Natura Vexata

Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death

2009-07-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging much this summer. Been focusing on writing for publication. Instead I will direct you to some interesting things found on the web recently. This video is a must see:

Political Ecology of Shifting Cultivation

2009-05-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

Rasul, G. 2007. Political Ecology of the Degradation of Forest Commons in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Environmental Conservation 34, no. 02: 153-163.

While there are many definitions of political ecology, all political ecologies share a common set of assumptions, similar mode of explanation, and a rejection of “apolitical” ecological explanations of social environmental change (Robbins 2004). Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) define political ecology as a combination of “the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political economy. Together this encompasses the constantly shifting dialectic between society and land-based resources, and also within classes and groups within society itself” (p. 17). While this definition is good, political ecology from an institutional perspective similar to Ostrom (2007) is a “confluence between ecologically rooted social science and the principles of political economy” (Peet and Watts 1996, 6). Rather than dwell on definitions, I will let the definition of political ecology be made clear through the discussion of a study of the degradation of forest commons in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Bangladesh.

Golam Rasul (2007) challenges the widely held belief of the United Nations and national governments that shifting cultivation is the major cause of deforestation in South East Asia. Instead, deforestation cannot be understood without also understanding the political and social processes and historical legacies that condition the access, control, and management of resources (Bryant 1997). To understand these social and political processes, Rasul (2007) collected information from colonial reports, official documents, diaries of colonial administrators and travelers’ books, journals, and censuses. The data collected from these secondary sources was supplemented with field visits, non-participant observation, and key informant interviews. Informants were selected to capture the variety of views held by different stakeholders (local people, forest officials, revenue department, civil society, business community, and traditional institutions). Rasul (2007) interviewed informants informally using checklists. These checklists had similar common elements, but differed according to the expertise and knowledge of informants, in order to capture different aspects of forest management knowledge. “Useful” key informants (circle chiefs, tribal leaders, and forest officials) were interviewed more than once, and the information received was verified against different sources to avoid bias.

Rasul (2007) uses the data from these secondary and primary sources to analyze the political and legal changes that have influenced access, control, and management of CHT in the pre-colonial, British colonial and post-colonial (Pakistan and Bangladesh periods) eras. This historical trend is summarized (as concise as possible) in Table 3. Rasul (2007) demonstrates that the process of deforestation became prevalent in the British colonial period as the British nationalized forests extracted timber for revenue, planted monocultures of teak, and alienated indigenous people from traditional forest management practices. The post colonial government continued to follow these policies as they tried to further centralize power and control over forests. While post-colonial government sought control over the forests, deforestation continued due to corruption, illegal timber trade, improved road connections to forests, and increasing indifference among the local people. Finally, this poor management regime, which was de facto open access, led to reduced trust and confidence between ethnic communities and the government, and ultimately to armed conflict. This open access situation is contrasted with the traditional shifting cultivation system of the tribal communities, which controlled the use of the forest by outsiders (Rasul 2007). Thus, the claim that shifting cultivation is the cause of deforestation in CHT is too simplistic, and instead of banning this practice, Rasul (2007) recommends a series of policies that could alleviate the conflicts over the forests of Chittagong.

Rasul (2007) provides a historical account of CHT that demonstrates a shifting dialectic between forests and society, particularly a dialectic between indigenous people, colonial power, and the institutional legacies of colonial power (See Table 5 for details). A diversity of methods is employed, including an analysis of historical documents and semi-structured interview. Some important methodological aspects come out of this study. First, when using ethnographic methods, the ability to establish rapport with informants is crucial. Under conditions of low trust, as we might expect under conditions of potential armed conflict between groups, the ability to obtain accurate information, or any information from informants becomes difficult. Furthermore, social conflicts may make it hard for some social groups to be able to get interviews. Additionally, the ability to communicate in the same language would completely rule me out of this type of ethnographic research, unless I was able to collaborate with someone who could communicate effectively, and establish rapport with the stakeholders involved in this account.

Additionally, Rasul (2007) states that the data from interviews were verified by checking them with different sources, but does not state which sources were used for verification. Furthermore, when reading the article, it is difficult to determine when Rasul (2007) is discussing information from historical data, or from informants. This leaves the reader somewhat unable to understand how the historical and ethnographic data were combined. Nevertheless, this political ecology study demonstrates the importance of putting institutional changes relating to SESs into a socio-political context. By understanding the processes that have led to deforestation, loss of confidence and trust, and weakening of traditional institutions, we can understand how policy and economics affects SESs, and begin to develop solutions to these problems within a given context.

Cholera and Interdisciplinary Science in 19th Century London

2009-05-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

From: The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. Johnson, S. 2006.

Johnson describes the scavengers of London’s underclass in the 19th century, who performed the daily tasks of recyclers in the city. Numbering over one hundred thousand people, the scavengers recycled compost, metals, cloth and other materials. These forms of recycling have been found in all cities, and our current recycling system is a new less dangerous or labor intensive method. With the invention of water closets, water use increased and more excrement was flushed into cesspools, exacerbated by population increases. With this rise in excrement in the city, and the inability of recyclers to deal with it, came the rise of Cholera. Soho, a site of an earlier plague became an important location, both for Cholera outbreaks, and as a location for urban poets, artists, and writers like Marx, Blake, and Shelley. Much of the Soho area was located above a mass plague burial pit. John Snow became an important figure in medicine, and Soho was the grounds in which he examined the causal relationships between water and Cholera outbreaks.

John Snow was first focused on the use of ether for anesthetic. His method of bridging between different disciplines, from properties of gases, to dosage in humans and their effects on individuals, to the development of devices to control dosages. This unique type of thinking was more focused on chains and networks moving from scale to scale. Snow’s interest in Cholera, however, moved him from the individual to study of social groupings. While the contagionists argued for a Cholera contagion passed from person to person, and the miasmatists argued that Cholera lingered in unsanitary places, Snow argued that the disease was a contagion that is transferred through water, and not air, and provided evidence that showing that Cholera’s effects were related to shared water supplies. During an outbreak in Soho, both John Snow and Henry Whitehead began separate investigations. While Snow began to map out the cases of Cholera deaths in order to determine its location, Whitehead began to notice the class differentiation of cholera contraction, and the ability to fight off the disease. Additionally, Whitehead found that the water responsible for Cholera deaths ceased to cause people to contract the disease after a certain amount of time.

Edmund Cooper’s map successfully proved that the plague pit was not responsible for the cholera outbreak, but the map was too detailed to show that the culprit was actually the water pumps. Snow used voronoi diagrams to show the correspondence between Cholera cases, water pumps and footpaths. This map reflected an intimate street-level knowledge combined with a birds-eye view. Snow’s map provided further evidence for his waterborne theory, but his theory was not accepted until years later. Whitehead used this map in combination with an index of cases to further support the theory. Snow and Whitehead were using a new method for exploring urban space, and a model for managing and sharing information based on two principles; the importance of local experts and the lateral cross disciplinary flow of ideas.

Through the telling of the story of John Snow and Henry Whitehead, the author highlights the important and unique attributes of these people that allowed them to see beyond the dominant theories of the time, and make a breakthrough in the understanding of Cholera, disease, and urban environmental health. Scientists tend to think that our sophisticated techniques of analyzing spatial/temporal problems have developed with the increasing sophistication of our tools (i.e. satellites, laboratories, chemical assays, genetic analysis). The story of Snow and Whitehead demonstrates that unique flows of information between people, local knowledge, and the simple method of representing data on a hand-drawn map can lead to scientific breakthrough. While the tools we have at our disposal have vastly increased our capabilities, it is the ability to utilize multiple forms of knowledge, local context, and a fresh perspective with these tools that can lead to further breakthroughs.

Harvey's Dialectics

2009-04-27T18:46:00.000-07:00

From David Harvey's Justice, nature, and the geography of difference.

Historical materialist enquiry infused with dialectics can integrate themes of space, place, and environment into both social and literary theory.

Literary theorists have brought about resurgence in dialectics, setting the stage for confrontations in social theory between positivism, materialism, and empiricism, with phenomenology, hermeneutics, and dialectics. Parallel modes of thinking:

1) Notion of “thing” as something that has history and has external connection

2) Notion of “process” containing history and possible futures, and “relation” containing ties with other relations Duality has no purchase in dialectics, yet the debate does have significance in regards to the abstraction of phenomena we encounter in everyday life.
Dialectics in 11 propositions:

1) “Dialectical thinking emphasizes the understanding of processes, flows, fluxes, and relations over the analysis of elements, things, structures, and organized systems.”

