Harvesting Fruitful Human-Nature Connections in Traditional Orchards:Perspectives from an Ethnographic Discourse Analysis in Luxembourg

The growing impacts of human activities on the natural environment have triggered extensive academic reflection on the relationship between humans and nature. One perspective to examine human-nature connections is through the concept of landscape (Förster et al., 2012). While studies have tackled the sustainability benefits of landscapes such as forests (e.g. Erbaugh & Oldekop, 2018), gardens (e.g. Lee, 2017) and urban parks (e.g. Rigolon, 2016), less attention has been given to orchards. Yet, encompassing various wildlife habitats and interactions between society and nature, orchards merit special research interests as they lie on a continuum between natural ecosystems such as forests, where human impact is minimal, and artificial ecosystems such as gardens, which are highly dependent on human maintenance. As a ‘semi-natural habitat’ (Barnes & Williamson, 2022), orchard is a unique setting to study human-nature connectedness. Therefore, I employ an ethno-case study (Parker-Jenkins, 2018) approach to examine how five Luxembourgish environmental volunteers think, talk about and interact with three local orchards, and analyse the ethnographic data using Hajer and Versteeg’s (2005) discourse theory framework. Demonstrating how orchards are perceived and constructed as sites to form intellectual, environmental and recreational human-nature connections, I argue that a socio-constructivist perspective enables a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of landscapes. Situated within discourse studies, my project also contributes to the interdisciplinary field of Environmental Humanities using orchards as an illustration to illuminate the multifaceted and evolving human-nature relationships. Comprehending the diversity and complexity of human-nature connections empowers us to negotiate the conflicts that result from the collision between different perceptions of nature. This contribution also showcases an alternative narrative on how people experience landscapes and co-exist with nature in convivial ways, contrasting with the dominant crisis narratives that highlight the dichotomy between human society and natural environment, often casting human as the antithesis of nature.