Encountering Nature

ENCOUNTERING NATURE To those who care for the land and help us ﬁnd a home in nature Encountering Nature Toward an E...

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ENCOUNTERING NATURE

To those who care for the land and help us ﬁnd a home in nature

Encountering Nature Toward an Environmental Culture

THOMAS HEYD Department of Philosophy, University of Victoria, Canada

© Thomas Heyd 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Thomas Heyd has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identiﬁed as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Heyd, Thomas, 1956Encountering nature : toward an environmental culture 1. Human ecology - Philosophy 2. Environmental ethics I. Title 304.2'01 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heyd, Thomas, 1956Encountering nature : toward an environmental culture / Thomas Heyd. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-7546-5423-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Human ecology. 2. Environmental ethics. I. Title. GF13.H48 2007 304.2--dc22 2006035623

ISBN 978-0-7546-5423-0

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.

Contents List of Figures Notes on the Author Foreword by Eric Katz Preface Acknowledgements 1 Introduction

vii ix xi xiii xv 1

Part I Environmental Conscience

13

2 The Case for Environmental Morality

15

3 Environmental Ethics and the Workplace: A Call to Action

37

4 Environment and Culture in Latin America: Community, Autonomy and Resistance

57

Part II Appreciating Nature

77

5 Aesthetic Appreciation and the Many Stories about Nature

79

6 Bashō and Wandering Aesthetics: Recuperating Space, Recognizing Place, Following the Ways of the Universe

93

7 Rock Art and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Natural Landscapes

109

8 After Mining: Reﬂections on Reclamation through Art

115

Part III Culture and Nature

121

9 Nature, Culture and Natural Heritage: Toward a Culture of Nature

123

10 Northern Plains Boulder Structures: Art and Heterotopias

139

11 Nature Restoration Without Dissimulation: Learning from Japanese Gardens and Earthworks

151

12 Botanic Gardens as Collaboration Between Humans and Nature

167

Afterword: Enabling an Environmental Culture

181

Index

187

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List of Figures Figure 1.1

Walking on Mauna Loa, author’s own photograph, 2006.

4

Figure 1.2

Foster Garden Bo Tree, author’s own photograph, 2006.

6

Figure 1.3

Wat Pho Chetuphon Bo Tree, author’s own photograph, 2006.

7

Figure 10.1

Majorville medicine wheel, photo by James Young, 2004. Reproduced with permission.

140

Drawing of medicine wheel, from John H. Brumley, “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” Archaeological Survey of Alberta Manuscript Series, 12 (1988), with permission courtesy of the Royal Alberta Museum.

141

Drawing of medicine wheel, from John H. Brumley, “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” Archaeological Survey of Alberta Manuscript Series, 12 (1988), with permission courtesy of the Royal Alberta Museum.

143

Drawing of medicine wheel, from John H. Brumley, “Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal,” Archaeological Survey of Alberta Manuscript Series, 12 (1988), with permission courtesy of the Royal Alberta Museum.

147

Kitanomaru garden, East Imperial Palace garden, Tokyo, author’s own photograph, 1999.

155

Zuiho-in Zen temple garden, Daitoku-ji, Kyoto, author’s own photograph, 1999.

157

Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969. 240,000 tons displacement of rhyolite and sandstone 1500’ x 50’ x 30’ Location: Mormon Mesa, Overton, Nevada Collection: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Gift of Virginia Dwan. Photo courtesy of the artist © Michael Heizer.

159

Figure 10.2

Figure 10.3

Figure 10.4

Figure 11.1 Figure 11.2 Figure 11.3

viii

Figure 11.4

Figure 11.5

Encountering Nature

Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969. 240,000 tons displacement of rhyolite and sandstone 1500’ x 50’ x 30’ Location: Mormon Mesa, Overton, Nevada Collection: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Gift of Virginia Dwan. Photo courtesy of the artist © Michael Heizer.

160

Elke Haeberlein, Double Negative Corte de Tierra, 2007.

163

Notes on the Author Thomas Heyd teaches in the Department of Philosophy, University of Victoria, Canada. His areas of research include environmental ethics and aesthetics, history of philosophy (seventeenth century), aesthetics of rupestrian art, and philosophy of the arts. His publications include Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, (editor) (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Aesthetics and Rock Art (co-editor with John Clegg) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Environmental Consciousness and Action (coauthor with Wolf Schluchter et al.) (German Environment Ministry, 1996); chapters in books; articles in journals such as Environmental Ethics, Environmental Values, Journal of Human Ecology, British Journal of Aesthetics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and Philosophy East and West. He presently is engaged in a research project on Environmental Philosophy and Humanized Spaces (supported by a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada).

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Foreword Let’s begin with a philosophical question: what is the proper relationship between humanity and nature? Although rarely asked (let alone answered) this question has been lying in the background of all human activity since at least the beginning of the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago. Humans use nature to live; this is the one inescapable fact of our biological lives. But the way we use nature, the way we live in and through natural processes, is the central ethical issue in all of environmental policy. Should humans attempt the subjugation, manipulation, and domination of nature? Should we try to minimize our interference in natural processes, to “let nature be”? Or should we try to harmonize our lives with nature, to adjust the human impact on the natural world so that both humanity and nature can ﬂourish? Is this third option even possible? In this book, in these essays, Thomas Heyd asks us to consider the human relationship with nature from a new perspective. Whether he is climbing the Ainapo Trail of Mauna Loa in Hawaii or contemplating the aesthetics of a formal Japanese garden, Heyd continually asks us to consider the fundamental idea that nature and human culture are intertwined. I believe that this is a new and exciting direction in the philosophical analysis of environmental issues. Heyd argues that any justiﬁable ethical analysis of environmental policies – of the human relationship with nature – must involve a synthetic evaluation of human-culture within the natural world. Since its inception as a distinct ﬁeld in the early 1970s, environmental philosophy has encountered several objections: that its focus on the nonhuman natural world is too radical to be a workable ethic; that philosophical reasoning about nature is too abstract for practical environmental policy-makers; and that environmental ethics is anti-human. Heyd’s perspective transcends these objections. By merging the disciplines of ethics and aesthetics he compels us to consider the concept and the reality of a human culture as it is connected to the natural environment. By focusing on the connection between culture and the natural environment he provides us with a template for the resolution of environmental disputes and problems. Consider the discipline of aesthetics. The human appreciation of beauty in the natural world is so fundamental to an understanding of human life that no serious analysis of the meaning of the human/nature relationship can ignore it. Yet philosophers concerned with ethical issues in environmental policy routinely dismiss aesthetic considerations as being irrelevant, subjective, or non-quantitative. Heyd’s perspective in this book serves as a corrective to this limited vision. When considering the rock art of pre-literate peoples or the trees in a Buddhist temple garden, he shows that aesthetics can provide the material for a robust analysis of the human relationship to the natural world. We must understand the human place in the natural world, and environmental philosophy must move beyond the sterile debates

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about the meaning, for example, of intrinsic value in natural nonhuman entities. Instead, we need to develop a genuine idea of the “culture of nature” – once again, a full picture of the inextricable connections between humanity and nature. Humans modify nature as they act and live; these modiﬁcations cannot be avoided. But in order for humans to respect the autonomy of nature, its intrinsic value and beauty, they must understand the role of human culture in the shaping of the natural world, and the converse shaping of human culture by speciﬁc and local natural environments. As Heyd writes, there are “many stories of nature” and these stories provide us – if we can open our eyes, our minds, our hearts – a new and harmonious vision of humans and nature enriching each other. Eric Katz Professor of Philosophy, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Preface This book is designed as a set of thought probes intended to entice readers to develop further the possibilities, both in theory and practice, of engaging in encounters with nature. Such encounters can transform our cultures so that we will ﬁnd a more adequate place within the natural world. The volume is divided into three parts, each of which is focussed primarily on ethics, aesthetics and culture in general, respectively. The book incorporates essays written for various occasions, spanning the last dozen years. They have been thoroughly revised and brought into relation with each other for this volume. Technical terms and complex points have been explained in everyday language and with the help of examples. While the common theme of the book is pursued throughout, some chapters have been written in a more analytic mode, while others are more narrative. The chapters are arranged so that the theme of the book becomes progressively more explicit, while each essay also stands on its own and can be read out of order. This allows the reader to dip into any part of this book as her or his interest suggests. Since the book aims to reﬂect the reality that our encounters with the natural world are diverse, and have many dimensions (emotional, cognitive, practical-instrumental, moral, poetic, and so on), the exploration of environmental culture pursued here also aims to reﬂect that diversity.

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Acknowledgements I am grateful to many people who have helped to make this book possible. First of all I thank the many people who have read some of the chapters in manuscript form, and have given me suggestions useful for improvement, including Angus Taylor, Cody Poulton, Eric Higgs, Stuart Lee, Michael Pardy, Richard Shier, Scott Woodcock, Sara Ehrenbeck, Jan Zwicky, James Young, Allen Carlson, Peter Lamarque, Professor Masaru Ogawa, and anonymous referees of Environmental Values and of The British Journal of Aesthetics. I am especially thankful to Nadine LeFort, Rick Searle, Edward Butterworth, Tony Berger and John Clegg, who each read large portions of the manuscript. I am also indebted to the many people who made it possible for me to research and to write at their institutions, and who welcomed me into their homes with generous hospitality, especially Julia Gerlero and Teresa Vega of the Universidad del Comahue, Patagonia, in the fall of 2000, and Professor Fumiaki Taniguchi of Konan University, Kobe, in the summer of 1999. I recognize, moreover, the assistance of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which made possible my stay at the Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus, Germany, in 2001–02, and of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, which provided me with ofﬁce space in the summer of 2000. For stimulating discussions while researching and writing the essays comprising this volume, I am thankful to Karen Baltgailis, Lisa Edwards, Shelly Ridder and Joan Pedrola. Besides being indebted to John Clegg for helping me with many useful suggestions, I am grateful to him for guiding me to intriguing rock-art sites in the Sydney area of SE Australia. Finally, for her continuing support in all my projects and for providing the ideal environment for research and writing, I am very thankful to Elke Haeberlein of Altea La Vella, Spain.

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Chapter 1

Introduction What this Book is About This book aims to bring broad philosophical reﬂection and analysis to the human encounter with the natural environment. To date, environmental philosophy generally has centered on the development of environmental ethics, focused in particular on critiques of anthropocentric and individualistic morality, though discussions in environmental aesthetics and environmental policy are becoming more common. Regarding the relation and interaction between culture and nature in general, relatively little has been written about the positive role that culture may have in our interactions with nature. This book addresses all three of these areas: ethics, aesthetics, and culture in general, as they relate to the natural environment. My overall aim is to reﬂect on the cultural dimensions of our relationship with nature. Since the 1970s, we have been hearing about the environmental crisis. Despite important successes in stemming some environmental problems, such as the use of DDT in North America, it seems that today we are facing ever greater threats to the integrity of our natural environment. As everyone is coming to learn, our generation and those that follow us must face even more serious challenges than those that had to be confronted in the last thirty years. Habitats and species are disappearing at a rapidly accelerating rate despite government regulations, countless conferences, and the unrelenting (unpaid or poorly paid) dedication of many citizens working either with non-governmental organizations or on their own. The degradation of the natural environment is not only an issue for those worried about nature as such or about our legacy to future generations. It also concerns all of us from the prudential, self-interested point of view, since many resources on which we depend for our livelihoods are coming to the point of exhaustion. Fish stocks are declining in most of the world’s oceans, old-growth forests that could be the source of continuous sustainable employment are being clear-cut world-wide, fertile lands are disappearing due to human-caused erosion and urbanization, while clean water for public use is becoming scarce due to waste, pollution and diversion into private uses.1 Add to this, the expected effects of climate change of a magnitude not seen on this planet for a very long time.

1 Not to mention that known oil ﬁelds are reaching their halfway point in productivity (“peak oil”) coincidentally at a point in time at which several newly industrializing countries are about to consume as much oil as the so-called “developed” countries, with the implication that oil will begin to become scarce and expensive, and increasingly the underlying cause for international conﬂicts.

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Encountering Nature

The common supposition of modernity has been that sufﬁcient control could be exerted on our natural environment so as to make it yield all the resources (and sinks) that we humans require – and desire – in order to lead comfortable lives in ever-increasing numbers. This belief system has served its purposes fairly well as long as unwanted side-effects, such as pollution of air, water and ground, could be overlooked or remedied. We are coming into a phase, however, in which we cannot continue with business as usual, since most of our energies will soon have to be focused on reacting to unwanted environmental side-effects, forcing us to clean up contaminated industrial sites, to treat people suffering from ill health due to pesticides and other chemicals bio-accumulated in our environment, to mitigate the severity of ﬂooding and droughts due to climate change, and so on. I propose that, for these reasons, this may be an appropriate moment to reassess the cultural fabric that underpins the activities that are causing such unprecedented stress in our relations with the natural environment. In reaction to our societies’ environmental record, environmental philosophers generally have taken the direct route in critiquing beliefs and values perceived to be false and misleading and in developing new, more adequate conceptions and value systems. Ecocentric, holistic approaches, for example, have been proposed to replace anthropocentric, individualistic beliefs and values.2 Furthermore, the question of whether nature has intrinsic or only instrumental value has been discussed along with corresponding policy options, such as whether we should aim for preservation rather than conservation of nature.3 In this book, I propose that the environmental degradation that we are increasingly experiencing is best conceived as the result of a general cultural mismatch. By this I mean that the cultural wherewithal of most industrialized societies, comprised not only of particular beliefs but also of a certain mix of habitual behaviors, practices and values, is not generally suited to the natural environmental conditions in which we ﬁnd ourselves. Our cultural evolution has been neglecting to ﬁgure in an important agent, namely the natural environment as an active participant in the shaping of our living spaces.4 While in my previous book, the edited collection Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, the focus was more on the recognition of the self-direction or spontaneity of nature, and its implications for human activities, presently I suggest to further explore the interpenetration of human and natural spaces and processes, as it comes to bear on the various facets of our life. The expectation is that we may come to develop more appropriate cultural responses to the challenges posed by the environmental problems that we are facing. This is a task that calls for cooperation 2 See, for example, J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic (Albany: State University of New York, 1989), especially “Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair,” pp. 15– 38, and “The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic,” pp. 75–99. 3 Where we view environmental degradation from a broad point of view, appeals for protection may be justiﬁable from both perspectives, and, depending on circumstances, either perspective may be legitimate. With respect to the distinction between conservation and preservation, I do believe that the distinction has a point, but that in practice there are circumstances in which we may appeal to either perspective in order to secure protection for endangered spaces or beings. 4 See Thomas Heyd (ed.), Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, October 2005).

Introduction

3

between diverse disciplines, and certainly exceeds the purview of philosophy alone. For this reason I repeatedly emphasize the necessity of integrating the disciplinary knowledge of ﬁelds such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, geography and art history, as well as what we might garner from environmental sciences such as ecology, conservation biology, and ecological economics and architecture. I also see the task of achieving a more appropriate approach to the natural environment as a personal one. By this I mean that insight into appropriate beliefs, habits, practices and values may only come about if individuals personally expose themselves to certain direct interactions with natural processes and spaces. In the chapters that follow I try to introduce both sorts of exploration: the cross-disciplinary research dimension and the personal encounter with natural spaces and processes. The book eschews any particular set of dos and don’ts. It is, rather, a sustained attempt to weave together exploratory themes in environmental thought which, hopefully, will incite others to pursue further the question of an appropriate, cultural fabric. In the remainder of this Introduction I provide a taste of what I mean by the personal exploration of the interpenetration of the human and the natural, point toward the importance of the concept of social responsibility for land as developed in diverse traditional societies, and make some general points about the role of culture in relation to nature. I then brieﬂy introduce each of the chapters that follow. The Ainapo Trail and the Bo Tree Recently I was privileged to have a stopover in Hawaii. As soon as plane and bus connections permitted, I made my way up the lava ﬁelds of Mauna Loa, reputedly the largest volcano on earth.5 Due to faulty timing and my stubborn reluctance to put off a long-anticipated hike, I found myself initiating my climb up the mountain shortly before sunset, and ended up bivouacking (sleeping under the stars) two nights in a row. At 2000–3000 m altitude, in a landscape with rocks as sharp as razors that tear up the toughest boots in no time, I was lucky that the torrential rains of the previous day had stopped and I twice managed to ﬁnd a patch of level ground without rocks or muddy puddles on which to spread out my sleeping bag. Following my penchant for ﬁnding out about the traditional ways, I had chosen to walk up the Ainapo Trail (Darkened Land Trail), now rarely traveled, which is the way the ancient Hawaiians used to climb the 4,170 m high peak, most likely to venerate the goddess Pele when the volcano became active.6 It is impossible to 5 “Rising gradually to more than 4 km above sea level, Mauna Loa is the largest volcano on our planet. Its long submarine ﬂanks descend to the sea ﬂoor an additional 5 km, and the sea ﬂoor in turn is depressed by Mauna Loa’s great mass another 8 km. This makes the volcano’s summit about 17 km (56,000 ft) above its base! The enormous volcano covers half of the Island of Hawai’i and by itself amounts to about 85 per cent of all the other Hawaiian Islands combined” (US Geological Survey – Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, “Mauna Loa Earth’s Largest Volcano” , accessed 7 August 2006). 6 “The summit of Mauna Loa was visited by prehistoric Hawaiians for ceremonial purposes … Ascents of Mauna Loa by prehistoric Hawaiians were made during summit eruptions, when the goddess Pele was present, to honor her with chants, prayers and offerings”

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imagine a more solitary experience than walking on this giant mountain (which curiously looks like a bulging pancake). After the ﬁrst day’s walk through lush Koa forests, I eventually left behind the last bushes and islands of grasses and was entirely surrounded by the gently upward curved sea of lava ﬂows, incised by valleys reminiscent of troughs between giant petriﬁed waves. For three days I did not see a single human being. And yet, this is a path that can be followed even at dusk, because the loose volcanic debris on which I walked has been worn down by hikers, probably throughout centuries past. And, not far off the trail, from time to time one can ﬁnd narrow cracks in the hardened lava ﬂows, where snow accumulates in the winter and water can be gathered by thirsty travelers in spring.

Figure 1.1

Walking on Mauna Loa

The layout of the trail makes it evident that prior to my own visits even this seemingly remotest of lands has been seen and transformed, albeit only in negligible ways, by human beings. I could at least imagine some of the experiences of those that preceded me, on the basis of the light traces that they have left behind. After arriving exhausted on the top of the mountain constituted by the edge of the Moku’aweoweo crater,7 I gazed down at the nearly 200 m deep and 3 x 5 km wide, smooth, lake-like lava surface. I perused the solidiﬁed lava ﬂows and imagined what the glistening, (Summitpost.org, “Mauna Loa – Historic Ascents of Mauna Loa” , accessed 7 August 2006). 7 “Moku’aweoweo,” “Moku” refers to a coastal land section or islet; “‘aweoweo’ is a type of red Hawaiian ﬁsh. Literal translation is ‘ﬁsh section’ (the red of the ﬁsh suggests red lava)” (US Geological Survey – Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, “Mauna Loa Earth’s Largest Volcano” , accessed 7 August 2006).

Introduction

5

presently hard, black surface might have looked like during the most recent eruption (March 1984), when the lava was boiling up and ﬂowing toward the south-west exit of the caldera. As some readers may remember, thereafter ﬁssures opened up on the north-east ﬂank of the mountain, cutting across some roads and bringing lava ﬂows into threateningly close vicinity of the city of Hilo. Having ﬁnally managed to arrive at the cabin at the top of the mountain before nightfall, I was able to sleep protected from the summit’s usual ﬁerce winds and freezing night-time temperatures. The next day I quickly descended the mountain, for nothing is more sobering than the recognition that one has neither enough food nor water to stay long in that kind of environment. The experience of coming off the mountain felt the way it must be like to come out of a spell or an hypnotic trance. The exuberance of the vegetation in the rain-soaked part of the island, together with the many people I suddenly had to interact with, caused something like nausea in me. But, once back within striking distance of my ﬂight connection, I recovered my stride when I discovered a botanical garden and its Bo tree.8 The Bo, or Bodhi, tree9 (Ficus religiosa, Moraceae) is the tree under which, according to tradition, Gautama, the Buddha, was sitting when he gained enlightenment.10 The particular tree found in this botanical garden is described as having been propagated from the Bo tree at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, which itself is said to have been grown from a slip of the Bo tree from Bodh Gaya, under which the Buddha sat.11 Personally, I am not much drawn toward the worship of relics, but this tree drew me with great magnetism. To think that I was with a kind of living witness of an historical event that took place 2,500 years ago, which had had an immense inﬂuence on the lives of many hundreds of millions of people, transformed the meaning that this tree had for me. Through its lineage, this tree had entered human history and lost its anonymity. It was no more a mere exemplar of a displaced plant species, gathered in a botanical garden by a collector with a taste for South Asian plants. This Bo tree, and Bo trees in general, had entered the human community when the enlightenment of the Buddha was associated with it. After my experience with this tree in Hawaii, I sought out Bo trees in Buddhist temple precincts in Thailand, to observe in what ways they are venerated and what importance these trees are accorded in the practice of Buddhism. I found that in Bangkok, for example, there is an ancient Bo tree at the Wat Pho Chetuphon (or Bo-Tree Monastery), better known for its enormous Reclining Buddha.12 In front of the tree, people venerate 8 This Bo tree is in the Foster Botanical Garden, Honolulu, Hawaii. 9 Also called pipal; assattha in Pali. Bo comes from the Sanskrit bodhi, enlightenment. 10 According to the Buddhist canonical text Mahā-Parinibbāna Suttānta, the Buddha attained enlightenment under a Bo tree. Theravada Buddhism views each tree as a symbol or memorial of the Buddha”s enlightenment. (James B. Pruess, “Merit and Misconduct: Venerating the Bo Tree at a Buddhist Shrine,” American Ethnologist, 6, 2 (May 1979), pp. 261–73, p. 263.) 11 “A living pipal at Anuradhapura, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), is said to have grown from a cutting from the Bo tree sent to that city by King Ashoka in the 3rd century BC” (Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, , accessed 14 January 2006.) 12 After unseating his rival Tak Sin, the future King Rama I renovated a run-down monastery called Wat Potaram and renamed it Wat Pho Chetuphon.

6

Figure 1.2

Encountering Nature

Foster Garden Bo Tree

Introduction

Figure 1.3

Wat Pho Chetuphon Bo Tree

7

8

Encountering Nature

the Buddha with ﬂowers, incense and candles. The tree itself is undergirded with sturdy wooden beams, decorated with colorful rags and intended to support the tree’s heavy branches. In some areas of northern Thailand there are special festivals related to the Bo tree, which involve the transport of such beams to temple areas.13 In retrospect I realize that both the Ainapo Trail on Mauna Loa and the Bo tree have become integrated into the human world by being bearers of traces, and witnesses of activities, deemed to be of important relevance to human beings. Interestingly, there is a branch of Buddhism that proposes something like the obverse of this process. A stream of Japanese Tendai (Chinese: Tiantai) Buddhism has argued for the “original enlightenment” of nature. According to this school of thought, nature originally attained enlightenment and human beings, as later comers, can take an example from it.14 This perspective would make sense of the walks that some Japanese people take on remote mountains, conceived as pilgrimages to further the appreciation of the Buddhist Absolute in nature.15 It is also notable that some of the foci of Japanese aesthetic appreciation of nature, namely the full moon and petals falling from tree blossoms, precisely coincide with key symbols of the Buddha’s enlightenment.16 For our purposes it is relevant that, while the Ainapo Trail and the Bo tree, insofar as they are parts of nature, became integrated into the human world and its history, nature-revering Japanese pilgrims are seeking their own integration into the already enlightened natural world. I propose that in both types of cases the interpenetration of human and natural spaces and processes opens up opportunities and inducements for encounters with nature, which otherwise might not occur. Buddhists, of course, are not the only people who have pursued the integration of the natural and human worlds, as I point out next. Climate Change, Sentient Landscapes and Culture As the certainty of climate change, and the severity of its effects, becomes increasingly evident, interest is growing in understanding how peoples at earlier times have responded to rapid natural change events. One kind of response has been to integrate natural agents, such as glaciers, into a “social” and “sentient” landscape. Julie Cruikshank writes about cultural adaptations to landscape change during the Little Ice Age (1300–1850), recounting some of the oral traditions about glacier 13 See Pruess, “Merit and Misconduct.” 14 On the debate about whether non-sentient nature is able to attain enlightenment, see William Grosnick, “The Buddhahood of the Grasses and the Trees: Ecological Sensitivity or Scriptural Misunderstanding?,” in Michael Barnes (ed.), An Ecology of Spirit (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), pp. 199–200. Also see W. Puck Brecher, An Investigation of Japan”s Relationship to Nature and Environment, Vol. 12, Japanese Studies Series (Lewiston, NY: Edward Mellen Press, 2000), pp. 60–63. 15 See William R. LaFleur, “Saigyō and the Buddhist Value of Nature,” Part I in History of Religions, 13, 2 (November 1973), pp. 93–128; and “Saigyō and the Buddhist Value of Nature,” Part II in History of Religions, 13, 3 (February 1974), pp. 227–48. 16 See Thomas Heyd, “The Unity of Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Interior: Vision Quest and Pilgrimage,” Poetica (2006), pp. 83–98.

Introduction

9 17

travel of the coastal Alaska Tlingit and of the Yukon First Nations. She retells stories about glaciers believed to pay attention and respond to human behaviors, such as speaking carelessly, spilling blood, making noise, or cooking with grease in their vicinity.18 Cruikshank describes the Alaska Tlingit and Yukon First Nations’ way of conceiving of glaciers, and of the ensemble constituted by human and non-human beings on the land, by the term “sentient landscapes.” To conceive of a stretch of land as sentient landscape has the implication that its diverse animate and inanimate components are not treated as mere resources for human endeavors but as active, responsive counterparts to human beings. To people who have not been raised in the cultural milieux where these stories originate, this notion, and the accounts on which it is based, may seem incredible, but to focus on the divergence of world-views would be to miss the point. What is relevant in our context is that Cruikshank describes the type of relationship between people and land exhibited in these oral traditions as involving “social responsibility” arising from “the social nature of all relations between humans and nonhumans, that is, animals and landscape features, including glaciers.”19 Land, from this perspective, is considered in a similar way that members of human society are considered. This is an approach to natural landscape that is common to many peoples who have deep roots in their lands, including the Inuit and the indigenous people of the Russian North, as well as the Mapuche and Quechua from South America’s Andes region, and the Aborigines of Australia. What is the import of this type of approach? Cruikshank points out that this kind of “local knowledge embedded in oral traditions” displays “commitment to an active, thoroughly positioned human subject whose behavior is understood to have consequences.”20 She proposes that the type of relationship displayed in these approaches to landscape underscores “the social content of the world and the importance of taking personal and collective responsibility for changes in that world.”21 While it cannot be my aim to advocate that we adopt any of the particular beliefs about the land and its inhabitants held by Tlingit and Yukon First Nations, I do think that a consideration of how the attitude of responsibility in relation to nature, inherent in such notions, functions and develops may be instructive for our present situation. Rapid changes in landscapes and physical systems, of the sort that already presently are brought about by climate change, invite us to reﬂect on vulnerabilities and the ability to mitigate, and adapt to, such change. Developing our ingenuity and technical-scientiﬁc expertise to come up with appropriate physical or socio-economic modiﬁcations to our environment certainly is to the point, but, as 17 Julie Cruikshank, “Glaciers and Climate Change: Perspectives from oral tradition,” Arctic, 54, 4 (December 2001), pp. 377–93; “Nature and culture in the ﬁeld: Two centuries of stories from Lituya Bay, Alaska,” Knowledge and Society (Research in Science and Technology Studies: Knowledge and Technology Transfer, Vol. 13; Marianne de Laet (ed.)), (Amsterdam: JAI/ Elsevier Science, 2002), pp. 11–43; Do Glaciers Listen?: Local knowledge, colonial encounters, and social imagination (Vancouver: UBC Press; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005). 18 Cruikshank, “Glaciers and Climate Change,” pp. 385, 387, 388. 19 Ibid., p. 382. 20 Ibid., p. 391. 21 Ibid., p. 391.

10

Encountering Nature

Cruikshank notes, “our human ability to come to terms with global environmental problems will depend as much on human values as on scientiﬁc expertise …”22 Societies that respond to environmental stresses in ways that are suitable to their continued or sustainable ﬂourishing differ from those that do not in a variety of ways.23 My supposition is that the best way to describe that difference is in terms of cultural dimensions. The difference is a matter of beliefs, habits, practices, values, and so on, and not just material or technological adaptations, in relation to the environing non-human nature. For this reason I think that the cultural perspectives of peoples who have cultivated the sort of respect that allows natural entities and processes space and time for their expression, and have developed a corresponding sense of responsibility for their own actions in the face of natural forces, may provide valuable models for the development, in our own societies, of appropriate approaches to rapid natural change. My supposition is that societies that have effective cultural resources for dealing with such natural changes perceive themselves as embedded in humanenvironmental communities, in which the natural environment is treated as more than a mere resource. I draw the conclusion that, in order to prepare our societies for rapid changes in landscapes and physical systems, such as those that come about through climate change, we need to study the factors which may generate appropriate coping attitudes and behaviors. This calls for a research program of its own. In this book we shall only consider a ﬁrst step, namely, that human and natural systems may fruitfully be conceived as interwoven, which should contribute to the realization of our responsibilities toward the natural environment. My interest in the natural environment has long been centred on its aesthetic affordances. Growing up in Spain in a rural, small-town environment, bordered by rugged mountains and by a coastline with a long bay that at both extremes ends in stark cliff faces, I have come to value the diversity of experiences that nature can offer. Notably, however, the natural environments to which I was exposed had long been inhabited by human beings. In that region, hilltop towns were fortiﬁed, at least after the Christian conquest of the Muslim kingdoms, to give villagers a modicum of protection against regular pirate incursions; mountainsides were terraced to capture rainwater and allow for dryland agriculture; and the sea had been traveled on a continuous basis since before Roman times to obtain ﬁsh and to carry on trade. Consequently, to me the natural and the human spaces have always seemed relatively intertwined. This may be a reason why I have generally written about natural spaces from a viewpoint which makes explicit its cultural situatedness. As we will see below, certain cultural interventions in natural spaces actually may be instrumental in guiding our sight into the natural world rather than away from it, as is commonly supposed. Ultimately, I have come to wonder about how we can move from a point of view that supposes that technology and science can solve all our problems toward a genuine, practical transformation of our attitudes and our ways of acting toward the natural 22 Ibid., p. 390. 23 See, for example, Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (New York: Viking, 2005), for a relatively popular treatment.

Introduction

11

environment, such that we make a better ﬁt than at present. This, I perceive, is the fundamental challenge of our times, especially now that evidence for the inevitability of drastic climate change is accumulating. It seems that the acceptance, and support for, mitigation and minimally adequate measures to adapt to the expected effects of climate change will require a cultural transformation. My working hypothesis is that, in order to attain appropriate long-term ways of coping with a world of increasingly disastrous natural environmental changes, we need to develop cultural matrices which integrate non-human nature and human beings in community. The Structure of this Book As noted, the book starts from the premise that, in order to bring about a fundamental change toward more adaptive attitudes respecting the natural world, we need to undertake a reconsideration of ethics, aesthetics and culture in general, in the context of the encounter with non-human nature. Although ethics and aesthetics obviously are always already part of the general cultural make-up of human groups, in order to highlight the differing emphases of each set of papers the book is divided into three sections corresponding to each one of those topic areas. Part I is about ways of conceiving afresh the idea of ethics in relation to the natural environment. It begins with a chapter that queries the relation between ethical theory and moral practice. It argues that, besides theoretical justiﬁcations for pro-environmental attitudes, what really is needed at this point in time is better understanding of the conditions that may generate pro-environmental conscience. The next chapter proposes that pro-environmental conscience can and should infuse our actions in a thoroughgoing way, especially at the workplace, because that is where most of the decisions affecting our natural environment are made. Chapter 3 discusses environmental ethics in a cultural context that is quite different from the North American or European. In this chapter, I claim that environmental ethics may be very closely linked with notions of community, resistance to outside manipulation, and reafﬁrmation of autonomy or self-determination. Part II is focused on the signiﬁcance of aesthetics in the development of appropriate attitudes toward the natural environment, especially in those cases in which nature is found in a hybrid or culturally modiﬁed form. Part II begins with a chapter on the many accounts or stories, scientiﬁc and also non-scientiﬁc, that may lead us into a genuine aesthetic appreciation of nature. In this context I emphasize the value of local or indigenous perspectives, based on long-term residence at a particular place in the land. The next chapter continues with the consideration of an example of a particular culture deeply rooted in place. I propose to look into the appreciation of nature in the Japanese poetical tradition, guided by the Japanese haiku poet, Matsuo Bashō, and argue that he laid the foundations for an aesthetics of wandering in nature. The following chapter is focused on rock art (mostly constituted by engravings and paintings on stationary rock surfaces). I propose that aesthetic appreciation of such manifestations simultaneously may lead to deepened attention of the natural environment which serves as its backdrop. The section concludes with a short chapter

12

Encountering Nature

on a type of earthwork that emblematically embodies the reclamation of industrially denatured spaces. My view is that, although such artworks may be intended to have the function of whitewashing the prior disruption of the land, in the end may rather serve to highlight the human incursion in such places. Hence, I propose that such “reclamation art,” in fact, may succeed in directing our attention to the increasing absence of undisturbed nature from the spaces that surround us. Part III approaches the question of the role of culture, in a broad sense, for the development of appropriate attitudes toward non-human nature. The section begins with an analysis of the relation between nature and culture, and the proposal that the two notions need not be conceived as contraries. I argue that we may, in fact, conceive of and develop a “culture of nature,” and that the protection of natural heritage may be understood as exemplifying such a culture. In the next chapter I focus on the possibilities for the recognition and appreciation of natural spaces opened up by the presence of cultural markers made by indigenous peoples. I take note of a particular type of indigenous cultural manifestation,found on the North American Plains constituted by boulder arrangements, and point out its signiﬁcance for a deeply felt understanding of our options in positioning ourselves with regard to the natural environment. This is followed by a chapter that considers the question whether it makes any sense to engage in nature restoration, given that such interventions seem, rather, to constitute further artefactuality. It confronts the notion of restoration with the shaping of natural processes in traditional Japanese gardens and in site-speciﬁc installations called “earthworks” or “land art.” Part III closes with the discussion of botanic gardens as a form of place-making that integrates natural and human forces in a very deliberate way. I point out that these hybrid spaces, as all gardens, in some ways are artefacts and in some ways are natural, and argue that botanic gardens, in particular, offer human beings a special challenge and opportunity to consider plants as subjects. My conclusion is that such mixed, hybrid environments may play an important role in the development of a genuine appreciation of the otherness of non-human nature, and potentially in the generation of environmental conscience. Finally, in the Afterword, I point out some of the further issues that we may need to consider if we are to develop a culture that is attentive to our embeddedness in natural environments.24

24 I would like to thank Cody Poulton, Tony Berger and Edward Butterworth for reading this chapter and making useful suggestions for improvements.