2) “Elements or “things” are constituted out of flows, processes, and relations operating within bounded fields which constitute structured systems or wholes.

3) The “things” and systems which many researchers treat as irreducible and therefore unproblematic are seen in dialectical thought as internally contradictory by virtue of the multiple processes that constitute them.

4) “Things” are always assumed “to be internally heterogeneous” at every level.”

a) What looks like a system at one level becomes a part at another level?

b) The only way we can understand the qualitative and quantitative attributes of “things” is by understanding the processes and relations they internalize.” Contradiction is a union of two or more internally related processes that are simultaneously supporting and undermining one another.”

c) “There is no limitation to be put on the argument.” We do not internalize everything, but only what is relevant.

d) Setting boundaries is a major strategic consideration. What is relevant, at what scale?

5) “Space and time are neither absolute nor external to processes but are contingent and contained with them. Processes do not operate in but actively construct space and time and in so doing define distinctive scales for their development.”

6) “Parts make whole, and whole makes part.”

7) The interdigitation of parts and whole entails “the interchangeability of subject and object, of cause and effect.”

8) Creativity arises out of contradictions from the heterogeneity in systems and internalized heterogeneity of “things”.

9) All aspects of all systems change

10) Dialectical enquiry is a process that produces permanences that can be supported or undermined by continuing processes of enquiry.

11) Exploration of “possible worlds, or potentialities is central do dialectical thinking

To the extent to which you replace labor power with machines, the market is reduced as unemployment increases. This means that the market has to expand, rewarding the rich and those who are not unemployed and have the money to consume more. Capitalism thus creates uneven development. This contradiction is manifested in crises.

DIALECTICAL CONCEPTS, ABSTRACTIONS, AND THEORIES

The above 11 dialectical concepts attempt to allow us to accept a strong view of dialectics, that the world is inherently dialectic, while according to Marx’s practice, focusing on socio-economic systems. The dialectic approach implies that the search for order must be replaced with a search for generative principles that produce different types of orders.

RELATIONS WITH OTHER SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT

Cartesian thinking is lacking in some ways. It cannot cope with change and process except in terms of comparative statics, feed back loops, or linear rates of change.

DIALECTIC APPLICATIONS – MARX’S CONCEPTION OF CAPITAL

Capital is conceptualized as a process or as a relation rather than a thing. He further states that we must concentrate our attention to the transformative moment of production if we want to understand the creative mechanisms of transforming the process of capitalism. The labor process and its appropriation allow capital to flow. Marx’s ideas have required further specialization, and can be used to explain processes and flows occurring today. But dialectics is not free from destructive misappropriation and a trenchant unchanging view of the world, but neither is any other form of worldview (i.e. Capitalism).

Weak Actor-Network Theories: Hybrid Nature

2009-04-19T16:52:00.000-07:00

Summary of:

SOCIAL NATURE: THEORY, PRACTICE, AND POLITICES
CHAPTER 11: DISSOLVING DUALISMS: ACTOR-NETWORKS AND THE REIMAGINATION OF NATURE. CASTREE AND MACMILLAN.

The first version of social constructionist arguments is that nature is socially and culturally given meaning, and thus we can never know nature in-and-of-itself. The second version argues that nature is increasingly reconstituted materially as it is physically produced and reproduced as industrial science and technology becomes increasingly profit driven. Both versions agree that nature is both humanly fabricated, and a tool or effect of power. These views, however, along with natural realism that it rejects all lack the ability to imagine human-nature relations as anything but dualities. Actor network theory (ANT) has been proposed as a way to imagine the world as hybrid, chimeric, complex, and entangled. It is founded on four important concepts.

Binarism – ANT argues for an amodern ontology recognizing hybrids or quazi-objects. This type of thinking compels us to think relationally instead of in terms of separations. Thus, through the metaphor of the network, we instead look at chains of connections between so-called social and natural entities. Instead of assuming that the same general processes drive different networks, ANT posits that the processes determining the dynamics of a network are internal, and explanations can only emerge after the network is described.

Symmetry – ANT argues for a symmetrical greening of human geography in which nature is not thought of in ecocentric or anthropocentric terms, instead as a hybrid. The social and the natural are co-constitutive within networks.

Actors as networks – Instead of assuming that significant actors are human, ANT argues that every actor is also a network, and actors are social and natural. This means that agency is a relational effect caused by the interacting components of the network. Additionally, capacities of actants vary according to their place within a network. This is a notion of actors and actions as multiple, contingent, and non-essentialist.

Power Relations – ANTs argue that power is not centralized; instead it is shared involving “myriad natural actants as much as social ones”. To see power as solely a human attribute is to be deceived and to “overstate the power of power”.

Castree and MacMillan argue for a more weak form of ANT to go along with a weak constructionism. First, they argue that ANT obscures the difference by flattening out out things in the world as being the same. Second, there still is the potential that the processes, which make up and make actor-networks, could be the same. Third, strong ANT in refusing any prior explanations, it is unclear what kind of explanations can be taken, and no theoretical commitments or commitments to weighing social forces. Finally, ANT risks ignoring the possibility of that some actants do have more power over others, and thus can limit the abilities of others.

Thus Castree and MacMillan argue for a weak ANT, remaining critical to duality, asymmetry, limited conceptions of agents, and centralized power. But at the same time weak ANT would concede that many actor-networks are driven by similar processes, these processes are social and natural, but not necessarily equal in measure, agents vary in their ability to direct power, and that the objective remains to develop a politics of nature attuned by o both human and social needs.

Historical and Ethnographic Analysis of the Conceptualization of Natural Landscapes

2009-04-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

In Laura Ogden’s article of the politics of nature of the Everglades, the concept of the Everglades was transformed from Tansey’s original mechanistic concept, to the interconnected socio-ecological systems concept. Finally, this concept was further transformed through the bureaucratization of the ecosystem concept into separate and technocratically controlled units. This type of research can be said to be similar to theory laid out by Foucault’s analysis of madness, sexuality, and the body among others, wherein knowledge is created as a product of power, and power operates through this socially constructed knowledge. In this case, a certain type of knowledge is created that benefits the technocratic and bureaucratic agencies and the continued application of this knowledge. Laura Ogden’s use of ethnographic and historical methods has effectively revealed the gaps left open by this particular type of knowledge, and the importance for a greater degree of agency among a diverse group of people in knowledge production in the context of socionatural relations.

In the second article on the ‘smoothing out’ of the Royal Palm Hammock region of the everglades, rural whites were first depended upon as guides for naturalists, and later alienated from the land. This was done by the separation of European whites from nature, the concept that any ‘civilization’ is detrimental to the Royal Palm, and the emphasis on rational technocratic knowledge. This study, while similar in methods to the politics of nature article, emphasizes the creation of the “pristine myth”. To dispel this pristine myth is of importance to the re-establishment of other forms of knowledge. Sluyter’s (2003) study of the transformation of the landscape of early Colonial Mexico shows how the pristine myth can erase a history of potentially sustainable relations with the land by the construction and production of “pristine” environments. Similarly, Laura Ogden’s study reveals the history of a region that was both social and natural, while additionally being of great interest to naturalists and scientists.

While the below articles have revealed important gaps and political agendas in the dominant ecological knowledge, it is important to understand the objectives of this type of research. While some critics could liken this type of research to current streams of argument for the social constructivism of climate change, a distinction must be made between what Demeritt (2001) describes as construction-as-refutation and construction-as-philosophical-critique. While the former makes a giant leap from the social construction of certain types of knowledge to the refutation of that entire body of knowledge, the latter emphasizes the importance of being reflexive on our knowledge and contextualizing and situating our knowledge into a broad range of perspectives. It is in this sense that Laura Ogden’s study can be of great benefit to the conceptualization of the socionatural landscapes of the Everglades, and greater agency of different social groups in future management policies.

Sluyter, A. 2003. Material-conceptual landscape transformation and the emergence of the pristine myth in early Colonial Mexico. In. Political Ecology: an integrative approach to geography and environment-development studies Ed. Zimmerer K. Z. and Bassett. T. J. The Guilford Press, NY, pp. 221-239

Demeritt, D. 2001. Being constructive about nature. In. Social nature: Theory, practice, and politics. Eds. Castree N., and Braun B. Blackwell Publishes, MA, pp. 22-40

Part 1: The Everglades ecosystem and the politics of nature. Ogden. L. 2008.

