Hello colleagues:
This is the latest book review. Please feel free to post off our list
if anyone wants to do this. You can also read it at
http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/Disconnect.html
David
********************
Disconnect: Environmental Theory and Activism
A
review essay by David Orton
_Main Currents In Western Environmental Thought_, by Peter Hay,
Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 2002, 400 pages,
paperback, ISBN: 0-253-21511-0.
"Ecofeminism is now the predominant position within ecological
thought." (p. 72)
Introduction
This book helps in locating oneself as a green or environmentalist
activist within the history of Western environmental thought, as seen
by Peter Hay. This Australian academic, based in Tasmania,
particularly reflects the influence of Australian writers. He wrote
this book to present the "multiplicity of ideas" within
environmentalism. It would have been good to have a picture of the
author and some information about his personal theoretical evolution
and his current interests.
There are ten chapters in _Main Currents In Western Environmental
Thought_: "The Ecological Impulse"; "Ecophilosophy"; "Ecofeminism";
"Religion, Spirituality And The Green Movement"; "Green Critiques Of
Science And Knowledge"; "Reclaiming Place: Seeking An Authentic
Ground For Being"; "Green Political Thought: The Authoritarian And
Conservative Traditions"; "Environmental Liberalisms: Green Thought
Meets The Dismal Science"; "Green Political Thought: The Socialist
Traditions"; and "Seeking Homo Ecologicus: Ecology, Democracy,
Postmodernism." There are more than forty pages of environmental
references. The book has a grand title, which can seem somewhat
pretentious. The author, by his selection of writers for _Main
Currents_, decides who is "in" and hence fit for discussion, and who
is not. He seems to designate other theoretical positions, some of
which he is apparently unaware of, as unrecognized back eddies - like
"left biocentrism".
I did not know of Hay as a green movement theorist until a couple of
years ago, when I first saw a reference to his book. Recently, a
green from Sweden praised this book as a "must read". I followed the
suggestion, and afterwards felt that a review might make it better
known to others. I found some of the discussions personally very
helpful, e.g. on postmodernism, as "fraudulent radicalism" (p. 337)
with its elevation of culture over Nature; on ecofeminism and its
limitations; on the ideas and influence of Martin Heidegger for
environmentalists and greens, with his critique of modernity and the
importance of living in place and defending this; the evaluation of
attempts to forge a Marxist ecology and their limitations; and on
social ecology, including the work of Murray Bookchin. I read Hay as
sympathetic to the Left - he is a former Marxist, and I agree with
him that "The ecology movement still struggles to construct a
coherent praxis, and here the left has much to contribute." (p. 296)
This author is also sympathetic to deep ecology and the ideas of
Australian deep ecology-influenced writers like Robyn Eckersley,
Warwick Fox, Richard Sylvan, Ariel Salleh and Val Plumwood, who all
make important contributions to this text. Yet Hay comes through as
evolving in a Realo direction: "There has been a tempering of support
for radical ecology in the wake of recent assessments of
philosophical ecocentrism as politically unpalatable or otherwise
incapable of implementation." (p. 169)
_Main Currents In Western Environmental Thought_ is written by
someone whose environmental heart is in the right place. There are
things to learn here, as well as some positions and opinions to
distance oneself from, as for example the quotation on ecofeminism by
Hay which introduces this review. Yet the reader may also ask, who
decides the genesis, propagation, and relevancy of the various
components of green and environmental theory? I believe this book
focuses too much on the literature of the academy and not enough on
the theoretical concerns of green and environmental activists.
How Does Theory Unfold?
Reading Peter Hay's book raises the question of how environmental and
green theory or philosophy arises and develops. It also raises the
question about the relationship of published "theorists", who seem to
be overwhelmingly university-based, to movement activists outside the
universities concerned about theoretical questions. For example, this
book devotes too much space to Michael Zimmerman, someone who is not
only a deep ecology apostate, but who has wandered the ideological
map and written too much about this as if it had significance for the
green movement. Zimmerman would not even make the "C" team of green
theorists whose ideas are helpful for changing this world. Just
because someone writes about the environmental movement or green
philosophy, that does not make that person a fit subject for
analysis. Rather, the writings need to have some direct relevancy for
environmental and green activists who embrace changing industrial
capitalist society.
My own view is that published environmental and green theories are
produced in the main for a university-educated audience. Those views
which become "legitimate" subjects for discussion have first to be
selected to be published, either in academic journals or books, and
this is normally related to an university connection on the part of
the author(s). This is not to deny that some good, relevant,
theoretical work comes out of the universities, but this book shows
that there is much that does not. Much writing by academics is a
"chew over", and obscures rather than clarifies or moves forward in
some way, our theoretical understanding. Unless green theorists are
involved in some concrete organizing, they will not understand the
practical problems and difficulties of moving to a
non-anthropocentric world which is also socially just.