PART I Environmental Conscience In the ﬁrst part of the book I offer various reﬂections on the possibilities of making our societies less environmentally degrading than they presently are by opening up our purview of environmental ethics in new, and hopefully productive, ways. In Chapter 2, I argue for the value of environmental morality and its effectiveness, and propose that, if developed, it may make an important contribution to the transformation of our practices, habits and beliefs with regard to the natural environment. The basic idea is that encountering nature in a direct way may be a crucial starting point for acquiring environmental conscience. In Chapter 3, I seek to dispel the misapprehension that environmental ethics is out of place in the world of work. I argue that the workplace is a very important place from the point of view of environmental ethics since most environmentally signiﬁcant decisions probably are made there. I propose that taking careful note of one’s impact on the natural environment while at work one can make an effective contribution to the protection of environmental integrity. I broaden the scope of analysis from a focus, in Chapters 2 and 3, on the conscience and actions of the individual, to a focus, in Chapter 4, on the beliefs and activities of the community. This chapter is centred on the exploration of models of sustainability from Latin America that are based on commonly shared habits, practices, values and beliefs, and integrate the human and the non-human natural parts of the community. I suggest that, as such, these models can serve as examples of what appropriate environmental cultures may look like.

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Chapter 2

The Case for Environmental Morality Despite thirty years of concern, both at the individual and at the institutional level, the rate at which the natural environment suffers degradation keeps on accelerating in nearly all spheres. Some go so far as to argue that only an appeal to selﬁshness will “save the environment,” allegedly because appeals to “morality” necessarily are ineffective. Others have argued that what we need is a “new, environmental ethics.” My thesis is that if we are interested in countering the degradation of the natural environment we need to reconsider actual morality, how it is developed, and how it may take into account human activities affecting the natural world. I argue that, ultimately, this means that we need to develop ways of recognizing the autonomy of nature. In the following I begin by considering the proposal that we rely on selﬁshness, as well as the suggestion that we need to develop a new theory of environmental ethics, to stem the tide of degrading anthropogenic change in our natural environment. Next, I propose that we reconsider actually existing morality, how any being becomes recognized as morally signiﬁcant, and the effectiveness of environmental morality. After this, I discuss the development of morality and, in particular, of environmental morality, and the importance of ways of knowing in this context. I conclude that environmental morality based on the recognition of the autonomy of nature may play a fundamental role in the development of a more appropriate cohabitation between human beings and the rest of nature. The Limits of Theory and Going Beyond The troubles with selﬁshness In a paper titled “Can Selﬁshness Save the Environment?” Matt Ridley and Bobbi S. Low claimed that in order to “avert global ecological disaster” we should “tap a boundless and renewable resource: the human propensity for mainly thinking of short-term self-interest.”1 To begin, we may note that, as various proponents of

1 Matt Ridley and Bobbi S. Low, “Can Selﬁshness Save the Environment?,” Human Ecology Review, 1, 1 (Winter/Spring 1993/94), pp. 1–13, p.1; originally published in Atlantic Monthly (September 1993). Also see the diverse commentaries to their original article, as well as their response, “Why We’re not Environmental Altruists – And What We Can Do About It,” published in the same edition of Human Ecology Review, pp. 14–106 and 107–36, respectively.

Encountering Nature

16 2

resourcism have suggested from time to time, the phrase “saving the environment” may be ill chosen since, insofar as environing or surrounding us strictly speaking, the environment is inescapable and indestructible. Alternatively, the notion that we are facing “global ecological disaster” equally may be subject to criticism due to its lack in precision and the incitement to think in catastrophic terms3; degrading anthropogenic changes in the natural environment are indeed globally perceivable but may become strictly disastrous only in particular locations (usually inhabited by marginalized people), such as in the petroleum industry-damaged Ogoniland in Nigeria, on Canadian Native reserves near uranium mining sites, or on Costa Rican banana farms aerially sprayed with carcinogenic pesticides while farm workers are on the job. Rather, the reality of the human activity which is degrading the natural environment is mostly of a slow, even if accelerating and relentless, variegated and exclusionary appropriation of habitats, punctuated by locally fatal events, such as the eradication of certain ecosystems, accompanied by the disappearance of species and the destruction of landscapes. The simpliﬁcation inherent in the formulation of the problematic, presented by Ridley and Low, goes hand in hand with the theoretical reductionism of their thesis that we should rely on selﬁshness and not on morality to bring about changes in behaviors affecting the natural environment. Since this kind of thesis may have considerable appeal among people who are already nurtured on an ideology that proudly proclaims the moral rightness of individualistic concerns, even in circumstances of collective stress, I will brieﬂy delineate three difﬁculties, which it needs to face. First, Ridley and Low assume that “human nature” is “genetically selﬁsh” because biologically speaking we supposedly are mere carriers of selﬁsh genes: “like other living things, [human beings] evolved to survive and enhance the spread of their genes.”4 As others have also noted, even if individuals and species are present with us thanks to their ancestors’ reproductive success, strategies for the survival and the nurture of their progeny rather depend on the adoption of cultural resources and the readiness to be socially cooperative.5 In any case, there is no clear support from anthropology for the view that present individuals necessarily must be “selﬁsh” in their behavior. Notably, the term “selﬁsh” indicates behavior that is self-serving at the expense of others. Each person’s experience, and the combined record of humanity, attest to the fact that human beings are not necessarily selﬁsh in this sense (even if people normally give priority to their own interests and to the interests of those that 2 That is, those who think of the natural environment as a mere store of resources available for the taking by human beings. 3 The expression “environmental crisis” also is subject to this sort of criticism. The term has been used for more than thirty years now for the problems that human beings are causing in the natural environment, which makes it inappropriate to speak of this situation as a “crisis.” Given the long–term character of these problems we should rather be speaking of a chronic, anthropogenic, problem in environmental health. 4 Ridley and Low, “Why We’re not Environmental Altruists,” pp.110, 109. 5 See, for example, Ian Tattersall, Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1998), and The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human (New York: Harcourt, 2002).

The Case for Environmental Morality

17

they feel closest to); sharing and cooperative behavior seems (still) to be a viable, societally approved, and often practiced, alternative to unmitigated egoism.6 In fairness we need to take note that Ridley and Low do acknowledge a range of behaviors which are not easily categorised as self-interest, but they propose that evolutionary theory would class most of those behaviors as involving reciprocity of some kind, and hence supposedly are consistent with the thesis of genetically based selﬁshness. They also accept apparent exceptions to the rule, such as the benevolent actions of Mother Theresa, but think that such “true genetic altruism,” characterized by “behaviors that cost the performer and beneﬁt someone else,” is rare.7 This contraposition of supposedly normal “selﬁshness” and of rare “altruism” is the basis for their claim that “moral suasion” is wasted effort. The conﬂation of the ordinary sense of morally objectionable selﬁshness with the technical sense derived from the assumption of “selﬁsh genes” seems a rather underhanded way of supporting their cynicism regarding humanity’s capacity for morality. We should expect argument instead of rhetorical ploys if that thesis is to be credible. This leads to the second difﬁculty with their overall thesis. Ridley and Low’s view is that we should not appeal to morality because it represents the point of view of altruism, which itself is seen as a form of self-sacriﬁce. Since we genetically are not disposed toward self-sacriﬁce, we allegedly are misguided if in environmental matters (as well as in other contexts, presumably) we appeal to morality. This, however, represents a very narrow view of morality because the moral point of view frequently, although certainly not always, coincides with self-interest. This is true, for example, of such a traditional morality as is represented by Christianity, according to which morally correct acts are simultaneously graceful, and hence prudential, for the one carrying them out, while morally incorrect acts are subject to punishment, at least in the “other life,” and hence contrary to self-interest. It is also generally true of such accounts of morality as represented in classical ethical theories such as contractarianism, utilitarianism and in Kant’s analysis of ethics. The social contract is agreed upon because it serves social peace from which the contractors generally beneﬁt in the long run. The maximization of utility makes sense because it generally makes the majority, among whom the actor may hope to ﬁnd herself most of the time, happier. Rational beings respect each other’s autonomy because not to do so, among other things, would run counter to the recognition of the value that each participant in a community of autonomous being perceives as embodied in her- or himself.8 The third difﬁculty with Ridley and Low’s thesis that I will discuss here has to do with their central, supposedly empirical, claim, namely, that we should rely on 6 Ridley and Low, “Why We’re not Environmental Altruists,” pp. 116, notably support this view by noting that “a proportion of individuals will cooperate no matter what,” though they link it with the reductionistic and cynical claim that “we have evolved to place great value on our reputations as reciprocators.” Also see Paul Stern, Thomas Dietz, Troy Abel, Gregory Guagnano and Linda Kalof, “A Value, Belief, Norm Theory of Support for Social Movements: The Case of Environmentalism,” Human Ecology Review, 6, 2 (1999), pp. 81–97. 7 Ridley and Low, “Why We’re not Environmental Altruists,” p. 110. 8 Obviously more could be said on this topic, but I will not develop this further on this occasion.

18

Encountering Nature

appeals to selﬁshness and not on morality because appeals to morality are not and cannot be effective in bringing about the kinds of changes that we require in a world that increasingly is suffering under the impact of humanly caused environmental degradation. This, however, seems quite false. We only need to take into account societies in which there has been a genuine breakdown of morality, as after a long war or due to eradication from a traditional homeland (consider, for example, the infamous case of the Ik9), to realize the general effectiveness of morality in maintaining peace and social stability under normal circumstances. One would have to see some evidence to believe that morality does not and cannot have a similar, underlying, regulative effect on people’s behavior regarding the natural environment. In fact, as we will see below, there is empirical evidence that morality can be quite effective in bringing about appropriate behavior in this context too. There remains a signiﬁcant plausibility to Ridley and Low’s thesis, however, when we take into account the fact that by most accounts the degradation of the natural environment is rapidly worsening, despite the continuous appeals by ordinary citizens, non-governmental organizations, academic institutions, and some government representatives, to reform our ways of life. There may be a variety of explanations for this fact, though. For example, it remains unclear whether the appeals are perceived by people as issuing from credible sources; the concrete moralities extant in the societies in question are perhaps ill-suited to admit an appeal to reform behavior concerning something, such as the natural environment, usually taken for granted; the appeals are likely neglected due to the presence of moral “defectors” or cheaters in those societies; and so on. I suggest that one of the most important reasons for the increasingly heavy “ecological footprint”10 that people are leaving on this planet is that the major “agents” contributing to the environmental degradation of our planet are entities that are not subject to direct moral appeals, namely corporations assembled for particular purposes, generally for proﬁt. As such, these entities can only be controlled by outright legislation or through other sorts of incentives directed to their “selfinterest.”11 The existence of such entities in our midst, as well as the relative success 9 See Colin Turnbull, The Mountain People (St. Albans: Paladin, 1984). 10 According to William Rees (the inventor of the term), the “ecological footprint” can be considered as the area needed to sustain a certain population, given certain consumption patterns and certain resource availability in the area in question, and given a certain technology. He proposes to use it as an analytical tool which, in his own words, can be used as follows: “Pick a population, examine its consumption patterns for a considerable period of time, and then calculate the total area of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems needed to produce all the goods and services that the population consumes, and to assimilate the wastes that the population produces” (Dr. William Rees Interviewed By Dr. Michael Gismondi , accessed 18 September 2006). 11 On corporate responsibility, I side mostly with John R. Danley against Peter A. French. In my view, corporations are agents because they act on our environments, but they should not be considered moral agents. Although corporations legally are treated as persons, morally they do not ﬁt the bill since they have no uniﬁed consciousness and, hence, as such, have no capacity to take responsibility for the effects of their activities. See John R. Danley, “Corporate Moral Agency: The Case for Anthropological Bigotry,” in Joan C. Callahan (ed.),

The Case for Environmental Morality

19

of incentives appealing to self-interest among human beings, does not by itself show that appeals to morality are necessarily ineffective, however. We take a closer look at this point further below.12 The limits of new theories of environmental ethics Since Richard Sylvan (Routley) wrote “Is there a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic?,” a diversity of thinkers have put their mind to the task of developing such a new environmental ethics.13 Sylvan argued that the environmental problems of our times cannot be tackled by an extension of prevailing ethics. On Sylvan’s assessment, the diverse traditions circumscribed by John Passmore in his classic Man’s Responsibility for Nature14 are all equally defective because of their anthropocentric bias. In this context, according to Sylvan, we need to acquire a decidedly non-anthropocentric ethics. Among those who responded to this call we may note J. Baird Callicott who, through an interpretation of Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic,” made a case for a holist ethics, which aims to protect wholes, such as species, over and against individuals, even if to the detriment of individual animals.15 From this perspective the culling by park rangers of herds of ungulates or of elephants in national parks, for example, is justiﬁed if it prevents the decimation of threatened plant species integral to the ecosystems in question.16 Various authors, such as John Livingston, have furthermore concluded that a new, environmental ethics is unlikely to be defensible unless a new metaphysics, replacing “the tyranny of Western knowledge systems,” is found. Livingston suggests that we need to return to our “biological being” and to our “animalness.”17 Ethical Issues in Professional Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 269–74; Peter A. French, “Corporate Moral Agency,” also in Callahan, Ethical Issues, pp. 265–9. For an interesting application of French’s view to environmental issues see his “Invaders of the Environment,” in Peter A. French, Corporate Ethics (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1995), pp. 211–48. 12 On corporate responsibility, also see Chapter 3. 13 Richard Sylvan (Routley), “Is there a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic?,” Proceedings of the XV World Congress of Philosophy 1 (Varna, Bulgaria, 1973), pp. 205–10. 14 John Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature (London: Duckworth, 1974). On Passmore’s claims, also see Chapter 9. 15 Curiously, on Callicott’s analysis the move toward a non-anthropocentric ethics does not seem to require giving up human control of non-human environments and species; it seems, rather, to be in accord with a “managerial” approach to other species. (See Dean Bavington, “Homo Administrator: Managing a Needy Nature?,” in Thomas Heyd (ed.), Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 121–36, for a critique of such managerial approaches to natural spaces.) 16 J. Baird Callicott, “Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair,” in Christine Pierce and Donald VanDeVeer (eds), People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (Belmond, CA: Wadsworth, 2nd edn, 1995), pp. 237–54. Frequent references to this volume are made given its ready access. 17 John Livingston, “Ethics as Prosthetics,” in Philip P. Hanson (ed.), Environmental Ethics: Philosophical and Policy Perspectives (Burnaby, BC: Institute for the Humanities, 1986), p. 76.

20

Encountering Nature

It is evident by now that the contribution that such new theories of ethics can make to bring about a halt to the degradation of our natural environment is relatively limited. These new approaches (see Chapter 3 for a more extended survey of theories of environmental ethics) certainly provide material for an in-depth reconsideration of the value structures prevalent in mainstream Western societies. Nonetheless, new environmental theories of ethics may seem too demanding to most people if they require equality of consideration for non-human entities side by side with human beings. Viewed from the perspective of many traditional, extant value systems, such new theories seem difﬁcult, or even impossible, to justify; if the new theories come packaged in new systems of metaphysics intended to justify them, these new conceptions of our world may be too alien for most people to take seriously.18 It seems likely therefore that such theories of ethics by themselves cannot provide a solution to our present problems. Even Sylvan, who seemed to have a transformation of everyday practice in mind, still focused in a rather technical way on ﬁnding a justiﬁcation for a new environmental ethics.19 The development and justiﬁcation of an abstract, selfconsistent theoretical system deﬁning rights and wrongs in relation to the natural environment without doubt is an important undertaking. We cannot forget, however, Aldo Leopold’s lucid insight that anything as important as a practically effective “new ethic” never comes about as a mere theoretical construct. In fact, the relative ineffectiveness of new theories of environmental ethics may partially be traced to the difﬁculties present in the application of ethical theories generally. In a study of the relevance of ethics theories for the resolution of practical moral problems, Barry Hoffmaster found a number of important problems in the suppositions that usually guide ethicists. We cannot go into any details here, but sufﬁce it to say that he concludes that ethical theories are often ineffective in applied settings because they neglect to take into consideration the speciﬁc contexts of those settings and of the people involved. They suppose that moral decision making is “static” rather than a process that entails personal growth and the “creation” of values and norms. They also suppose that the rationality of morality is “formal” rather than directed toward “global” attempts to make one’s life “manageable” and “coherent,” in the face of difﬁcult decisions which affect the lives of individuals with whom we are affectively involved.20 In sum, systems of ethics that seem theoretically well

18 See, for example, Christopher Belshaw, Environmental Philosophy: Reason, Nature and Human Concern (Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2001), for a critique of deep ecology and ecocentric theories along these lines. 19 Sylvan, “Is there a Need?,” p. 19. So, on the assumption that the term “[an] ethic is ambiguous,” he suggested that “An ethical system S is, near enough, a propositional system (i.e. a structured set of propositions) or theory which includes (like individuals of a theory) a set of values and (like postulates of a theory) a set of general evaluative judgments concerning conduct, typically of what is obligatory, permissible and wrong, of what are rights, what is valued, and so forth,” (p. 20). 20 Barry Hoffmaster, “The Theory and Practice of Applied Ethics,” Dialogue 30, 3 (Summer 1991), pp. 213–34.

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21

grounded still may lead to failure when those systems are applied to resolve concrete problems.21 Another way to summarize Hoffmaster’s ﬁndings is to say that he proposes that, for ethics to be effective in its application, it is necessary to take greater note of people’s actual morality; what Hoffmaster is suggesting is that attention needs to be given to the fact that, prior to the ethicists’ gaze, the ﬁeld of human action is already occupied by individuals who constantly are trying to come to terms with the propriety of their actions in view of sets of values that have been determined in dialogue with others in their environments and over the length of their lives.22 As applied to the problems of human behavior which degrade the natural environment, this means that we need to rethink the concrete value of theories of ethics.23 One alternative is to focus on the value of morality more directly. Beyond theory: environmental morality It is noteworthy that relatively little attention has been paid until recently in contemporary ethics to people’s actual moral functioning, that is, to their actual values, motivations and moral development, both in general and as directed toward the natural environment. The importance of a focus on actual moral functioning was already commented upon by Aldo Leopold. He noted a perplexing conjunction of knowledge of environmental and ecological facts, and inaction in the face of grave needs for environmental protection and remediation. He found that his contemporaries had a ﬁne grasp of the rhetoric of conservation as found in “letterhead pieties,” but that “ecological conscience,” that is, “a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land,” was missing.24 According to Leopold, what was required was less a new theoretical justiﬁcation than a new willingness to act in ways that express respect for the land and its life. One might say that Leopold’s call for a land “ethic” primarily is a call for the adoption of a new, individual and social, ethos, that is, a new form of life or morality, commensurate with the value that, in our enlightened moments, we claim to recognize 21 For a similar point regarding “theoretical ethics,” applied to the environmental context, see John Visvader, “Ken’s Problem: Environmental Activism in an Age of Deconstructionist Biology,” Human Ecology Review, 5, 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 31–4. 22 From this point of view, applied ethicists cannot expect to be able to provide readymade solutions for the moral problems that people face, even if they may still ﬁnd a limited role in the dialogic support that they can provide individuals in facilitating reﬂection on the choices faced. Also see Kant in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. L. White Beck (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959; original 1785) for an account of the limited role that philosophy may play in ethics. 23 Of late, the value and role of theory in ethics has become a subject of concern to a number of writers, including Bernard Williams, Alasdair MacIntyre, Annette Baier, Jonathan Dancy, John McDowell, Susan Wolf and Robert Fullinwider. See Dale Jamieson, “Method and Moral Theory,” in Peter Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 476–86, for a summary discussion. 24 Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic,” in Pierce and VanDeVeer, People, Penguins and Plastic Trees, pp. 142–51; reprinted from Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).

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Encountering Nature

in the land. Leopold argued that the development of this new ethos or morality was impeded by certain characteristic obstacles.25 Leopold, interestingly, proposed a connection between the development of environmental morality and a certain type of knowledge. We shall have a look at that connection shortly but ﬁrst it is necessary to consider what morality is, how any being becomes morally signiﬁcant, and the effectiveness of environmental morality. Morality, Moral Signiﬁcance, and the Effectiveness of Environmental Morality Ethics and morality Morality is a contested issue. It has been argued that it is a matter of acting according to correct rules, themselves backed up by ultimate principles, or of taking note of rights and responsibilities, as derived moreover from a more general system of ethics, or of living according to certain virtues, justiﬁed furthermore by certain ultimate values; and so on. As such, the question concerning what morality is has generated an extensive debate in the literature as to whether one type of theory or another is the correct one. By attempting to set out the correct account of morality, ethics seeks to respond in a foreshortened and thorough way to the question “how do I know if I am doing the morally correct thing?” It is relevant however that, in practice, contrasting notions such as rules vs. rights vs. virtues, as postulated by diverse types of ethical theories, may never explicitly enter into an individual’s reﬂections, even while it may still make good sense to speak of such an individual’s morality.26 Here I attempt a characterization of the notion of morality as inspired by actual practice. I propose to speak of ethics as reﬂection on morality, and of morality as constituted by appropriate attitudes and patterns of action with regard to signiﬁcant others, insofar as these attitudes and patterns of action may be subject to praise or censure and may characterize a person’s character.27 This account of morality calls for elucidation of what constitutes “appropriateness” in this context, of course. Here I rely on the currency of the notion of “responsibility,” as it is commonly used to describe situations in everyday life. In ordinary life we perceive a variety of responsibilities arising out of the relationships in which we are engaged with certain other human beings. We may realize a responsibility for the return of an item that we have borrowed, for payment when purchasing a good, or for caring for an elderly relative. In other words, we perceive certain responsibilities because we have entered into relationships with particular individuals as a borrower, as a purchaser, or as a younger relative, respectively. We perceive these responsibilities, furthermore, because we encounter these particular 25 For discussion see Thomas Heyd, “The Land Ethic and Its Obstacles,” Stewardship ’94: Revisiting the Land Ethic/Caring for the Land (Victoria, Canada: Ministry of Environment, Parks and Lands, B.C., Canada, 1995), pp. 64–7; also see below. 26 But see Jamieson, “Method and Moral Theory,” for a view that emphasizes the role of theory in moral practice. 27 I propose to distinguish these two terms, ethics and morality, for clarity’s sake, even if they usually are used interchangeably.

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23

people as signiﬁcant others: it is important to us how these people are and how they feel; what these people think of us, how they treat us, how our treatment of these people appears to third parties, etc. These relationships generate particular normative relations for us, which in turn may generate a sense of responsibility or a feeling of obligation when we realize that the relationship of being a borrower, a purchaser, or a younger relative, is instantiated.28 It may be argued, moreover, that, even in the absence of a sense of responsibility, these relationships set certain responsibilities, such as returning the item, paying for the good obtained, and helping out the elderly relative, respectively. That is, moral responsibility is not just a subjective but also an objective matter, insofar as it revolves around intersubjectively accessible situations and shared norms. Moreover, even if the demand to take responsibility for certain actions may arise for us because we perceive that we belong to a particular society, and share in its particular culture, this is not to say that the norms explicitly or implicitly contained in such demands are “merely” relative to a culture. Rather, on reﬂection we may well ﬁnd sufﬁcient reasons for the view that the norms in question should be held and acted on transculturally by anyone capable of ethical reﬂection.29 That is, we may ﬁnd sufﬁcient arguments for the conclusion that a certain responsibility applies to anyone in similar circumstances. Importantly, however, such arguments cannot replace the motivating power represented either by a sense of personal responsibility or by societal demands to take certain responsibilities. George Silberbauer proposes that in small-scale societies “morality is seen more clearly [than in large-scale societies] as a set of orientations for establishing and maintaining the health of relationships.”30 On this account, both our sense of responsibility and our willingness to take responsibility, when it is demanded in our society, reﬂect a concern with harmonious, interpersonal functioning. Morality, understood in this manner, can be found everywhere. This is small surprise for at least two reasons. One reason is that we are social beings, and so our own needs and those of others surrounding us naturally become entangled in such ways that morality can be very desirable, since it demands relatively predictable behavioral 28 The point of view on ethics developed here is indebted to Mary Midgley’s “Duties Concerning Islands” in VanDeVeer and Pierce, People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (1st edn, 1986), pp. 156–64, and Val Plumwood’s “Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism” in Pierce and VanDeVeer, People, Penguins (2nd edn), pp. 197–213. It is a well-known principle in philosophy that one cannot derive values from facts. Our experience, however, is not neatly divided into values and facts. Our experience, which is heavily dependent on the modes of knowing and valuing particular to our culture, rather acquaints us with the world in value-laden ways. On reﬂection we may critique the values that we were initially caught up in, of course; this is how we rid ourselves of problematic prejudices. But we may also, on reﬂection, come to the conclusion that we need to deepen our commitment to certain of our value conﬁgurations. That is what we may call the development of a “sense of responsibility.” 29 This is the sense in which Kant supposes that ethics should be evident and applicable to any rational being (any being capable of reasoning). 30 George Silberbauer, “Ethics in small-scale societies,” in Singer, A Companion to Ethics, p. 27.

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patternings which facilitate social functioning. This seems to be true even for hostile interchanges: in war as well as in peace-time some moves are considered “fair” and others not. The other reason is that, as beings who, perhaps above all, have a need to continuously give meaning to our own experiences, responsiveness to certain others recognized as morally signiﬁcant serves to create a context in which one’s existence can make sense. That is, by recognizing that I have many responsibilities toward certain others and that certain others likewise have responsibilities toward me, I can see a point to many of my activities and an explanation for the beneﬁts that accrue to me. Morality may make sense, for example, of the effort that caring for sick relatives entails, or of the beneﬁts one enjoys when receiving unearned hospitality. For these diverse reasons it is rather rare to ﬁnd people who have foresworn all morality. The responsiveness toward certain others, which is constitutive of morality, cannot, however, be the result either of some social imposition or of mere rational analysis, since in either of those cases it would be difﬁcult to perceive the source of its continuing motivating power over (self-determining) people.31 Morality, rather, needs to be conceived as the result of an articulation of self and particular other beings such that those others turn out to be important in a strict sense.32 Another, simpler way of stating this is to say that morality, insofar as it is constituted by a particular sort of attitude and pattern of actions, is the result of a speciﬁc sort of personal relationship.33 Other morally signiﬁcant beings While theories of ethics typically attempt to determine centers of value from ﬁrst principles before focusing on the responsibilities that may arise for beings such as ourselves, a naturalized approach to ethics, such as I’m proposing here, needs to proceed more empirically. Hence, instead of taking it for granted that, for example, only human beings, or only rational beings, or only sentient beings, morally count, I propose that we consider how the recognition of moral signiﬁcance happens in practice. It may at ﬁrst be assumed that this is a cultural matter, on the supposition that one is more or less a result of being “born into” a morality and its values just as one supposedly is “born into” a culture. 31 The latter point was already noted by David Hume, of course. 32 The implication in morality of self-identity, self-respect, and so on, has been pointed out by various researchers in moral psychology. See, for example, Augusto Blasi, “Bridging moral cognition and moral action: A critical review of the literature,” Psychological Bulletin, 88, 1 (July 1980), pp. 1–45, p. 41; Clive Seligman, “Environmental Ethics,” Journal of Social Issues, 45, 1 (1989), pp. 169–84, p. 179 and passim. 33 The relational approach to ethics has come to prominence due to the work of various feminist writers, including Carol Gilligan. (I was reminded of this point by Sara Ehrenbeck.) For a good survey of the contributions of feminist thinkers to a reconception of morality that places fresh emphasis on the value of emotional engagement and interdependence, see, for example, Virginia Held, “Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory,” in Steven M. Cahn and Peter Markie (eds), Ethics: History, Theory and Contemporary Issues (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 682–99.

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A closer look at the anthropology of morality reveals, however, that, even if the set of values available to individuals for the construction of their moral world-view may largely be generated from within the conceptual (and habitual) resources of a certain cultural group, no individual simply “slips on” a morality as one would pull on a sweater. The anthropologist Tim Ingold speaks most eloquently about these matters when he denies that even with regard to culturally speciﬁc ways of living “acculturation” is a straightforward matter; he argues that people, rather, undergo an enskilment with their cultural conspeciﬁcs.34 On Ingold’s account people learn to see and encounter certain features in their world through practical engagement and exposure to modeling, much like wine connoisseurs learn to detect ﬂavors and aromas in wine through the activity of tasting under the guidance of those who already have learnt to recognize the special characteristics of good wine. The important point here is that we have no reason to believe that morality is any different from these other cultural matters. Accordingly, we should suppose that individuals learn to perceive certain other beings as morally signiﬁcant as a result of particular, personal experiences partially made possible through enskilment by one’s cultural conspeciﬁcs. Interestingly this also means that there is no predetermined limitation on which beings morally count and which do not. In the large-scale societies founded by European peoples, the set of beings recognized as morally signiﬁcant mostly is limited to humanity, perhaps reﬂecting the generally citiﬁed spaces in which European people have their daily interaction (which tends to be limited to other human beings). In contrast, for people of smallscale societies, situated in greater direct contact with their natural environment, a variety of beings, including diverse non-human animals, plants, and even geological features, may count as morally signiﬁcant.35 This is not to say that even for urban people the range of signiﬁcant beings necessarily is restricted to human beings. Certain domestic animals kept for the pleasure of their company (“pets”), certain landscapes with which people have become identiﬁed as a community (for example, those located in national parks), and even certain artefacts (such as a nation’s ﬂag) have become foci of moral concern. What is of interest here is that, although historically the peoples of European culture generally have excluded from moral consideration most non-human beings (sometimes even restricting the realm of signiﬁcant beings to a subset of humanity) this need not be so. Environmental morality and its effectiveness As noted, I am using the term “ethics” to mean reﬂection on morality. Environmental ethics, just as its cognates biomedical ethics, legal ethics, and so on, concerns reﬂection on appropriate attitudes and patterns of action with regard to signiﬁcant others, but as considered within a speciﬁc context. So, while biomedical ethics 34 Tim Ingold, “Hunting and Gathering as Ways of Perceiving the Environment,” in Roy Ellen and Katsuyoshi Fukui (eds), Redeﬁning Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication (Oxford: Berg, 1996), pp. 117–55. 35 See Ingold, for example, “Hunting and Gathering.”