In this article Ogden (2008) traces the institutional history of the scientific concept of the ecosystem as it was applied to policy and environmental science in restoration efforts in the Florida Everglades. She analyzes the quasi-government organizations and government bureaucracies involved in Everglades restoration planning and implementation, as well as the political agendas and knowledge systems and the knowledge production within these institutions.

From the early to mid 20th century, the Everglades were considered to be uncivilized lands to be drained, settled, and made productive by human hands. The Corps initiated a massive construction project to achieve these ends, diverting excess freshwater to the oceans. But this reengineering project was linked to ecological problems. Guided by the ecosystem approach, the U.S. congress authorized CERP. This ecosystem approach assumes that the natural world can be separated by semi-permeable boundaries with internal interactions, and that ecosystems are adaptable, resilient, and exhibiting alternative stable states. This concept of the ecosystems differs largely from Tansley’s original mechanistic modernist concept. Yet this concept was redefined as it became incorporated into the policy of state and non-state institutions. Ogden (2008) documents this process of bureaucratization of knowledge with the use of participant observation, semistructured interviews of policy makers and scientists, and the analysis of official documents.

Before the concept of the ecosystem was applied to the Everglades, the landscape was a set of resources to be managed. As this landscape was rapidly undergoing transformation, the scientific research of the Everglades was narrowly constrained by the bureaucracies that employed scientists. Through the control of funds and resources, and strictly defined boundaries to research protocols, the scientific approach to problem solving was fragmented and limited to local scales. Environmental NGOs helped to transfer information between scientists and administrators, allowing interagency collaboration, and helping to transform the culture of Everglades science and management. This led to a broader perspective on the Everglades as an ecosystem, but humans were not included in this model. Instead, they were abstract external impacts, and their variation as differently embedded into global and national markets was homogenized.

This ecocentric approach began to shift to reflect the interdisciplinary focus of ecosystem studies. Through the Commission for a Sustainable South Florida, the emerging concepts of the interconnectability inseparability of society, economy, and ecosystems was transformed as it was separated into domains, managed by separate entities. With the implementation of CERP, the ecosystem concept was bureaucratized resulting in conflicts between the attributing of expertise to those organizations (such as the Corps) that historically has failed in their stewardship roles, and the ecosystem as a nonlinear uncertain system. Ignoring the uncertainty of ecological knowledge, the approach to the everglades was transformed into a technocratic management plan.

Part 2: Searching for paradise in the Florida Everglades. Ogden L.A. 2008.

This narrative article accounts the rise of Royal Palm Hammock in the Florida everglades and the contributions of the local experiences to scientific knowledge. Ogden (2008) reviews scientific papers, letters, fieldnotes, photographs, bibliographies of naturalists, newspaper articles and published accounts of fieldwork from the late 1800s through to the mid 1930s, in order to understand the cultural history of the scientific process. Much of this literature has ignored the human history of the hammock, emphasizing ecological worth and rarity. This history includes the encroachment of white settlers on indigenous land , the genocide of indigenous people, as well as the subsequent removal of white settlers to create a ‘pristine’ national park. This type of research is essential to the understanding of the continuation of colonialist rhetoric that frame the disputes of land use between indigenous people and the national parks. Additionally, Ogden (2008) conducted interviews with alligator hunters to demonstrate how the once blurry distinction between human and natural world have now been separated.

While indigenous people were considered to be a part of nature, nonindigenous people were abstracted from nature and considered out of place. In order to protect Royal Palm Hammock, it needed to be transformed into a ‘smooth object’, ontology devoid of conflict, or incongruities, or human-nature entanglements. The Royal Palm Hammock and the people that inhabited the region were ‘generified’ into intelligible, stable categories. Naturalists from the late 1800s to mid 1930s did not recognize the connections rural whites had to the site, saw all white presence as detrimental, and portrayed the ways of knowing the landscape as intuitive despite their fundamental dependents on local rural whites.

In order to assert the ecological importance and rarity of Royal Palm, naturalists were required to conduct intensive research, surveys, fieldwork, and replicable scientific progress. To do this, naturalists depended upon the expertise of white rural guides, who knew the area as alligator hunters, trappers, and traders. Interviews with alligator hunters indicated that both Seminoles and whites continued to hunt and camp in the hammocks of Royal Palm, even after the establishment of the hammock as a state park in 1916 and a national park in 1947. This picture of the national park runs contrary to the narrative of the region as a pristine and undiscovered landscape, yet naturalists achieved this by categorizing the rural whites as deviant, unsophisticated and detrimental to the ecological integrity of the area.

To combat the unsophisticated and destructive activities of rural whites, the conservationist discourse emphasizes the rationality of technocratic expertise in managing land and resources. This technocratic knowledge, originally dependent on local knowledge becomes a means to the removal of rural whites from the Royal Palm region. To this conservation approach, all signs of ‘civilization’ (a term that excluded the Seminoles) is a threat to Royal Palm.

The Power Relations of Parks

2009-04-15T14:25:00.001-07:00

The Patapsco Forest Reserve: Establishing a “City Park” for Baltimore, 1907-1941. Buckley et al. 2006.
We can better understand progressive era park building by considering the historical web of relationships involved in the formation Patapsco Forest Reserve. In this article, the history of this process is described by an examination of landownership records, state government documents, newspapers, accounts, and original reports of the Olmsted brothers.
As the City Beautiful movement became popular in the U.S. at the turn of the century, Romantic Era parks were altered to accommodate a more diverse general public, as well as recreational and aesthetic demands. This meant a shift from lawns and flowers to athletic facilities. While the Municipal Art Society initially focused on decorating and improving the aesthetics of the city, the Society’s Committee was authorized to collaborate with landscape architects in order to create a scheme for parks, street planning, drainage and development of suburban regions. The Park Report submitted by the Olmsted Brothers was favorably received, and Major Richard M. Venable of the Board of Park Commissioners successfully secured funding for the project. One recommendation from the Olmsted plan was the purchase of land beyond city limits to secure there is plenty of protected park areas as the city grows. The Patapsco Valley was purchased for this purpose.

State Forester Fred W. Besley, inspired by Gifford Pinchot, promoted state forest reserves for the “ecosystem services” they provide, including timber production and water purification. The Forest Conservation Act granted the Board authority to protect and improve state parks, condemn land, and purchase and accept gifts of land. As concern over the fate of Patapsco Valley began to grow, Besley sought to form an alliance with the elites of Baltimore in order to strengthen his scientific forestry plans, and the influence of the State Board of Forestry. Besley rallied support from Baltimore’s economic establishment to testify before the Maryland General Assembly (1912) for funds to purchase property to expand the Patapsco Valley Reserve to the banks of the Patapsco River. He ended up receiving twice the appropriation requested, as well as support from the Municipal Art Society. By 1956, a total acreage of 3,2144.875 acres was secured through donations and purchases for the Patapsco Reserve. Land was contributed by private residents, mostly of the upper class, and industries that had been adversely affected by sediment buildup and increased silt in the river and dams.

The forest reserve was marketed to the public as a park, allowing middle and upper class (those with the means to get to the park) Baltimoreans to get close to nature. Thus, Baltimore’s Progressives transformed Besley’s idea of the park as a timber reserve into a place of scenic beauty. Since Besley did not want to bound and separate scenic parks from timber reserves, he continued to garner support from the Baltimore public for conservation of the Patapsco Park.
Despite the goals of building parks throughout the city by the Olmsted brothers, this favoring of outlying parks reinforced the orientation of the middle and upper classes to suburban regions.

Marx contra Parson Naturalists

2009-04-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

Both Marx and Darwin emerged as critics of the Parson Naturalists (like Malthus) who attempted to put teleological principles into naturalism. One such theological naturalist, Paley, used the analogy of the watchmaker to infer design on natural phenomena, such as the eye. Darwin’s criticism of the watchmaker argument was the lack of a conception of the “arrow of time”.

Malthus’ Essay on Population suggested that the Deity designed humanity so that population growth is geometric, while the growth in food supply is arithmetic. Therefore, there will be a point in which population will outstrip food supply, and population will be kept in check by famine. This was not considered a negative thing, however, because only those who have chosen to disobey the natural laws of God are punished with famine.

