Ecosemiotic Basis of Locality

The study of relations between culture and nature requires a discussion between different fields of science – no so-called pure discipline can completely embrace such a diverse subject. In Estonia, literary ecology, environmental aesthetics and environmental psychology have so far been more actively engaged in such discussions. These disciplines have, proceeding from the literary criticism and theories of art and psychology, respectively, attempted to interpret the relations between man and nature. Since these border disciplines all originate from the Anglo-American tradition, and their development coincided with the arrival of the ecological way of thinking in the scientific discourse in the 1960s, they are also burdened by the same tradition. One component of this relationship under observation – culture – invokes a question: how adequate at all are the methods originating from the AngloAmerican scientific tradition for the analysis of the local Estonian material? Our cultural environment is, obviously, rather different when compared with the American one. Maybe the greatest difference between the so-called small and large cultures, and between the paradigms stemming from these cultures, is aiming at different degrees of generalisation. While a large culture, and a large scientific tradition deriving from such a culture can quite naturally claim to represent universal experience and knowledge, the scientific thought of a small nation is haunted by the doubt, whether the achieved knowledge represents only local matters and whether it is universally relevant (such doubt is especially strong in disciplines discussing culture and society). Also, the question of selfidentity is much more important for a small culture. Therefore, the scientific