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focuses on human actions within the context of biomedical research and medicine, environmental ethics does similarly regarding actions considered within the context of the natural environment. Just as some actions within the medical setting may be considered morally correct or incorrect, some actions within the context of the natural environment similarly may be a matter of moral praise or censure. For example, in a biomedical context it may become apparent to me that it is morally incorrect for physicians to take on a parental role with regard to their adult, conscious patients even if, ordinarily, taking charge of important decisions concerning certain weaker members of society, such as one’s small children, may be quite morally appropriate. Similarly, it may become apparent within an environmental context that it is morally problematic to rid oneself of industrial toxic waste products by putting them into the atmosphere through one’s chimney even if, ordinarily, it may seem morally appropriate to use a chimney for the exhaust from one’s home heating furnace.36 The natural environment affects us human beings in a variety of ways, namely through the goods that it offers us on a regular basis, such as air or water. Those goods may be perceived, for example, as of narrowly biological importance because essential for our very survival, or as having aesthetic signiﬁcance, as when we appreciate the limpid transparency of the skies on a clear day or the ever-present but always changing sound of the sea’s surf. The natural environment can also, of course, affect us by the harms that it may cause through events such as storms or diseases. Furthermore, we affect the natural environment through certain actions, the extremes of which may be described as contamination and over-exploitation, on the one hand, and as protection and restoration, on the other. To reﬂect on environmental morality is to consider our attitudes and ways of acting as they affect the natural environment, thereby affecting signiﬁcant others, who (depending on the relationships that we have developed) may include human as well as non-human beings.37 Now we may ask whether environmental morality, conceived in this way, can be effective in countering environmental degradation. There indeed seem to be individuals, and even populations, who have developed moral concern for the natural environment. As has often been reported in the media, in surveys regarding willingness to act to counter the degradation of the natural environment, the populations of industrialized countries generally state that they are quite ready to give up something to bring about a positive change. This has been

36 I am not entering here into the question whether, in light of the need to mitigate climate change, putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is morally acceptable, though this certainly should be considered, especially in cases in which spaces are heated unnecessarily.. 37 Although the term “environment” strictly speaking also encompasses humanly made or artefactual things and spaces surrounding us, generally, when discussion focuses on environmental ethics, the “environment” of concern is the natural environment. This is not to say that the humanly made environment is inconsequential from the point of view of ethics. Rather, the reason for the focus in environmental ethics on the natural environment, in contrast to the artefactual environment, is that the former more fundamentally constitutes a condition for the ﬂourishing of a great variety of human and non-human beings.

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conﬁrmed by a number of social science studies since the 1970s. Interestingly, concern for non-human nature can be very signiﬁcant. Paul C. Stern and Thomas Dietz found that “the increase in environmentalism among the younger generations may be showing a value shift, from one based solely on concern with humans to one that assigns value more broadly to nonhuman entities.”39 Gisela Szagun and Elke Mesenholl, furthermore, studied a population that expressed moral concern for environmental degradation to the point that they considered it more immoral to harm the natural environment than to harm human beings.40 If we wonder whether such declarations, manifesting moral concern for the natural environment, are connected to action, we may note that research has shown that there is a fairly strong correlation. In a comprehensive review of the literature in psychology on the general relation between moral cognition and action, Augusto Blasi found that, contrary to claims “that moral reasoning and moral behavior are independent dimensions [this largely is] a well advertised myth.”41 This makes good sense: as Joanne Vining reports with regard to participation in recycling behavior, given that people have “positive environmental attitudes,” such active cooperation is explained by the fact that “intrinsic satisfaction that occurs when an individual acts in accordance with his or her attitudes is a primary motivator.”42 The effectiveness of moral appeals is also corroborated by Stern, Dietz and J. Stanley Black who proposed that “support for environmental protection has a moral dimension.”43 Their research shows that such support depends both on awareness of harmful consequences and on ascription of responsibility to those seen as accountable, leading to a perception of “moral obligation” for the latter to act.44 These diverse ﬁndings suggest that environmental morality may well be effective in 38 See, for example, R.E. Dunlap, G.H. Gallup and A.M. Gallup, “International Public Opinion Toward the Environment, Part I,” Impact Assessment, 11 (1993), pp. 3–25; ibid., “International Public Opinion Toward the Environment, Part II,” Impact Assessment 11 (1993), pp. 111–43; M.A.E. Steger, J.C. Pierce, B.S. Steel and N.P. Lovich, “Political Culture, Postmaterial Values, and the New Environmental Paradigm: A Comparative Analysis of Canada and the United States,” Political Behavior, 11 (1989), pp. 233–54; K.D. Van Liere and R.E. Dunlap, “The Social Bases of Environmental Concern: A Review of Hypotheses, Explanations and Empirical Evidence,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 44 (1980), pp. 181–97. 39 Reported in Susan Opotow and Susan Clayton, “Green Justice: Conceptions of Fairness and the Natural World,” Journal of Social Issues, 50, 3 (1994), pp. 1–11, p. 8. 40 Gisela Szagun and Elke Mesenholl, “Environmental Ethics: An Empirical Study of West German Adolescents,” Journal of Environmental Education, 25, 1 (1993), pp. 37–44. G. Szagun, G.E. Mesenholl, and M. Jelen, Umweltbewußtsein bei Jugendlichen: Emotionale, handlungsbezogene und ethische Aspekte (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1994). 41 Blasi, “Bridging moral cognition,” p. 10. 42 Joanne Vining, “Natural Laws and Human Nature,” Human Ecology Review, 1, 1 (Winter–Spring 1993–94), pp. 100–6, p. 102. Also see Raymond De Young, “Some psychological aspects of a reduced consumption lifestyle: The role of intrinsic satisfaction and competence,” Environment and Behavior, 28 (1996), pp. 358–409. 43 Paul C. Stern, Thomas Dietz and J. Stanley Black, “Support for Environmental Protection: The Role of Moral Norms,” Population and Environment, 8, 3 and 4 (Fall–Winter 1985–86), p. 218. 44 Ibid., pp. 204–7.

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guiding individual behavior, even if until now the total effect on our globe’s health may have been small. The fundamental question then is how environmental morality may be developed further.45 Moral Development, Environmental Morality and Ways of Knowing Moral development There is a large and growing literature on moral development, mostly focused on Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory.46 This theory attempts to provide an account of the supposed stages which constitute moral development, in analogy to Piaget’s structuralist account of the stages of cognitive development. In Kohlberg’s theory, the order of the stages is ﬁxed; the supposition is that individuals may move from a condition of pure egoism all the way up to a condition of respect for justice for its own sake. Furthermore, according to Kohlberg, the process of moving through stages in principle is universal (even if he thought that in actuality in some of the more “primitive” [sic] societies the highest stages may not be reached47). In this model, moral development occurs as a result of cognitive disequilibrium, coupled with the availability of some individuals serving as models of “higher level” moral reasoning. It is of concern, however, that Kohlberg’s account has been criticized on diverse grounds, including its ethnocentric cultural presuppositions and the insufﬁcient justiﬁcation for the rank ordering of stages.48 In my eyes, the major competitor of Kohlberg’s theory is found in Norma Haan’s “interactional model” of moral development, which does not suppose that moral development is a purely cognitive matter. Haan’s model proposes that moral concern is generated through our sense of interdependency. Her theory attempts to provide an account of the conditions that lead individuals to develop their capacity for the resolution of moral conﬂicts. Accordingly, “morality is seen, not as judgmental competence, but as a social, emotional dialectic of practical reasoning among

45 As noted above, when I write of “environmental morality” I mean those attitudes and patterns of action that are congruent with, and appropriate to, the maintenance and promotion of the integrity of the natural environment and its diverse constituents. 46 See, for example, Lawrence Kohlberg, “Stage and Sequence: The Cognitive Developmental Approach to Socialization,” in D.A. Goslin (ed.), Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research (New York: Rand McNally & Co., 1969). 47 See Lawrence Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice, Vol. 1 Essays on Moral Development (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1981), pp. 128, 378, 383. Also see John Snarey, “Cross-Cultural Universality of Social-Moral Development: A Critical Review of Kohlbergian Research,” Psychological Bulletin, 97, 2 (1985), pp. 233–50, for commentary on this rather troubling aspect of Kohlberg’s views. 48 See, for example, Israela Ettenberg Aron, “Moral Philosophy and Moral Education: A Critique of Kohlberg’s Theory,” School Review (February 1997), pp. 197–217; Robert Paul Craig, “Some Thoughts on Moral Growth,” Journal of Thought, 13 (1978), pp. 21–7; Snarey, “Cross–Cultural Universality.”

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49

people.” This theory does not propose any ﬁxed set of stages that individuals go through, but rather supposes that moral development consists in the acquisition of “personal social skill and tangible power” which allow for a more sensitive resolution of the “social disequilibrium of moral conﬂict.”50 In a study comparing the two models, Haan found that moral development in this sense came about as a result of “the emotional, interactive experience of moral-social conﬂict,” and, moreover, that “development seemed to depend on whether or not [subjects] cope functionally, that is allow themselves to recognize and tolerate conﬂict so that they could learn from it.” The capacity to cope appropriately, furthermore, seems to depend on “some self-doubt about one’s own self-righteousness, as well as willingness to admit that another’s claims may be superior to one’s own.” In general, according to this theory, moral development with respect to any one morally conﬂictual situation requires that the participating individuals’ experience over time has brought about tolerance for conﬂict and “a degree of practical, intelligent selectivity so they can develop a modicum of optimism that negotiations will usually end up with wrongs being righted and participants’ honor being preserved.”51 Although the ﬁeld is still quite undeveloped some aspects of moral development, such as the acquisition of a sense of justice and the development of the self, have already been studied to date.52 What is relevant to our purposes here is that these various theories tend to focus on diverse modes of solving moral conﬂicts, while leaving aside the question how the recognition of a range of morally signiﬁcant beings may come about. Kohlberg’s theory seems intent on moral development that encompasses increasingly larger portions of humanity but fails to consider the possibility that morality might concern more than the human world. Haan’s theory similarly is focused on development of interpersonal capacities for conﬂict resolution without taking into account the possibility that human beings may be in conﬂict with members of other species. Moral development, conceived in these respective ways, may be of value for the development of environmental morality as our actions affecting the natural environment indirectly affect other human beings,53 but, given our present accelerating trends toward environmental degradation, we need to ask whether there

49 Norma Haan, “Processes of Moral Development: Cognitive or Social Disequilibrium?,” Developmental Psychology, 21, 6 (1985), pp. 996–1006, p. 996. 50 Ibid., p. 997 (emphasis added). 51 Ibid., p. 1005. 52 On the development of the notion of justice see, for example, M.L. Hoffman, “The contribution of empathy to justice and moral development,” in N. Eisenberg and J. Strayer (eds), Empathy and its Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 47– 80; on the development of the notion of the self-in-relation, Held, “Feminist Transformations,” pp. 692–6, reports on the work done at the Stone Center at Wellesley College, especially as articulated by Jean Baker Miller. 53 In this context, see Thomas Craig Swearingen’s interesting application of Kohlberg’s model of moral development to people’s interaction with the natural environment in his dissertation Moral Development and Environmental Ethics (Seattle: University of Washington, 1989).

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can also be development of a sense of responsibility to non-human parts of our natural environment, and perhaps to the natural environment as a whole. Development of environmental morality Obstacles As noted, while people of European culture generally limit the range of morally signiﬁcant beings to those belonging to our own species, this need not be so. There are many people who have developed a sense of moral responsibility for other parts of the natural world, as is evident from the existence of diverse associations for preservation of the integrity of the natural environment (such as Greenpeace or or more locally oriented groups, such as the committees of the Sierra Club or the Spanish Ecologists in Action). The question then is what obstacles are keeping us from the more general development of environmental morality or “ecological conscience,” as Leopold put it. Leopold listed three obstacles in particular, which may serve us as guideposts in our search: our increasing isolation from natural processes, our perception of an adversarial relationship with the earth, and our belief in the fallacy of economic determinism. Leopold claimed that we are becoming ever more distanced from a clear consciousness of natural processes by our educational and economic systems’ increasing focus on artefacts. He called these artefacts “synthetic substitutes” for nature, and thought that they block our direct perception of the natural environment on which we depend. He thought that we also come to feel alienated from nature by our perception that the earth is an adversary that one must force to produce, while simultaneously supposing that we are in a condition of slavery toward the earth due to our dependency on it. Leopold, moreover, thought that it simply is false that economic factors determine all uses of the earth; he claimed that the great majority of attitudes and patterns of action affecting the natural environment, in fact, are not governed by the pocketbook but by the users’ tastes and preferences.54 This account of obstacles to the development of environmental morality is quite apposite because it highlights difﬁculties in three distinct and relevant areas. First, our increasing isolation from natural processes addresses the difﬁculty that people of our industrial societies have in including a greater range of beings among those deemed morally signiﬁcant. Leopold’s thesis is that acquaintance with the non-human natural world is conducive to the development of a relationship that may lead to a sense of responsibility toward it. Second, Leopold’s claim that we have a perception of an adversarial relationship with the earth points toward the underdevelopment of our capacities for cohabitation with the rest of the natural world. Leopold, in other words, implicitly is supposing that we may ﬁnd other modes of relating to the natural world than as adversaries. Finally, by pointing out the fallacy of economic determinism, Leopold is highlighting the narrowness of our conceptions of selfidentity if we think of ourselves only as rationalizers of economic efﬁciency. His tacit supposition is that we have other options for our self-representation than just as economic proﬁt maximizers.

54 Leopold, in VanDeVeer and Pierce, People, Penguins and Plastic Trees, p. 82.

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Possibilities By all accounts, direct acquaintance with the natural environment may play a very important role in the recognition of the moral signiﬁcance of other than human beings. Empirical studies indicate that the contribution of “book knowledge” of the natural environment to the development of genuine actionoriented concern for the natural environment may depend on the co-presence of other factors, such as direct experience of nature.55 According to a research project done with a Swiss population, formal study regarding the natural environment “did not predict environmental engagement … Instead, learning served as a consequence of environmental concern …”56 Consistent with these results Szagun and Mesenholl found that, among their subjects, harming an ecosystem was considered more immoral than harm done to other human beings. They concluded from their study that, in order to generate environmental conscience regarding the natural environment, we need to “reach deep convictions and emotions” and not simply impart (what ordinarily is called) knowledge. Interestingly, not even carrying out practical ecological projects seems as important as reaching deep convictions and emotions. In Szagun and Mesenholl’s estimation, the development of environmental morality probably depends on empathetic and sympathetic knowing of the natural environment.57 Such knowing, though, implies the sort of acquaintance with nature that is provided by direct experiences. These conclusions are also consistent with Wendy A. Horwitz’s analysis of the factors that inﬂuenced the development of environmental morality in environmental activists. She points out that although intellectual and academic factors were important, they seem to have been effective in conjunction with nature experiences. These may contribute in several ways, including the fostering of “an esthetic appreciation of nature” and “an emotional and spiritual afﬁliation,” as well as

55 See, for example, Wendy A. Horwitz, “Developmental Origins of Environmental Ethics: The Life Experiences of Activists,” Ethics and Behavior, 6, 1 (1996), pp. 29–54. 56 Opotow and Clayton, “Green Justice,” p. 7. See Matthias Finger, “From Knowledge to Action?: Exploring the relationship between environmental experiences, learning and behavior”, Journal of Social Issues, 50, 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 141–60 (emphasis added). This issue of the Journal of Social Issues is entirely dedicated to environmental issues. For articles on the development of environmental concern and action also see recent issues of Human Ecology Review, for example, Martha C. Monroe, “Two Avenues for Encouraging Conservation Behaviors,” Human Ecology Review, 10, 2 (Winter 2003), and Henk Vinken and Atsuko Kuribayashi, “Pro–Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors: An International Comparison,” Human Ecology Review, 10, 1 (Summer 2003), pp. 23–31; issues of Journal of Environmental Psychology, for example, P.W. Schultz and L. Zelezny, “Values as predictors of environmental attitudes: evidence for consistency across 14 countries,” Journal of Environmental Psychology, 19, 3 (September 1999), pp. 255–65; and issues of Social Science Quarterly, such as Midori Aoyagi-Usui and Steven E. Barkan, “Explaining Public Support for the Environmental Movement: A Civic Voluntarism Model,” Social Science Quarterly, 85, 4 (December 2004), pp. 913–37. 57 Szagun and Mesenholl, “Environmental Ethics: An Empirical Study,” p. 43.

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“providing opportunities to learn about the natural world in a more graphic way than with books alone.”58 This sort of emotionally engaging, ﬁrst-hand experience of nature may also be fundamental for the development of alternatives to the adversarial mode of relating to nature. Coming to personally know diverse facets of the natural world allows for the development of ﬂexibility in one’s ways of relating to it, making one’s mode of relating dependent on circumstance.59 The learning process that leads to the development of a diversity of appropriate modes of relating to the natural world in some ways parallels the process exhibited by individuals facing social disequilibrium (as studied by Haan) who, by coming to know a variety of appropriate modes of responding, develop increasing sophistication in their ways of responding to morally problematic situations. Another way of coming to understand this process is through Clive Seligman’s discussion of the role of values in environmental ethics. Seligman adopts Milton Rokeach’s proposal that “the number of values that a person, or even a society, possesses is relatively small,” and that these values are ordered hierarchically.60 Applied to environmental conﬂict situations, such as the development of relatively untouched wilderness areas, this means that “ethical disputes may be more usefully characterized as disagreements about which values are important and/or applicable in speciﬁc situations than as disagreements about the acceptance or rejection of each other’s side.”61 Interestingly this “suggests that, for different moral issues, different values may become emphasized,” and the fewer the values at play for a person across diverse situations the more dogmatic he or she is.62 Hence, on this analysis, the explanation for why a person can only perceive nature as an adversary is that he dogmatically fails to exhibit a context-oriented ﬂexibility in the choice of values. We may ask, moreover, how we may overcome the narrowness of conceptions of self-identity that lead people to represent themselves as mere economic proﬁt maximizers when confronted with the natural environment. Although popular in contemporary industrial societies, this concept of self (just as the notion that human beings necessarily are selﬁsh) is the product of a reductionism which simpliﬁes our actual and potential self image. Self-perception, in any case, is not static. Reporting on the development of environmental morality among environmental activists, Horwitz claims that “in this group environmental ethics,” which was engendered by a diversity of learning experiences, including direct contact with nature, “might be more than a discrete set of beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors, but instead, constitute an essential part of identity.”63 She also reports on the importance 58 Horwitz, “Developmental Origins,” pp. 44–5. 59 For example, while traveling in wilderness areas, standing one’s ground may be called for in dealing with predators in some circumstances while an attitude of ﬁrmness combined with retreat may be more appropriate in other cases. But one can only learn how to deal with other species if one has some unmediated exposure to the environments in which they are present. 60 Milton Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values (New York: Free Press, 1973). 61 Seligman, “Environmental Ethics,” p. 181. 62 Ibid., p. 181. 63 Horwitz, “Developmental Origins,” p. 44 (emphasis added).

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of salient role models for her subjects, which ﬁts well with Kohlberg’s appeal to the importance of access to examples of individuals at “higher levels” for moral development. Consequently, it seems that learning that we may play other, perhaps more satisfying, roles within the frame of the natural world can bring about changes in our self-conception. A self-identity as mere self-interested proﬁt maximizers is the complement to a perspective on the natural environment that treats it as a mere economic resource. Both may perhaps be overcome by directly coming to know the environment in such a way that we discover for ourselves that there are many other roles that we can play with respect to it. Though research of the conditions that may engender environmental morality is still very limited, our discussion leads to the conclusion that direct, emotionally engaging experience of the natural environment may be crucial if we are to recognize a range of morally signiﬁcant non-human beings, to relate to nature in a non-adversarial way, and to discover a self-image that goes beyond the role of economic proﬁt maximizer. It may be objected, however, that direct, emotionally engaging experience of the natural environment may not necessarily lead to the development of nature-preserving environmental morality. Some individuals may, for example, perceive a deep canyon as a potential hydroelectric reservoir; others may think of the last living members of an endangered species as an invaluable addition to their scientiﬁc collection of stuffed animals; and so on. Environmental morality may ultimately depend on a certain sort of epistemology and ontology. So, what ways of perceiving and knowing nature will reliably lead to nature-respecting environmental morality? Ways of knowing and the autonomy of nature Despite the ofﬁcial prevalence of the scientiﬁc mode of knowledge in contemporary industrialized societies, this way of knowing coexists with other ways of knowing. As of late, much discussion has turned, for example, toward the concepts “indigenous knowledge,” “traditional knowledge” and “local knowledge,” as well as their overlap among each other and their distinctions from “scientiﬁc” knowledge.64 As has been observed by diverse commentators, people living in traditional (non-modern, nonindustrial) contexts have a mixed record in terms of the adaptive appropriateness of their relations with the natural environment.65 Nonetheless, traditional societies that have successfully managed to live in their area for extended periods of time often provide outstanding models for an approach to our world that is respectful of nonhuman entities in their ecosystemic roles. What is particularly interesting about such ways of knowing is that the knowledge acquired about the natural environment under these circumstances tends to be explicitly imbued with values. We may consider,

64 See Thomas Heyd, “Indigenous Knowledge, Emancipation and Alienation,” Knowledge and Policy, 8, 1 (Spring 1995), pp. 63–73; also see Thomas Heyd, “Indigenous and Scientiﬁc Knowledge Revisited,” Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, 4, 1 (April 1996) . 65 For example, see Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (New York: Viking, 2005).

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for example, Deborah Bird Rose’s paper, “Exploring an Aboriginal Land Ethic,”66 in which she proposes that the particular understanding of land of the Australian Aboriginal Yarralin people integrates in a thoroughgoing way their moral practice and their philosophical outlook about the land. She documents how the Yarralin people’s judgments regarding responsible and irresponsible actions are based on their thorough, ﬁrst-hand, long-term acquaintance with plants, animals and places on their land. We may also consider the variety of instrumental ways of knowing that can even be directed toward one and the same object: a forestry executive may see a particular stretch of forest in terms of yield per unit of invested capital, a forestry worker in terms of months of employment, a gatherer of mushrooms in terms of more or less productive and accessible sites, and so on. In contrast with the strictly instrumental ways of knowing, we may list the aesthetic, the spiritual, the historical, the affective, and so on. Ways of knowing can be multiplied indeﬁnitely, of course, since we cognize our environment differently depending on our roles, capacities, values, age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and, in general, according to both our physical constitution and prior cognitive and emotional experience or knowledge. The apparent advantage of the scientiﬁc way of knowing over other ways may be attributed to its greater capacity to generate predictions and explanations useful in the manipulation of our world.67 This does not mean, though, that its advantage over other forms of knowing is absolute; even a dedicated physical scientist may prefer to leave the laboratory and her theories behind when she is to come to know a new type of concert music or how to ride a bicycle. As discussed above, morality may be understood in terms of appropriate attitudes and patterns of action with regard to others with whom we have entered into a certain sort of relationship. The kind of relationship that is characteristic of morality, and contrasts with other kinds of relationship (such as the instrumental or the aesthetic), may be difﬁcult to specify further. Nonetheless, we make take note that, in order to activate moral concern, relationships need to be perceived for what they are.68 Since perception is a kind of knowing, we need to examine what sort of knowing is involved in the perception of relationships that activate moral responsibility. Once again we may begin with the assumption that for a variety of individuals belonging to diverse cultural groupings the answer will be different: for a Christian, all human beings are perceived, and hence known, as (metaphorical) sisters and brothers, which engenders a particular sort of relationship and moral responsibility. For a Buddhist, all living beings, known as fellow sufferers in this world of appearances, likewise engender a particular sort of relationship and call 66 Deborah Bird Rose, “Exploring An Aboriginal Land Ethic,” Meanjin, 47 (1988), pp. 378–87. 67 On the normativity of technology and science, see Jürgen Habermas, Technik und Wissenschaft als “Ideologie” (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996). 68 Notably, the story of Oedipus’ unknowing parricide precisely creates dramatic tension because of his lack of knowledge about his ﬁlial relationship, in a strictly physical sense, with the man he kills. Had Oedipus known that he was to kill his father he would have been a less interesting ﬁgure for the dramatist to work with, given the common moral assumption that one should take special responsibility for actions affecting one’s parents.

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for appropriately charitable and compassionate attitudes and behavior toward them, and so on. What is common to each case is that sets of beings are recognized as having value because they are perceived as standing in a particular relationship with oneself; that is, we have a “knowing as” that identiﬁes a particular set of beings as valuable and signiﬁcant. My suggestion is that one way of knowing that may lead to the development of nature-preserving environmental morality is to recognize the natural beings that surround us as autonomous, where autonomy stands for the capacity for self-generation, for self-realization, or for being able to direct their own projects, even if only in some minimal way.69 If we recognize a being as autonomous we are perceiving her, him, or it as minimally uniﬁed and as structured dynamically enough to render this being morally considerable precisely out of respect for its unity and capacity for self-realization. To recognize a being as autonomous is not to deny that every being thrives through interdependence with certain other beings, since self-determination may only be possible in a relational context.70 Nor does this mean that autonomy should be treated as a criterion for moral considerability, thereby establishing a hierarchy of morally relevant beings. Rather, coming to know other beings as autonomous is relevant in a heuristic manner because recognition of other selves means recognition of limits to one’s own acting.71 Consequently, to promote environmental morality we do well to promote the recognition of the autonomy of nature. As discussed above, nothing is resolved at a merely theoretical level. Hence, if this account is correct, it is not sufﬁcient to ﬁnd arguments that attempt to theoretically prove the autonomy of nature. We need, rather, to develop ways of knowing with which we can practically recognize the autonomy of nature. Contrary to Francis Bacon’s advice, according to which we should force nature to show herself as useful through our experimental proddings, we need to ﬁnd ways that allow the other beings in our environment to show themselves unencumbered by our instrumental interests.

69 Autonomous beings set a law unto themselves. Developing further precision with regard to the notion of autonomy is beyond the scope of this chapter, but see Heyd, Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, for further clariﬁcation. Also see Aristotle’s account of nature in Physics, book II, ch. 1. He proposes that “All things [that exist by nature] plainly differ from things which are not constituted by nature. For each of them has within itself a principle of motion and of stationariness ...” (Physics, II.1, 192b, 12–15) In this way each natural thing has its own “autonomy” or spontaneity. (I am indebted to Taneli Kukkonen for clarifying this point). 70 As noted by Held, “Feminist Transformations,” some writers, such as Jennifer Nedelsky, “Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources, Thoughts and Possibilities,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 1 (Spring 1989), pp. 7–36, p. 9, have argued that the concepts of autonomy and interdependence of selves need not be taken as antagonistic. 71 Also see Plumwood, “Nature, Self and Gender,” p. 205, on the danger of supposing that we should identify our selves with nature through an extension of our selves, possibly “failing to recognise unambiguously the distinctness and independence of the other.”

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Conclusion Global, humanly caused degradation of the natural environment is increasing in scope and speed. Some have argued that we should rely on selﬁshness as a way of countering these trends. Others have proceeded with the development of new theories of environmental ethics. I have argued that neither approach can ultimately be expected to sufﬁce. There are other approaches, of course. We may consider, for example, Michel Serres’ suggestion that what is needed is “a new natural contract,”72 or the deep ecological proposal that we should seek to “identify” ourselves with nature. The question, however, is, what would motivate us to sign such a new contract, and why we would ﬁnd nature worthy of identiﬁcation with ourselves, respectively. My proposal has been that we need to focus on actually existing morality and on its development with regard to the natural environment. Even if more empirical research certainly is called for, there already is sufﬁcient reason to believe that human beings are capable of, and ready to develop, substantial moral concern for nature. Crucially, we may need to develop ways of perceiving the natural environment as valuable. That is, rather than knowledge of nature pure and simple, such as we may acquire through a book education, it is particular ways of knowing the natural environment that may be required for the development of environmental morality. The development of environmental morality may come about through a kind of direct acquaintance with nature which allows for the acquisition of empathetic and sympathetic interest in it, and thereby reveals a range of morally signiﬁcant nonhuman beings; which reveals diverse non-adversarial ways of relating to the natural environment and the various beings that constitute it; and which reveals a concept of self that is richer than that which proclaims that we are mere economic proﬁt maximizers. One way to describe this way of knowing is to say that it recognizes those other beings as autonomous, that is, as being able to direct their own existences and being a law to themselves. Consequently, insofar as we think of autonomy as a sign of moral signiﬁcance, it is imperative that we develop ways of recognizing the autonomy of nature.73

72 Michel Serres, The Natural Contract, Elizabeth MacArthur and William Paulson (trans.), (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995); translation of Le Contrat Naturel (Paris: Éditions François Bourin, 1990). 73 An early version of this chapter was written while visiting the Universidad del Comahue, Patagonia, in the fall of 2000. I am deeply indebted to Julia Gerlero and Teresa Vega, and many others, at the university for their unequaled hospitality and continuous intellectual stimulation. I am grateful to Sara Ehrenbeck, a referee for Environmental Ethics, for helpful and very encouraging comments. The Case for Environmental Morality has appeared in Environmental Ethics, Vol. 25 (Spring 2003), 5–24. Permission for reproduction granted.

Chapter 3

Environmental Ethics and the Workplace A Call to Action

From Alienation to Personal Involvement Nearly everyone agrees that there are serious environmental problems in our world, such as the clearcut felling of the remaining ancient rainforests in tropical and temperate zones, the contamination of air, water and ground by garbage incineration, which disseminates pollutants such as mercury and PCBs1 that end up in our bodies, and can even be found in the mother’s milk; the destruction of mangroves in coastal areas, due to misplaced tourism development schemes and shrimp farms, with the consequent elimination of breeding grounds for ﬁsh and so on. Nearly everyone might also agree that decisions made and activities undertaken in certain workplaces (primarily, but not restricted to, boardrooms in industry and government) are contributing signiﬁcantly to these problems. But, if asked what role environmental ethics has in the workplace, most people tend merely to think in terms of paper recycling, or perhaps conserving energy by turning off the lights after leaving the ofﬁce for home. We may wonder, however, whether a deeper concern for ethics, including environmental ethics, in the context of work may not be possible. Interestingly, there is a growing movement that promotes socially and environmentally responsible investment and business practices, and there are books that propose that even capitalism can take a new, environmentally friendly, turn.2 Some business ethics textbooks argue for the need for businesses to change, and for our economies to be managed differently, in order to prevent further serious harm to our already heavily mistreated planet.3 Most discussions of environmental ethics in such textbooks are put in such impersonal terms however, that although none can disagree, none need personally feel compelled to act either.4 For various 1 Polychlorinated biphenyls. 2 See, for example, Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Boulder, CO: Rocky Mountain Institute; Little, Brown, & Company, 1999). 3 See, for example, Manuel G. Velasquez’s excellent “Ethics and the Environment,” in Manuel G. Velasquez, Business Ethics (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2001). 4 For an important proclamation of the importance of the workplace in bringing about development that is sustainable, and a consequent call for the reduction of “impacts on resource use and the environment,” see Agenda 21, especially Chapter 30, “Strengthening the Role of Business and Industry.” The chapter, as well as discussions of the role of business in the light of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development), such as Lloyd Timberlake’s “Changing Business Attitudes” (found along with an abridged version

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reasons, it seems to be generally assumed that the workplace is not the place where environmental degradation can or should be tackled, even if most decisions affecting our natural environment issue from the workplace. This situation should cause us to think afresh about the role of environmental ethics at work.5 While in the previous chapter I argued for the value of environmental morality and the possibility of its development, in this chapter I propose that personal responsibility for one’s impact on the natural environment also applies to individuals while in the workplace, and perhaps more so than in any other place that we are active in during daily life.6 I begin with a summary of my conception of ethics,7 followed by a survey of the various ways by which one may develop a sense of responsibility for the condition of our natural environment. I continue with an overview of some important critical perspectives on our behavior regarding the natural environment. I follow up on this with an analysis of what it would mean for individuals in the workplace to take their ethical responsibilities seriously in the context of environmental problems, while noting the limitations as well as opportunities that their special situation (given the aims of work) implies. I conclude by noting the signiﬁcance that taking personal responsibility for the integrity of the natural environment has for each of us, as well as for our place in nature.8

of Agenda 21 in Joyce Quarrie (ed.), Earth Summit ’92 (London: Regency Press, 1992)), may be well-intentioned but demand no personal commitment from the business sector, similarly expressed in international policy documents. But see the extraordinary Estefanía Blount, Luis Clarimón, Ana Cortés, Jorge Riechmann and Dolores Romano (eds), Industria como naturaleza: Hacia la producción limpia ([in English: Industry as nature: Toward clean production] Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2003). 5 Similarly important is to rethink the general focus of environmental concern. While the destruction of relatively untouched natural areas gathers most of the attention, urban environmental problems should equally be considered. See, for example, Alastair S. Gunn, “Rethinking Communities: Environmental Ethics in an Urbanized World,” Environmental Ethics, 20 (Winter 1998), pp. 341–60; Roger J.H. King, “The Place of Domesticated Spaces in Environmental Ethics: Toward an Environmentally Responsible Culture,” Social Philosophy Now, 19 (2004), pp. 41–53. 6 My proposals here are not intended to convey the impression that the goodwill of individuals in the workplace is sufﬁcient to alleviate the rapid rush toward environmental degradation in which we presently ﬁnd ourselves. Given the culture of self-interested individualism that is increasingly spreading around the globe, communities will have to take concerted action through strictly legislated limits on the exploitation of common goods, such as air, water, forests and open spaces, and on their use as waste sinks; on the dissemination of toxins and genetically modiﬁed organisms; on the generation of radioactive wastes, and so on, if there is going to be left any integrity in the environment after our generation is through with it. 7 This is a topic which I have developed further in Chapter 2. 8 By “integrity of the natural environment,” I mean the condition of the environment at a certain location that allows for its normal functioning as the site for the ﬂourishing of various species of living beings, as are commonly found there unless human interventions have impeded their presence. By “environmental degradation,” I mean the processes that diminish the integrity of the natural environment, as well as the resulting condition.

