Jag ser och hör fåglar - Om relationen fågelskådare-fågel och vad den uttrycker om relationen människa-natur

Sammanfattning: This thesis investigates the relationship between the human being and nature and how it emerges through the relationship between birdwatcher and bird. The aim is to study a potential contradiction in bird watching, between perceptual proximity and detached objectification that potentially inheres in the activity. Six birdwatchers are interviewed about their experiences of watching birds, in terms of how they find it meaningful, and how they go about it. Some themes emerge as especially consistent throughout the interviews, namely those of ticklist, knowledge, temporality and place. These themes are discussed in relation to the conventional idea of a divide between nature and culture, what is known as the nature-culture dichotomy, and the problems associated with this idea. These are articulated as problems of distance and fragmentation. Firstly, the empirical material suggests that there is an actual conflict between the world as described by science, and the lived world, or life-world. Moreover, I argue that the notion of an education of attention is useful in understanding bird watching as a quest for knowledge and as a way of discovering meaning in the environment. The reading of an essay by Ingold, which describes the world as being constituted through resonances among its inhabitants, is used to explain why the stories of the birdwatchers consistently reflect on time. Finally, the responses provided in the interviews confirms that an attention aimed at birds appears to make the divide between nature and culture somewhat diffuse due to the ubiquitous close proximity of various bird species. Overall, the results suggest that bird watching is indeed meaningful due to a very close, rather that distant, relationship that develops between the birdwatchers and their surroundings. Here, fragments are triumphed by the whole of the environment.