Malthus’ ideas stem from the debate between Wallace and Godwin. Wallace believed that a perfect government would result in the increase of population beyond what can be sustained, while Godwin believed that our population would depend upon our wealth and wages.

As human beings come to know that they “have a duty towards those who are not yet born,” they will regulate human population accordingly “rather than foolishly encumber the world with useless and wretched beings.

Malthus, however believed that vice and misery was necessary to keep population at equilibrium, and that a class of capitalists and workers was also necessary. Government policy that attempted to deal with poverty, misery, and vice, was denying the necessities to keep population in check. This writing served as a means to strengthen power of the capitalists over workers, and to disorganize working class opposition. Malthus’ disciple, Thomas Chalmers continued the work of Malthus stating that the hand of God works among property rights, and abolition of Poor Laws to bring about the best result for humanity. It was this marriage between capitalism and naturalist Theology that plays a crucial role in the detachment of humanity from nature.

This also seems to be a common thread in the current right in the USA. The Randroids and the intelligent design fans continue to join forces in America. Regulation continues to get in the way of God’s design, and the sciences (though accepted at the doctors office) are seen as an attempt to move us away from god’s design.

Racial Inequity and Toxic Urban Environments

2009-04-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

Summary of: An assessment and explanation of environmental inequity in Baltimore. Boone, C. 2002.

Conventional environmental equity literature predicts that minority groups experience a higher exposure than the majority to unwanted land uses. Contrary to these expectations, Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) sites are found primarily in White census tracts. Studies demonstrating correlations of inequity patterns, however, do not identify the processes that create inequity patterns. This requires an understanding of not only the processes that make poor or minority communities a target of polluting industries, but why industries do not locate in certain regions of the city. Geographers have understood that instead of “which came first” questions, it is important to understand zoning, race and other demographic factors, as well as the broad changes in residential and industrial geography, and the contribution of institutional factors to inequity patterns.

While the TRI inventory is limited in that it underreports toxic releases, and does not include all chemicals with negative impacts or acute releases of chemicals, most would agree that living close to a TRI site is a disamenity. This study found similar results considering all census tracts, examining census tracts individually, block groups. In each case Whites were more likely to live in proximity to TRI sites. Census tract or block group data is limited in that it will underestimate the risks associated TRI cites located on the borders. Williams (1999) argued that the neighborhood might be the best unit of analysis because it constitutes a community or cluster of people. When Boone (2002) analyzed the relationship between race and location within neighborhoods containing TRI sites, a greater number of blacks live in neighborhoods with TRI sites. This unit of analysis was coarse, and neighborhoods are ambiguously delineated. The results for the case of Baltimore vary depending on the unit of analysis, and if adjoining census tracts within a half mile or quarter mile are included the inequity patterns are not as strong. This highlights the importance of explaining these correlative patterns.

The accelerated industrial growth of Baltimore also accelerated the separation by class, race, and ethnicity, assisted by manufacturers that built industrial cities and ran paternalistic operations to recruit German, Welsh, and Irish workers. Blacks also worked for industries, but were given the lowest paying jobs, and industries sometimes accommodated Black workers, though usually under poor conditions. Additionally, blacks lived far from manufacturing centers, having to spend a long time making the trip to work. Blacks were kept out of white areas by restrictive covenants, the threat intimidation and violence, and lobbying from real estate boards, building inspectors, and property owner associations.

The present distribution of TRI sites is largely a function of the industrial sites in the 1930s. The Zoning Board deemed the south and southeastern parts of the city to be suitable for industry, because the smoke would be carried away from majority of the population of Baltimore. This zoning pattern has shaped the TRI sites of the present, concentrating TRI sites in White areas. Thus the policies that sought to keep Blacks away from the more privileged White areas, has created a legacy of racial segregation and greater risk from TRI sites for Whites than Blacks.

Parks, Golf, and Desegregation in Baltimore

2009-03-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

Summary of: Separate but equal? Desegregating Baltimore’s golf courses. Wells et al. 2008.

The environmental justice literature connects patterns of inequity to the socio-political processes that create them, using spatial techniques, and importantly, a historical approach to uncover these processes. This article uses original minutes of Baltimore’s Board of Public Park Commissioners (BPPC) meetings, newspapers, and other historical sources to demonstrate the racial and ethnic struggles that shaped access to Carroll Park.

Seeking a park in southwestern Baltimore to complement the parks in other regions, the BPPC purchased the Mount Clare Estate from the heirs of Charles Carroll, as well as 20 surrounding acres. All former Carroll Family land was acquired by 1898, and Carroll Park was opened to the public that same year. While Charles Seybold, the park superintendent, envisioned a wide array of recreational facilities, his plans were never realized because the majority of funding was directed towards Druid Hill Park. As a result, much of the park had deteriorated and crime began to rise. The Olmsted Plan of 1904 reinforced the demands of men representing sporting clubs for police protection, more athletic facilities and better upkeep of existing services. One strip of land at the west, declared unsuitable by the BPPC, was sold to Montgomery Ward Company in 1924 for development. Charles Hook, Parks and Recreation Director, announced plans to build a 65 acre golf course on the remaining undeveloped property to allow urban golfers to exercise and get some fresh air. But the constructed Carroll Park golf course earned the reputation as the worst in Baltimore.

In the 1930s, the Monumental Golf Club of Baltimore, an African American organization led by Edward Lewis, began to campaign for access to golf courses. While all golf courses were previously white only, the BPPC began to allow African American golfers to play at Carroll Park. The Councilman representing the community southwest of Carroll Park threatened that his community would not support the mayor and the BPPC, and thus a compromise was reached in which whites and African American golfers were given privileges to Carroll park on split days. In an effort to force integration, the National Association For the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) targeting the wallets of those who promoted segregation by seeking to improving the quality of the facilities and schools to a level equal to white golf courses. Since attempts to desegregate all golf courses were met with strong resistance from Baltimore citizens, attorney Dallas Nicholas of the Monumental Golf Club engaged himself in a legal struggle for the improvement of the Carroll Park golf courses seeking renovation of facilities. Charles Law continued this campaign in 1947 by arguing that 9 holes are not equal to one. This political struggle was successful in returning to a gradual desegregation scheme. With petitions for additional time for African American golfers, and further threats of legal action, desegregation rules were finally relaxed. With Brown vs. Board of Education in 1953, the full desegregation of parks followed in 1955.

While the reaction to these changes was initially negative, racial tensions subsided, though partially due to “white flight”. The present arrangement of parks, now favoring African Americans in terms of walking distance to parks in Baltimore, was the product of legal struggles, demonstrating the importance of human agency in generating uneven access to environmental amenities and disamenities.

Summary: Envisioning the future for ecosystems and people. Carpenter et al. 2005.

2009-03-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

Human use of ecosystem services have resulted in rapid changes to ecosystems, reducing the resilience, and increasing the uncertainty about future change. Scenario planning involves the use of plausible, provocative, and relevant stories about what may happen in the future. This technique explores the consequences of current and future actions, assumptions and policy choices based on current knowledge. Based on the Millenium Assessment’s Current State and Trends volume, scenarios explore three pathways involving a positive commitment towards sustainable development, and another without such commitment.

The scenarios designed explore two transitions; increasing globalization or regionalism, and reactive environmental policies and proactive environmental policy. Based on these choices, the authors came up with four choices; Global Orchestration (globalization, equity, economic growth, and reactive approach), Order from Strength (regionalism, emphasizing economic growth and reactive approach), Adapting Mosaic (regionalism with a proactive approach), and Technogarden (globalism with emphasis of proactive technological approach). All of these approaches are based on processes that are occurring today, and scenarios explore the tradeoffs involved in the different combinations of approaches.

Based on these four types of approaches, scenarios were constructed through applying qualitative and quantitative analyses to the MA framework, including feedbacks from ecosystems and well-being. Additionally, interviewing was done to determine the benefits, risks and opportunities from differing paths of globalization, governance, and ecosystem management. Economic growth and expansion of education and access to technology increases the ability to respond to environmental problems, but does not sufficiently deal with the potentially severe and irreversible effects of ecosystem degradation. An approach that emphasizes national security, and protectionism combined with reactive ecosystem

management may allow conservation in wealthy areas (wilderness), there would be a rapid loss of biodiversity in low-income areas. Proactive regional ecosystem management may help social-ecological systems to be more resilient, but regional a regional focus may affect the potential for global commons management. Technological ecosystem engineering and economic incentives may lead to highly efficient delivery of ecosystem services, but may create new environmental problems and may lead to greater demands for these services.