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Environmental Responsibilities, Critical Perspectives and the Workplace In Chapter 2, I proposed to use the term “morality” to refer to appropriate attitudes and patterns of action with regards to signiﬁcant others, reserving the term “ethics” to refer to reﬂection on those attitudes and patterns of action. It is of key importance, of course, to be clear on what makes certain attitudes and patterns of action appropriate, and which beings should count as signiﬁcant from the moral point of view. In Chapter 2, the questions concerning which actions and attitudes are appropriate and which beings are morally signiﬁcant normally are resolved through reﬂection on the course of the interactions we have with others in our day to day. My account suggests that responsibilities toward others typically arise from relationships that we enter into in our daily lives. Those relationships may generate both a personal sense of responsibility and an objective obligation. The objective obligation may at ﬁrst appear to us to be merely culture-relative but, on deeper reﬂection, we may discover that there are trans-culturally valid obligations for anyone in similar circumstances. For instance, after deeper reﬂection, we may conclude that the notion of respect for the life of the people that we encounter in the everyday is such that it should apply to any human beings wherever we might encounter them. I use the term “environmental ethics” to make reference to reﬂection on appropriate attitudes and patterns of action with regard to signiﬁcant others as considered within the context of the natural environment, and suppose that some actions in that context are praiseworthy, while others are deserving of censure. To reﬂect on environmental morality is to consider how we ought to act insofar as we affect things that surround us. Although the term “environment” strictly speaking also encompasses human-made or artefactual things and spaces surrounding us, generally, when discussion focuses on environmental ethics, the “environment” of concern is the natural environment. This is not to say that the humanly made environment is inconsequential from the point of view of ethics. Rather, the reason for the focus in environmental ethics on the natural environment, in contrast to the artefactual and built environment, is that the former constitutes a fundamental condition for the ﬂourishing of a great variety of human and non-human beings. Taking responsibility: from anthropocentrism to Gaia-centrism One basic distinction, much discussed in environmental ethics, concerns the difference between intrinsic value and extrinsic value. Intrinsic value denotes the value of a thing considered independently of the extrinsic value that it may have for us as a result of its usefulness. We may note, for example, that each person considers her- or himself as having a value, independently of her or his usefulness to others, while forks or computers or toques may have little or no value among people that do not use these items.9 To indicate that a being has intrinsic and not just extrinsic or

9 Toques are heavy, Canadian, stocking-caps. See Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis, IN and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), on the distinction between something valuable for our use and something valuable in itself.

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instrumental value, and hence ought to be accorded consideration for itself from the moral point of view, I speak of a morally signiﬁcant being.10 Some people initially may have the impression that normative theories in philosophical ethics are intended to enunciate principles that only philosophical analysis could discover. Careful study of the classics, such as Immanuel Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, however, suggests that these theories generally have the more modest goal of providing systematic reﬂection on the basis of the morality that is already current in our culture, and merely to make explicit the principles that animate it.11 Consequently, an approach to ethics such as Kant’s is intended to deﬁne a principle of concern which to him seemed quite commonly, albeit only tacitly, accepted within his culture, namely respect for each person’s autonomy or capacity to fashion one’s own life projects.12 So, the explanation for why stealing is frowned upon is that it makes the individual stolen from less capable of leading the life she or he would want to. Hence, such actions are morally impermissible.13 On Kant’s account, the foundation of the principle is straightforward since each individual values her or his autonomy, and hence can see the sense in not acting in ways that undermine a person’s autonomy. A contrasting approach to ethics – contractarianism – proposes that we need to respect the implicit as well as the explicit agreements that make society possible, since society is useful to each individual that belongs to it.14 This reﬂects a principle based on the common notion of reciprocity and mutual beneﬁcence. For example, 10 There are beings, of course, with whom we have both morally signiﬁcant and instrumental relationships, as in the case of one’s spouse who is also one’s business partner. To speak of a morally signiﬁcant being is equivalent to speaking of a being with “moral standing”; this latter term, and the criteria for attributing moral standing to some being, are discussed at some length by Donald VanDeVeer and Christine Pierce (eds), The Environmental Ethics and Policy Book: Philosophy, Ecology, Economics (Belmond, CA: Wadsworth, 2004), pp. 114–22. They propose that a being has moral standing if “its continued existence … or its interests in well-being have positive moral weight” (p. 115). Another way of saying that some beings are morally signiﬁcant is to say that they are morally considerable. See, for example, Robert Elliot, “Environmental Ethics,” in Peter Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 284–93. 11 Notably, Kant, Foundations, repeatedly praises common moral reason and restricts the contribution of philosophy to handmaiden for the implementation of norms in practical life. 12 It is to be noted that I do not claim that ethics merely is a descriptive matter. What I am proposing, rather, is that when ethics concerns itself, among other things, with normative relations its intended aim is the systematization and deepening of our understanding of the prescriptive claims of common morality. This does not mean that upon reﬂection we cannot reject the norms of common morality. The idea simply is that ethics, if it is to go beyond abstractions, will have a link with the norms that guide us in at the pre-philosophical stage. 13 For a clear exposition of Kant’s ethics see Onora O’Neill, “Kantian Ethics,” in Singer, A Companion to Ethics; also see Roger J. Sullivan, An Introduction to Kant’s Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 14 For a summary discussion see, for example, James Rachels, “The Idea of a Social Contract,” in his volume, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 143–61.

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since truth-telling is the foundation of all agreements in society, we can see that we each need to respect the injunction against lying and deceit if we belong to, and beneﬁt from, society. Both the principle of respect for autonomy and the principle of respect for contractual relationships exclusively focus on relationships with other human beings, though they tacitly suppose that at least some non-human beings need to be treated with care because of the relationships that some of us have with them. For example, my respect for the autonomy of someone who has befriended a certain bird may mean that I should not harm that bird because it would be disrespectful to the human being. Similarly, although according to the contractarian principle I have no reason to respect trees (with which I cannot enter into agreements since they cannot negotiate with me), my implicit agreement with other human beings to respect their interests means that I should not harm non-human beings that are important to them, such as trees in people’s backyards. In other words, even anthropocentric or humancentered ethics supposes that we may have indirect responsibilities with regard to certain non-human beings.15 Within the European tradition in philosophy, utilitarianism is the ﬁrst major theory of ethics that straightforwardly opens the door to the direct consideration of the interests of non-human beings, insofar as utilitarianism seeks to represent the common notion that acting rightly is acting in such a way as to bring about happiness and to diminish unhappiness for the aggregate of those concerned.16 Interestingly, this way of discussing morality includes all sentient beings (those capable of feeling pleasure and pain) among the morally signiﬁcant. In other words, according to this perspective we ought to count very many of the animals (at least those with a relatively developed nervous system) among those to be considered from the moral point of view. Although the application of the utilitarian principle to situations involving animals generally is neglected in today’s industrialized societies fed by factory farms,17 one may argue that the moral consideration of sentient beings does reﬂect a common value, though this value indeed is only applied to select animals with whom special ties have been developed (for example, the squirrel that feeds in front of someone’s window, or the pet dog bought for a child’s amusement). While it is true that as highly culture-dependent social beings we mostly are preoccupied with the relationships that we entertain with other human beings, on reﬂection we may admit an afﬁnity with all living beings. The perception of a relationship with all living things, which is the foundation of biocentric ethics, may lead to “reverence for life” and a respect for living things insofar as they are

15 Also see VanDeVeer and Pierce (eds), Environmental Ethics and Policy Book, pp. 116–17. 16 See John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1863). For a summary account of the signiﬁcance of this perspective for our treatment of animals see Rachels, “The Utilitarian Approach,” in his Elements of Moral Philosophy, pp. 96–106. 17 On the use of animals in our society and the moral problems that this poses see, for example, Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Random House, 2nd edn, 1990); and Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

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“teleological-centres-of-life.” That is, we may take note that the basis of our caring for living things is constituted by the perception that, in their various intricate ways, they are goal-directed, and, more speciﬁcally, directed toward goals (the goals of life, one might say), such as survival, general ﬂourishing of their own sort, reproduction, and even enjoyment of a speciﬁc sort, with which we can empathize. 19 Of course, respect for living things requires that these beings are allowed spaces in which they can ﬂourish. In fact, those spaces themselves, teeming as they are with various life-forms, may be seen as analogous to organisms that are similarly composed of many organic and cellular subunits. People often do show appreciation for areas of land or sea that represent especially good environments for certain living things such as caribou or salmon. Frequently their appreciation for those areas is mingled with self-interest, insofar as they represent valuable procurement places to satisfy human needs and desires, but, interestingly, individuals can also feel that the relationships with those areas of land or sea warrant a certain care for their own sake. It is this notion of responsibility for ecologically signiﬁcant areas of land, sea, and, more generally, ecosystems, which ﬁnds expression in Aldo Leopold’s call for a Land Ethic. Leopold proposes that we take note of the community and organismic unity constituted by the complex natural environments in which human beings are mere citizens and participants. He supposes that realizing that we are in community, and parts of an organism-like unity, with the land and its inhabitants supposes certain responsibilities for their care and a respect for their ﬂourishing. Consequently, Leopold advises that one “[e]xamine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”20 A variant of this appreciation for living things as part of, and dependent on, wholes larger than single organisms, is expressed in calls for the protection of species from extinction. Individuals who through relationship with certain kinds of living beings have developed a sense of responsibility for them may develop a concern for the continued existence of beings of that kind. This concern may become generalized and deepened issuing in what Holmes Rolston calls “duties to species.”21 Respect for 18 On reverence for life see Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics (London: A.&C. Black, 1946). On living things as teleological centres of life, see Paul Taylor, “The Ethics of Respect for Nature” and also John Rodman, “Ecological Sensibility,” both in VanDeVeer and Pierce (eds), Environmental Ethics and Policy Book (1st edn, 1986), pp. 169–84 and pp. 165–8, respectively. 19 See Thomas Heyd (ed.), Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), for further discussion of respect of autonomous natural beings and processes on the basis of their goal-directedness. 20 See Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic,” A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). For further discussion of some aspects of Leopold’s land ethic, see Chapter 2. 21 See Holmes Rolston III, “Duties to Endangered Species,” in Christine Pierce and Donald VanDeVeer (eds), People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (Belmond, CA: Wadsworth, 2nd edn, 1995), pp. 314–25.

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complex parts of our natural environment, such as ecosystems or species, may be called “ecocentric.” Ultimately, people may develop a relationship with the planet as a whole. Though this may seem too abstract to be a realistic proposition, one may note that there is a certain basis in experience for this nowadays, given our increasing understanding of the global interconnections of geological, meteorological and biological processes, and the increased mobility of human populations all over the planet. The idea that such a relationship with the earth as a whole should lead to a kind of responsibility for its well-being has found expression in connection with the “Gaia Hypothesis,” which argues that the planet as a whole in many ways appears to function like an organism. 22 Based on this hypothesis we may suppose that we ought to accord it care similar to the care that we would accord to individual living things. Up to this point I have surveyed a variety of relationships with beings populating our natural environment with a view to the personal sense of responsibility that we may develop with regard to those beings. By sense of responsibility, I mean the perception that one ought to hold certain attitudes and take certain types of actions because of the personal conviction that one has acquired through one’s experience and reﬂection. But, as already discussed above, moral responsibility may also be regarded as an objective matter. That is, we may ﬁnd that by virtue of the existence of certain relationships with morally signiﬁcant others, certain responsibilities are given. For example, we may argue that if some person causes an accident, seriously hurting someone due to careless drinking and driving, then, independently of whether this person has a sense of responsibility for what he or she has done, he or she should take responsibility for the event, and probably produce certain reparations to the one harmed. Although this form of reasoning (and similar ones) undoubtedly is captured from within a concrete cultural context (as all judgments are, of course), one may ﬁnd sufﬁcient arguments to suppose that such reasoning should be acceptable transculturally if the notion of ethics (as we understand it) has any meaning in other cultures.23 The idea that in certain circumstances moral responsibility is given, that is, that we may expect any individual in certain circumstances to “take responsibility” for his or her actions, implies that ethics attains a role beyond merely private reﬂection on one’s own morality. Thus, ethics obtains a role of societal critique. So, each one of the approaches noted above may also bring about important critiques of the activities that generate the present environmental degradation.

22 See James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia (New York: Norton, 1988). 23 It is a matter of some complexity whether one can, and how one is to, avoid cultural bias, especially in ethics. I propose that, insofar as our notion of ethics has its roots in the western European traditions, we should acknowledge its prima facie cultural speciﬁcity, which means that it is a contingent matter whether the idea of ethics, or any particular ethical conviction, has counterparts in other cultures. But see George Silberbauer, “Ethics in small-scale societies,” for an account of ethics as found across societies; for a summary of ways to justify an environmental ethic see Elliot; “Environmental Ethics,” both in Singer, A Companion to Ethics.

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Critical perspectives and action Moral critiques As noted, even purely anthropocentric approaches in ethics, such as the Kantian or the contractarian perspectives, may take note of the duties regarding the natural environment that accrue to us because of our duties to other human beings. This critical approach has been further developed in various ways. It has been argued, for example, that each individual has a right to a livable environment.24 Hence, those who are degrading the environment, for example, through the spraying of ﬁelds or vineyards with pesticides and fungicides that may be hazardous to people’s health, may be unjustiﬁably interfering with certain individuals’ rights.25 Moreover, to impose certain important environmental impacts, as represented by the dissemination of genetically modiﬁed organisms in our environment or the delivery of toxic materials into our communities, on the supposition that these activities are justiﬁed by the economic beneﬁts generated for certain private parties, is to impose health risks on third parties for which usually no fully informed and uncoerced consent has been obtained, or compensation is provided.26 One sort of response to this problem has been to demand the application of the precautionary principle in a wide range of cases. In other words, in order to protect citizens from risks to which they have not agreed to be exposed to, it is proposed that no activity be undertaken until it has been shown not to increase existing risks.27 24 See William T. Blackstone, “Ethics and Ecology,” in William T. Blackstone (ed.), Philosophy and Environmental Crisis (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974). 25 Notably, we are talking of a moral right and not of a legal right. Legal rights may constitute important ways of ensuring decent treatment of certain beings, but are independent of moral rights. For an interesting argument in support of legal rights for non-human parts of nature see Christopher D. Stone, “Should Trees Have Standing? – Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects,” in VanDeVeer and Pierce (eds), Environmental Ethics and Policy Book, pp. 189–201. Also see Christopher D. Stone, Should Trees Have Standing?: And Other Essays on Law, Morals and the Environment (Oxford: Oceana Publications/Oxford University Press, 1996). 26 With regard to the trafﬁc of toxic materials and the moral implications that this has, see, for example, Jang B. Singh and V.C. Lakhan, “Business Ethics and the International Trade in Hazardous Wastes,” in Robert Larmer (ed.), Ethics in the Workplace, 2nd edn (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001). The export of such materials to impoverished areas inhabited by racial minorities also poses issues of environmental racism; see, for example, Karl Grossman, “Environmental Racism,” in Pierce and VanDeVeer (eds), People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (2nd edn, 1995) pp. 39–44. With regard to the imposition of risk on third parties, see Conrad G. Brunk, Lawrence Haworth and Brenda Lee, Value assumptions in risk assessment: a case study of the alachlor controversy (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991). 27 The precautionary principle is enshrined in various United Nations documents, as for example in The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development adopted at the Rio Earth Summit (The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992): “Principle 15. In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientiﬁc certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation” (consulted 21 January 2006). The precautionary

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Furthermore, although the moral status of future generations of human beings is a matter of some debate,28 various, strong arguments may be offered to the effect that we do have responsibilities to them, and that those responsibilities are being neglected by people who cause or fail to prevent serious environmental degradation.29 These arguments can be supported by Kantian and contractarian approaches, since the status of future human beings (whoever they are) as autonomous beings and as potential contractors, respectively, is being overlooked if our own generation degrades the environment that they will come to inherit. Since utilitarianism enjoins us to consider the effects of our actions on all those affected, given environmental degradation that lasts beyond our life-spans, responsibilities for future human generations also become an issue from this perspective. These arguments have attained further speciﬁcation through the idea of sustainable development. According to the Brundtland Report, the notion of sustainable development implies that we have a duty to meet humanity’s “current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”30 A similar idea is behind the notion that the present generation has a duty of stewardship with regard to the Earth’s natural environment in light of the needs of both present and future generations.31 Both a duty to limit our activities to those that are sustainable in this sense and a duty of stewardship for the sake of future generations have their foundation in the idea that future human beings and their needs deserve the same kind of concern as present human beings and their needs. To suppose otherwise would call for argument, for one may ask why human beings separated from us by time should be discriminated against any more than human beings separated from us by space. One way to interpret the demand that our activities be sustainable and take into account a duty of stewardship toward future generations is to insist on the internalization of all costs. Practically this means that, if in the process of doing business there is a signiﬁcant generation of polluting materials or reduction of resources, the producer of the environmental degradation should take on the costs for reparation or “making whole” again. That is, those who pollute or reduce the

principle has also become part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Article 3: “The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects …” 28 For an introductory review of the debate see, for example, Joseph R. Des Jardins, “Ethics, Energy, and Future Generations” in his Environmental Ethics (Belmond, CA: Wadsworth, 1993), pp. 69–98. 29 Regarding the status of future generations, see, for example, the various contributions in VanDeVeer and Pierce (eds), Environmental Ethics and Policy Book, ch. V. E. 30 Emphasis added; The World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 8. 31 See John Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature (London: Duckworth, 1974) on the historical foundation of the idea of stewardship for nature. Besides its justiﬁcation through various forms of anthropocentric ethics, the idea of stewardship for future generations also receives backing from diverse forms of religious ethics that demand conscientiously good management of the Earth because of our duty to a higher being.

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stock of available resources are not to externalize these costs, for otherwise others from present and future generations would have to pay those costs.32 As noted earlier, according to non-anthropocentric perspectives, besides duties regarding the various non-human beings in our natural environment (based on our duties to human beings) we may be said to have duties to those non-human entities. Speciﬁcally, from the point of view that focuses on the continuity of sentience (which includes the capacity to suffer) between human beings and a large class of animals, human beings accrue a responsibility for those activities that hinder the full ﬂourishing of, and cause suffering to, sentient animals. This perspective, hence, provides grounds for critique not only for species decimations through hunting and ﬁshing but also for the human degradation (through water pollution, clear felling, or urbanization, for example) of the ecosystems on which sentient animals depend. From the point of view of biocentric and ecocentric ethics, we accrue responsibilities for interferences in the ﬂourishing of all living things, ecosystems and/or species, respectively. This means that we should be morally concerned, among other things, about the eutrophication of many of our lakes and rivers, the rapid disappearance of tropical and temperate rainforests, the proliferation of toxins in water systems and food chains, the production and uncontrolled diffusion of genetically modiﬁed organisms, and the ultimate effect on ecosystems of wastes from mining, milling, and inadequate storage of radioactive substances that will be emitting radiation for hundreds of thousands of years.33 Since there has been considerable concern in western countries34 (and some nonwestern countries like Japan) about these matters since at least the 1970s, we may come to wonder why the rate at which our environment suffers serious degradation continues, nonetheless, to increase. Part of the answer may be found in various analyses that focus on social and cultural factors. Social critiques It may be difﬁcult for individuals, who take responsibility for the impact of their actions on the natural environment, to have much of a transformative impact if essentially contrary trends prevail in society. Such contrary trends are generally expressed both in certain practices and in certain ideas or conceptual structures. 32 For a summary defense of the importance of internalizing private costs of production see, for example, Velasquez, Business Ethics, pp. 238–41. 33 Regarding the hazards of uranium mining and milling for present and future generations, see, for example, National Film Board (Canada), Uranium, directed by Magnus Isacsson, produced by Dale Phillips, written by Michael Riordon (1990). On how to avoid clear cutting of ancient forests, see, for example, All About Us Canada Foundation, A Cut Above: My Grandfather Was a Logger, directed by Karen Baltgailis (1995). 34 I use the term “western” to refer to the civilization prevalent in modern, industrialized North America, Australia, Europe, and other places such as South Africa, because of its traditional meaning designating the cultures that are European or have their origin in Europe, even though it is geographically inaccurate since the Age of Colonialism. (Notably, eyeballing an imaginary globe the countries called “western” are all over the place: Europe is west of Asia but east of the Americas; Australia seems both east and west, while South Africa is south, of Europe.)

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Ecological feminism (or ecofeminism), for example, argues that abuse of the natural environment and the oppression of women have similar causes. Speciﬁcally, this is a critique of social practices that are based on a belief system which assigns women and nature to a subordinate moral category in relation to men and society, and, furthermore, operates on the assumption that the morally superior is entitled to dominate the morally inferior. Ecofeminists point out that, since there is no good basis either for that belief system or for that assumption, it is difﬁcult to see how social structures that facilitate the oppression of women and the degradation of the natural environment may be justiﬁed.35 An independent, but related, critique has been presented by the approach called “social ecology.” On this view the degradation of the natural environment is the result of generalized structures of hierarchical domination in western societies. Such structures are held responsible for the inequality in our societies, and also for misguided attempts to control nature through interventions such as the introduction of toxic chemical pesticides in agriculture, large hydroelectric projects, nuclear power generating stations, and so on.36 Closely related to ecofeminist and social ecology critiques is the analysis of our present environmentally pernicious trends as due to the prevalence of technological rationality. This perspective, developed initially by Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School, argues that in modern, industrialized societies instrumental reason is applied to all beings, including humanity and non-human nature.37 Instrumental reason, or “means-ends rationality,” is the application of reason to the attainment of ends or goals without careful (rational) assessment of the value of the goals pursued. The result is a panoply of techniques (commonly referred to as “technologies”) that focus our attention on the extrinsic value of things, irrespective of their intrinsic value.38 Focusing on the natural world with the point of view of instrumental or technological rationality leads to the consequence that ancient forests are approached as mere sites for the application of sophisticated “labour-saving” machinery, facilitating lumber-extraction management regimes, which generate raw material for marketing strategies; seashores are treated as nothing but sites for tourism development and lakes simply as potential sources for water exports, and so on. Moreover, where 35 This is Karen Warren’s way of summarizing the ecofeminist critique. See her “The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism,” in VanDeVeer and Pierce (eds), Environmental Ethics and Policy Book, pp. 282–96. 36 On social ecology see Murray Bookchin, for example, “Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future” in Pierce and VanDeVeer (eds), People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (2nd edn, 1995), pp. 227–33. 37 See Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991) and Eros and Civilization (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1955). 38 For further work on the “rationality” and politics built “into” technology see, for example, Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984); and Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). Regarding the politics of “formal technologies” see Susan Leigh Star, “Layered Space, Formal Representations and Long-Distance Control: The politics of information,” Fundamenta Scientiae, 10, 2 (1989), pp. 125–54.

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formerly a person’s visit to the marketplace was a manner of keeping in touch with one’s community while acquiring some necessities, instrumental rationality turns it into a mere occasion for the maximization of the respective interests in increasing property or value-holdings of producers and consumers in an increasingly mechanized and stafﬂess supermarket. Insofar as instrumental rationality fails to take into consideration the intrinsic value of human and non-human beings, it has been argued that this approach constitutes a fundamental mistake, for which we pay in various ways. Cultural critiques Although the social critiques noted above call for a rethinking of the conceptual framework supportive of our society’s collusion with patriarchy, its patterns of hierarchical domination, and technological rationality, very little is usually said about what is to replace the practices and belief systems in question. Deep ecology, however, has made an attempt to speak to this latter aspect. Deep ecology critiques “shallow” attempts merely to reform the activities that cause environmental degradation. It critiques, for example, the introduction of various techniques and devices that allow us to continue treating the rest of nature as a mere resource for human desires. Deep ecology proposes that we need to think “deeply” about our relationship with the natural environment by noting that human beings are fundamentally connected to the rest of nature.39 For example, electrically-powered vehicles are presently being touted as a way to transform transportation so as to prevent the production of greenhouse gases. This may be so, but from a deep ecological perspective we should be asking some supplementary questions such as how the electricity needed to eventually charge millions of large car batteries on a daily basis is going to be generated. It would seem unlikely that “soft” technologies, such as wind or solar power, could supply sufﬁcient power to cover the additional draw on the power grid of countries like Canada or the United States. If so, one may wonder if oil, gas, or coal is going to be burned, or if new nuclear power stations are even going to be built, to generate the needed electricity.40 In either case, we end up with very serious difﬁculties since either greenhouse gases will continue to be produced unabated or additional risks for the health of human and other living beings will be introduced through the increased presence in our environments of long-lasting radioactive substances. In light of the interconnectedness of all things, deep ecology, moreover, suggests that we reconsider the special place attributed to human beings in our thinking. We

39 See Arne Naess, for example, “Self Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World,” in VanDeVeer and Pierce (eds), Environmental Ethics and Policy Book, pp. 268–73. There are a number of other proposals aimed at creating the conditions for rethinking our place in the greater environment. Some appeal to the example provided by various Native and traditional cultures. Others, like Anthony Weston’s “Enabling Environmental Practice,” in Pierce and VanDeVeer (eds), People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (2nd edn, 1995), pp. 463–9, propose that we begin by becoming acquainted with our natural surrounds through a new “environmental practice.” 40 Increasingly, the nuclear power lobby is advertising itself, both in popular media and at climate change meetings, as the greenhouse gases-free alternative to hydrocarbon fuels.

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are encouraged to see ourselves as a part of nature, and to stop favoring narrow human interests over the interests of the ecosphere as a whole. Some ecofeminists also have made concrete suggestions on what belief systems and practices should replace the present ones. They argue, for example, that traditional ethics is deﬁcient by its abstract appeal to reason. They argue that in environmental matters, as in other areas of life, attention needs to be placed on the relationships that individuals, as embodied and embedded beings, have developed with particular parts of their lived-in world, since such relationships are the basis for an ethics of care. They suggest that such an approach would prove to be both sympathetic to the point of view of women and helpful to the development of a conceptual reconstruction of our place in relation to nature as other.41 Summation While moral critiques of our present activities focus on the responsibilities that may accrue to us as individuals who are in particular, personal relationships with various beings or larger parts of our environment, social critiques point to some of the underlying structural features that need to be changed and, hence, call for cooperation among individuals, if we are to avoid further environmental degradation. That is, if oppressive practices and hierarchical structures of domination are to be overcome, this will require concerted efforts by individuals throughout our societies to develop new practices and ways of relating to the natural environment. Cultural critiques, furthermore, propose ways of envisioning a different place for human beings within nature. I conclude from this survey that even if we only agree with some of the critiques offered by environmental philosophers, insofar as we see the urgency of stemming the degradation of our natural environment we have reason to take action. If so, what concerns us is scoping out the possibilities for action from where we are. Since we spend half of our waking time at work, and make most of the decisions affecting our world there, I propose that we consider the applicability of environmental ethics from within our role in the workplace. Environmental responsibility in the workplace: impacts, limitations and opportunities Is it realistic to suppose that in the workplace one can act on one’s moral responsibility concerning environmental matters? I propose that, though there are objections to the idea that ordinary morality may be relevant at the workplace, these objections can be addressed. Furthermore, even if particular work situations impose speciﬁc limitations

41 See Val Plumwood’s “Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism,” in Pierce and VanDeVeer (eds), People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (2nd edn, 1995), pp. 197–213. She also critiques deep ecology for the alleged failure to perform the necessary historical analysis of its conceptual baggage. A number of critiques of the contemporary discourse on nature have also issued from writers inﬂuenced by postmodernist and poststructuralist perspectives. See, for example, Jane Bennett and William Chaloupka (eds), In the Nature of Things (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

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on one’s freedom to act, ultimately there remain considerable opportunities in most workplaces to act on one’s environmental responsibilities. The workplace as a special place and its environmental impacts The workplace is a very special place in western civilization. In contrast to the situation in many other societies and in other times, for us the place and the circumstances in which we gain our livelihood are mostly separate from the places and circumstances in which we enjoy the rewards of our labors. Due to processes of rationalization set into action by capitalist modernity in our societies, a fairly clear division of space and attitudes has developed between the workplace, directed almost entirely toward production, and all other places, increasingly directed exclusively toward consumption. Although under these circumstances certain values (such as the desire for achievement) may be recognized as useful in the maximization of productivity, generally speaking values expressive of affective ties are treated either as irrelevant or as problematic in the workplace. It is assumed, in other words, that values that suppose other than instrumental relationships with human beings, animals, place, or a particular manner of working, should be put aside so as not to interfere with the effectiveness and efﬁciency of work processes and their objectives.42 This perspective is often expressed by what we may call the business world ethos, summarized by the phrase “business is business.”43 Moreover, as work today very frequently involves corporations, special problems arise. Corporations are characterized by their charters, their legal standing, and their legal responsibilities toward stockholders, all of which explicitly or implicitly may seem to require managers and other employees only to pursue the goals of growth or maximizing proﬁts for stockholders. So, working for corporations may seem to legitimize (environmentally or otherwise) unethical behavior as long as it maximizes the corporations’ proﬁt-seeking objectives. The argument that is intended to lead to this conclusion is dubious, however. We may note that the supposition that a separate set of values is appropriate in the business workplace depends on its actual separateness from the rest of life. Notably, someone may quite reasonably say that, while the rules of common courtesy demand that we avoid bumping into each other, such rules do not apply when engaged in a wrestling match since in that situation a different set of values is relevant. We may perhaps even come to understand that on the lifeboat of the Medusa a different set of values may have been appropriate, since the shipwrecked literally were cut off from the rest of society and its resources. The question remains whether the workplace, even the corporate workplace, really is as isolated from the rest of life as to warrant a very different set of values, that is, values superordinate to those otherwise current in society. A very strong case can be made, rather, for the view that the workplace is not isolated from the rest of life, since it does interact with it in very many and 42 But see the literature on the (instrumental) value of “emotional intelligence” for business. 43 For a defense of this attitude see, for example, Milton Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business,” in Joan C. Callahan, Ethical Issues in Professional Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 349–50.

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thoroughgoing ways. On the one hand, work absorbs a great proportion of each citizen’s waking time, intelligence and energy, in other words, a great part of our lives. On the other, most work activities affect other people in society and, ultimately, require considerable quantities of materials from the environment, that is, the environment in which we all live and on which we all depend. So, individuals in the workplace actually are in especially direct and intimate relationships and interactions with the world around them, even if this is not often taken note of. Furthermore, despite the laudable efforts undertaken by the movement for socially responsible business practices, in our times the impact of the workplace on the natural environment often is harmful. Many, if not most, of today’s environmental problems are attributable to activities in, or directed from, the workplace, especially run by large corporate businesses.44 Examples discussed in the media, such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill or the Bhopal Union Carbide toxic gas explosion, readily come to mind. Nearby industrial smokestacks or the sight of industrial efﬂuents entering a neighboring creek, moreover, remind us of the role of certain businesses in the despoliation of our home ground. Attributing a very signiﬁcant share of environmental destruction to the workplace may engender certain objections. For example, it may be suggested that if there are environmental impacts arising in the workplace, ultimately they are to be blamed on citizens viewed as consumers since they create the demand for products that otherwise would not be made. This sounds quite reasonable until one takes note of the fact that for most products on the market there was no demand at all until industry made them available and known through advertising campaigns. Even if much workplace activity is attributable to consumer demand, however, this fact will not sufﬁce to exonerate the role of people in the workplace in generating, or contributing to, environmental degradation, since this is a case of “blame shifting” when the appropriate reaction should be “blame sharing.”45 Another response to the claim that the workplace is responsible for much environmental destruction is that the economies of industrialized countries are turning more and more toward the supposedly “clean” service and information technology sectors. Such comments overlook, however, that many parts of the service sector such as, for example, banking or insurance, ultimately are involved in the industrial sectors 44 The use of hydrocarbon-burning motor cars is, of course, a major contributor to pollution which is primarily and directly attributable to the decisions of consuming individuals and not primarily to decisions made at the workplace. Nonetheless, the decision to create certain types of vehicles (for example, SUVs), and to market them aggressively to a certain segment of the population is made in the boardrooms of large corporations. As such, large corporations share the responsibility for the present situation. 45 We may consider that, even if one may determine the individual that has primary responsibility for an untoward event, this does nothing to absolve others who in their own way contributed to the event, even if only passively. We can imagine many examples. For instance, even if there is only one arsonist who sets ﬁre to a house, there can be indeﬁnitely many others who would share the blame for the ruination of the house, including those who perhaps failed to build in sufﬁcient safeguards, or those who did not notify the ﬁreﬁghters. On sharing and shifting responsibility see, for example, James L. Muyskens, “The Nurse as a Member of a Profession,” in Callahan, Ethical Issues in Professional Life, pp. 290–95.

