Reading for this week:

1
Reading for this week

• Soule, Michael and Daniel Press. 1998. What is
  environmental studies? Bioscience 48(5) 397-406.
  

2
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

3
The rise of ecology

• Ecology
• the study of interactions among living organisms
  and the biotic and abiotic components of their
  environment

4
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

5
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
6
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

7
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

8
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

9
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.

10
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

11
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)

12
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

13
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).

14
(No Transcript)
15
Social criticism - Issues

• access to land / land ownership policies
• concentration of wealth / economic monopolies
• social and environmental consequences of
  capitalism
• North-South economic imbalances

16
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

17
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

18
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

19
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

20
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

21
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

22
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

23
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

24
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