UN Magazine Reveals Shifting Global View of Nature and Culture
A 72-year analysis of UNESCO's flagship publication shows nature and culture have become increasingly intertwined in global discourse, signaling a fundamental shift in how policymakers and organizations frame environmental challenges. The finding suggests sustainability strategies must now treat nature and culture as inseparable—a crucial insight for businesses and governments redesigning climate and development initiatives.
Originaltitel: Nature and Culture in the Age of Environmental Crisis: Digital Analysis of a Global Debate in <em>The UNESCO Courier</em>, 1948-2020
<p>This study uses digital text analysis, focusing on LDA topic modeling, to conduct a historical investigation of the relationship between the concepts of nature and culture found in the pages of the official magazine of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, <em>The UNESCO Courier</em>, between 1948 and 2020. The relationship between the concepts of nature and culture has historically been at the core of concerns about the environment and sustainability; <em>Courier</em> offers a means of charting a global conversation on these concepts. After presenting the corpus and our methods, the paper documents three approaches to LDA topic modeling that we have tested, through which we seek to make topic modeling useful for the field of conceptual history. Our empirical findings suggest that the concepts of nature and culture have come to be increasingly close over the course of the last six decades, while the stakes of the very distinction between the concepts have changed radically. Our methodological tests support the argument that topic modeling can be a valuable tool for conceptual history, albeit one that must be handled with care.</p>