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by way of the direct funding of new mining, manufacturing, or infrastructure projects in countries under development, and the trading of stocks of industrial ﬁrms. The perceived need to maintain and increase the value of shares on the stock market leads to an exacerbation of the pursuit of proﬁt within corporations, with a consequent readiness to cut corners (for example, through restructuring operations) often affecting employees and the natural environment. The information technology sector, furthermore, has its own growing set of production plants, satellite launches and mobile telephone towers, all of which may have harmful effects on the integrity of the natural environment. In summary, if, contrary to the supposition that the business workplace is a world apart, it is in fact tightly imbricated with the rest of our lives, and if, in addition, it generates a very important share of the degradation of our commonly shared natural environment, we may conclude that there is no reason to suppose that a different, special set of values should be applied to the workplace than to the rest of society. Rather, we should conclude that it is of great urgency to seek the application of ethical principles in the workplace. Limitations and opportunities In one sense we may admit that the workplace indeed is a special place, since for most of us it is the place on which we primarily depend for our livelihood, and where some of us have the opportunity to realize ourselves as creative, productive persons. This circumstance may persuade us that the extent to which one can carry through on one’s ethical responsibilities is relatively limited, whether those responsible concern the state of the natural environment or otherwise. But, as noted, the workplace is connected to the rest of life. Hence, one should suppose that at least principles such as not to cause harm are relevant there, even if there may be little room for beneﬁcence. In other words, although there may be little opportunity to promote the integrity of the natural environment, it is appropriate for individuals to be concerned about environmental degradation originating in their workplace. This is especially so because the workplace is a place at which special knowledge about the impacts on the environment of various activities is available. Since greater knowledge commonly supposes both greater capacity to act and greater accountability, the role of the workplace in the prevention of environmental degradation becomes very important. Practically this means considering both the impacts of the workplace on the immediate environment in which work is carried out, and the impacts that happen at a distance in either space or time. Presently, many workplaces have instituted recycling programs for paper and other materials, but a little reﬂection at each workplace will show that the possibilities for action in the nearby environment are much wider than that. These possibilities for action include many instances of simply doing less damage, for example, through the reduction of commuting by moving to a home within walking or pedaling distance, or through the reduction of airplane travel by scheduling fewer face-to-face meetings out of town. Also, depending on what work activity is carried out on location, attention to the relative toxicity of the materials in use in various operations, or the relative generation of electromagnetic radiation by various devices, may also be of relevance. Impacts at a considerable distance from the workplace can also be various, ranging from the quantity and type of packaging of consumer goods,

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which affects waste deposition, to the application of high vs. low-impact methods in forestry, which affects the continued existence of old-growth forests.46 The actions undertaken from the workplace may also vary in the immediacy by which they will be effective, and sometimes those aiming at the long run are more signiﬁcant than those that promise quick results. For example, car-pooling may be a ﬁne initiative that can be achieved relatively quickly from within the workplace, but switching over the transport ﬂeet of a business to fuels based on waste oils may, though not so rapidly attained, eventually pay off more substantially in terms of a reduction of new loads in greenhouse gases and the use of non-renewable fuels. In fact, once achieved, such efforts could have signiﬁcant effects on the rest of the business community by serving as an example for what is possible.47 The question remains who in the workplace may be expected to take on responsibility to halt environmental degradation, given that the workplace is mainly directed toward the securement of livelihood (if not toward the maximization of proﬁt). It would seem unrealistic to suppose that the average employee of a large corporation could afford to risk her job for the sake of possibly small decreases in the total degradation of the natural environment. It is relevant, however, that workplaces are not all alike, and that some people in some workplaces enjoy more autonomy than others. We may note the following diversity in workplace situations. •

The self-employed, including individuals who sell and make goods as well as ﬁshers and farmers. Reasonably, the ﬁrst concern of such individuals is securing the continuity of their enterprises. Nonetheless, once they have secured their livelihoods, these individuals have great leeway to direct their workplace in such a way that it is in agreement with their responsibility for the integrity of the natural environment.48

46 For a creative solution to the problems of excessive packaging see, for example, Thomas Dyllick, “Ecological Marketing Strategy for Toni Yogurts in Switzerland,” Journal of Business Ethics, 8 (1989), pp. 657–62. For “solutions” to “global climate change,” see Guy Dauncey with Patrick Mazza, Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change (Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2001). 47 It has been debated whether changes in the conditions of doing business undertaken for the sake of safeguarding the integrity of our natural environment will cause job losses and a lowering of living standards. Data on job losses due to societal transformations toward more “environmentally friendly” ways of doing business are difﬁcult to determine; see, for example, Velasquez, Business Ethics, p. 237. There are indications, though, that a turn toward more environmentally responsible ways of managing and producing the things that we need actually spurs innovation, increasing the number of workplaces as a result. See, for example, Carrie Sonneborn, “Generating Jobs: Sustainable energy initiatives deliver more jobs and lower greenhouse gas emissions,” Alternatives Journal, 26, 2 (Spring 2000), pp. 30–1; Hal Kane, “Shifting to Sustainable Industries,” in Lester R. Brown et al. (eds), State of the World 1996 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), pp. 152–67. 48 Of course, small-scale farmers and ﬁshers increasingly are caught facing difﬁcult dilemmas because of the diminishing productivity of soil and ﬁsh stocks, due to erosion and overharvesting, and competition from large-scale agribusiness, forestry, and ﬁshing outﬁts. Given these circumstances it may be difﬁcult for them to act on their perceived environmental responsibility.

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•

•

•

•

•

Employees in cooperative enterprises. In a cooperative, employees usually are also owners who have a say on the board of directors themselves or through their representatives.49 Often they also have a say in the day-to-day management of their workplaces.50 In such employment situations there is almost as much opportunity to pursue well-deﬁned goals of lowering the workplace impact on the integrity of the natural environment as there is for the self-employed. Professionals. This class includes lawyers and physicians, as well as dentists, accountants, teachers and nurses.51 Although professionals are subject to a certain degree to regulations arising from their associations, to state legislation, and to their employers if not self-employed, on the whole they enjoy a degree of autonomy not generally shared by ordinary employees. Consequently, they also have substantial opportunities for acting on their environmental responsibilities. Managers and CEOs in particular, as well as all employees in situations that allow at least some degree of participation in workplace decision making. These individuals generally have opportunities to suggest modiﬁcations of present practices to make them more agreeable to the aims of safeguarding environmental integrity.52 Employees who are members of a union or association. As such they may be able to obtain special protection from the employer for employees who make suggestions, or lodge complaints, regarding environmental matters. Alternatively, it might be possible to institute within the workplace the position of environmental ombudsperson, who would have leeway to alert publicly the employer about ways to avoid contributing to environmental degradation. Political representatives at all levels, federal, provincial or state, municipal, sand and so on. In today’s political climate, the pursuit of a “healthier” natural environment is a goal that generally will bring politicians public support. Anyone with political ofﬁce usually has excellent opportunities to put into place programs that will combine her or his stated platform with the satisfaction of her or his ethical responsibilities concerning the integrity of the natural environment.

49 It is relevant that the cooperative movement has made formal commitments to pursue the maintenance of the integrity of the natural environment, and that individuals involved as employees (and other members) can pursue the application of those commitments in their particular situations. For those commitments see, for example, Ian MacPherson, Cooperative Principles for the 21st Century (Geneva: International Cooperative Alliance, 1996). 50 On the opportunities for democratic participation in cooperatives see, for example, Jaques and Ruth Kaswan, “The Mondragón Cooperatives,” Whole Earth Review (Spring 1989), pp. 8–17. 51 For an enlightening discussion of what it is to be a professional, and the ethical repercussions this has, see Michael D. Bayles, Professional Ethics (Belmond, CA: Wadsworth, 1989). 52 Note the example of the CEO of Toni Yogurts in Dyllick’s paper in Larmer, Ethics in the Workplace.

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•

55

Investors or shareholders in productive enterprises. Although not directly involved in the workplace, investors are (co-)owners of whatever workplace they invest in, and hence play a role in the objectives pursued there. Investors can (co-)determine the charters under which businesses will operate by taking part in General Meetings. Even if often difﬁcult to have any certainty in the matter, it is possible, moreover, to choose investments by the compatibility of the aims and practices of the enterprises under consideration with the integrity of the natural environment.53

The effectiveness of action from the workplace will vary depending on speciﬁc circumstances. In this context it is important to remember that, generally speaking, moral responsibility is commensurate to the urgency of the situation, but also to one’s capacity. In any case, we may note Leopold’s claim that in preserving the integrity of the natural environment much depends on conscience, that is, a sense of responsibility and the readiness to act on it, and that, consequently, “The bulk of all land relations hinges on investments of time, forethought, skill, and faith rather than investments of cash.”54 It is imperative to act from where one is if one hopes to live up to one’s moral responsibility. For a variety of reasons some workplace situations, however, may allow only for very few, or for no, genuine choices on ethically signiﬁcant matters. The division of tasks, the diffusion of responsibilities, and the formalization of roles within complex organizational structures may make it difﬁcult to determine who has responsibility for what effects.55 Such circumstances may be sufﬁcient grounds to change workplaces, joining the self-employed, or perhaps a cooperative enterprise in which one’s voice can be heard. (Of course, due to various economic, geographic, or personal circumstances not everyone is at liberty to choose freely their workplace.) Environmental Morality: Deﬁning the Self and Enabling our Home in Nature In response to the question “why be moral?” only one good answer can be given, namely, “this is the sort of human being I intend to be.” Other responses, for example, that one acts in morally correct ways to ﬁt into one’s society or that God demands it, really come down to the supposition that to be moral is to be prudent. But if the response is given in terms of prudence then we are not dealing with the question “why be moral?,” since morality implies a commitment to “do the correct thing” even if it is not prudential (that is, in one’s self-interest). The existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre has taught us that the question “why act this way rather than that way?” has a 53 This concern has lately been institutionalized under the terms “ethical investing.” 54 Leopold, “Land Ethic,” in VanDeVeer and Pierce, People, Penguins and Plastic Trees, p. 84. 55 See, for example, Star, “Layered Space, Formal Representations and Long-Distance Control.” One may note, though, that even small steps, such as introducing language that openly addresses workplace responsibilities regarding environmental integrity in corporate ethics statements or in procedure manuals, can constitute a valuable contribution to change in the long run.

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further answer, namely, “this is the image of humanity I want to create.” With regard to environmental ethics one can add, “and this is the kind of natural environment I desire to enable.” As discussed, the workplace has an overwhelming impact on our natural environment. This is sufﬁcient reason to exercise, even at the workplace, one’s moral responsibility with regard to the impacts of one’s actions on signiﬁcant others by affecting the natural environment. To neglect this responsibility is one way to declare what sort of human being one wants to be and in what sort of environment one desires to exist. It is a kind of declaration of alienation, or separation, from the natural world. To take on this responsibility, in contrast, is a declaration that one’s pursuit of livelihood is directly connected to one’s pursuit of a home within nature.56 Fortunately there are many ways to do this. But it is up to us to get personally involved.57

56 On the idea of being at home in nature see, for example, Don McKay, “Baler Twine: Thoughts on ravens, home, and nature poetry” in Tim Lilburn (ed.), Poetry and Knowing: Speculative Essays and Interviews (Kingston, Ont.: Quarry Press, 1995), pp. 17–28. Also see Wendell Berry, Home Economics (San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1987). 57 I am indebted to Stuart Lee and Michael Pardy for helpful suggestions. Environmental Ethics in the Workplace: A Call to Action appeared in Robert Larmer (ed.), Ethics in the Workplace, 2nd edition (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth, 2001), 578–87. Permission for reproduction granted.

Chapter 4

Environment and Culture in Latin America Community, Autonomy and Resistance

In the two previous chapters we have explored the potential of environmental morality in the project of creating a more appropriate relationship with our natural environment, and its role in the workplace. The fundamental ideas driving those chapters are that the development of environmental ethics should be more than a matter of arriving at better theories but of transforming attitudes, practices and habits, and in every place of our lives (at home as well as at leisure activity sites and perhaps especially at the workplace).1 Continuing with the theme that environmental theorizing and practice require greater integration, in this chapter I propose that we consider potentially useful models of sustainability, that is, models of the types of behaviors and attitudes that reﬂect an ethic of care for the continued functioning, and even ﬂourishing, of natural processes.2 We will sample a few approaches and case studies from Latin America. To set the stage, I begin by considering some of the possible sources of Latin America’s distinctiveness. In the second section, I introduce three theoretical approaches, which have eloquent advocates in Latin America, for redrawing the human–environmental relationship. In the third section, I discuss the idea of cultural identities rooted in land, cases illustrating sustainability, and theoretical analyses supportive of such ways of achieving sustainability. In the fourth section, I propose that the ways of achieving sustainability discussed illustrate an implicit environmental ethic, and that this ethic has counterparts elsewhere, outside Latin America. I conclude by suggesting that the crucial feature that brings about, and maintains, these sustainability-enabling beliefs and practices is a particular type of cultural matrix. 1 As noted in Chapter 2, I generally reserve the term “ethics” to reﬂection on the attitudes and actions that constitute morality. I will use the term “ethic” in the singular, moreover, to make reference to a way of living that expresses a certain morality. 2 At least since the Brundtland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), and the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development), there has been widespread discussion of the notions “sustainable development” and “sustainability.” There are very divergent interpretations of what these notions entail, ranging from total non-intervention by human beings in natural processes, on the one hand, to the supposition that sustainable development demands a ﬁfty-fold increase in present economic activity (entailing signiﬁcant human transformation of the natural environment), on the other. Without attempting to be precise, I use the terms “sustainability” and “sustainable” to refer to ways of living that take note of the requirements for the ﬂourishing of both the human and non-human components of the environment.

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Distinctiveness of the Latin American Context Latin America has an immense geographical extension, ranging over two hemispheres, with Spanish and Portuguese primarily spoken but also French, Dutch, English, and countless indigenous languages including Mapudungun (the language of the South Andean Mapuche), Aymara, Quechua, various Mayan languages and Nahuatl. One certainly should not expect uniformity in any respect from such a heterogeneous region. Nonetheless, the prevalence of Iberian languages and the common foundation of Latin American cultures in their mostly Hispanic and Portuguese colonial heritages make it tempting to suppose that the area may have some common, and also some distinctive, approaches to practical and intellectual matters. So, can we expect anything distinctive about environmental thought and attitudes in Latin America, especially today, as the globalization of cultures progresses along with the globalization of the marketplace? Three factors seem relevant when we try to formulate an answer to this question: the professional, the cultural, and the economic-historical situation. Most of our attention will be placed upon the third factor. First, in Latin America environmental ethics, as a ﬁeld of research, perhaps more than elsewhere, is only partially professionalized as such, and many contributions to the ﬁeld come from individuals who, strictly speaking, work outside the academic ﬁelds of ethics and philosophy. Hence, academic environmental ethics is correspondingly diverse, even if there increasingly is communication (both across disciplines and across geographical boundaries) among those that address this subject-area. The views of those who in fact are professionals in ethics, moreover, are also diverse, since, in addition to the Anglo-American approach in philosophy some others, including the German, the French, the Spanish, and the originary philosophy of Latin America developed since colonization, partially founded in Catholic theology, Marxist theory and scholasticism, also contribute to the perspectives held.3 Second, certain typical characteristics of Latin America’s cultures differentiate environmental ethics and environmental morality4 in those areas to a certain degree from its counterparts in English-speaking and northern European countries. Principally, we may consider the historical links of Latin Americans with the Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) cultures, the emphasis on the value of personal relationships with family and community, the prevalence of the Catholic faith, and the continued ﬂourishing and partial integration of Native, indigenous cultures. These facts point toward attitudes which are less individualistic and more community-oriented than

3 For a review of Latin American philosophy see the special issue of The Philosophical Forum, 20, 1–2 (Fall–Winter 1988–89), especially Jorge J.E. Gracia, “Introduction: Latin American Philosophy Today,” pp. 4–32, and Iván Jaksić, “Sources of Latin American Philosophy,” pp. 141–57. 4 As noted in Chapter 2, for clarity’s sake I distinguish between ethics and morality, where ethics is reﬂection on morality and morality is constituted by the attitudes and types of actions considered appropriate or inappropriate with respect to those beings considered signiﬁcant.

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5

their counterpart in countries of the North, and by implication they point toward an environmental morality that is also less individualistic and community-oriented. Third, economic-historical conditions in the Americas largely determine a distinctive environmental practice. European colonization of Latin America had a different tenor than in other places, such as in North America, since in Latin America the primary interest of the colonizers lay in the exploitation of the area’s mineral resources (particularly gold and silver), and only secondarily in its occupation with colonists. Today, economic and geographical conditions in Latin America are still signiﬁcantly different from those in many other areas of the world, thereby co-determining environmental ethics and attitudes. We may consider the following three facets of those conditions. The expropriation of indigenous peoples’ lands In Latin America the areas that are valuable to mining and forestry enterprises frequently are coterminous with the territories of traditional owners (indigenous campesino and Native peoples). Therefore, their exploitation by private interests, consequent to expropriation, can generate a greater and more pointed awareness of the interdependency between human beings and nature than is common in areas of the world where ownership of natural areas has long been assigned to the State, which largely manages them as an absentee landlord.6 In the past the expropriation of indigenous peoples’ lands has come about for diverse reasons, including the settling of colonists, as in Patagonia in the late nineteenth century (after the extermination by the Argentinean Army of most Native people, remaining after initial contact with Europeans, in the Guerra del Desierto, or Desert War7). Today, the expropriation of indigenous peoples’ productive land comes about through the maneuvers of large enterprises (many of them foreign owned), or even through the creation of parks by the State. Though the exploitation of Latin America’s natural wealth is still primarily driven by interests from outside the region, it is apparent that this process generally is facilitated by local elites. The economist David Barkin of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City has noted that, for the last half-century, “local corporate control over productive and social processes” has contributed to the present dismal socio-economic conditions of indigenous and campesino people,

5 I follow common usage by utilizing the term “North” in order to make reference to the cultures of fully industrialized countries, mostly located in the North, in contrast with the less industrialized countries, mostly located in the “South.” Geographically speaking, the terms only partly capture the contrast at issue since some southern countries, such as Australia, count among the fully industrialized, which some northern countries, such as Haiti, are very little industrialized. 6 As in Canada, where the Crown owns most of the land. Of course, in various regions of this country we have a similar overlap of commercially used lands (leased or bought from the crown) and indigenous territories, which leads to questions regarding which rights should prevail. 7 See Osvaldo Bayer, La Patagonia Rebelde (Buenos Aires: Hyspamérica, 1980).

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and, as a result, environmental justice and equity have become signiﬁcant issues.8 Insofar as the expropriation and exploitation of the natural environment affect Native peoples’ very livelihood, these sorts of offensive appropriations generate considerable resistance movements to outsider interventions. The introduction of global market forces into traditional rural communities Even in remote regions of Latin America the global market system is insinuating itself into important aspects of people’s lives. Through international trade agreements, such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), local prices for basic foodstuffs such as maize may become undermined through the inﬂux of heavily subsidized grains from North America, and traditional forms of agricultural production become labeled as “inefﬁcient.” As a consequence, the state and other economic actors propose that traditional forms of production be replaced with monocultures dependent on chemical inputs and expensive irrigation schemes. Insofar as in the past in Latin America, many rural communities mostly have been self-sufﬁcient in the generation of basic goods (such as foodstuffs), this imposition of the global market by external actors has often been perceived as a new form of colonialism. As a result communities increasingly develop defensive strategies “for organizing peoples, protecting resources, and framing struggles” in order to defend their traditional ways of living along with the natural environments that make those forms of life possible. In the process, they develop alternatives which go beyond the reactionary defense of traditional modes of living. Rather, they constitute creative experiments aimed at the protection of the foundations of their societies and environments.9 Industrialization with few safeguards/urbanization without planning Industrialization in Latin America has brought about similar problems to those observed in other parts of the world with the difference that, given the relatively limited power of civil society in Latin America, contamination of air, water and earth has proceeded at a much more signiﬁcant rate and intensity. Mitigation measures, furthermore, are slow to come into effect due to the lack of enforcement powers and frequent corruption of policing bodies. These factors contribute to the development of environmental justice movements. Moreover, because of a delay in the establishment of the needed infrastructure for continuously increasing urban populations, people often suffer from inadequate provision with water, electricity, or green spaces, and are subject to hazardous environmental conditions, such as high levels of dust and geologically insecure siting of their housing. These factors contribute to social ecology movements that demand greater attention to the environments in which human populations live.

8 David Barkin, correspondence (13 February 2002). 9 For the ideas and the quote in this paragraph I am indebted to Barkin, correspondence (13 February 2002).

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Summation The facets of the economic and geopolitical conditions noted indicate that there are important, speciﬁc sectors of Latin American society that have particular concerns about the degradation of the natural environment: the indigenous, the rural agricultural, and the poor, recently established urban, populations, especially those located in industrialized areas. Together they comprise a signiﬁcant proportion of Latin American populations. Even if the conditions that characterize Latin America are not entirely unique, their particular combination with the cultural speciﬁcity of Latin American thought and life is. Furthermore, given the diversity of approaches to the study of environmental ethics in the geographical area, these conditions point toward a distinctive environmental theory and practice. Some Theoretical Approaches to Environment in Latin America Theoretical discussion of environmental ethics among diversely situated Latin American thinkers naturally is various and often focuses on themes well known in northern contexts, such as individual responsibility in the face of global warming, the trouble with the identiﬁcation of happiness with consumption, or the question whether the natural environment is being degraded because of exacerbated individualism, anthropocentrism, or industrialization.10 Latin American theorists, such as Antonio Elizalde Hevia or Fernando Mires, are quite aware that, while in terms of biodiversity their part of the Americas is one of the richest areas in the world, it is also one of the most threatened, and to address this problem they frequently focus on explanatory paradigms similar to those circulating in Northern societies.11 Here I sample three approaches to the environment, which even if they have parallels in other parts of the world, have a rather particular expression in Latin America. These approaches are roughly complementary to each other. While ethnoecology emphasizes the power to shape attitudes through the experience of personal, direct acquaintance with the natural environment when guided by timetested, traditional ways of knowing, social ecology and liberation/restorative ecology point toward social commitments, and even to affective dimensions, with regard to that environment. More speciﬁcally, social ecology points toward the need to stem certain threats to human beings-in-their-environments, while liberation ecology argues for the necessity of openly embracing non-human nature as an equal.

10 On the problem of extreme individualism and consumerism, see Antonio Elizalde Hevia, “Aproximaciones Éticas y Espirituales para la Sustentabilidad en el Próximo Milenio,” Revista Argentina de Economía y Ciencias Sociales, 3, 4 (1999). 11 Antonio Elizalde Hevia, “‘Yo como tú, creo en la poesía de todos’ ¿Será posible un mundo no excluyente? Pistas para la construcción de una nueva sociedad latinoamericana,” Documentación Social, 113 (1998); Fernando Mires, El Discurso de la Naturaleza: ecología y política en América Latina (San José de Costa Rica, Editorial DEI, 1990).

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Ethnoecology Ethnoecology studies the relationship of communities with their natural environments insofar as that relationship is reﬂected in local knowledge of plants, animals and ecosystems (often called “traditional ecological knowledge,” or “TEK”) accumulated diachronically over long periods by people who live in close dependency with the land.12 Ethnoecology seeks to understand the kind of knowing that most people in urban centers and many agricultural settings have now lost, but may recover up to a point as long as these ways of knowing continue to be maintained in contemporary indigenous cultures. Víctor Toledo, a well-known Mexican ethnoecologist, argues that this approach can give us insight into the type of relationship with the natural environment that will maintain the long-term sustainability of natural environments as well as the livelihoods of the human communities dependent on them. On his analysis, ethnoecology teaches that sustainable development at the community level requires the maintenance of traditional ecological knowledge. He directly couples the necessity of defending both the particular cultural and natural endowments that make up the strength of rural communities. He argues that, in the face of threats of incursions from state-sponsored and corporate entities, sustainable community development requires that communities “take (or retake) control of the processes that affect it,”13 which, among other things, requires the development and consolidation of “a community conscience.”14 Toledo is seconded by Enrique Leff in his insistence on the importance of community control of the cognitive factors regarding land use that co-determine its future. In his book Green Production, Leff argues: The objective of ecodevelopment, deﬁned as a strategy for the production and application of knowledges and techniques necessary for the sustainable management of particular 12 While indigenous people are the originators and traditional keepers of ethnoecological knowledge today, there are diverse efforts by people from outside indigenous communities to assist them in the preservation of this knowledge. With regard to the deﬁnition of ethnoecology, Ted L. Gragson and Ben G. Blount, “Introduction,” Ethnoecology: Knowledge, Resources, and Rights (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1999), say that “ethnoecology is increasingly used a cover term for natural history studies derived from local people …” but then propose that “ecology and ethnoecology can be deﬁned in the broadest sense as the study of relationships between organisms and the totality of the physical, biological, and social factors they come into contact with” (p. vii). Also see Nancy Turner, Earth’s Blanket: Traditional teachings for sustainable living (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005); and Thomas Heyd, “Indigenous Knowledge, Emancipation and Alienation,” Knowledge and Policy 8, 1 (Spring 1995), pp. 63–73. 13 Toledo explains that this perspective is based on a general principle of political ecology according to which “contemporary society and nature suffer generalized processes of exploitation and deterioration [due to] the loss of control of human society over nature and itself.” Víctor M. Toledo, “Sustainable Development at the Village Community Level: A Third World Perspective” in Fraser Smith (ed.), Environmental Sustainability (Boca Raton, FL: St. Lucie Press, 1997), pp. 233–50, p. 237. 14 Ibid., p. 239.

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ecosystems, is a social process inserted within the struggles of each community for the appropriation of their natural resources and their social wealth.15

What Leff has in mind is that development, which is appropriate to the conditions of the natural environment, depends on knowledge and techniques held and controlled by the communities that rely on that environment. Social ecology As understood by Eduardo Gudynas and Graciela Evia, social ecology studies the ways in which the activities of contemporary citizens, mostly located in large urban centers and involved in manufacturing, processing and consuming goods ultimately based on natural resources, can be brought into consonance with ecological processes.16 On their analysis, insofar as social ecology is grounded in the sciences, it needs to go beyond the divisions among the social, the human and the natural sciences in order to arrive at an understanding of the possibilities of coexistence of human activity and natural diversity in their complementarity. So understood, social ecology incorporates the perspectives of biologically oriented human ecology as well as anthropological ecology, but aims at an explicit integration of human agency, understood as socially embedded, with natural environmental contexts. Gudynas and Evia’s social ecology is in accord with its North American variant (as represented by Murray Bookchin’s account to it17) in its focus on the modes of domination that affect both human and non-human systems, but it explicitly seeks to incorporate the insights arising from Latin American life conditions. In particular, these authors point toward the perspectives on human–environmental relations developed by traditionally living people of Latin America. As we will see further below, social ecology interestingly does not remain at the theoretical level in this region of the world but has an embodiment in certain social movements (for example, in Amazonia) with notable practical consequences for human well-being and natural sustainability. Liberation/restorative ecology A third approach for redrawing the relationship between human beings and the natural environment, as found in Latin America, is what we may call “liberation” or

15 Enrique Leff, Green Production (New York: Guilford Press, 1995). 16 Eduardo Gudynas and Graciela Evia, El concepto de ecología social ; modiﬁed version of Chapter 1 of Eduardo Gudynas y Graciela Evia, Ecología Social, Manual de Metodologías para Educadores Populares (Madrid: Editorial Popular, 1993). 17 See, for example, Murray Bookchin, “Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future” in Donald VanDeVeer and Christine Pierce (eds), The Environmental Ethics and Policy Book: Philosophy, Ecology, Economics (Belmond, CA: Wadsworth, 2004, 2nd edn), pp. 227–33.

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“restorative” ecology. This is related to the notion of restoration ecology.19 In the largely North American discussion of ecosystems restoration, it has been proposed that restorative activities be conceived as a way to restore not only a certain integrity to ecosystemic processes but also a certain quality in the relationship that we, human beings, may have with the non-human natural beings that surround us.20 The idea is that, although we may be alienated from our natural environment, due to contemporary socio-economic and ideological conditions, we may recover an appropriate relationship to that environment through a certain type of activity or practice (for example, through ecological restoration). I propose that the term “liberation/restorative ecology” may be the most adequate to describe the kind of reﬂection and ethic called for by Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian liberation theologian, in the presence of the linked crises of radical impoverishment and environmental degradation.21 In his recent writings, Boff argues for an ethos of care and compassion for the earth in conjunction with such care and compassion for our fellow human beings. He says, for example, that “[t]he earth has arrived at the limits of its sustainability. Our task is not to create sustainable development, but a sustainable society – human beings and nature together.”22 According to Boff’s analysis, human beings and natural environments are jointly going through a severe crisis due to a failure to recognize our true human nature, which is that of care. 23 Now, since human beings are implicated in a fundamental way with the 18 The idea of “liberation ecology” resonates with Herbert Marcuse’s idea (for example, in Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1972)) that the time will come for the liberation of humanity and nature. José Francisco Gómez Hinojosa, “De la Ecología a la Ecoﬁlía: Apuntes para una Ecología Liberadora,” Pasos, 30 (July–August 1990), directly uses the terms “liberating ecology” in the title of his article. 19 See Chapter 11 for a discussion of how nature restoration can make sense. 20 See William R. Jordan III, “Autonomy, Restoration and the Law of Nature,” and Andrew Light, “Restoration, Autonomy and Domination: The Case for Benevolent Restoration,” both in Thomas Heyd (ed.), Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). Also see Eric Higgs, Nature by Design: People, natural process, and ecological restoration (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). 21 See Leonardo Boff, Saber Cuidar: Ética do humano – compaixão pela terra (Petrópolis, Brazil: Editora Vozes, 1999). This perspective agrees nicely with Richard Peet and Michael Watts’ notion of liberation ecology movements, which combines the concerns for environmental integrity with the concerns for “livelihood, entitlements, and social justice” (Richard Peet and Michael Watts, “Liberation Ecology: Development, sustainability, and environment in an age of market triumphalism, ” in Peet and Watts (eds), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 39.) 22 Emphasis added. Boff is drawing a contrast between “sustainable development,” focused on the continued generation of marketable goods and on industrial development, and “sustainability,” conceived as a condition in which both human and non-human natural beings ﬂourish. (Leonardo Boff – Brazil, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Heroes/Leonardo_Boff. html; accessed 8 August 2007) Compare his usage of the terms with Toledo’s, who supposes that sustainable development understood in the community context will actually bring about the ﬂourishing of both human and non-human beings. 23 Regarding the ethics of care, also see ecofeminist analyses, such as Val Plumwood, “Nature, Self and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of

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natural environments that surround them, attaining a full realization of our humanity requires that we develop an ethos of care with regard to those environments and all other beings comprised in them. So, one way of understanding Boff is that, through the restoration of an appropriate relationship between human beings and the other natural beings, there will be a freeing (liberation) of human and natural potentialities. As another example of such a viewpoint, we may consider the perspective of José Gómez Hinojosa, who similarly speaks about what I call liberation/restorative ecology but from a philosophicaltheological perspective.24 He argues to the possibility of a “naturo-centric” approach. From Gómez Hinojosa’s perspective, if we pay attention to the common trajectory that human beings share with the rest of nature we will stop seeing ourselves as separate from nature, and hence we should stop exploiting it as mere object. Taking a hint from Ernst Bloch, Gómez Hinojosa explains how we may see nature as subject, and ourselves as part of that subject.25 From this he concludes that we will perceive ourselves as living with nature as equals and not simply in nature as its users. The consequence of such a change of perspectives would be both a liberation of nature and a restoration of our relationship to it. Cultural Identities, Sustainability and Strategies Land-based populations and cultural identities Anthropologists and geographers have shown that different conditions generate different socio-cultural relationships to the natural environment. This certainly can be conﬁrmed in Latin America, where there is great diversity in history, geography, geology, botany, demography, ethnicity, and so on. The relations to the natural environments that characterize different sections of the population are correspondingly diverse and, moreover, in constant ﬂux as conditions change. Such relations can be analyzed from various perspectives. As of late, political ecology has emerged as a leading way of analyzing human relations to the environment. Peet and Watts describe its “theoretical heart” as the linking of political economy with ecology.26 Various political ecologists have Rationalism,” in Christine Pierce and Donald VanDeVeer, People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (Belmond, CA: Wadsworth, 1995), pp. 197–213. 24 José Francisco Gómez Hinojosa, “De la Ecología a la Ecoﬁlía … .” 25 Also see Eric Katz, Nature as Subject: Human Obligation and Natural Community (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleﬁeld, 1997); and Eric Katz, “The Liberation of Humanity and Nature,” in Heyd, Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature. 26 They propose that, in the attempt to chart “the shifting dialectic of nature–society relations, important new avenues were opened up for research and activism,” which include “analyses of how the capacity to manage resources could be constrained by the relations of production in which peasants were enmeshed, how particular forms of state subsidy stimulated the mining of the soil, or how local forms of knowledge could be harnessed in ecologically adaptive ways,” Richard Peet and Michael Watts, “Preface,” in Peet and Watts (eds), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, development, social movements (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. x.

