| The examination of social perspectives on nature is an enduring geographical theme. Early geographical views held that societies were shaped by environmental conditions and the availability of natural resources, while subsequent critical Marxian views presumed that political economic forces, especially those linked to ruling social classes, determined the material conditions of social life and differences in environmental conditions mattered little in comparison to social stratification and economic interests. Geography's contemporary cultural approaches, on the other hand, emphasize how the views societies have about nature are inseparable from their cultural, social, economic, and political processes.;In my dissertation research, I integrate geography's cultural approach to nature-society relations with feminist perspectives on gender, work, and worker identity. I focus on the natural products segment of the US beauty industry to explore four facets of the interconnections between the categories of nature and women's beauty. I use advertisements for beauty products from a prominent US women's magazine to examine narrative themes and shifts in how nature is positioned in relation to women's beauty (Chapter Two). Using the Aveda Corporation as my case study firm, I develop a multi-stranded exploration of its view of nature and examine how this permeates the discourses it employs in the projection of its corporate self-image, in its marketing materials, and in the professional training it provides and the workplace practices it promotes. Informed by non-western views of nature, Aveda portrays nature as a key source of beauty, healing, and wellness in its origin stories and promotional materials (Chapter Three), in performing spectacles of its corporate self to evoke identification among staff at its network of affiliated salons (Chapter Four) and in the ways it shapes the physical spaces of affiliated salons and the work practices of salon staff (Chapter Five).;Methodological approaches include content and discourse analysis of beauty advertisements (Chapter Two), discourse analysis of corporate narrative and marketing materials (Chapter Three), and participant observation and semi-structured interviews (Chapters Four and Five). |
