A Neopragmatic Perspective on the Processual Nature of Landscape—Coastal Land Loss in Louisiana in the Context of Scientific Findings, Social Patterns of Interpretation, and Individual Experience

Abstract

The changes on the Louisiana coast due to land loss can be understood as a process, and the social construction of these processes is highly complex. Due to this complexity, we will examine these social patterns of interpretation as well as individual experiences of coastal land loss in Louisiana within a neopragmatic meta-theoretical framework using several methods, data, researcher perspectives, forms of representation, and theories, with a special focus on the construction of coastal land loss by the media. For this purpose, comments below a YouTube video on a hurricane event on Grand Isle, Louisiana, as well as on-site interviews with people affected by coastal land loss, were qualitatively analyzed. The results were interpreted with the help of various theories such as the theory of three landscapes, Dahrendorf’s conflict theory, Bourdieu’s theory of social capital, and Luhmann’s autopoietic systems theory. The research reveals patterns of interpretation, categorization, and evaluation of processes from an internal and external perspective that are highly morally charged.