In my experience, an activist facing a problem often sees the need
for theory. For example, in anti-forestry biocide agitation or
off-highway vehicle struggles, we come up against the "private
property" argument. In the spraying situation, we are told "the land
owner or forest industry has the right to do what he or she wants on
their land." In the off-highway vehicle situation, we have a conflict
of "property rights" between the rider of the ATV or snowmobile, who
claims, by ownership of the machine, the "right to ride" anywhere;
and the "rights" of the landowner to say who can come on "their"
land. Hence we see the necessity to work out a theoretical ecological
view of land use, from a deep ecology ecocentric perspective, where
humans are not centre-stage.
Environmental activists have to contrast private property to usufruct
use, where all species have their interests recognized on an equality
basis. This means reigning in some taken-for-granted human-centered
rights under existing thought paradigms. We need an overall
theoretical perspective like deep ecology, which one can work with
and apply in particular situations. As Arne Naess, the Norwegian
founder of deep ecology said, "The ideology of ownership of nature
has no place in an ecosophy." New conceptions of so-called property
rights must evolve which serve both to protect Nature and all
nonhuman living creatures, and to provide social justice for humans.
Local environmental struggles, while vitally important to participate
in, can become ends in themselves and eventually exhaust the
participants, unless grounded in relevant green theory which gives a
wholistic overview.
There is a dedication by Peter Hay to his past and present students
of a class on "Environmental Values", who, we are told, "have been my
best teachers." While the sentiment is laudable, for most
environmental or green activists, actual issues in the environment
which they confront are the primary instructor, not exchanges in an
university classroom. Hay himself speaks of "The green activist's
penchant to value maxims forged in struggle rather than principles
derived from abstruse theorising..." (p. 165) The word "abstruse" is
not out of place here. The university represents a privileged and
insulated enclave in society. Its primary function is a support
institution to provide, through theoretical work, for the
continuation/propagation of industrial capitalism, with its human
dominance and self-serving manipulation of Nature. Notwithstanding
the radicalism of a handful of university teachers, for the
university as an institution, the society we live in is taken as a
given. Under industrial capitalism, the main focus for teaching on
the environment can only be "managerial environmentalism", known in
one incarnation as "sustainable development". The field of
"environmental studies" has no accountability to the movement in
whose name it holds forth. Having said this, when invited by radical
professors to their classes, I do go to speak to university students
about deep ecology, radical environmentalism and green politics.
Green and Red and Inclusiveness
"...today the mainstream environmental movement is firmly committed
to the social justice concerns traditionally associated with the
left..." (p. 185)
I have been very involved with both the left and the environmental
movement. I have written about how the Left should relate to the
environmental movement, and what I felt could be learnt from the Left
by greens and environmentalists. Yet there is only one passing
reference to one of my earlier works, in _Main Currents_, in
connection with an exchange with Jim O'Connor on the concept of
"socialist biocentrism" (misleadingly called "Marxist ecocentrism" by
Hay) in an article in the journal _Capitalism, Nature, Socialism_.
And Hay does not explore what is happening in this article, where a
PRACTICAL Nova Scotia issue, industrial forestry, is used to contrast
a Marxist ecological perspective with an ecocentric/leftist one,
showing the different value assumptions of the two positions which
are important for any attempted fusion of the Green and the Red.
There are quite a number of other articles and book reviews about
this work, some of which bear directly on topics discussed in Peter
Hay's book, but which are unacknowledged by him. (See various Green
Web publications at http://home.ca.inter.net/~greenweb/) For recent
published presentations of left biocentrism, see two 2005
publications:_The Encyclopedia Of Religion And Nature_ and Patrick
Curry's _Introduction to Ecological Ethics_.
Ecofeminism
"Ecofeminists may be seen to identify with a sisterhood of feminism,
but not with a family of environmentalism. Evidence adduced in
support of this view would especially instance the hostility evinced
in ecofeminism to deep ecology." (p. 92)
While I found the overall discussion on ecofeminism in this book by
Hay thorough and insightful, the quotation about ecofeminism which
introduces this review, repeated several times in the book, is, I
believe, a fantasy showing the disconnect between "Environmental
Thought" in the universities and everyday environmental and green
life for the rest of us. Thus, for example, the Earth First!
environmental movement in the United States orients theoretically to
deep ecology, not ecofeminism, as does the Green Party of Canada, in
its 2004 Election Platform: "We can begin to live up to the challenge
of deep ecology when we begin to draw boundaries and respect the
limits of what nature can support." (2004 Election Platform, p. 44)
Deep ecology, not ecofeminism - a gender-based theory - is more
likely to influence environmental or green activists in Canada and the U.S.
Conclusion
Does reading this book lead to greater environmental awareness? One
must answer yes to this. Therefore _Main Currents In Western
Environmental Thought_ has my overall endorsement, despite the
various criticisms that this review has raised. Perhaps the book
could be renamed "The Main University Currents in Western
Environmental Thought"! It is unfortunate that Peter Hay does not
have any path forward after such a survey of ideas, except upholding
green or environmental pluralism. As he rightly notes in this
overview book, socialism has declined and environmentalism now
becomes the main opposition to the taken-for-granted ecologically and
socially destructive world of the bourgeoisie.
November, 2005
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