A comparison of proactive and reactive approaches revealed that a proactive approach would significantly reduce the probability of extreme events affecting more than 1 million people. The authors argue that proactive approach is particularly important under rapid change or novel conditions. Land use change will continue to drive changes in ecosystem services provisioning, biodiversity conservation goals will be difficult to achieve due to habitat loss, ecosystem services will decline, fertilizers will affect nutrient flows, and the focus on provisioning services will reduce the provision of supporting, regulating and cultural ecosystem services. Each scenario has different consequences for material well being, health, freedom, security, and social relations.

URBAN POLITICAL ECOLOGY: POLITIZING THE PRODUCTION OF URBAN NATURES. HEYNEN, KAIKA, SWYNGEDOUW.

2009-02-24T17:36:00.000-08:00

from

In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism. Ed. Heynen E., Kaika, M., and Swyngedouw E. 2006.

Environmental theory has ignored the urbanization process as a driving force behind environmental issues, and a place where more people experience socio-environmental problems. Urban political ecology examines the ways in which political processes make and remake socio-environmental urban conditions, and seeks to formulate new political projects that are radically democratic in the production of urban environments. Urbanization is a process of metabolic transformation that is both social and ecological. That the ecological perspective of urbanization has been left out is of utmost importance. We cannot emphasize the interconnections of species and their biophysical environments, as we do in ecology, and then act as if we are detached from these interconnections. Cities are built “out of natural resources, through socially mediated natural processes.” In the capitalist city, “nature” takes the form of the commodity, a commodity that hides its socio-ecological contexts. Often this context of commodity creation is of domination/subordination, exploitation/repression. This commoditization even gives us the feeling as if these commodities are separate from this process of flow, and metabolization of nature. Photosynthesis is not socially produced (obviously), but the powers of photosynthesis are socially mobilized in particular bio-chemical and physical ways to serve specific purposes, often expressions of hierarchy, positionality and networks of social power. To understand the changes in urban environments, we must focus on political economic processes that bring about natural injustice, and those artifacts produced by these uneven social processes.
As engels said in 1940 “when we consider and reflect upon nature at large… at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutation and combinations, in which nothing remains what, where, and as it was, but everything movies, changes, comes into being and passes away.”

In capitalist social relations, the production of use values operates through the mobilization of labour and nature to produce commodities, to produce exchange value. So the circulation of capital produced in this manner is a combined metabolic transformation of socio-natures. Political ecology is concerned with the dialectic between society and land-based resources.
Urban political environments are often enhanced in some places improving the lives of some people, while leading to deterioration of social and physical conditions elsewhere. There is no such thing as an unsustainable city, only a city that negatively affects some groups while benefiting others. The urban environment is at once liberatory, and disabling, empowering and disempowering. Who benefits and what the benefits are is largely a function of social power relations.

Manifesto
1. environmental and social changes co-determine each other
2. There is nothing inherently unnatural about produced environments like cities, genetically modified organisms, dammed rivers, or irrigated fields
3. The type and character of socio-environmental change is not independent of historical, social, cultural, political, or economic conditions and the institutions that preceeded them
4. Socio-spatial processes are predicated on the metabolism of physical, chemical and biological components
5. Socio-environmental metabolisms produce both enabling and disabling social and environmental condition
6. Processes of metabolic change are never socially or ecologically neutral
7. Social power relations are important
8. Socio-environmental sustainability is a political issue
9. Environmental transformation is not independent from class, gender, ethnic, or other power struggles
10. Socio-ecological “sustainability” is only possible by means of a radically democratic organization of the process of socio-environmental (re)construction.

(POST)COLONIALISM AND THE PRODUCTION OF NATURE

2009-02-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER 5: (POST)COLONIALISM AND THE PRODUCTION OF NATURE

summary from Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics

Gregory illustrates the connections between domination and normalization of nature as both imaginative and material, embedded in and giving substance to both concepts and practices. Postcolonialism seeks to recover the impress of colonialism on the series of representations, practices, and performances of cultures in the constitution of the world. This culture underwrites power and power elaborates culture through the discourses encased in apparatuses produced by interacting networks of individuals and institutions, and naturalizing certain modes of being in the world. One such discourse is the imaginative geographies that construct and calibrate the distances between colonizer and colonized. In this double process, the colonized are defined by their lack of the colonizer’s qualities, and commanding the colonized to present themselves as intrinsically colonial subjects. These colonial productions of space were connected to the production of nature. Nature was not only dominated, as the rape of mother earth, but it was domesticated as a reproduction of “normal” nature of the temperate zone that Europe is familiar with. Vital in this colonial production of nature is ‘enframing nature’, that is, the ‘reality’ of the world is created through the practices that represent our picture of what the objective, enduring structure of the natural world really is. Burton’s description of Tangyanika is picturesque and portable literal construction of a painting that is ordered, and imbued with the prospect of colonial progress. The colonial understandings of the natural world also produces this order to an unordered system through discourses of hydrology, the translation of nature into mathematical formulae, where local knowledge has no place. This also occurs as culture becomes naturalized into economic modeling of people as self-interested actors and the inherent rationality of the market. In representing new colonial cultures and landscapes, colonial powers sought to both find affinities and parallels to their landscapes, but also to radicalize and exaggerate differences, making colonial worlds “familiar by their very strangeness”. Two themes emerge from this discourse, the representation of Eden before the fall as in the Caribbean, and the pestilential landscape as in South Asia. These two themes became entangled, and yet tropical landscapes continued to frustrate all attempts of ordering and control, and instilled fears in the colonial powers of the possibility of becoming hybridized, or creolized. Thus in the many massacres that occurred during colonial rule, the landscape was destroyed by the familiarity of fire, and the threat of “brute nature” was staved off by the violation, torture, and murder of the people attached to that landscape. The only way to live in a terrifying environment, is to inspire terror yourself.

Nature, Poststructuralism, and Politics

2009-02-13T22:03:00.000-08:00

Summary of a chapter from Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics

What counts as nature is never a closed question. The concepts through which we know nature are produced where actions, concepts, and matter are mixed. The act of fixing the concept of nature has social and ecological effects. The argument that environmental issues are simply a dispute between competing interests does not take into account that the concept of nature is not self-evident, and not independent of power and politics. Foucault’s analysis of madness, sexuality, the body and so on showed that knowledge is produced as an effect of power, and power operates through knowledge. Post-structuralism on the other hand, is a radicalization of structuralism, such as that of Saussere, which suggest that there are sign-systems beneath cultural practices, allowing a degree of stability of such concepts. Structuralism asserts that an utterance has meaning because we can understand the cognitive significance of the rules of the relations between words. Deconstructionism (Derrida) can be understood as an approach to reading that calls into question the closure of meaning of the text. This can be seen as an extension of Heidegger’s notion of ‘sein’ (with a line through it), or being as it is revealed as it is taken away or effaced. Thus, Derrida argues that the meaning of the signifier in relation to signified is mutable, an effect of différance. Différance refers to play of deferrals (referring meaning to another time) and differentiations within meanings. All words are defined in terms of other words, and meaning is always deferred to another time. The positive aspect of this defferal is that we open ourselves up to new possibilities. The example of the exclusion of Native Americans from the forests of BC through a reiterated citation or recalling of meaning, the hauntology of those excluded meanings of forest, provides an example of the usefulness of post-structuralist analysis of socionature. The indigenous assertion of new meanings of the forests that filled in some of the gaps of Sloan’s “forest” allowed the Tla-o-qui-aht to make claim to that land, based on notions of property, and the notion of indigeneity. Poststructuralism emphasizes a world in flux, where we continue the project of making sense of the world, but also focus on how meanings become fixed at certain points.

STRATEGIES FOR AUTHENTICITY AND SPACE IN THE MAYA BIOSPHERE RESERVE

2009-01-30T19:29:00.000-08:00

from Political Ecology: An Integrative Approach to Geography and Environment-Development Studies

Juanita Sundberg argues that international NGOs have generated a set of environmental discourses to explain environmental degradation in a way that generates inequities. These NGOs have access to the “unbiased” truths, and the moral authority to delineate which is the right way to relate to the local environment.