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argued that in spite of the increasingly global push and pull of market forces, which demand that people as well as resources become mere mobile instruments for the reproduction of capital, there remain some populations notable for their tendency to maintain residency on the lands of their ancestors.27 The reasons people have for opting for continued residency are diverse, ranging from affective relations with land and people, to their pride in using “traditional” (“local,” or “indigenous”) knowledge about techniques and resources of the place, or simply comfort in staying put where they matured as persons and their ancestors have lived. The land-based cultural identity of such populations generally is carefully deﬁned, and counts for them as a value worthy of protection for itself.28 However, as processes of modernization and globalization reach such closelyknit populations, signiﬁcant dislocations can occur. Greater access to markets for agricultural products, for example, may generate opportunities for the acquisition of formerly unavailable manufactured goods, but may also bring local agricultural products into competition with those produced more cheaply elsewhere. The result may be, on the one hand, relative impoverishment and considerable, persistent outmigration of young people to city and industrial centers as laborers, and, on the other, increasing replacement of traditional ways of producing food and other goods with “modern,” introduced ways.29 Concretely this may also mean, for example, that, where agriculture before was entirely “organic,” it may end up highly reliant on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, on commercial seeds, and so on. The transformation of agriculture and lifestyles away from self-sufﬁciency and toward dependency on external actors and factors is problematic, from the point of view of theoreticians and activists who seek to maintain or reactivate traditional, less harmful, ways of interacting with the natural environment, but may be perceived as necessary for bare survival by the populations involved. The interesting thing is that many populations, who are at the crossroads between a traditionally sustainable and an increasingly external input-dependent way of life, offer signiﬁcant resistance to these kinds of forces of change. In fact, we ﬁnd that the commitment among such populations to resist anything that might undermine traditional values is accompanied by a reassertion and progressive elaboration of those values,30 and by a drive to strengthen the community’s autonomy and auto-sufﬁciency over against outside forces, such as large-scale commercial or government entities. The autonomy pursued tends to be such as would allow for the continued ﬂourishing of the longstanding mixed ecologies in which people live. 27 See, for example, Anthony Bebbington, “Movements, Modernizations, and Markets: Indigenous organizations and agrarian strategies in Ecuador” in Peet and Watts, Liberation Ecologies, pp. 86–109, p. 101. 28 For example, see Sara McFall and Roberto Morales, “The Ins and Outs of Mapuche Culture in Chile,” in Anny Booksbank Jones and Ronaldo Munck (eds), Cultural Politics in Latin America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 127–41, on the creation of cultural identity of Mapuche people, and their strategies for protecting it. 29 See Bebbington, “Movements, Modernizations, and Markets,” in Peet and Watts, Liberation Ecologies. 30 I am indebted to David Barkin, correspondence (February 13, 2002), for ways of expressing these ideas here.

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Toward human-environmental sustainability: some cases I offer a sample of cases of populations that conceive of their communities as including the non-human parts of the environment along with the human parts, as found in many areas of Latin America and elsewhere in the less westernized world. Such populations do not suppose that the natural environment is a domain apart from that occupied by human beings. Instead, they individuate, and they attribute value to, something like “hybrid” human-environmental spaces. I begin with a description of the beliefs of the Native people called Mapuche (the term literally means “People of Their Land”), who live in the border region between Chile and Argentina, followed by brief accounts of the environmental practices of populations of extractivists and Native people of the Amazonian region of Brazil, and of groups of campesinos and indigenous people of Mexico. The Mapuche, who, like people from many small-scale societies that traditionally have directly depended on their natural environment for survival, exhibit a remarkable interweaving in their beliefs of the roles of human beings and nature. Historically, the Mapuche suffered from the conﬂict with the Spanish and subsequently, on both sides of the border, from conquest by the respective government troops.31 Although in more recent times some communities were granted a certain degree of autonomy on their traditional lands within drastically reduced boundaries, they have become subject to new threats to their integrity. In Argentina, they have had to suffer, among other things, from the incursions into their land, air and water sources of the activities of the petroleum industries, with consequent health problems and loss of access to important parts of their territories. In Chile, their steep mountainous regions have been subjected to European settlement, and most recently, to industrial forestry practices brought in by transnational companies, which through clear felling have deprived them of the traditional forest cover and its medicinal plants, and create hazards due to erosion.32 Both in Argentina and in Chile, the Mapuche have proudly declared their intention to resist the various incursions into their communities.33 The Mapuche explain that insults to their lands are insults to themselves, because their community encompasses both human and non-human parts of the land. For the Mapuche, human beings are just one element among many others in the universe in which everything is ﬁnely balanced and interrelated with every other thing, including the animals, spirits, plants, waters and landscapes:34 Mountain, forest, lakes, high lands, and … the river are [the Mapuche’s] lived-in landscape, the place where they were born and where they were raised. The Mapuche have always cared in a special way for the elements and forces or newenes of the natural world that 31 See, for example, Patagonia . Also see Bayer, La Patagonia Rebelde. 32 David MacKinnon and Sara McFall, “Pueblo Mapuche, Expansión Forestal y Poder Local” . 33 See, for example, . 34 Sara McFall, Wajmapu: Territorialidad Mapuche y Medio Ambiente (October 2000) .

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Encountering Nature surrounds them, the Itroﬁl Mongem [all the lives], and have always given access to all the human beings that wish to enjoy the place as long as they respect the environment for which, as original inhabitants, [the Mapuche] act as “natural auditors.”35

The belief that human beings are deeply entwined with the other elements of their environment, including the alpacas or the maize-corn, but also “[t]he river, the stones, the stars, the wind,” and so on, is common among diverse Latin American peoples, such as the Quechua.36 Eduardo Grillo, for example, speaks of a symbiotic community such that “those which live here in the Andes raising [animals] and those [animals] who allow our raising them, form a family.”37 Further east, indigenous populations and extractivists who live in Brazil’s Amazonian region have had to contend not only with large corporate interests, intent on clear-felling their forests to set up cattle ranches, and the establishment of dam and mining projects,38 but also (perhaps paradoxically) with government departments set on creating new parks. Unfortunately, the creation of parks, intended for the protection of biological diversity, generally has followed a model conceived in North America, which calls for the exclusion of human inhabitants for the protection of the purity of the natural environment enclosed in park boundaries.39 In the Amazonian region (and in other regions like it) where apparently untouched, “wild” areas in fact have been inhabited since long before European colonization, and where indigenous and extractivist inhabitants practice a sustainable kind of use of rivers and forests, the creation of parks has often had serious repercussions for people who in the process are displaced from their homelands. The land for them, as for the Mapuche and the Quechua, is part of their communities. Consequently, the indigenous and extractivist inhabitants from Amazonia resist outside incursions

35 Quienes son los hijos de la tierra: Los Mapuche (this and all translations from Spanish are by myself); . The Spanish translation of the terms Itroﬁl Mongem sometimes is straightforwardly given as “biodiversidad,” that is, “biodiversity.” 36 See Grimaldo Rengifo, La Cultura Andina de la Biodiversidad (Lima: PRATEC, 1996). Similar beliefs about the deep inter-connectedness of human and non-human elements of our world are common among indigenous people elsewhere, of course, though always molded by the particular experiences that people have had in their speciﬁc environments. 37 See Eduardo Grillo, Caminos Andinos de Siempre (Lima: PRATEC, 1996). 38 For a critique of development efforts in Amazonia see Emilio F. Morán, Through Amazonian Eyes (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993). Extractivists are people whose livelihood depends on the collection of diverse nuts, fruits, roots, ﬁsh, and so on, found in their traditional environment. 39 Antonio Carlos Diegues, “Recycled Rain Forest Myths,” in David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus (eds), The World and the Wild (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001), pp. 155–70. Also see Ramachandra Guha, “Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique,” in Pierce and VanDeVeer, People, Penguins and Plastic Trees, pp. 358–66, for a critique of the misapplication of North American ways of protecting natural spaces in developing countries. Also see Chapter 9 for a discussion of how it may make sense to include traditional residents in parks.

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through social environmental movements, which have been dubbed “social ecologism.”40 Rubber-tappers, artisanal ﬁshers and indigenous people have joined together in organizations which demand that they not be denied access to their traditional territories. In some places they have gone as far as to establish their own “zoning” practices, requiring differentiated uses of the lakes in their region.41 Their aim is to protect their communities, which they perceive as intertwined with their natural environments, so as to retain their physical/economic self-sufﬁciency and cultural autonomy, which would be threatened if they were forcibly moved outside their traditional territories. This situation is comparable to that experienced by diverse groups in Mexico. Located in an area denuded of their millennial tropical forests in the state of Veracruz, where almost all land has been turned over to pasture and monocultures due to a mistaken model of modernization,42 the Totonac people have provided researchers with a persuasive model of sustainability.43 The Totonac perceive themselves as the guardians of the remaining islands of original rainforest in the area. They recently became known for a signiﬁcant cultural revival,44 which has led to a strong reafﬁrmation of traditional values, all the while accompanied by the adoption of modern organizing strategies applied to achieve strengthened self-determination for their community in the face of powerful integrative state policies (aimed at depriving indigenous people of visibility as Native or autochthonous).45 While achieving food and energy self-sufﬁciency, and bringing in satisfactory incomes, the Totonac multiple-use approach to land also allows for the ﬂourishing and use of 355 diverse species of plants, animals and mushrooms in their area.46 This shows that their traditional practices, supported by the will to resist new industrial approaches to land use (while, however, ready to adopt new techniques of social action), and a commitment to the autonomy of their community, can lead to a revitalization of both the human and the non-human parts of the community.

40 Diegues, “Recycled Rain Forest Myths,” p. 165. 41 Ibid. 42 Also see Vandana Shiva, “Development, Ecology, and Women,” in Staying Alive (London: Zed Books, 1988), pp. 1–13, on “maldevelopment,” a process that destroys instead of supporting the bases for sustainable livelihoods of communities. 43 Víctor M. Toledo, “Biodiversity Islands in a Sea of Pasturelands: Indigenous Resource Management in the Humid Tropics of Mexico,” Etnoecológica, 2, 3 (April 1994) . 44 Albert L. Wahrhaftig and Bruce (Pacho) Lane, “Totonac Cultural Revitalization: An Alternative to the Zapatistas,” originally presented at Annual Meeting of the Western Social Science Association, American Indian Studies Section, Oakland, California, 29 April 1995 (accessed August 2005). Also see Guillermo Bonﬁl Batalla, México Profundo: Una Civilización Negada (Mexico: GrijalboConsejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1990). 45 Autochthonous people are those “held to have sprung from the ground” they inhabit (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, 1980). 46 Toledo, “Biodiversity Islands.”

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The implicit environmental ethic of care for the natural environment found in Totonac traditional practices is not an isolated case. This story is repeated many times over among rural communities in Latin America. Especially impressive is the case of the Chimalapas, who, located in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, ﬁght against powerful outside logging interests to maintain some of the last tropical forests in Mexico. Their aim similarly is to continue with their traditional way of life, which largely depends on the biological diversity only present in their native forest.47 Another example comes from the highlands people of the Huatulco area, recently studied by Barkin. His study was about the participation of indigenous people and other campesinos in innovative new planning for environmental restoration with an outside group and the application of traditional ways of water management. Traditional water “harvesting” techniques primarily consist in contour terracing, check dams and bordered gardens. Contour terracing, which is the most common form of traditional water management, is achieved with low stone structures placed along the contours of hillsides so as to catch rain runoff.48 Barkin’s study in the Huatulco area showed that the reintroduction of these water production regimes serves to restore the environmental integrity of the region, increasingly denuded of forests, while also reafﬁrming the communities’ identities and raising incomes that make it possible for people to remain in the area instead of outmigrating to cities.49 Also relevant is the environmental practice of urban groups in various countries in Latin America who, in the face of neglect by the responsible authorities, take the initiative to plant trees on trafﬁc islands and along streets, and to establish green spaces on their own.50 The necessity of strategies: resistance and autonomy The common thread among these cases is that they all illustrate the importance of recognizing a deep, everyday, interdependence between human beings and their communities, on the one hand, and natural environments, on the other. They point toward the idea that the natural environment, which sustains human livelihoods, is, or should be, considered part of the community. I take note that several Latin American environmental theoreticians also emphasize that environmentally appropriate ways of living demand strategies for achieving autonomy and of resistance to the present globalizing socio-economic forces.51

47 ; also see . 48 Manuel Anaya Garduño, “Ancient And Contemporary Water Catchment Systems In Mexico” . 49 David Barkin, “Water and Forests as Instruments for Sustainable Regional Development,” International Journal Water, 1, 1 (2000). 50 I observed such practices in neighborhoods in Neuquén, Patagonia, in 1999. 51 The meaning of the terms “modernization” and “globalization” constitutes contested territory, of course. Sufﬁce it to say that I understand by these terms certain approaches to the generation of goods for human beings that are dependent on a certain complex of techniques and tools such as capital, synthetic ingredients (such as pesticides and fertilizers), reliance on

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Roberto P. Guimarães speaks of environmentalism in the last ﬁfty years as a form of “resistance to the modernity ‘of consumerism’.” Guimarães is careful to point out, however, that it is not a question of joining or not joining in the processes of modernization, but, rather, of deciding “which sort of insertion [into the globalized economy] is convenient to us, which sort of insertion allows us to take control of growth on a national level and which sort of insertion allows us to maintain our cultural identity, social cohesion and environmental integrity in our countries.”52 Toledo, similarly, points out that “in Mexico, as in the rest of the world, rural communities are permanently under siege by the destructive forces of a ‘modernizing development’ (based on the destruction of nature and of the community and the consecration of the individualist interest) …”53 Consequently, Toledo includes selfsufﬁciency in his description of the nine principles that may lead to sustainability in campesino and indigenous communities.54 Insofar as, according to Toledo’s analysis, what is threatened by unsustainable practices is the human community as well as their environment (and not just a separable entity called the “natural environment”), a sophisticated strategy of resistance to shield both human beings and their environments to external domination, and an innovative approach aimed at autonomy, are called for. In agreement with Leff and Toledo, David Barkin shows that in the rural areas of Mexico biodiversity and sustainability of the natural environment are directly dependent on the degree of autonomy of communities of indigenous people and other campesinos. Consequently, he proposes that “it may be possible and necessary to promote a new form of local autonomy: a social structure that allows people to rebuild their rural societies, produce goods and services in a sustainable fashion while expanding the environmental stewardship services they have always provided.”55 The Environmental Ethic of Community, Resistance and Autonomy Latin America While in some senses the conditions generating attitudes toward the environment that favor sustainability in Latin America and in the North are similar, in other the demand of remote markets, introduction of exotic (even genetically modiﬁed) species, large-scale irrigation, absenteeist property management, and so on. 52 Roberto P. Guimarães, “Aspectos Políticos y Éticos de la Sustentabilidad y su Signiﬁcado para la Formulación de Políticas de Desarrollo,” Persona y Sociedad, 13, 1 (1999), pp. 157–83, emphases added, p. 160. 53 Victor M. Toledo, “Principios Etnoecológicos para el Desarrollo Sustentable de Comunidades Campesinas e Indígenas,” in Documentos Red Latino Americana y Caribeña de Ecología Social ; reproduced with modiﬁcations from Temas Clave, CLAES, 4 (August 1996), p. 2. 54 Toledo, “Principios,” in Documentos, p. 1. Other principles listed by Toledo include diversity, equity and economic justice, as well as the integration of practices with landscape units and natural cycles. 55 David Barkin, “Sustainability: The Political Economy of Autonomous Development,” Organization and Environment, 11, 1 (March 1998), pp. 5–32, p. 1.

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respects they are not. A majority of the populations of the North have been subjected to increasing levels of contaminants, and have been deprived of access to relatively untouched natural spaces, just as Latin American populations. Nonetheless, with the exception of Native peoples, certain visible minorities and impoverished sectors, people of the North have not had certain crucial experiences that people in Latin America have: the expropriation and exploitation of ancestral lands, on which they relied for their livelihood; the sudden exposure to the full force of global markets with no effective tools to counter the impacts; subjection to the full intensity of industrial contaminants with no, or very limited, legal restrictions enforced; or the experience of the hazards of rapid urban growth unsupported by adequate infrastructure and regulations. These facts explain why, to some Latin Americans, the degradation in their natural environment seems not so much a result of anthropocentrism (as some might suppose) as the consequence of the actions and attitudes of particular wellpositioned individuals and corporations, who fail to consider the effects of their actions on the human-environmental communities affected. So, even if there are ethicists and activists in Latin America that echo the debates, current in the North, between anthropocentrists and non-anthropocentrists, or between individualist and holist ethics, the focus often, as we have seen, is elsewhere. People from Native as well as of other environmentally stressed sectors of society, ranging from the Mapuche of southern Patagonia to the Zapatistas of Chiapas, from the extractivists of Amazonia to farm workers in northern Mexico, have declared the importance of maintaining their identities as members of particular communities, the rightness of resistance, and the urgency of recovering their autonomy in the face of the degradation of their natural environments. I shall not claim that the themes of community, resistance and autonomy are exhaustive of environmental ethics in Latin America, but they represent it in an important way and may be said to be characteristic of it. So, if we compare the Latin American environmental discourse surveyed with its northern counterpart, we can observe certain important differences. As noted, community often is deﬁned as inclusive of the natural environment in which people traditionally live and ﬁnd their livelihoods. Consequently, rather than a concern for the natural environment as distinct from human beings, value is attributed to hybrid communities made up of both human beings and their environments.56 Instead of a search for a new ethic to deal with the drastic and ever-accelerating degradation of conditions in their natural environment, we mostly ﬁnd a reassertion and progressive elaboration of traditional values, favoring precisely the ﬂourishing of the hybrid communities described, and a commitment to resist anything that might undermine the basic constituents of their societies.57 There may be resistance, 56 Edward Butterworth has reminded me that very similar ways of thinking developed in the interior of British Columbia in the 1980s, later summed up in the notion of bioregionalism which was conceived as “watershed democracy,” that is, local control of local resources for local uses. 57 I am indebted to Barkin, correspondence (13 February 2002), for ways of expressing these ideas here.

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for example, to giving a purely utilitarian market value to the natural environment (or to the people who inhabit it). Resistance may be directed against both corporate and state representatives, who, committed to unlimited growth in proﬁts or revenues, seem not to understand the complexities of hybrid human-environment spaces, and thereby threaten their communities. Moreover, instead of singling out the protection of species, or ecosystems, or landscapes as the primary aim of environmental ethics and morality, as is common in the mainstream Northern context, we ﬁnd that the overall objective may be strengthening the community’s autonomy and self-sufﬁciency over against outside forces, represented by large-scale commercial or government entities. The autonomy pursued tends to be such as would allow for the continued ﬂourishing of the longstanding mixed ecologies in which people live (or in which they lived until recently). An environmental ethic is expressed through a way of life or practice, which directly or indirectly takes into consideration the natural environment or certain parts of it.58 So, insofar as I have described a way of life that values the natural environment qua crucial component of hybrid (human-environmental) communities, we can speak of an environmental ethic. Moreover, insofar as the societies under discussion seek to resist the erosion of this value, and hold as an objective the autonomy and ﬂourishing of their hybrid communities, we may think of this as an environmental ethic with a certain complexity. Elsewhere If we ask the question whether the type of environmental ethic pointed at by the themes of community, resistance and autonomy has counterparts within a broader, inter-cultural context, we may note that it does ﬁnd echoes in certain relatively similar communities outside Latin America. In India, for example, there has been a strong reaction to the creation of national parks that exclude the resident people, and resistance to the suppression of indigenous peoples’ traditional forest uses through the intrusion of industrial forestry into their lands.59 The result has been a mobilization for the preservation of local people’s interest in their lands, epitomized by the Chipko women’s movement. Their example has spawned a wider movement 58 As pointed out in above, in Note 1 of this chapter, I distinguish “ethics” from “ethic,” supposing the latter to be a synonym of morality. Moreover, as proposed in Chapter 2, ethics is the study of morality, which itself is constituted by the ways of acting and feeling that are perceived to be normatively loaded in terms of right and wrong, or good and bad. An ethic or morality, moreover, is the result and expression of certain experiences, of the development of particular relationships, and of the dialectic resulting from simultaneous commitment to, and critique of, one’s community’s (at least tacitly) agreed upon values. I understand an environmental ethic or morality as an ethic or morality in the context of the natural environment. 59 Regarding the displacement of resident peoples from areas where parks are to be created see, for example, Shirir R. Raval, “The Gir National Park and the Maldharis: Beyond ‘Setting Aside,’” in P.C. West and S.R. Brechin, Resident Peoples and National Parks: Social dilemmas and strategies in international conservation (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991).

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aptly known as “social ecology,” which precisely propounds the importance of protecting human communities with their environments.60 In the North, of late, there is a new turning-away in theory and action from a search for the prime culprit for environmental degradation (anthropocentrism or individualistic ethics, for example) toward an approach that takes note of the communities that are actors and resisters in the process of environmental degradation. This sort of approach has its theoretical forerunner in Murray Bookchin’s theory of social ecology, which, as noted above, argues that generalized oppressive structures are the culprits of environmental degradation, and not anthropocentrism or individualistic ethics per se.61 More recently this thesis has taken a more concrete form through the focus on environmental justice and environmental racism. As Eugene Hargrove has said, the North American “environmental ethics literature, for the most part, reﬂects [North American] environmentalist concerns, and these have not included concerns for human welfare.”62 Now, however, there are a number of voices, primarily from minority populations in the U.S., that call for an alliance between those who oppose the oppression of human beings and those that oppose the degradation of the environments that they inhabit.63 Typically people from African-American and Hispanic communities have begun developing practices of resistance to the mostly corporate, entrepreneurial forces that impose environmental burdens jointly on people and land. In California’s Kettleman City, for example, the Latino/a community struggled to prevent the construction of a hazardous waste incinerator; Cesar Chávez’s union fought against the use of DDT and other poisons on table grapes, which were affecting the health of farm workers and their communities; the Madres del Este de Los Angeles fought plans for the placement of an oil pipeline through their community; and the Chicano farmers of Colorado’s San Luis Valley fought the clearcutting of their watershed.64 These struggles are fair reﬂections of the views held by the Latino/a population, at least in California. This was conﬁrmed by a poll in 2001, which determined that Latino/a people are signiﬁcantly more concerned about

60 See Sahotra Sarkar, “Restoring Wilderness or Reclaiming Forests?,” in Rothenberg and Ulvaeus, The World and the Wild, pp. 37–55. Obviously, there are theoretical similarities, as well as differences, among the various perspectives represented by the term “social ecology” in Latin America, India and North America. They cannot be disentangled here, though. 61 Murray Bookchin, “What is Social Ecology?,” in M.E. Zimmerman (ed.), Environmental Philosophy: From animal rights to radical ecology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993); Toward an Ecological Society (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1980). Also of interest in this context is Bryan G. Norton, “Environmental Ethics and Weak Anthropocentrism,” in Pierce and VanDeVeer, People, Penguins and Plastic Trees, pp. 82–92. 62 Eugene Hargrove, “Foreword,” in Laura Westra and Bill E. Lawson (eds), Faces of Environmental Racism, 2nd edn (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld, 2001), pp. ix–xiii, p. ix. 63 See, for example, Laura Westra and Bill E. Lawson, “Introduction,” in Westra and Lawson, Faces of Environmental Racism, pp. xvii–xxvi, and passim. 64 Robert Melchior Figueroa, “Other Faces: Latinos and Environmental Justice,” in Westra and Lawson, Faces of Environmental Racism, pp. 67–84.

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environmental issues than the rest of the voters in that state. These are the seeds of a wider environmental practice and ethic focused on community. Just as in Latin America and in India, the ethic at issue concerns people-in-their-environment, not human beings considered separate from the environment.66 Given this brief overview, one may say that an environmental ethic focused on the themes of community, resistance and autonomy indeed also has counterparts outside Latin America. Conclusion: Environmental Ethics and the Role of Culture Ethnoecology points toward the importance of a particular kind of knowledge, namely, knowledge of the manner in which people and their natural environments may be integrated in sustainable ways of living. Social ecology argues for the necessity of resisting external domination of human communities and their natural spaces. Liberation/restorative ecology proposes that human beings and nature may come to ﬂourish fully through the restoration of a qualitatively different relationship to each other. Ultimately, in Latin America, spokespersons from the ﬁelds of ethnoecology, social ecology and liberation/restorative ecology converge with the perspectives inherent in the practices of many (mostly Native) populations of Latin American societies, ranging from the Mapuche of southern Patagonia to the extractivists and Natives of Amazonia and the Totonac of Mexico. These populations insist on the importance of maintaining their cultural identities as members of particular communities which incorporate the natural environment, as well as human beings, in an important way. They also realize the importance of strategies of resistance, and the urgency of acquiring and maintaining autonomy, in the face of the powerful modernizing and globalizing tendencies of advanced capitalism. The theoretical approaches sampled, as well as the accounts of sustainable practices and belief systems drawn from Latin American populations, point to a model for the generation of sustainability that, through particular ways of living, also entails an implicit environmental ethic of care for the natural environment. What can we learn from this ethic? Perhaps that thinking of the natural environment as distinct from people is the result of privilege and alienation. That is, on the one hand, the habit of thinking of nature as separate from human beings might have to do with the privilege of living at arm’s length from environmental degradation, such that the condition of the natural environment does not constitute a direct, vital concern. On the other hand, it may have to do with psychological alienation from nature. The thought that nature needs to be conceived separately from human beings may 65 See Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, Environmental Attitudes Among California Voters with a Special Analysis of Environmental Attitudes Among Latino Voters and Voters of Color (Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, May 2001). 66 Also relevant are the environmental practices and implicit ethics of Native people in North America. See, for example, Dennis Martinez, “First People – Firsthand Knowledge,” Chapter 5.2 in OLIFE, Can We Restore Paradise? , reprinted with changes from International Journal of Ecoforestry, 12, 3 (1997).

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be based on the supposition that nature can be fully itself only if human beings are absent. Coming to see environmental ethics, as well as environmental morality, as a matter of ﬁnding our place in the hybrid communities made up of human beings and nature may perhaps lead to a way of living that treads softly on nature wherever it is, be it in the nature reserve, the corn ﬁeld, or the back-street lane, while, at the same time, perceiving nature as our home. On the view outlined, sustainable ways of living are not determined simply by propitious physical or socio-economic conditions, nor are they guaranteed to arise or be maintained even if some individuals are personally committed to naturerespectful ethical principles. Rather, while physical and socio-economic conditions are relevant factors, as is the presence of individuals with a deﬁnite commitment to act on the basis of a nature-respectful conception of morality, neither may be sufﬁcient in the factors, as is the presence of individuals with a deﬁnite commitment to act on the basis of a nature-respectful conception of morality, but neither may be sufﬁcient in the presence of contemporary pressures from modernizing and globalizing forces. The working hypothesis that I obtain from this analysis is that certain cultural matrices, which guide everyday life and integrate nature and human beings in a community, are the crucial conditions for sustainability.67 In this sense, the approaches and cases from Latin America sampled point toward feasible models for the development of environmental morality and environmental ethics that also may be of relevance in our own Northern societies.68

67 This points toward the importance of the exploration of what we may call “cultures of nature,” that is, patterns of thought and ways of acting that allow the inherent qualities of natural things to ﬂourish. See Chapter 9. 68 I am indebted to numerous correspondents from Latin America and Spain who made suggestions on avenues to explore the topic of this chapter. For illuminating comments, I am indebted to Felipe Mansilla, Henri Acselrad, Eduardo Gudynas, Alan Holland, two anonymous referees of Environmental Values, and especially to David Barkin, Víctor Toledo and Antonio Elizalde. I also thank Edward Butterworth for an attentive reading of this text and diverse suggestions on how to improve it. Environment and Culture in Latin America: Community, Autonomy and Resistance is a signiﬁcantly modiﬁed version of two papers: “Themes in Latin American Environmental Ethics: Community, Resistance and Autonomy,” Environmental Values 13 (2), (May 2004), 223–42; and “Sustainability, Culture and Ethics: Models from Latin America,” Ethics, Place and Environment, Vol. 8, No. 2 (June 2005), 223–34.

PART II Appreciating Nature In Part I, the general focus was on environmental ethics, the signiﬁcance of the encounter with nature for the development of environmental conscience, the possibilities for environmental ethics at the workplace, and on models of sustainability from Latin America. In Part II, we explore various ways in which the encounter with nature through its aesthetic appreciation may contribute to an environmentally aware and benign culture. Chapter 5 is intended to lay out a general schema for aesthetic appreciation of nature. In it I propose that, since what is really important in aesthetic appreciation is to closely attend to things and to do so in non-instrumental ways, any story or account that facilitates our attention to natural things for themselves is relevant. Consequently non-scientiﬁc accounts may function as appropriately as scientiﬁc accounts to guide us in the aesthetic appreciation of nature. Although each of the three chapters that follow have their own topic area, they may also be seen as applications of the general principle developed in Chapter 5. In Chapter 6, I explore an understanding of the wandering practice of the Japanese haiku poet Bashō. This poet is known for his aesthetic sensitivity to plants, birds, landscapes, and nature in general. Bashō laid out the basis of an aesthetics of wandering in nature that directly implicates the cultural background of his time and society. In this way he sets an example of the way in which the encounter with nature can be generative of new aesthetic perceptions, rendered through his poems and prose writing, while at the same time showing how a certain cultural background can prepare us for the appreciation of the natural environment that we may encounter. Chapters 7 and 8 both contain personal reﬂections on the aesthetic encounter with cultural goods that have a direct relation with the natural spaces that surround them. I include them here as illustrations of the idea that culture and nature are not necessarily antagonistic to each other, and that the aesthetic appreciation of cultural goods located out of doors, such as site-speciﬁc installations, may contribute to the development of environmental conscience. In Chapter 7, the focus is on sites with indigenous paintings and engravings on rock (rock art), which serve as the occasion for a discussion of how aesthetic appreciation of this kind of cultural phenomenon also is an appreciation of the environing natural landscape. In Chapter 8, I reﬂect on the idea of reclaiming mining sites (or other environmentally degraded sites) by turning them into site-speciﬁc installations that proclaim the difference between the natural and the artefactual. The notion that cultural goods may lead us toward an appreciation of and respect for natural goods, as has been discussed in the chapters of this part of the book leads us into the third part of the book which is focused more directly on nature and culture.

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Chapter 5

Aesthetic Appreciation and the Many Stories about Nature Until recently, most reﬂection on the natural environment has been in environmental ethics, while environmental aesthetics has been relatively neglected. A strong case can be made, however, for the view that our attitudes toward the natural environment largely are modulated by way of our capacity for appreciation of nature, which speaks for the importance of environmental aesthetics. Fortunately, environmental aesthetics has seen considerable development in the last twenty years.1 Although there is a great variety of views among those who have written in this area of research, the claim that natural science (and its common-sense predecessors and analogs2) does or should provide the primary account or story informing our aesthetic appreciation of nature,3 has received most of the attention.4 In this chapter I show that there are important problems with this claim. I propose that there are good reasons for believing that aesthetic appreciation does and should beneﬁt from

1 See, for example, the special issue on environmental aesthetics of Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56, 2 (Spring 1998), edited by Arnold Berleant and Allen Carlson, Chapters 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13 of which are reprinted in Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant, The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2004). See, moreover, the “Symposium: Natural Aesthetics,” edited by Stan Godlovitch, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 33, 3 (Fall 1999), Chapter 12 of which also is reprinted in Carlson and Berleant. Also see Martin Seel, Eine Ästhetik der Natur (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996); Martin Seel, “Ästhetische Argumente in der Ethik der Natur,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 39 (1991), pp. 901–13 (English trans. “Aesthetic Arguments in the Ethics of Nature,” Thesis Eleven, 32 (1992), pp. 76–90); and Gernot Böhme, “An Aesthetic Theory of Nature: An Interim Report,” Thesis Eleven, 31 (1992), pp. 90–102. 2 In the following I will focus on the role that Carlson grants scientiﬁc knowledge, largely leaving aside the function of “its predecessors and analogs,” since Carlson only grants the latter a “second-best” role in appropriate aesthetic appreciation of nature. In any case, to suppose that common sense endorses scientiﬁc approaches to the aesthetic appreciation of natural phenomena is problematic since what is “common sense” to people from one society may not make any sense at all to people from another. 3 I here adopt Carlson’s use of the term “story” as a neutral way of making reference to the diverse accounts that might guide our aesthetic appreciation. This is not to denote any prejudice either in favor of “stories” in the literary sense nor against unadorned, prose scientiﬁc reporting. 4 Especially see Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), Chapter 4 of which is reprinted in Carlson and Berleant, Aesthetics of Natural Environments, as Chapter 12.

