The nature of nature writing: the politics of environmental education and the necessity of spiritual commitment in the writings of Stefan Edman

The nature writing of Swedish author/biologist Stefan Edman (1946 –) is shaped by a mainstream political agenda. Simultaneously it gives voice to aesthetic and spiritual reflections on nature’s processes and on environmental change. This paper focuses on how Edman’s texts function, through rhetoric, scientific clarification and ethical positioning, as both an integral part of an established political context, and as a reflective and critical instance, addressing environmental issues. Edman has for several years upheld a position at the center of Swedish politics; apart from being one of the major nature writers of this and the last century, he is the author of governmental investigations, and closely associated to the Social Democratic Party and one of the originators behind ‘the green welfare state’ during Prime Minister Goran Persson’s reign (1996-2006). In this paper analyses are made of Edman’s nature writing and his work is  contextualized with the intent to demonstrate the specific political significance of the texts’ different modes, with particular attention taken to the key concepts ‘limited resources’ and ‘sustainable development’. The theoretical basis of my paper includes Ursula Heise’s ‘Sense of Place and Sense of Planet’ and Satterfield and Slovic (eds.) What’s Nature Worth’, as well as models of discursive analysis.