A Lighter Shade of Green: Reproducing Nature in Central Florida

Abstract

Sorkin and others have recently described contemporary social and material developments as just so many "variations on the theme park" ideal (Sorkin 1992). This "theming" of everyday life is understood as relating directly to the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial society. Changes in the dominant forms of material production have led to what Lash and Urry (1994: 15) call the increasing "aestheticization of material objects," or the "increasing sign value" of goods and services in post-industrial society. Image has become an increasingly important source of value, particularly in information rich, service-based economies. How well products, services, and even places are "imagineered" (in Disney parlance) for exchange is of ever greater concern in the quest for economic viability.