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a great many diverse stories, as gathered by people from a great variety of walks of life and cultures.5 In the following, I begin by laying out the case for taking our cue from natural science in our aesthetic appreciation of nature. Next, I point out problems with respect to this approach. After this, I make the case for a plurality of stories as the basis for aesthetic appreciation, and conclude that such an approach may well be more effective in drawing considerate attention to nature’s diverse splendors. The Case for the Priority of the Scientiﬁc Story Allen Carlson has proposed that aesthetic appreciation involves a kind of “sizing up,”6 and, hence, requires knowledge of the thing to be appreciated. So, appreciation of works from the contemporary art scene would be malfounded if, out of ignorance, they were appreciated as works from the Renaissance are, since the respective works are intended to be differently appreciated. Carlson proposes that the remedy for this situation is art history, since it gives us insight into the various aims and intentions presumably expressed in the diversity of artworks. In the case of nature, though, aesthetic appreciation cannot be based on an understanding of aims and intentions expressed since nature is not the result of artistic design. To understand what it is to appreciate nature aesthetically, Carlson asks us to consider certain avant-garde and anti-art works, such as Jackson Pollock’s dripped paintings, or chance poetry, which, similarly to the natural world, are not the result of artistic design. Carlson’s suggestion is that in those cases, as well as in the case of nature, the object of our aesthetic appreciation is the order exhibited.7 In the case of these avant-garde and anti-art works, our appreciation is guided by knowledge of “the story” behind the artwork, that is, by an account of how the artist 5 In this chapter I focus on Carlson’s “Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature,” in Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (eds), Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 199–227, reprinted in Carlson’s Aesthetics and the Environment, pp. 102–25. Other relevant discussions of aesthetic appreciation of nature include Noël Carroll’s “On Being Moved by Nature: Between Religion and Natural History,” also reprinted in Carlson and Berleant, Aesthetics of Natural Environments, as Chapter 4, and Malcolm Budd, “The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 36, 3 (July 1996), pp. 207–22. Carrol shares my concern with alternative (natural science– independent) bases for the appreciation of nature by developing an account that focuses on our capacity to become emotionally moved by nature. Budd’s discussion is primarily directed at an analysis of what is meant by the aesthetic appreciation of nature, while leaving open the cognitive basis on which one may come to this appreciation. Since these papers are only peripherally relevant to my concerns I will not discuss them here further. 6 See, for example, Allen Carlson, “Nature, Aesthetic Appreciation, and Knowledge,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 53, 4 (Fall 1995), p. 396 and passim. 7 As Tony Berger (in correspondence, 13 February 2006) has pointed out, if we are going to appreciate nature for what it is, we also need to be able to appreciate the lack of order, in the sense of the lack of a regular pattern, in many natural phenomena. Berger’s point is worth reﬂecting on since it indicates that Carlson probably has something more general in mind than regularity in pattern when he makes reference to order.

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has chosen a particular technique or circumstance to generate the order appreciable in the work. Carlson proposes that in the case of nature we analogously do and should look for the story behind its generation, and that the proper story in this case is provided by natural science (or, less ideally, by its common-sense predecessors and analogues). He concludes that, consequently, for proper aesthetic appreciation of nature we should have scientiﬁc knowledge of its etiology. In the following section I identify problems with three aspects of Carlson’s proposal. First, I question the supposition that knowing the etiology either of an artwork or of an aspect of nature is necessary or sufﬁcient for their respective aesthetic appreciation. Second, I point out that in many cases scientiﬁc knowledge may be neutral, or even harmful, for our aesthetic appreciation of nature, because it directs our attention to the theoretical level and the general case, diverting us from the personal level and the particular case. Third, I note that importing the categories of science into aesthetic appreciation of nature may constitute a hindrance to our capacity for discovery, through aesthetic appreciation, of what nature is. Problems Regarding Etiology, Theory and Categories Etiologies and aesthetic appreciation Directing ourselves, ﬁrst of all, to Carlson’s analysis of our intercourse with artworks, we may ask whether, generally speaking, art history indeed is the basis for their proper aesthetic appreciation. Even if art history may be a useful tool for individuals who frequent art museums to orient themselves amid a plethora of diverse styles and periods, since it provides the viewer with more or less ready-made categories into which one can place the works on display, aesthetic appreciation neither requires nor is exhausted by art historical classiﬁcation. That is, if appreciation is a form of “sizing up,” as Carlson suggests, then in appreciation we should like to ask whether a particular piece has certain strengths due to the organization of its parts that other works do not, whether it is innovative in important respects, what gives it its aesthetic appeal and power in the context of the artist’s oeuvre, and so on. No ready-made art history, however, will be able to supply these tools for appreciation, which, arguably, can only be acquired through lengthy, searching exposure to many works; continuous conversation with others about suitable criteria for evaluation; personal reﬂection on the signiﬁcance of the work’s style, execution, personal impact, and so on. The insufﬁciency of art history to direct proper aesthetic appreciation of artworks is particularly evident once we move into the contemporary art scene for which no art historical guide is available. In these latter circumstances it should quickly become evident that art history can only provide criteria for conservatism in art; truly innovative works precisely fall outside the ken of criteria developed with the aid of art history. This was true, for example, when avant-garde and anti-art works ﬁrst collided with the established art world. On Carlson’s account, art history is to help us in aesthetic appreciation by providing us with etiologies, and therefore providing those works with a framework of some sort. That is, knowledge of the aims of the avant-garde and anti-art movements may

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help us understand why their products ﬁt so strangely next to their predecessors in art history. But, from a more fundamental perspective, etiologies by themselves would be supremely useless; the fundamental feature in aesthetic appreciation surely is attentive experience of the thing to be appreciated, and such experience may not be necessarily furthered through etiology.8 For instance, even if through knowledge of their etiologies we may be able to make sense of the peculiar look of Pollock’s paintings or of odd juxtapositions in surrealist chance poetry, these works, insofar as aesthetically appreciable, really require to be attentively heard and seen, respectively. To worry about how they came about is like reading the label of origin on a bottle of wine, or the biographical note on the wall next to a painting in an art museum: it puts things in context, but surely is secondary to properly experiencing the thing (the wine or the sculpture). If we now consider the case of nature, we may note that having knowledge of the etiology of some natural object, site or event, similarly may be a convenient way to put things into a comprehensible framework. Knowing that arbutus trees (arbutus menziesii), endemic to the north-west Paciﬁc coast, are related to the heather bush (calluna vulgaris) through their common family (Ericaceae) may give me a sense of how diversity in environments can engender diversity in speciation, but surely is not a necessary nor a sufﬁcient condition for their proper aesthetic appreciation. In other words, I may be able to enjoy quite thoroughly a local stand of arbutus and garry oak trees (quercus garryana) located in a camas (camassia quamash) meadow without needing to know their evolutionary history, their taxonomic nomenclature, or even their individual developmental story. In fact, my appreciation of their special virtues, such as the sensuously skin-like, red-green trunks of the arbutus trees, or the weathered looking, ridged and scaly trunks of the garry oak trees, may be hampered if I am preoccupied with either their evolutionary or their more proximate natural history. Just as the aesthetic appreciation of the painting or the wine primarily require that I attend to what I am now presented with (certain paint marks on a ﬂat surface, and certain ﬂavors, colors and odors in the vinous liquid, respectively), so the aesthetic appreciation of the stand of trees demands that I mainly focus on what now is present to me while attending to the trees. Abstract theory vs. the concrete particular More generally, even if in some circumstances scientiﬁc knowledge may be helpful in the aesthetic appreciation of nature, in others it may be neutral or even harmful. While walking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon from its rim, knowledge of geology may be helpful to our aesthetic appreciation if it makes us focus with attention on the various visible strata uncovered by the river’s action throughout the ages. Such 8 See the debates on the value of biographical and historical information for the interpretation of artworks surrounding the “intentional fallacy.” For example, William K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Monroe C. Beardsley, The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1954), pp. 3–18; Jerrold Levinson, “Messages in Art,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 73, 2 (June 2005), pp. 189–203.

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knowledge may serve a similar function to the role played by knowledge of the manner in which layering of paint on a canvas generates certain distinguishable coloring effects in a de Kooning painting, or of the manner in which layering of plot lines in a novel generates certain noticeable dramatic effects. But in some other circumstances scientiﬁc knowledge will be quite irrelevant or even harmful. For instance, to know that water has been chemically identiﬁed as made up of molecules composed of two positively charged hydrogen atoms and one negatively charged oxygen atom likely has no impact on my aesthetic appreciation of great expanses and depths of the stuff, while I sit at the Vancouver Island shores of the Juan de Fuca Strait gazing across to the Olympic Mountains. And, if my cognizance of geology, chemistry, or botany were to lead me to really focus on, for example, seeking appropriate scientiﬁc classiﬁcations for the Olympic Mountains, the watery expanse, or the arbutus tree I sit beneath, diverting my attention from the natural objects and sites concretely at hand, such knowledge should be considered harmful to my aesthetic appreciation of the natural environment in which I am immersed.9 The trouble with using scientiﬁc knowledge as a guide in these circumstances may be partly due to the fact that scientiﬁc knowledge characteristically draws our attention to the theoretical level, pretending to encompass all things of a certain kind. So, what we learn about arbutus trees from natural science is (supposed to be) true of arbutus trees in general. This perspective may draw me away from taking note of the concrete character of the particular thing I seek to appreciate aesthetically: It is myself standing in front of this arbutus tree who now experiences it as sensuous and sinuous.10 And it is on the basis of that very particular, concrete experience that I come to an appreciation of this tree here. Only subsequently may it be relevant that some of the features found in this particular tree similarly are represented in other arbutus trees.

9 The importance of “participatory immersion” in the environment is stressed by Arnold Berleant in the The Aesthetics of Environment (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992), and in his Living in the Landscape: Towards an Aesthetics of Environment (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1997). 10 See Cheryl Foster, “The Narrative and Ambient in Environmental Aesthetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56 (1988), pp. 127–37, reprinted in Carlson and Berleant, Aesthetics of Natural Environments, as Chapter 11, who argues against the “narrative,” or theory-mediated, and for the “ambient,” or direct experiential dimension of aesthetic appreciation. Also see Holmes Rolston III, “Does Aesthetic Appreciation of Landscapes Need to be Science–Based?,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 35, 4 (October 1995), pp. 374–86, who agrees that there is an important “participatory” element in aesthetic appreciation of at least one part of nature, landscapes, but falls in with Carlson in attributing to natural science the role of primary guide. He, like Carlson, overlooks the possible irrelevance or counterproductivity that a ﬁxation on natural science in aesthetic appreciation may entail. Also relevant is Holmes Rolston III, “The Aesthetic Experience of Forests,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56 (1988), pp. 157–66, reprinted in Carlson and Berleant as Chapter 10.

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Categories and discovery This leads to another problem with Carlson’s proposal. Carlson claims that we need the categories derived from science, and its common-sense predecessors and analogs, in order to properly perceive and appreciate nature. Part of Carlson’s emphasis on the importance of science for aesthetic appreciation derives from his conviction that science “is the paradigm of that which reveals objects for what they are and with the properties they have.”11 What Carlson seems to overlook is that aesthetic appreciation is also a sui generis way of coming to know what things are. In other words, it is a form of discovery that can break the mold of previously taken-forgranted categories and beliefs. And, insofar as it is discovery of what nature is that we aim at in aesthetic appreciation, it may be counterproductive to overly rely on any set categories, be they scientiﬁc or other. In the following section I propose that we do not limit our possibilities of discovery of nature by the categories of natural science and its predecessors and analogs, but that we consider a diversity of stories or accounts as our guides in its aesthetic appreciation.12 The Many Stories and Our Appreciative Capacities Carlson quite correctly points out that aesthetic appreciation requires engagement. As just discussed we may ask, though, if theoretical knowledge, as offered by science for example, is or should be a primary component of such engagement and, hence, appreciation. Clearly, certain objects of aesthetic appreciation, such as Rembrandt’s miniature etchings, primarily call for sensitive sensory attention more than any particular knowledge. Similarly, some works, such as musical works intended to evoke places or seasons, and all literary creations, probably require generous doses of imagination more than anything else. So, if aesthetic appreciation entails meaningfully engaging a natural object, site, or event then some other ingredients besides theoretical knowledge, namely a keen capacity for sensory attention and an unprejudiced, agile imagination may be of great importance.13 11 Carlson in Kemal and Gaskell, Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, p. 219. 12 Carlson, by the way, is only concerned with the contributions to aesthetic appreciation supplied by natural science, which is curious since social and psychological science may have at least as much to tell us about aesthetic appreciation. After all, such appreciation is an activity that connects socially constituted beings to things in the physical world. Certainly appreciation is not something that each one of us re-invents de novo. Rather, there are cultural–social patterns in ways of aesthetic appreciation which vary from society to society. The appreciation of mountains and seascapes by Japanese people doubtless is different from that of Europeans or Canadians. Furthermore, there obviously is a (neuro-)psychological dimension to appreciation, as to any human activity. 13 See Emily Brady, “Imagination and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56 (1988), pp. 139–47, reprinted in Carlson and Berleant, Aesthetics of Natural Environments, as Chapter 8, who argues against a science-based and for science-unprejudiced, explorative approaches reliant on the natural, common faculties of perception and imagination.

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It is well-known that perceptual attention is prone to fatigue. For most individuals it becomes very difﬁcult to spend more than a few minutes looking at a painting, even if they expressly go to a gallery to view it. Furthermore, the number of people who show signs of boredom or sleepiness even while listening to concerts of compositions that they claim to value is considerable. There are very few among us, excepting the most experienced connoisseurs perhaps, moreover, who are able to maintain their attention on the bouquet of a particular wine after the ﬁrst few sips have been considered. All this poses a problem for aesthetic appreciation, both in the case of art and in the case of nature, since to make appropriate aesthetic assessments we likely require greater endurance than we can ordinarily offer. I propose that we may be able to extend our “aesthetic endurance,” if we may call it that, by enriching our aesthetic horizons, by increasing the contrast in our perceptual experience, and, generally, by enhancing the possibilities for the play of the imagination. One way of doing this is through coming to know a diversity of stories. In the following I discuss three sorts of stories: verbal artistic and verbal non-artistic, and non-verbal. Artistic stories and aesthetic community Nature is a term that covers a lot,14 but even if we restrict ourselves to landscapes there are countless accounts or stories that can and do guide us in our aesthetic appreciation of nature. We may consider, for example, the impact of the stories about the Canadian West told by Rudy Wiebe, or the story of Peter Handke’s visit to Mont Ste. Victoire.15 Visiting the Canadian West after reading Wiebe we may be able to ﬁnd aesthetic pleasure in traveling across the otherwise perhaps alien land, with its seemingly endless expanses of prairie grass and its so-called “badlands.” Visiting Mont Ste. Victoire after reading Handke’s account, itself inspired by Paul Cézanne’s countless painted renderings of the mountain, we may feel the invitation to scrutinize this mountain with some of the aesthetic enthusiasm for its craggy rocks that both of these artists felt for it. The artistic stories of our artists carry out an important service since aesthetic appreciation of nature often is much more accessible to the rest of us ordinary people if mediated by the stories of capable and experienced aesthetic appreciators. Their accounts also often strikingly are more capable of inspiring aesthetic appreciation than some of the relevant “scientiﬁc stories.” Compare, for example, the following summary geological description of the island of Santorini with the account of the same place given by the 20th century Greek poet George Seferis. Santorini, also anciently called Thera, is a volcanic island in the Aegean Sea which exploded at some point in time in the Minoan period. Some have identiﬁed it with Homer’s “Phaiakian land,” which to Odysseus “looked like a shield lying on 14 See Budd, “The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature,” for a listing. 15 See, for example, Rudy Wiebe, The Temptations of Big Bear (Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1976) and The Angel of the Tar Sands and Other Stories (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982); Peter Handke, “The Lesson of Sainte Victoire,” in Slow Homecoming, translated by Ralph Manheim (London: Methuen, 1985).

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the misty face of the water.” As a preface to his poem “Santorini” Seferis quotes Guide to Greece: “Thera geologically consists of pumice and china clay, and in its gulf … islands have appeared and disappeared.” This gives us a capsule account of the scientiﬁc information on this extraordinary island.17 Seferis’ preface continues quoting Guide to Greece which says that Santorini “was the center of an ancient cult in which lyric dances of solemn and austere rhythm, called gymnopaidia, were performed.”18 Seferis’ poem “Santorini” expresses his aesthetic appreciation for the island in the context of his appreciation for this ancient rhythm. Santorini Lean if you can toward the dark sea, forgetting the sound of a ﬂute above bare feet which trod in your sleep in that other sunken life. Write if you can on your last sherd the day, the name, the place, and throw it into the sea to sink. We found ourselves naked on the pumice seeing the islands breaking the surface, seeing the red islands sinking in their sleep, in our sleep. … 19

A visitor to the ﬂat surface on the promontory-peninsula on Santorini where the gymnopaidia dances possibly were performed will see a large expanse of sea below and surrounding her on all sides, except on the side that connects the peninsula to the rest of the half-volcano that remains since the island exploded. If she is knowledgeable in geology she might discover that it is a volcanic island consisting of pumice and china clay; this bit of knowledge may help her classify this part of nature of the island Santorini. I submit, however, that if she knows Seferis’ poem she will be much better equipped to appreciate aesthetically her natural surrounds.20 With regard to the stories of natural science, Carlson says that “They illuminate nature as ordered and in doing so give it meaning, signiﬁcance, and beauty – qualities those giving the stories ﬁnd aesthetically appealing.”21 I propose that having Seferis’ poem in mind while exploring Santorini also is a very fruitful way to “illuminate nature” so that we can perceive it as having “meaning, signiﬁcance, and beauty”: the 16 Homer, The Odyssey, R. Lattimore (trans.) (Harper and Row, 1967) Bk V, lines 280– 81, p. 95. 17 Of course, there is a lot more that could be said about Santorini from the standpoint of natural science. 18 George Seferis, Gymnopaidia, in Mythistorima and Gymnopaidia, translated by Mary Cooper Walton (Athens: Lycabettus Press, 1977), pp. 6–59, p. 61. 19 Seferis, “Santorini,” in Gymnopaidia, p. 63. 20 Furthermore, if the visitor knew Éric Satie’s musical piece Gymnopédies there would be a further level of appreciation added to her experience, which, albeit quite indirectly, might guide her to appreciate the natural features of the island in still another way. 21 Carlson in Kemal and Gaskell, Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, p. 221.

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sea may now be noticed as being dark and deep, echoing the Homeric “wine-dark seas”; the contrast between the worn character of the rocks on the ancient square, carrying the imprint of many generations of feet, and the sharp, rough rocks on the steep cliffs off the promontory may now be appreciated more readily; the precarious condition and ephemeral character of the small islands jutting out on the inside of the ancient caldera may now be recalled. Moreover, the poet’s perspective may provide us not only with a viewpoint to his appreciation of nature, but with a perspective on the appreciation of nature that the gymnopaidia dancers and their contemporaries may have had. He places us in a state of contemplation that may recreate some of their perceptions for us. Stories such as the one contained in Seferis’ poem widen our aesthetic horizon such that we enter into aesthetic community with aesthetic appreciators spanning time, and possibly reaching across cultures. In this way such stories may facilitate our later-coming aesthetic appreciation of nature. Non-artistic stories and perceptual salience There are many non-artistic accounts, originating in our various societies’ interactions with non-human nature that may guide us in our aesthetic appreciation.22 We may consider, for example, the Dreaming of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. The Dreaming is an account of the supernatural beings that inhabited and still are present in the Aboriginal peoples’ lands. These beings do not have an existence separate from nature but integrate it. One anthropologist puts it this way: … the isomorphic ﬁt between the natural and supernatural means that all nature is coded and charged by the sacred, while the sacred is everywhere within the physical landscape. Myths and mythic tracks cross over numerous tribal boundaries and over thousands of kilometres, and every particular form and feature of the terrain has a well-developed “story” behind it.23

This means that a stretch of land, which to an uninstructed person may appear nearly indistinguishable from the next, may contain great numbers of perceptually salient features in the eyes of a person knowledgeable of the Dreaming. We may take note, for example, of the Tjati (Red Lizard) story from Uluru (Ayers Rock): Tjati is a small, red lizard who lives on the mulga ﬂats. In the creation period he travelled to Uluru past Atila. When Tjati threw his kali, a curved throwing stick, it embedded itself in the rock face of Uluru. Tjati scooped with his hands into the rock face to retrieve the kali, leaving a series of bowl-shaped hollows at Walaritja. Unable to recover his weapon,

22 My distinction between artistic and non-artistic stories is pragmatic. It is based on whether the “story-tellers” applied the techniques and conceptions characteristic of artistic productions. 23 Aram A. Yengoyan, “Economy, Society and Myth in Aboriginal Australia,” in W.H. Edwards (ed.), Traditional Aboriginal Society (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 203–24, p. 215.

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This story illustrates well the details of a particular location in the landscape that may become perceptually salient through knowledge of it, much in analogy to the manner in which a rock face might become perceptually salient for someone knowledgeable of the geological story concerning its different strata. Salience is important to aesthetic appreciation insofar as it makes objects, sites, or events noticeable and, hence, appreciation possible. That is, if aesthetic appreciation depends on our capacity to take note of a thing, to make a thing the object of our sensory attention and of our imaginative play, then stories such as this one may be of great value because, in contrast to scientiﬁc classiﬁcation, which due to its abstractness, may draw us away from the present thing, such stories, because of their concreteness, draw us into the object, site or event. Non-verbally expressed stories and the play of the imagination Besides verbally expressed artistic and non-artistic stories we may take note of various other cultural resources that “tell” stories in a non-verbal fashion. Among the cultural resources that may “tell” stories we can list paintings, engravings, sculptures; architectural, musical, ﬁlm and dance creations; ﬁne wines, ﬁne foods; as well as dendroglyphs, monuments such as tombs and ceremonial buildings, stone arrangements, and so on. Any cultural resource can serve the function of leading a person to reﬂect on the aesthetic appreciation of its makers; in this way contemporary appreciators, once again, may come into a wider aesthetic community. Some of those cultural goods, moreover, may make explicit reference to the natural world, as is the case with many paintings and sculptures featuring images of landscapes, animals or plants. In this way those who “read” the stories contained in the objects may come to be reminded of the natural environment that surrounds them, and may be enticed to ﬁxate on that environment a little longer, thereby aiding in the aesthetic appreciation of those things.25 Some cultural resources, however, may only implicitly “tell” stories that may guide us in our aesthetic appreciation of the natural world. For instance, ﬁnding ruins of ancient societies, dendroglyphs, or rock art at some relatively remote location may lead to us to wonder what plants and animals the people who were there used for

24 Retold by Paul S. Taçon, “The Power of Place: Cross-Cultural Responses to Natural and Cultural Landscapes of Stone and Earth,” in Joan M. Vastokas, Jordan Paper, and Paul S. Taçon (eds), Perspectives of Canadian Landscape: Native Traditions (North York: Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, York University, 1990), pp. 11–43, p. 20. 25 Also see Robert Stecker, “The Correct and the Appropriate in the Appreciation of Nature,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 37 (1997), pp. 397–402, who argues that landscape paintings, for example, may be a resource and not a distraction from landscape appreciation because of our tendency for tacking back and forth between art and nature.

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food, what pool or creek they used to supply themselves with water, what overhangs they used as shelters, and so on.26 Furthermore, we may wonder whether any landmarks, animal species, or natural phenomena near such sited cultural resources may have been perceptually salient in such a way as to have been an object of aesthetic appreciation to our predecessors at such locations. Sometimes the particular arrangement of sites supply possible answers to such questions. I encountered a particularly striking example a few years ago while visiting two dolmens (megalithic, table-like structures) in Antequera, in southern Spain. From the deepest part of the interior space of one of the dolmens I had a view through the opening that perfectly frames a mountain with a shape of a head in proﬁle, leading me to attend imaginatively to this feature in the land in a way I certainly would not have otherwise. In sum, diverse stories, verbal and non-verbal, artistic and non-artistic, may in various ways stimulate the play of the imagination, which itself may facilitate our capacity to perceptually attend to the natural world, which in turn may lead to enhanced aesthetic appreciation of it. Objections and Replies I consider three sorts of objections to my proposal that in aesthetic appreciation we do and should heed a great variety of stories. The ﬁrst is that such stories, if nonscientiﬁc and divergent from “common-sense” tend to be either merely subjective or perhaps outright false, and therefore problematic. The second is that, in contrast to natural science, the type of stories that I promote as guides to aesthetic appreciation are “cultural” and, hence, inapplicable to the appreciation of nature. The third is that these stories are driven by particular values, and hence distort the pure, aesthetic appreciation of nature. Carlson mostly ﬁnds inappropriate that aesthetic appreciation be guided by literary or by personal accounts, for the reason that such accounts may only reﬂect a “subjective” perspective and not an “objective” point of view. Furthermore, Carlson dismisses traditional stories about nature that do not originate in natural science because he supposes that we do not ﬁnd references to gods, heroes, and other “mythic” beings credible.27

26 Also see Chapters 7 and 10 for discussions of the value of rock art and other ancient artworks for drawing attention to the natural environment in which they are found. 27 Contrariwise to the essays listed so far, some also argue on behalf of the natural science-based approach. For example, Yuriko Saito, “Appreciating Nature on Its Own Terms,” Environmental Ethics, 20 (1998), pp. 135–49, reprinted in Carlson and Berleant, Aesthetics of Natural Environments, as Chapter 7, argues against “imposing” historical/cultural/literary associations and for “appreciating nature on its own terms,” which means giving scientiﬁc knowledge a big role. Also see Marcia Muelder Eaton, “Fact and Fiction in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56, 2 (Spring 1998), pp. 127–37, reprinted in Carlson and Berleant as Chapter 9, who, in agreement with Carlson, ﬁnds “myths and legends” problematic because she supposes them false.

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It is, however, beside the point whether a story focuses on a personal, “subjective” experience if it leads to attend and aesthetically appreciate nature. Similarly, it is irrelevant whether we (or any other people) ﬁnd the existence of gods, heroes, or traditional culture ﬁgures credible if our purpose is to account for the aesthetic appreciation of nature. In other words, whether the entities referred to are credible is irrelevant if it turns out that such stories do in fact guide and mediate the aesthetic appreciation of nature. And, as we already saw, there is evidence that such stories about nature can guide and mediate the appreciation of nature. At this point it may objected that, no matter what actually guides aesthetic appreciation, appropriate aesthetic appreciation should be guided by objective, true accounts, and that therefore literary, personal, or “mythic” accounts are problematic.28 In reply we may note that although some accounts, such as those that make the Earth out to be the ruined refuge of “fallen angels” and sinful human beings, in fact can subvert the full ﬂourishing of aesthetic appreciation, other accounts, such as the ones mentioned earlier may enhance it (for the reasons given). Consequently, stories need to be considered on a case-by-case basis for the degree to which they highlight or obscure aesthetically appreciable features of nature. That is, we may want to consider stories from a functional point of view by asking whether the account under consideration will illuminate the object of aesthetic consideration in a new and fruitful way. If yes, then we have no good reason to dismiss such a story as inappropriate. The second objection I want to consider arises from the observation that, in contrast to the stories of science, such stories as I propose as legitimate aids in aesthetic appreciation are “cultural” and maybe appropriate to the appreciation of culturally molded items, such as certain agriculturally modiﬁed landscapes, but are irrelevant to a proper appreciation of “pure nature.” In other words, the objection proposes that in appreciating parts of nature, such as the Australian bush, stories, such as those traditionally passed on by the Aborigines, are inappropriate to its aesthetic appreciation because such stories concern the cultural overlay rather than nature itself. This objection suffers from a curious sort of limitation, since it overlooks that the “stories of science” are also deeply cultural. After all, they arise from very particular cultural conditions (as were given in modern Europe), and serve very speciﬁc cultural goals (to make the world understandable and more controllable through application to actual problems and in technology). The cultural speciﬁcity of science, as currently practiced, becomes evident as soon as one realizes that not all societies are, or have been, engaged in the project of developing science as we know it. Consequently, whether non-scientiﬁc stories should guide aesthetic appreciation needs to be determined once again on functional criteria: if they enrich our capacities to appreciate aesthetically the natural environment (pure or modiﬁed) then they are relevant. The last objection I would like to consider takes note that the production of the sort of stories that I mentioned usually are driven by certain values. Stories such as Handke’s about Mont Ste. Victoire seek to gives us a literary understanding of what it is like to be a twentieth-century person who lives in a world richly “previewed” by 28 But see Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment, Chapter 14, pp. 216–40.

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his predecessors. Stories, such as contained in the poem “Santorini,” seek to bring about a lyric understanding of its subject matter. Traditional (“mythic”) stories, such as contained in the account of Tjati, seek to explain how people ﬁt into the land and how it ought to be valued. In each case, there are purposes and sets of values driving the accounts, while science supposedly is exempt from this weakness since science only “tells it like it is.” The illusion that science is not driven by values, though, can only be upheld by being so deeply involved in its world-picture that one lacks the capacity for critical scrutiny of what science is. Science, just as any other human activity, is guided by certain values (its ability to furnish predictive and retrodictive explanation) which, in this case, are seldom questioned; science’s values, however, do not become any less controlling of its point of view for that.29 And if so, then, with regard to the aesthetic appreciation of nature, the only question, once again, is functional. Concerning any one story we need to ask: will this story lead to an enhancement of our capacity for aesthetic appreciation or not? Conclusion In his Aesthetics and the Environment, Carlson makes clear that, among other things, he is concerned with showing that the “postmodernist” option, that is, the notion that anything may be considered aesthetically relevant if it draws attention to an aesthetic property, should be rejected.30 We may understand his claims with regard to the importance of science, and its common-sense predecessors and analogs, for aesthetic appreciation of nature as the view that those factors are necessary for the aesthetic appreciation of nature. But, in this case, it would not be possible for many people, who lack what we call science or common sense, to appreciate aesthetically nature. It seems evident to me, however, that many people, including the Australian Aborigines who literally see expressions of Ancestral Beings in their landmarks, may still be able to appreciate aesthetically those parts of nature. If Carlson’s proposal, in contrast, is taken as advice on how we should aesthetically appreciate nature, then his arguments would considerably limit, and at times hamper, our aesthetic appreciation of nature. My argument has been to the effect that aesthetic appreciation of nature is and should be guided by a great variety of stories from a diversity of walks of life and cultures because this likely enriches our capacity to appreciate nature aesthetically. While considering objections to my own proposal I have granted that there may be some stories that in fact will diminish our capacity to appreciate nature, but that those stories have to be identiﬁed case by case. In general, it cannot be our aim, however, to restrict our aesthetic appreciation, without further justiﬁcation, by the parameters that Carlson proposes. It seems to 29 This is not to say that science can not teach us things that we want and need to know, but only that it is illusory to suppose that the activity of science is not value-laden in its own way. 30 See especially Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment, pp. 218–19, and Chapter 8 (pp. 129–37).

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me, rather, that the wider the reach of aesthetic appreciation of nature the better, both for its own sake, since it tends to be a pleasurable activity, and insofar as it is a way to generate interest in the protection of what little relatively undisturbed nature there still remains in the contemporary world.31

31 An earlier version of this chapter has been reprinted in Carlson and Berleant, Aesthetics of Natural Environments, as Chapter 15. For helpful comments on prior versions of this chapter I am indebted to the members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Victoria, especially to Jan Zwicky and James Young; to Allen Carlson, Peter Lamarque, and an anonymous referee of The British Journal of Aesthetics. I would also like to thank the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, which in the summer of 2000 provided me with an ideal setting to produce a thorough revision of this chapter. Aesthetic Appreciation and the Many Stories about Nature appeared in The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 41, No. 2 (April 2001), 125–37.

Chapter 6

Bashō and Wandering Aesthetics Recuperating Space, Recognizing Place, Following the Ways of the Universe

This road – No one goes down it Autumn’s end Bashō1

Due to high speed transportation, technologies of instantaneous communication, the ubiquity of cellular telephones, the planetary reach of television programing, the accelerating immersion in cyberspace, globalization of trade, the proliferation of malls and convenience chain stores, and so on, space appears to be shrinking, places are losing their uniqueness, and nature is fading from our view. In this essay I propose that wandering – the activity of leisurely, though attentively, traversing the land in relatively unaided ways – has an aesthetics that may help us recover a sense of the depth of space, of the diversity of places, and of our human lives within the larger context of nature. I approach this topic by taking as my guide the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō (1644– 94), and begin by describing his poetic ways of wandering. Next, I argue that poetic wandering is similar in certain interesting respects to shamanic journeying. After that I sketch an outline of an aesthetics of wandering, and conclude that the practice of wandering may be a way to resist the an-aesthetizing effects of our modern societies’ trends and to recover a sense of our embeddedness in a non-human natural world. Following Bashō in the Three Mountains of Dewa Travel is the ﬂower of haikai. Hakai is the spirit of the traveler.2

As soon as I walk into the woods through the torii gate,3 the town of Tōgei, and its treeless streets, jumble of power and telephone lines, canalized creeks, vending 1 Quoted by Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 285, from Backpack Diary (Oi nikki; 1695). Translations from the Japanese are by the authors cited; otherwise, by myself. 2 Kyoriku, quoted by Shirane, Traces of Dreams, p. 252. 3 A torii is the entrance gate to a shrine or sacred natural space.

