Nature and Culture in the Age of Environmental Crisis: Digital Analysis of a Global Debate in The UNESCO Courier, 1948-2020

Abstract

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, The UNESCO Courier, 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; Courier 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.