Reading for this week:
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Reading for this week:
Soule, Michael and Daniel Press. 1998. What is environmental studies? Bioscience 48(5): 397-406.
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Outline of article
• The origins and development of environmental studies (U.S. bias)
• Emerging themes, problems, and conflicts
• A discipline, multidiscipline, or interdiscipline?
• Ideological conflicts
• Institutional problems
• Solutions for multi-disciplinary illiteracy
• Conclusions and recommendations
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The rise of ecology
Ecology:
• the study of interactions among living organisms and the biotic and abiotic components of their environment
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The rise of ecology
Ecologists recognized that:
• humans were a part of natural systems
• abiotic and biotic components are linked and interdependent
• natural systems could be studied and understood in terms of systems principles
• ecosystems have functional limits
• ecosystems can be perturbed and destroyed
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The rise of ecology
• referred to as ‘a subversive subject’ by Paul Sears (1964) and ‘the subversive science’ by Shepard and McKinley (1969):
the insights and implications of ecology cannot be ignored when looking at every aspect of human endeavour
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Ideological Tensions in Environmental Studies
Environmental studies covers a broad ideological spectrum with two main foci:
• Ideologies based in social criticism
• Ideologies based in the natural sciences
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Social criticism approach
• Humanistic
• Anthropocentric
• Emancipatory Often view the world and teach about it from
the viewpoint of the human victims of discrimination and injustice
Social justice and equity concerns predominate
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Natural Sciences approach
• rarely equate intuition (or narrative) and knowledge; rely on empiricism and science
• accept the premise of evolutionary or incremental (rather than revolutionary) improvements in society
• pragmatic - believe that environmental studies should teach students to be effective problem solvers and to master skills and research techniques
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Social Criticism vs. Natural Sciences approaches
• Disputes between these two groups are often formulated in terms of anthropocentric versus ecocentric goals and values, although these labels do not apply to all members of these groups.
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Anthropocentrism
• may consider human welfare and economic advancement to have higher ethical standing than the welfare and existence of other species and ecosystems
• may be embraced across the political spectrum
• traditionally includes sociologists, anthropologists who emphasize sustainable development and poverty alleviation, and many ecofeminists
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Ecocentrism
• reject the claims of absolute human privilege and rightful domination over nature
• accuse the humanists of "speciesism," ecological naivete, and callousness toward living nature.
• not attached to any particular social science theory of history or society, but generally value ‘intrinsic worth’ theorists (e.g. Arne Naess, Holmes Rolston, George Sessions)
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Ecocentrism
• advocates biodiversity, wilderness, and native plant and animal communities (ecosystems), including the services these provide society
• believes that the ultimate causes of environmental problems are either ancient human institutions (such as agriculture) or the genetic, evolved roots of human nature
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Ecocentrism
• assumes a universal, deep-seated impulse toward self-interest in all species, including human beings, and that greed or selfishness is genetic and that self-interest is resistant to cultural fixes or education
• Because ecocentrists believe greed to be a fundamental part of human nature, they are less sanguine about the potential long-term benefits of revolutions (which all too often replace one elite with another).
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Social criticism - Issues
• access to land / land ownership policies
• concentration of wealth / economic monopolies
• social and environmental consequences of capitalism
• North-South economic imbalances
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Social criticism – Tenets:
• tends to favor social explanations (such as differential access of classes to power) for the unsustainable forms of human activity
• tend to champion revolutionary political change and promote bottom-up decision-making / participatory development
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Social criticism – Tenets:
• suspicious of pragmatism and incremental change, particularly when advocated by privileged elites
• favor revolutionary forms of social change, pointing out that ‘mainstream’ scientists and activists too readily assume Western or ecocentric views of nature and the economy--views that they regard as inappropriately narrow constructs for guiding public policy
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Social criticism – Tenets:
• prefer intuitive, or deconstructive, methods over hypothesis-testing, reductionist methods
• the search for underlying generalities or principles and for methodological repeatability is eschewed in favor of culturally contextualized, occasionally ethnographic case studies that question the cultural norms of Western civilization
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Social criticism – Tenets:
• critical of scientists and technocrats as being narrowly "scientistic" and "technist" and may disparage modern science as an engine of the dominant, authoritarian culture
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Deep Ecology
• a shift away from the anthropocentric bias of established environmental and green movements
• deemphasizes the rationalistic duality between the human organism and its environment
• emphasis is placed on the intrinsic value of other species, systems and processes in nature.
• an ecocentric system of environmental ethics
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Social Ecology
• it is not the number of people, but the way people relate to one another that has fueled the current economic, social, and ecological crises
• the current ecological crisis is the product of poor distributive justice and capitalism
• over-consumption, productivism and consumerism are thus symptoms, not causes, of a deeper issue with ethical relationships within societies
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Ecocentrism
• a philosophy that recognizes that the ecosphere, rather than any individual organism, is the source and support of all life
• advocates a holistic approach to governance, industry, and individual endeavour that respects ecosystem process and function
• similar to Biocentrism, but includes inanimate elements of the ecosphere
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Humanism
• a philosophy free from beliefs in the supernatural
• meaning and values for individuals on this earth defined through reliance on reason, intelligence, scientific method, democratic process, and social compassion
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Humanism
• affirms the inherent dignity and worth of every human being
• asserts that we are responsible for the realization of our aspirations, and have the ability within ourselves to achieve them
• contends that human beings are a part of nature, have emerged as a result of an evolutionary process, and that our values - religious, ethical, political, and social - have their sources in human experience and culture