In 1970, 70-80% of the Peten in Guatamala was covered in forests, yet 50% of this forest coverage was lost by 1986. The deforestation of the Peten was attributed to cattle ranching, farming, commercial logging, and oil exploitation. In 1990 the 1.6 million acre Maya Biosphere Reserve was created under direction of USAID and other international NGOs. NGOs flocked to this area to ensure a more “rational” management of the land in the reserve.

The NGOs have represented local forest collectors, and petenero farmers as “appropriate” users of the land, and all others have been marginalized. Additionally, forest collectors and peteneros were considered “authentic” and “traditional” as campaigns for handicraft workshops and museums developed this narrative.

Inappropriate farmers included immigrants practice slash and burn and cattle ranchers. These groups are considered to have no connection to the land, and therefore, no commitment to its sustainable use. “Truths” about the nature of the environment are created to support these views, and the reasons for the marginalization of these groups are attributed to the poor soils, or inappropriateness of the land for grazing.

Yet Juanita Sundberg points out how these narratives begin to break down if looked at more deeply. The traditional or local forest collectors have only migrated to the region in the past 100 years, and the ecological impacts of these people are also prevalent as forest collectors create footpaths, and clear land for corn cultivation. Additionally, a percentage of the trees from which forest collectors harvest die annually. Furthermore, the practices of Petanero farmers are not different from immigrant farmers, with the main difference that immigrant farmers clear more land.

Petaneros and forest collectors have used this narrative to further their own goals by proclaiming themselves as the true stewards of the land, further exacerbating this marginalization.

NGOs also assert their authority both in morality and knowledge by taking on the technical and mental aspects of projects, leaving hard labor to the locals, while lamenting that locals don’t “see the project as their own”.

While I agree that the unequal allocation of labor and mental work, and the privileging of some groups over others is problematic for environmental initiatives, I do find Sundberg’s analysis to be problematic.

First of all just what is this percentage of trees that die from forest collectors activities, and what ecological impacts would immigrant farmers that clear more land have on the reserve. Could the NGOs be right in asserting that some practices are more ecological than others? Before the creation of the reserve, much of the land in the Peten region was lost due to cattle ranching and farming, yet does Sundberg suggest that these practices return to the region? While NGOs certainly do not have privileged access to the truth, there may be some legitimacy to their claims. Potentially, the practices of both immigrants and locals must be subject to an assessment of sustainability to ensure a more sustainable approach.

What is clear from Sundberg’s case studies is the importance of knowledge sharing in NGO-community environmental initiatives, and encouraging local participation without which local communities will not develop a sense of stewardship for the land. If this were the case, it is quite possible that exploitative practices would return to the area immediately after the NGOs leave.

2009-01-22T18:44:00.000-08:00

Summary of:
Balancing Conservation with Development in Marine-Dependent Communities: Is Ecotourism an Empty Promise?
by Emily H. Young
in Political Ecology: An Integrative Approach to Geography and Environmental Development Studies

Ecotourism seeks to minimize ecosystem impacts and provide local people with an incentive to reduce ecosystem impacts through tourism. While ecotourism may be a viable alternative in some situations, a number of drawbacks have been discovered, such as impacts of wildlife and ecosystems from development, disruptions of local community traditions, low benefits to local people and environments, and conflicts.

In Baja California Sur, ecotourism has become a popular response to growth in local fisheries, and consequent declines in fish stocks and conflicts. Two towns have adopted Gray Whale tourism as a non-expoitative means to provide livelihoods to local fishers; Bahia Magdalena, and Laguna San Ignacio. As the tourism industry has grown, however, conflicts between local and
outside tour operators have also grown. Bahia Magdalena is easily accessible by car from outside cities, and thus day trips are a popular option. Bahia Magdalena does not have sufficient waste disposal and treatment services to meet this influx of visitors.

In both Bahia Magdalena and Laguna San Ignacio, communal lands or ecotourism cooperatives have formed the basis for the industry. Yet communal lands are becoming privatized in access and benefits, generating conflicts between communal landholders. Additionally, non-communal land holders have had similar complaints of the appropriation of land. In Laguna San Ignacio, cooperative management has been threatened by the challenge of new groups, and during the summer seasons as gray whales leave the region, crowding and competition over remain whales sightings become fierce. In both situations this heightened state of conflict, uncontrolled and rapid growth, and reckless conduct in tour boats threatens people and wildlife.

In addition, while outside operators generate a vast majority of revenue from these ecotours, local tour guides and businesses receive a minor fraction of these revenues (<1.2% in Laguna San Ignacio, and <1% in Bahia Magdalena). The Mexican government has attempted to alleviate this problem by requiring guide permits, which are given out to only local guides. Additionally, environmental NGOs have raised awareness of local residents to sustainable fishing practices, and improving local ecotourism.

Ecotourism must provide sufficient economic benefits to reduce the rate of depletion of local fisheries; otherwise it has not achieved its main objective. There are many cases in which resource users successfully self-manage their practices through common goals of stewardship without the need for ecotourism. Yet, the ecotourism approach can be effective, but only if it properly allocates access rights and benefits from use.

Malthus, Marx, and the Politics of Population Growth

2008-11-21T22:48:00.000-08:00

Summary of:

THE COMMONER-EHRLICH DEBATE: ENVIRONMENTALISM AND THE POLITICS OF SURVIVAL
BY ANDREW FEENBERG

From:
Macauley, D. (1996) Minding Nature: The philosophers of ecology. The Guilford Press, New York, NY.

The debate between Ehrlich and Commoner is concerned with the cause and solution to the environmental crisis. Ehrlich argues that the principal source is overpopulation, while Commoner argues that it is polluting technologies. Ehrlich traces all of the environmentally destructive activities we are in to overpopulation, a problem that is biological at root. Commoner, however, traces environmental problems (including overpopulation) to the social causes inherent in capitalism.

For Ehrlich, there are two solutions, reducing birth rates or increasing death rates. Thus, humanity can only be saved through moral, financial, and coercive legal incentives. These measures must be applied on an international scale.

Alternatively, Commoner argued that the state of environmental degradation we are in can be traced to our changes in productive technology. More destructive replaced the less destructive ones that we traditionally used.

Ehrlich uses the example of diminishing returns in food production for his argument. As population increases, good soil is used up. All that remains is poor soil that requires increasing fertilizer inputs. Yet, as Commoner argues, the United States has often paid farmers to not produce crops in order to maintain prices.

Feenberg points out an important aspect of this debate. “When the emphasis is placed on population, “social control over personal acts” appears as the solution. This approach is at once more individualistic and more repressive than emphasizing reform of the social processes which, Commoner claimed, ultimately determine both birth rates and technological choices.” Ehrlich argues for changes to occur at the personal level, but when this does not become universalized, the only option (for the sake of survival) is to force this personal choice into action. Commoner, on the other hand, believed that it was not the individuals that must be changed, but institutions (financial, political etc…). Financial and political institutions understood this as they supported campaigns that placed responsibility on individuals rather than on the institutions themselves.

Commoner places emphasis on capitalism and class struggle,

“Pollutants can accumulate in the ecosystem or in a victim’s body, but not all the resultant costs are immediately felt. Part of the value represented by the free abuse of the environment is available to mitigate the economic conflict between capital and labor. The benefit appears to accrue to both parties and the conflict between them is reduced. But in fact pollution represents a debt to nature that must be repaid. Later, when the environment bill is paid, it is met by labor more than by capital; the buffer is suddenly removed and conflict between these two economic sectors is revealed in full force.”

Environmental constraints run counter to market incentives, and thus capitalists resist environmental control until it is unavoidable, and then they let others deal with the problem. Workers pay for pollution in health care bills, while capitalists enjoy trips to the countryside and organic pomegranate juices. Therefore, for Commoner, the solution is a radical change to the capitalist mode of production.

The distinction between Ehrlich and Commoner is quite significant. In a society where success is measured by material gluttony, coercive laws must impose changes to the human mindset. When controlling your birthrate is morally right, we are left with the forbidden fruit, the temptation to fall, and a stoning as our punishment.

To this Ehrich replies “Coercion? Perhaps, but coercion in a good cause.” This statement was made in support of policies that would deny food aid to growing countries like India simply because of their population growth rates. What is Commoner’s alternative? Commoner argues that it is affluence and social wealth that stabilize population, and thus we should aid in the development of countries of the South. Furthermore, Commoner argued that the accumulation of wealth in the West was achieved through our exercise of “demographic parasitism” on the South. Thus, overpopulation is synonymous with the proletarianization of the Third World.

We know now that there is more than just social wealth and affluence that stabilizes population. The education, and emancipation of women play a huge role in decreasing population growth rates. But the choice we are faced with remains. A one world government that ensures that the “good” and “right” is upheld for our own survival, or a world where everybody has the means to live freely and healthily.

Silent Spring and Long Term Social Change

2008-11-19T22:45:00.000-08:00

Summarized discussion of: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN ENVIRONMENTAL WORLD-VIEW: THE POLITICS OF NATURE IN RACHEL CARSON’S SILENT SPRING by Yakoov Garb

in: Macauley, D. (1996) Minding Nature: The philosophers of ecology. The Guilford Press, New York, NY.

While Silent Spring was one of the most significant forces of change in environmental thought, it was framed in a way that was ideologically acceptable to a wide audience. This first becomes evident with Carson’s evoking the concept of the “balance of nature”. This concept has its roots in theology as it is God that ensures this balance. The use of this concept in the book makes her arguments persuasive, as we become most aware of this natural balance as it is disrupted and lost by our use of pesticides. In her discussion of alternatives, however, she suggests methods of biological control such as juvenile hormones, and X-ray sterilization, and thus belies many of her appeals to the natural balance. Agricultural techniques such as biological control were actually already in use before pesticides use began to rise, and the rise of pesticides can be attributed to their profitability.

Garb suggests that the most novel idea in Silent Spring is her discussion on the growing toxicity of the landscape, and the uncertainty of effects of these toxins. Our traditional ideas of poisonous chemicals are put in question as minute quantities of chemicals can have toxic effects, and even non-toxic levels accumulate in body tissues and biomagnify as they reach higher trophic levels. Yet Carson does not discuss why research is primarily funded for the development of more chemicals, and not the study of their effects.

Rachel Carson is most reticent in her writing when we begin to logically move towards the social relations that brought about the overuse of pesticides. We are told that the decisions for such use were made by an “authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power” who snuck this decision by us. But the solutions can come from science and technology, diminishing the significance of important social relations that underlie the pesticide problem.

Garb compares Silent Spring to Murray Bookchin’s Our Synthetic Environment, written half a year earlier and touching on similar topics. Bookchin, however, suggested that the problems lie not only in our relations with nature, but also in our relations with each other. He advocates the political strategies of decentralization (Ecoanarchism) and the abolition of capitalism.

Thus Garb argues that Carson shied away from the logical conclusions of her work, a new way of relating to nature, and a critique of capitalism. Our Synthetic Environment is largely unknown, likely due to its radical views, but Rachel Carson’s goal was to achieve reforms that would have immediate effects on pesticide use. She was also preemptively on the defensive as she was quite aware of the amount of attacks she would get from corporate interests.

The results were effective… or where they? As far as I know, we continue to pump out new chemicals every year, faster than we can test them. Bioengineering has become a popular agricultural marketing ploy, while their ecological effects are far from understood. Garb raises the question of when or whether it is useful to temper your work to affect a wide audience, and when to be uncompromising. Ultimately, the questions comes down to the importance long-term and far reaching changes, and whether baby steps that seem to be in the right direction can undermine these long-term goals.

Domination and Utopia: Marcuse's Discourse on Nature, Psyche, and Culture.

2008-11-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

Summary of Henry T. Blanke, Chapter 8 in

Macauley, D. (1996) Minding Nature: The philosophers of ecology. The Guilford Press, New York, NY.

Central to Marcuse’s analysis, and utopian vision was a profound change in human psychology and perception. Marcuse appropriated Freud’s ideas on instinctual repression by making a distinction between “basic repression” and “surplus repression”. Basic repression is defined as a necessity for work and cooperation that society demands. Surplus repression is additive self-control imposed by the elite for the purpose of domination, mainly to maintain the position of the social elite. Freud believed that material scarcity created instinctual repression, but Marcuse argues that it is material scarcity imposed by ruling classes to support the exploitation of labor that creates instinctual repression. Technological advances, however, provide the foundations for a society without scarcity, and liberated erotic instincts can counteract the destructive impulses of human nature. Technology can reduce the amount of necessary labor-time giving us the freedom to satisfy our human desires.

Marcuse proposes a perception of oneness with the universe, and criticizes the purposive instrumentalist view of production that Marx suggested. His proposal may seem mystical, but Blanke argues that this mysticisim may provide the utopian fervor for a change in our relationship to nature. Yet Marcuse’s argument runs in a circle, as he proposes an increase in the same technology that has been part of the disease of domination of man and nature. To address this contradiction, Marcuse provides an analysis of technological and scientific reason.

While Marcuse originally believed that science and technology were neutral, he later argued that scientific rationality is inextricably bound to our world-view that shapes the world. Scientific rationality is inherently repressive. Yet Marcuse distinguishes himself from those who advocate a “return to nature”, by suggesting that humanity transforms nature so that the qualities of nature become socially mediated and historical. To free nature, reason must be transformed to bring out its affinities with art. Thus on the one hand we must master nature, yet on the other we must overcome the opposition between man and nature. Liberation of human and nonhuman nature are inextricably bound.

Habermas, on the other hand argues that nature must always remain instrumental, while humanity can become freer. What seperates Marcuse and Habermas is Habermas’ goal of completing the Enlightenment project, of mastering human and nonhuman nature as a progression towards human rational autonomy. Marcuse and Frankfurt school theorists, however, saw the Enlightenment conception of reason and selfhood to be flawed, and sought to transcend this Enlightenment project.

In Counterrevolution and Revolt, Marcuse shifts his from a liberating mastery of nature to a liberation of nature itself. A historical worldview is needed to generate a reciprocal relationship with the environment that at the same time fulfills the needs of inner and outer nature.

“the drive for painlessness, for the pacification of existence, would then seek fulfillment in protective care for living things … in the restoration of nature, both external and within human beings… The protection of the life-environment will also pacify nature within men and women. A successful environmentalism will, within individuals, subordinate energy to erotic energy.”

In terms of technology, it is not necessary to regress technologically, but to preserve the achievements of industry while eliminating the destructive nature of technology. Marcuse is not suggesting an appreciation of nature, but an “erotic cathexis” (what does that mean? I just looked it up… a concentration of personal energy).

These ideas are based on Marx’s concept of the human transformation of nature, where the environment comes to reflect human sensibility. “Freed from the distorting economic and technical imperatives of capitalism, this process would allow for the limitless expansion of human creative capacities.(p 200).”
Marcuse’s Contemporary Relevance.

Modern environmentalism merely seeks a sounder way of extracting resources from nature, but does not seek a change in our concepts or perceptions of our relations to nature. On the other hand, Deep Ecology views people as simple species that are the enemy of the biosphere, ignoring the social origins of environmentalism, namely hierarchy, instrumental rationality, and capitalism. In using a dialectic approach, Marcuse transcends these two opposing views.

Further, Marcuse anticipated ecofeminism by seeing the importance of patriarchical social relations as important in the domination of man and nature. Ecofeminism challenges patriarchial social relations that identify women with nature in the struggle for manipulation, control, and exploitation. Marcuse, however, did not assume that women had certain intrinsic biological qualities. Nor did he see the equality of women in a system of aggression and competition as a means to liberating society. Women have experienced history different than men, having been left out of the Enlightenment project up until recently. Patriarchal values are to be transcended not by making woman like man, but by femalizing men.

“Both feminism and ecology embody the revolt of nature against human domination. They demand that we rethink the relationship between humanity and the rest of nature, including our natural embodied selves… An analysis of the interrelated dominations of nature – psyche and sexuality, human oppression, and non-human nature – and the historical position of women in relation to those forms of domination is the starting point of ecofeminist theory?” (Ynestra King 1989)

The hallmark of Marcuse’s approach is described by Blanke as “analyizing the dialectic interplay between individual consciousness and social structure, between nature and culture.” “Marcuse’s vision of a society beyond domination, where the free development of nonhuman nature is the condition for the free development of human nature and vice versa, challenges us to keep the utopian imagination alive. P(206)”

Leiss on Marcuse and the Domination of Nature

2008-11-03T18:05:00.000-08:00

Nineteenth century socialist thinkers considered technology was to be important as a means to establish a material basis for satisfying needs. Marcuse’s work attempted to reveal the internal instrumentalist character of modern scientific rationality. Modern scientific rationality is an a priori technology of social control and domination. This “one-dimensional” technology is all embracing in our advanced industrial society.

The idea of liberalism is built upon the notion of individual rationality, an originally critical and antidogmatic rationality. But the promises of liberal society were denied as the process of commodity production undermined the economic basis for individual rationality. At this point, individual rationality was transformed into technological rationality.

Marcuse argues that the antitechnological attitude is a result of the alliance between rational technologies of production and terroristic political domination. Thus the problem is not technology, but with repressive social institutions. “In the social reality, despite all change, the domination of man by man is still the historical continuum that links pre-technological and technological Reason.”

Both Marcuse and Horkheimer agree on the connection between the mastery of external nature and the mastery of internal nature. The mastery of external nature by scientific and technological rationality requires disciplining of the work process, and the expression of need and satisfaction.

As soon as civilized society establishes itself the repressive transformation of the instincts becomes the psychological basis of a threefold domination: first, domination over one’s self, over one’s own nature, over the sensual drives that want only pleasure and gratification; second, domination of the labor achieved by such disciplined and controlled individuals; and third, domination of outward nature, science and technology.

Marcuse, however, was criticized in his theory for his failure to show a clear connection between science as instrumentalist rationality and the technology that contributes to political domination. Leiss argues that it is a specific constellation of social forces that link scientific rationality to the project of domination of nature and man. This connection is to be found in the framing of certain scientific methods as the only valid source of objective knowledge.

Leiss summarizes the consistent features of Marcuse’s thought as follows; 1) domination in social relations among men shapes the development of technological rationality 2) technological and scientific progress can serve to support social domination, but certainly do not undermine it, and 3) technological and scientific rationality are necessary preconditions for a liberated society. The contradiction between the second and third point is seen as a real historical contradiction by Leiss. The ongoing dialectic between rationality and irrationality augments both the potentialities for domination and for liberation.

In the last paragraph of Leiss’ Appendix to The Domination of Nature, he states, “What is essential is to articulate the specific objectives of mastery over nature in relation to human freedom rather than to human power.”

The Domination of Nature

2008-11-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

Summarized from:
Leiss, W. (1994). The Domination of Nature. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Ideologies are only as valuable as the desire and full implications of those who argue for them, and the social dynamics they set in motion. For example, the ideology of natural rights was a means to establish new political, cultural, and economic institutions instead of feudalism, yet this doctrine conceals a fundamental set of contradictions set in motion by capitalism. These contradictions, such as that between abstract “universality of rights” and the concrete interests of the minority who control capitalist societies remains unresolved. If these contradictions are not transcended, they become increasingly under attack from counterideologies, and the progressive aspects run the risk of being thrown out as the baby with the bathwater.

While Western ideology is being adapted to non-Western cultural traditions, these non-western societies more commonly encounter the negative aspects, while the West enjoy the positive aspects. This makes it difficult for these positive values to be institutionalized in non-western countries.

Many thinkers have proposed a change in ideology to counter the negative aspects of the mastery of nature, however, ideas in the pure abstract can not improve the social situation in itself, it is merely a substitution of one ideology for another.

The idea of mastery over nature helps us understand how past hopes influence the present social situation, yet the failure to recognize its changing role in society distorts the past as well as the present. “The reciprocal interplay of idea and reality, theory and practice, determines the changing physiognomy of both. In its inception, the idea of the mastery of nature spurred an attack on outmoded science and philosophical dogma, bringing humanity towards a greater understanding of nature and towards the possibility of satisfying our material needs. The negative dimensions of the exclusivity of science and technology as the instrument for mastery of nature disguised the connection between scientific and technological development, and social conflict and political domination.

“The doctrine of individual freedom must surrender its archaic vision of universal participation in a market economy without state intervention, composed of producers with equal economic weight, and the idea of the domination of nature must yield up its fond dream of human technological power over nature that remains socially and politically innocent. Until such time the past will rule the present with a despotic hand, distorting men’s understanding of their own activity as a carnival room of mirrors distorts an image (p178).”

Underlying thesis: the idea of the domination of nature emerges as a radical break from “naturalistic” modes of thought, and sets itself as the primary means to satisfying human needs. This is first represented in the form of Western capitalism. The rule of nature by nonhuman forces such as spirits and oracles gradually becomes “despiritualized” through religion and increasingly through capitalism. Yet some naturalistic tendencies remain in the ideas of the “invisible hand”, only to be replaced after the Great Depression with forms of managed capitalism. Development became associated with progress, and the system expanded into the noncapitalist world.

Francis Bacon introduced the idea of the domination of nature, but this idea only made sense when nature is separated from God (spirit). Today the concept is attacked, as it is believed that the domination of nature is shackled to the domination over men. Thus, the idea of the mastery over nature must be reinterpreted so that the focus is ethical development rather than scientific or technological innovation. It must be conceptualized as a mastery over the irrational and destructive aspects of human desire, thus bringing about the liberation of nature. This secularly founded mastery over nature would seek social institutions that distribute authority among citizens who are able to fully develop their critical capabilities. This reinterpretation could bring about the fulfillment of human desires in the way that it was originally intended.

Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth (summarized from an article by David Abram)

2008-10-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

The original article that I have summarized from can be found in:
Macauley, D. 1996. Minding nature: the philosophers of ecology. The Guilford press, New York, NY.

One main goal of phenomenology has been to describe things as they appear to an experiencing consciousness. Merleau-Ponty was the first to identify the body as the conscious subject of experience. Transcendence becomes a capacity of the physiological body, through perception.

Of perceptions, depth gives our body the freedom to engage, to choose, to focus the world before we represent the world with language and themes. Depth announces that we are immersed in the world, a world that continues behind “that curved horizon”. We are not detached intellects in the world, but we are immersed in the depth of a breathing “Body much larger than our own”.
Merleau-Ponty further states, “it is by borrowing from the world structure that the universe of truth and of thought is constructed for us.” Our thoughts, theories, and even language is sustained by the structures of the perceptual world. The mind or the soul or consciousness is the prolongation of the transcendence of bodily sensation. This transcendence is formed from the body. Thus, there is unity between the visible and the invisible, mind and body, earth and sky, and human and earth. We are in the depths of our world, and the world must be known from the inside.

“The visible is pregnant with the invisible…to comprehend fully the visible relations one must go unto the relation of the visible with the invisible.”

Our thoughts and reflections are the prolongation and expansion of the many shifting, polymorphic, invisible natures of the perceptual world.

“One can say that we perceive the things themselves, that we are the world that thinks itself or that the world is at the heart of our flesh. In any case, once a body-world relationship is recognized, there is a ramification of my body and a ramification of the world and a correspondence between its inside and my outside, between my inside and its outside.”

Merleau-Ponty also began to dismantle the Cartesian opposition between animals and humans, but humanistic influences kept him from supporting a ecological intercorporeality.
He also saw language as not something that we are capable of through biology, but language is found in the depths of the perceptual world, as the structure embedded deep in our sensory landscape. Language does not belong to humankind, but to the sensible world that we are a part of. Conceived from this perspective, language is the “voice of the living Earth itself, singing through the human form.

Marx's Ecology

2008-10-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

An important read for the environmental movement, though sometimes long winded. Foster describes the merging of Epicurean materialism with abstract dialectics of Feuerbach and Hegel, into a materialist dialectics that focuses on praxis. Marx and Engels is put into the context of a philosophical struggle against Social Darwinism, Malthusianism, and theological views of the world. Instead of these ideologies, they argued for a materialist look at the world that focuses on the process of opposing forces, coevolution, and the emergence of change through history and prehistory. Marx's ecological thinking is illuminated through his idea of Metabolism between man and nature. In this metabolic process, humanity through its productive forces change their environments, and, in the process change themselves. Capitalism has brought a metabolic rift in this process whereby humanity is alienated from nature and from each other in competitive struggle.

Many of these broader insights have been obscured by the focus on the struggle against capitalism, and interpretations of Marx based on a limited knowledge of his works. In Russia, the continuation of Marx's dialectical materialism were put away in Stalin's secret collection, only to be found in the 1990s. What remained of Marx's ecological perspective was revitalized in the ecology of Levins and Lewontin and other natural scientists in the 1970s.

Today we are faced with a massive metabolic rift, and alienation is beyond what Marx could ever have imagined. The use of a dialectical materialism of Marx in the environmental movement that focuses on the metabolism between human and nature, and the attempt to transcend alienation in all its forms can bring us closer to sounder ecological relations to nature, and the human freedom that Marx sought.