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machines (selling “Boss Coffee,” “Vitamin Water,” cold beer, warm soup and teas, and cigarettes), and the other signs of 1999 Japan, disappear from my consciousness. Next to the red, winged torii gate there is very large boulder draped with a thick rope as in celebration. I descend to the Harai-gawa, the River of Puriﬁcation, by way of centuries-old stone steps ﬂanked by towering cryptomeria trees. As I cross a creek on the red Shinkyo (God’s Bridge), I discover that one of the giant trees also is laced with a thick rope that has white pieces of paper attached to it at regular intervals. Tree and boulder are noted as sites of powerful kami – spirits or gods; according to traditional Japanese beliefs this forest is alive in a more thoroughgoing sense than modern people may think. Passing a beautifully weathered pagoda, built more than a thousand years ago, I climb up the steep, slippery and wobbly 2,446 stone steps until I reach the top of Haguro-san, Black Feather Mountain. Here is a temple and shrine area where the sounds of a ﬂute, and the hard clack of two sticks being knocked together in a backbeat fashion, accompany a highly ritualized ceremony. Then I continue to the much higher Gassan, Moon Mountain, ambling through alpine meadows, sliding over the remainders of the winter’s iceﬁelds and stemming myself against the cold winds, as I walk up to the cloud-shrouded and shrinebedecked summit. After a rest I return to the lowlands by way of mythical Yudonosan, Hot Water Mountain, where busloads of pilgrims expect blessings from walking barefoot around a red rock bathed by a hot spring. Bashō, Japan’s most celebrated haijin (haiku poet), had walked this way 310 years ago and recorded his wandering in a partly ﬁctionalized account called Oku no Hosomichi, best translated as The Narrow Road to the Interior.4 Bashō had been on his last major wandering when he set out into Japan’s deep North on the 2,400-km, ﬁve-month-long trek which reached its highest point on

4 Oku no Hosomichi, which is a ﬁctionalized account of Bashō’s travel to the interior of Japan in 1689, was only completed in 1694 and ﬁrst printed in Kyoto, 1702; found in Matsuo Bashō shū, eds Imoto Nōichi, Hori Nobuo and Muramatsu Tomotsugu, pp. 341–86, Nihon koten bungaku zenshū 41 (Shōgakukan, 1972). For English translations, see Nobuyuki Yuasa (trans.), The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966); Donald Keene (trans.), The Narrow Road to Oku (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1996); Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu (trans.), Back Roads to Far Towns (New York: Grossman/ Mushinsha, 1968). Also see the German translation by G.S. Dombrady, Auf Schmalen Pfaden durchs Hinterland (Mainz: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1985), with a very useful introduction and extensive notes on the text and with detailed annotations on each of the poems; for an engaging French translation with an inspired summary, see Jacques Bussy (trans.), La route étroite du Nord profond in L’Ermitage d’Ilusion (Paris: La Delirante, Éditions Jean-Michel Place, 1988); for a translation into Spanish by the famed Mexican poet Octavio Paz together with Eikichi Hayashiya, see Matsuo Bashō, Sendas de Oku (Barcelona: Breve Biblioteca de Respuesta Barral Editores Barcelona, 1970); it has a worthwhile preface by Paz titled “La Tradición del Haiku.” Also of interest are Makoto Ueda, Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991); Shirane, “Remapping the Past: Narrow Road to the Interior,” in Traces of Dreams, pp. 212–53; for a contemporary retracing of Bashō’s journey, see Lesley Downer, On the Narrow Road to the Deep North: Journey into a Lost Japan (London: Jonathan Cape, 1989).

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5

these famed mountains of the Dewa region. He is known for having given the art of haiku (or, more properly, hokku no haikai, since “haiku” is a nineteenth-century contraction of the two terms6) its deﬁnitive form. In the process he also perfected an aesthetics of wandering which for him was intimately connected to the art of poetry. Bashō had given the art of haikai an entirely new character. Previously haikai poetry was written on topics determined by the courtly elite’s somewhat precious taste, or, alternatively, on amusing subjects of interest to Japan’s emerging seventeenth-century merchant class. In contrast, Bashō’s lifelong dedication to this art form issued in a style of poetry that was, at the same time, deep and light.7 That is, for Bashō poetry was to reach the very being of things, but the occasions that open the way to things were to be found in the common everyday.8 According to one commentator, toward the end of Bashō’s lifetime there were already tens of thousands of poets throughout his island country who sought to follow Bashō’s new way of haikai poetry (shōfu),9 so that his wanderings also turned out to be workshop tours. Friends and acquaintances took every opportunity to arrange convivial haikai sessions for him, and Bashō, as a haikai master, would give critiques of the poems of his disciple-students. For all that Bashō denied that, strictly speaking, there is a technique to create good haikai; he contended that it primarily is a practice dependent on a ﬂash of insight and on immediate articulation in language.10 But, what circumstances are propitious for this practice? The answer that we can gather from Bashō’s peripatetic life seems to be the life of wandering.11 Bashō’s wandering goes beyond aimless walking about, but is also distinct from the kind of hike that has a set goal such as the “conquest” of a peak.12 The 5 Dombrady, “Introduction,” p. 12, notes that Bashō thought that this risky adventure, following the paths into the innermost heartland of Japan taken by many previous, important poets, was a duty for him; he notes (p. 24) that René Sieffert calls it “un pèlerinage aux hauts lieux de la poesie classique.” 6 Hokku designates the ﬁrst poem of a chain of poems called haikai created jointly by a number of poets as a collective activity. The term “haiku” was introduced by Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902); René Sieffert (trans.), Le haikai selon Bashō (Paris: Publications Orientalistes de France, 1989), p. xxxix, argues that it is “non seulement un anachronisme” to speak of Bashō’s haiku but that it goes against Bashō’s deep-seated conviction that poetry is a dialogic activity. 7 On Bashō’s innovation, see Dombrady, fn. 259, p. 186, and Sieffert, pp. xxxix–xxxviii. On the history of haikai, see Sieffert, “Introduction,” Le haikai selon Bashō; also see Shirane, Traces of Dreams. 8 See Le livre rouge, section 2, in Sieffert, Le haikai selon Bashō, pp. 120–21. 9 See Sieffert, “Introduction,” Le haikai selon Bashō, p. xxxii; he claims that presently there are millions of Japanese practicing haiku who recognize Bashō as their master. 10 See for example, Le livre rouge, section 5 in Sieffert, p. 122; also see Sieffert, “Introduction.” 11 See ibid. 12 Conquering mountains, by the way, is a highly paradoxical affair. If one reaches one’s destination one still has the return journey to accomplish, and once one has returned to the trailhead the whole trajectory remains to be done again. So, the conquest of a peak is like Sisyphus’s fate: to accomplish it is to fail. The only way to conceive of a conquest that might

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poetic wandering exempliﬁed by Bashō at once is leisurely, that is, not done for any instrumental purpose, as well as disciplined, that is, done methodically.13 The method in question serves to concentrate the poet on the way.14 Bashō usually travels on foot, he himself carries his luggage, such as his changes of clothes and his writing materials (as well as any presents given to him), and he takes the long and arduous route, all of which makes evident to him the great difference between wandering and going for a stroll near his home hut.15 Bashō does not, however, rely on novelty alone to focus him on the way.16 Rather, his travels are structured by the visits of sites well-known for historical, religious, or aesthetic reasons, and he allows himself to be inspired by the work of earlier poets so that, resting on the comfort of this uta makura (which literally means “poet’s head rest,” or “poet’s pillow”), he may further plumb the signiﬁcance of those sites.17 Furthermore, although Bashō’s wandering method (angya) is not as extreme as the shamanistic wandering austerities (shugyō) of the yamabushi, the

correspond to the notion of subjugation, common from the human context of conquest, is to suppose the obliteration of the obstacles that constitute the trail or route. Such obliteration, however, is even more paradoxical since, if really carried out by, for example, dynamiting or mining activities (or by bulldozing trails perhaps, as is being done on Mt. Fuji!), it also eliminates the thing supposedly conquered. In other words, the thing supposedly subjugated either continues offering its obstacles, in which case it is not conquered, or it ceases to exist, in which case there literally is nothing left that one could point at as conquered. 13 See Dombrady, “Introduction,” Auf Schmalen Pfaden durchs Hinterland, pp. 29–37, on the idea of leisurely wandering (see especially p. 31 on its daoist source in Chuang Tse), and on the yamabushi or mountain ascetic way of disciplined wandering. Also see Bashō’s Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel, in Yuasa (trans.), The Narrow Road, p. 85, where Bashō prides himself of, and describes, his walking “at full ease.” 14 Bashō’s method was to focus him on the way in two senses, namely on the way understood in the Daoist manner as the way of life (dao in Chinese or dō in Japanese; see Dombrady, Auf Schmalen Pfaden durchs Hinterland, p. 24), and on the path to be walked (which also functions as an analog of the Daoist way of life). 15 Shirane reports that some later poets “severely criticized” Bashō for his “stance as a hermit-traveler [as] both hypocritical and anachronistic” since he, supposedly, “had no need to be a wanderer.” But see my comments on Bashō’s wandering below. 16 Regarding the importance of novelty in Bashō’s poetry see Sieffert, “Introduction,” p. xxxvii; also Le livre rouge, section 6, p. 123 and passim. 17 On “the cult of uta makura” see Dombrady, Auf Schmalen Pfaden durchs Hinterland, pp. 20–5. Also see Bashō’s comments near Ichikawa in Narrow Road. Perhaps it may be objected that Bashō’s practice of visiting places of some renown would seem to diminish the pleasure that comes from one’s discovery of a new place, but this need not be so. Places change and perceivers vary in outlook, and so one person’s experience of a place is never identical to the next person’s. The well-travelled wanderer knows that no matter how prepared she is on arrival at a place, her own experience will be different from her previous ones or somebody else’s. In fact, having a culturally crafted image of a place may make possible the apprehension of details otherwise overlooked, just as most artworks will only be properly appreciated if attended with a certain degree of preparation. Also see Shirane, Traces of Dreams, on the “reﬁguring [of] cultural memory” effectuated through Bashō’s wandering.

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trailhead ascetics whom he admired and whose practice included immersion in cold mountain waterfalls and ﬁre-walking, he shares their seriousness in intent.18 Bashō’s wandering method serves to bring him into direct contact with the natural world in a way that is unusual for most people. On his trek to the North, for example, he nearly dies of cold climbing Mount Gassan, he rides down the dangerous, rainswollen Miami River, and he takes time to notice cuckoos, cicadas, woodpeckers, pheasants, and many diverse plants. He ended translating many of these encounters into poems, such as Stillness – Piercing the rock The cicada’s song.19

In summary, insofar as Bashō described a practice that concerns the experience of wandering in and for itself, he has set out the rough parameters of what we may call a “wandering aesthetics.” We may glean three foci from his practice: the activity of traversing space by moving oneself and one’s things along a path, the (re)cognition of places, and the coming to know of nature as it presents itself to a wanderer in the land. The Poet-Wanderer as Shaman The changes of heaven and earth are the seeds of poetry Sanzōshi20

When we speak of space and place it is easy to fall in with a reductionism that we owe to our education in physical science. Space seems to denote the empty (Newtonian) expanse in which objects ﬁnd their place as determinable by Cartesian coordinates. In his discussion of landscape, Eric Hirsch has pointed out that, both in our own and in other cultures, the terms “space” and “place” function in much content-richer ways than this. He argues that space and place form a conceptual twosome related to each other just as background potentiality and foreground actuality, outside and inside, and that they are dependent on each other for their meaning.21 Places distinguish themselves by being comparatively well known; by being determined for us in some way; by being locations from which one can act. Space stands for the rest, for that which is relatively unknown; where one is not present (at

18 On angya, which best translates as wandering exercises, also see Bashō’s comments near Ichikawa in Narrow Road, and Dombrady, Auf Schmalen Pfaden durchs Hinterland, notes 166 and 167, p. 134. 19 This poem from Narrow Road reﬂects his visit to the peaceful Ryūshaku or Yamadera Temple. 20 Quoted from Sanzōshi in Shirane, Traces of Dreams, p. 254. 21 See Eric Hirsch, “Introduction,” in Eric Hirsch and Michael O’Hanlon (eds), The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space, (Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 1–30, especially p. 8.

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least not at the time being), but where one could potentially be.22 Hirsch recounts the various ways in which the dialectic between space and place is effectuated in diverse cultures. For example, among the Yolngu of Australia the background space is characterized by tracks left behind by the Ancestral Beings in the Dreamtime. These tracks constitute mythical maps which serve the Yolngu in the identiﬁcation of actual places in the land. Their lived experience, interestingly, slowly modiﬁes the mythical maps. In this way their sense of space and their grasp of the places that they know are in continuous interaction and recreation.23 In another example, Hirsch mentions the Piro of Amazonian Peru who make a marked distinction between the places where they have their gardens and homes and the dangerous background space encompassed by the forests and the river, which they see as sources of sickness and death but on which they nonetheless depend for new gardens and homes, and for meat and ﬁsh. Interestingly, the Piro are not entirely cut off from that background space because their shamans, taking the drug ayahuasca, do enter that other space both literally and through a trance, and bring back the knowledge to cure their sick.24 The inherent interdependence of the notions of space and place is perhaps most evident in the notion of a journey, insofar as it implicates the idea of a proximate foreground place from which to depart and the idea of a distance or space to be traversed. Moreover, enacting a role similar to the shaman’s, the traveler fulﬁlls an important function in the cultural community (aside from the bringing back, or sending back, of practically useful goods or information). The traveler provides perspective on the here-and-now (the ephemeral everyday) by reporting on the reality of other, distant places throughout the spread of space. One may say that the place here-and-now only properly becomes apprehensible as such by receiving a horizon in space. In this context we may characterize the poet-wanderer’s activity, as exempliﬁed by Bashō, as exceptionally appropriate for the recovery of space and the recognition of place. In some senses the poet-wanderer is a sort of shaman, on condition that at least two differences are noted. First, the poet, as poet, does not apply techniques of ecstasy (intended to put her in a trance), and, second, the poet is poet in virtue of her ability to capture experience in lyrical language, which is not a requirement for being a shaman.25 The poet-wanderer is like the shaman, however, in that she travels to 22 On space and place also see Michel Foucault, “of other spaces,” diacritics (Spring, 1986), pp. 22–7. Already in classical times Pomponius Mela, Chorographie, trans. A. Silberman (Paris: Société d’édition “Les belles lettres,” 1988) had argued for the creation of chorographia, an account that was to treat places as more than mere analogs of locations determinable on maps. 23 See Hirsch, “Introduction”; also see Howard Morphy, “Landscape and the Reproduction of the Ancestral Past,” in Hirsch and O’Hanlon, Anthropology of Landscape, pp. 184–209. 24 See Hirsch, “Introduction”; also see Peter Gow, “Land, People and Paper in Western Amazonia” in Hirsch and O’Hanlon, Anthropology of Landscape, pp. 43–62. 25 See Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Ancient Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), especially p. 4, on a deﬁnition of shamanism; see p. 510 on his speculation on the relation between at least some lyric poetry and shamanism. Also see the note on Eliade below.

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distant, disconcerting places through (relatively) unknown and possibly dangerous space, eventually reporting back on those other spaces to the ordinary person in the everyday. And, qua poet-wanderer, she does this not just in one way but doubly: literally, as travellers do, and metaphorically, as poets do. That is, taking Bashō on his Narrow Road to the Interior as our example, we may note that, as a wanderer, he goes to the end of the civilized world known to the Japanese of his time on a relatively risky, comparatively unknown and difﬁcult route, thereby underscoring the distance in space that he covers.26 And, as he visits remote locations, he makes them a little more accessible as places, both to himself and to his readers, by relating, whenever possible, the names of famous people, notable incidents, or well-known poems that may be connected to or associated with them. This is Bashō’s way of effectively establishing reference to places in distant space that otherwise may have no reality for his readers, and only very limited reality even for himself. He goes, however, beyond merely reiterating literati commonplaces, which he could have listed just as well from the comfort of his hut in Edo (today’s Tokyo).27 Rather, he further afﬁrms the reality of those places (adding to our conception of them in a manner reminiscent of the transformation of mythical maps by the Yolngu) by reporting on his own insights at those remote places. Bashō does this both through hokku no haikai and through haibun, that is, lyrical, very condensed prose accounts. So, we may say that, qua poet, Bashō goes on another sort of journey, a metaphorical journey to the depths of reality, reporting through his poetry to those ﬁxated in the everyday.28 Thereby he provides evidence of his own journey in a way that cannot be achieved by merely repeating beautiful and insightful poems from earlier times. And, insofar as he provides a believable report, we may be persuaded that what the poet apprehends is real, whereby his poetry becomes an invitation to visit those depths of being, those metaphorical spaces, after him. What do we know about Bashō’s attitude toward those metaphorical journeys realized through poetry? In the preamble to an earlier travel account, The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel, he notes that the hallmark of great art is “the poetic spirit, the spirit that leads one to follow the ways of the universe and to become a friend

26 Bussy, L’Ermitage d’Ilusion, pp. 8–9, emphasizes that the “depth” represented by the Japanese word oku in the title of Bashō’s Narrow Road is not just geographical. Rather, it stands for the heart of the Japanese land: “cette profondeur designe un dessous sans fond … Ce que recherche Bashō, c’est la fraîcheur de l’origine.” 27 Dombrady, Auf Schmalen Pfaden durchs Hinterland, note 83, pp. 92, 94, recounts an amusing story about the poet Noin-hoshi, known for his travel poetry; apparently Noin-hoshi never went to some of the places, such as the barrier at Shirakawa, that he claimed to have visited. Supposedly he hid away at home for a long period, all the while sticking his hands out the window to bronze them, to make it seem that he had been traveling. 28 Also see Mircea Eliade’s discussion in his Myth and Reality, (trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 120–21) of Hesiod, Theogony, 32, 38. According to Eliade’s reading of Hesiod, “When the poet is possessed by the Muses, he draws directly from [the goddess of Memory] Mnemosyne’s store of knowledge, that is, especially from the knowledge of ‘origins,’ of ‘beginnings,’ of genealogies.” So, on this ancient Greek account the poet is a kind of messenger on the remote depths of things.

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with things of the seasons.” The poetic spirit Bashō is speaking of is a capacity for ﬁnding a larger, meaning-giving context to every situation, such that, “For a person who has the spirit, everything he sees becomes a ﬂower, and everything he imagines turns into a moon.”30 For Bashō the poet is to view the human condition from a detached perspective in the sense that he is aware of his own only transitory perspective. In this way it is beside the point if something is pleasing or disturbing: through detachment all aspects of living can become subjects for aesthetic appreciation.31 Consider, for example, the following poem praised by Bashō for its sabi, that is, its representation of the feeling of detachment. Cherry blossom guardians – Their white heads Bumping together. Bashō32

Here Bashō is reframing the human experience of coming to the end of life from a broad, object-attentive perspective. Just as the impending fall of the blossoms may be tolerable, and even aesthetically pleasing, so, perhaps, may old age. The effect of insightful poetry and attentive wandering is, among other things, estrangement from the everyday. So, in a similar way as reports about our home country delivered by someone who has gone abroad precisely may give us insight on our place because she is not so near to it, for Bashō poetry is to provide a horizon to the worn-out everyday, which keeps us centred on the narrow angle of our own private fortunes or misfortunes. The question remains, why does Bashō double the estrangement from the everyday by going on literal as well as metaphorical journeys? Though no certain answer may be available, it seems that the kind of concentrated grasp entailed in the composition of poetry was difﬁcult for him to maintain while remaining in one place for long.33 Even an exceptional poet such as Bashō might have feared that he would get stale under such circumstances. It may also be, however, that Bashō engaged in wandering because of the special aesthetic interest which he perceived in the activity itself.

29 The quote is from Makoto Ueda, “Bashō and the Art of the Haiku: Impersonality in Poetry,” Literary and Art Theories in Japan (Cleveland, OH: The Press of Western Reserve University, 1967), p. 148. When Bashō uses the phrase “to follow the ways of the universe,” he is talking about paying attention to the ways of nature. 30 Bashō, quoted by Ueda, “Bashō and the Art of the Haiku,” pp. 147–8. 31 On the unattached perspective see especially Ueda, “Bashō and the Art of the Haiku.” 32 Shirane, Traces of Dreams, p. 78, translating one of Bashō’s hokku from Komojishi shū. Also see Kyorai, section 36, in Sieffert, Le haikai selon Bashō, p. 91. 33 See Sieffert, Le haikai selon Bashō, p. 37.

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Wandering Aesthetics From which year was it? I was summoned by the winds of the scattered clouds, with no end to thoughts of wandering. Bashō34

Wandering includes walking, hiking, climbing, and other such relatively unaided, self-propelled ways of travelling, if done for their own sakes and attended to as such.35 My account is of the aesthetics of wandering as an activity, and in this respect it is similar to the aesthetics of acting, ﬁgure skating and art dance, which are all activities appreciated as such and not (or, not only) for their products.36 It contrasts with the aesthetics of paintings, sculptures and compositions, which generally are appreciated as products of activities. Wandering, moreover, is an activity that arguably may best be aesthetically appreciated by those who perform it, since they are the ones who can be most aware of the values that the activity affords (that is, wandering aesthetics is not a spectator aesthetics). In this sense, the relevant class of activities that wandering compares with is acting, ﬁgure skating and dance, as appreciated by actors, ﬁgure skaters and dancers, respectively. As noted, I take Bashō’s practice as a wandering poet to provide the general outline of wandering aesthetics. Bashō was not inclined to develop a theory of the aesthetics of wandering, but I propose that we may build on his implied outline. As noted earlier, one may focus on the following central aspects: the event of traversing space, the event of coming to know places, and the event of coming to an understanding of the nature of things. Traversing space Wandering is a way of becoming aware of space, which itself fundamentally is dependent on awareness of bodily movement insofar as it is anchored in our experiences of right and left, up and down, inside and outside.37 So, the aesthetics of 34 From the beginning of Oku no Hosomichi, quoted by Shirane, Traces of Dreams, p. 230. 35 There are a number of other ways of focusing on the aesthetics of wandering (also in terms of ‘walking,’ ﬂâner, caminar), for example, in reference to Thoreau, Beaudelaire, Benjamin, or Antonio Machado, which I cannot enter into here, however. For an interesting account of the history of wandering and what has been written about wandering see Rebecca Solnit, A History of Walking (Penguin Books, 2001). 36 In its most general sense, aesthetics is the study of attentiveness to our perceptual world, given that our perceptual world is constituted by sensory, imaginative and cognitive contents, and given that those contents become of interest for and in themselves. Aesthetics may also refer to the acts of closely attending to certain objects, events, or processes for their own sake. It is in this sense that I am using the term here. Also see my Introduction to Thomas Heyd and John Clegg (eds), Aesthetics and Rock Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). 37 The dependency of space awareness on the awareness of bodily movement may itself be worthy of further discussion, but is beyond the limitations of this chapter. But see M. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962); also see Hirsch, “Introduction,” especially p. 17.

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wandering may usefully take the aesthetics of art dance, which also has the (relatively unaided, self-propelled) body in motion as its focus, as a guide.38 Like dance, wandering, if done with a certain degree of intensity, requires continuous choices in the placement of feet (and often of hands); in the balancing and unbalancing of body weight, in the acceleration to be furnished to one’s body mass or in the management of the momentum it has acquired; in the articulation of one’s body’s position with the physical environment which may include branches, rock faces, slippery muddy areas, fragile moss surfaces, swampy areas, slick tidal plates, razor-sharp volcanic rocks, hidden lava tubes, boulders, pebbles, scree, sand, creeks, rivers, and so on. After some experience a wanderer, like a dancer, may develop her own general mode and styles of approach to various environments. In some environments, she will perhaps simply walk, feeling her limbs rhythmically carrying her along, as she alternates between, on the one hand, noting the thoughts that pop in and out of her consciousness, and, on the other hand, ﬁxating her senses on the particular sights, smells, sounds, or feels of the land. In other environments, she will maybe imitate the considered, circumspect mode of travel of a grazing, predator-conscious mountain goat, taking her time to leap from one rock or ledge to another, reconnoitering with care along the edge of some abyss, and so on. And in yet other environments she may appear more like a dancer engaged in body contact improvisation, attentively leaning into and out from the rocks, and other surrounding materials, that offer her support. Each wandering excursion, moreover, may be seen as a kind of project for which one tacitly designs something akin to a choreography. That is, for a terrain that promises to offer a combination of steep ascents, uncharted routes, as well as clearly deﬁned level trails, one may propose to oneself a different set of paces and overall style of travel than for a terrain that has only one of these features. In addition to terrain, the wanderer may take into account general and particular climatic conditions, the speciﬁc condition of her body, the level of skills already acquired, “props” (backpack, hat, garments, staff) to be carried, other participants (and their respective circumstances), and so on in the (perhaps not fully conscious) design of her journey. The analogy of wandering with dance is useful in highlighting the fact that we may gain aesthetic pleasure in situating ourselves through bodily motion, but there are differences too. The pleasure of dance largely is constituted by the variety of bodily movings of which a human being is capable, and by the extent to which we are able to inhabit or fully identify with our body as moved in space. Wandering, as exempliﬁed in a trek or in a walk, usually presents a more limited repertoire of embodied motions but offers an additional sort of aesthetic value, namely, the making concrete of space.

38 On the aesthetics of dance see Francis Sparshott’s extensive work, especially Off the Ground: First Steps to a Philosophical Consideration of the Dance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); also see my “Dance Today: Art of Body Among Simulacra,” Journal of Aesthetic Education, 34 (Summer 2000), pp. 15–26.

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While previous to wandering we may know that there are a certain number of kilometers between one town and the next, representing so many hours of travel by train, automobile, or airplane, we may not be able to put a picture to the space to be traversed. Wandering, however, entails effort and engagement that may leave us with a collection of richly textured images, visual, aural and tactile, but also olfactory, kinaesthetic, and maybe gustatory, that, as we will see next, establishes places for us. It is this cognition of space as composed of perceptually meaningful places that gives reality to abstractions such as the space represented on a map or in a story. So, insofar as wandering is traversing space and, insofar as we ﬁnd either the experience of our bodies in motion or the making concrete of space aesthetically interesting, so is wandering.39 Coming to know place What is it about the activity of coming to know places through wandering that is aesthetically interesting? We may think that the interest in coming to know a diversity of places is due to the fact that such experiences give us leverage, the feeling that “we know our way around there,” and that we can launch ourselves across space from them. But this is to focus on wandering as instrumentally valuable and not as valuable for itself. I think it useful to follow Bashō once again to a clearer picture. Coming to know any thing, including places, is a process that begins long before one has direct acquaintance with the thing, and which may continue long after one has left it behind. Bashō’s practice of wandering illustrates this very well. Before going on his way into the depth or interior of Japan, he thoroughly absorbed his society’s rich literature and its historical and geographical knowledge (and a great deal of Chinese culture too, as is evident from his continuous references to Chinese poets and landscapes). Certainly the process of fully knowing place demands attentive ﬁrsthand exploration, but Bashō carried this further, sedimenting his experiences and previous knowledge into lyric prose (haibun) and haikai poetry. One way to describe these processes may be to call them forms of engagement. So, my proposal is that the aesthetic interest in coming to know place through wandering lies in the fact that wandering tends to engage several of our faculties in the process of attending to our perceptual acts, and that these engagements may take place at various levels of excellence. More speciﬁcally, it seems that the cognition of place may engage us as cultural beings, as it calls for grounding in our society’s culture, including its history, literature, customs, hopes, and so on.40 It may engage 39 Though Bashō has little to say about the aesthetics of wandering in terms of bodily movement, he did seem to have had an extraordinary appreciation for the making concrete of space through wandering, even if this entailed considerable discomforts. See, for example, Satchel in Yuasa (trans.), The Narrow Road, especially p. 85. 40 Also see Yi-Fu Tuan, topophilia: a Study of Perception, Attitudes and Values (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), pp. 93–5, on the role of historical and other knowledge in the aesthetic appreciation of place- and nature-related environmental features such as “scenery.” Moreover, see Allen Carlson’s writings in environmental aesthetics, for

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us as athletic beings, as it may demand of us more or less mental-physical effort and skill to become directly acquainted with place through our body-mind unit. Furthermore, it may engage us as creative, productive beings insofar as it may call on our ability to generate an image (a poem, a story, a song, a drawing) of what the place is for us. Each of these engagements of our faculties may occur at various levels of excellence. In this sense they reﬂect various skills and, as such, these engagements may be appreciated for their own sakes and, hence, contribute to the aesthetic interest of wandering. Following the ways of the universe Nature, of course, has long been of aesthetic interest.41 But in what does the aesthetic interest of wandering as a way of coming to know nature consist? Although some recent aestheticists suppose that adequate aesthetic appreciation depends on natural science or its antecessors, other factors may be of greater relevance. While Bashō’s accounts of his wandering involved factual knowledge it was oriented in a particular way. We may note, for example, that Bashō advised his students to pay close attention to natural processes. He said “Go to the pine tree if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo.” But the relation to nature supposed here is personal, rather than systematic and distanced (as is normal in natural science), even if the learner is to focus on something other than the self. Dohō, one of Bashō’s followers, comments that in the text just quoted “‘Learn’ means to enter into the object, perceive its delicate life, and feel its feeling, whereupon a poem forms itself.”42 It seems, hence, that the process of knowing nature that Bashō had in mind was a matter of apprehending nature for what it is, but from a personal perspective. The emphasis on the personal in learning from nature is not due to doubts about the reliability of others as witnesses; the issue is that in coming to know nature for oneself one comes to know how oneself and the rest of nature ﬁt together. Another way of putting this may be that in this way of knowing nature one comes to know it dynamically. To know nature concretely one cannot expect that the being of nature will show itself in the laboratory with its beakers or its particle beams; one needs to meet it as the kind of being that one is oneself. The ideal at work here has been identiﬁed, for example, as a representation of “landscape in human emotion, and human emotion in landscape.”43 To illustrate we may consider Bashō’s coming to know nature at Gassan, Moon Mountain. Before Bashō arrived there on his wanderings, Gassan, as one of the three sacred mountains of the Dewa region of Japan, likely was not more than a name for him. example, “Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature,” in Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (eds), Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts (cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 199–227. For further references see Chapter 5. 41 See Chapter 5. 42 Quoted by Ueda, “Bashō and the Art of the Haiku,” pp. 157–8. Also see Le livre rouge, section 3, in Sieffert, Le haikai selon Bashō, p. 121. 43 This is a Chinese ideal enunciated by Sodō, one of Bashō’s contemporaries. See Shirane, Traces of Dreams, p. 243.

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But, on his journey to the innermost depths of his country, Bashō climbed Gassan, and this mountain environment left a trace on his body and mind, while he also left a trace on the mountain, however insigniﬁcant those respective traces may be in the long run. Bashō recounts: I walked through mists and clouds, breathing the thin air of high altitudes and stepping on slippery ice and snow, till at last through a gateway of clouds, as it seemed, to the very paths of the sun and the moon, I reached the summit, completely out of breath and nearly frozen to death.44

Bashō and Gassan had undergone what the Ancient Greeks called an agon, a struggle or test, in which both he and the mountain revealed a bit of their respective natures: Bashō showed endurance and attentiveness, and Gassan its harsh, alpine, and aesthetically captivating, mountainscape, as it rises nearly 1,900 meters from the plain below. For a wanderer, such as Bashō, to reach a point on his trajectory is not merely a stepping-stone to somewhere else where some business will occupy him. It is to come to know a terrain, the various natural phenomena occurring in its environment, and the particular ways that it presents itself to him in his own particular condition. That is, as offering certain resistances for a body like his that tires from walking; as offering certain images for a being with senses, traveling speeds, and acculturation like his; and so on. This way of knowing may not always be pleasant. Intending to visit the famous historical site of Kasashima on his journey to the interior, it rained so much when he approached the town that he simply walked past it and wrote: Kasashima? – The ﬁfth month’s Mud road.

Knowing nature through wandering is a process of attending to both one’s own nature and the nature of one’s surroundings in the particular way that they reciprocally exhibit themselves, and this attending can be done more or less skillfully or excellently.45 Hence, also in this way, wandering may be of aesthetic interest.

44 Bashō, Narrow Road (trans. Yuasa), p. 125. 45 Wandering may also become unpleasant because it makes personal weaknesses ever so evident. Bashō, for example, had a chronic stomach ailment that he suffered from all the more en route. He considered it part of the wandering exercise, however, to come to terms with such symptoms of our ephemeral nature. See, for example, his reﬂections on “the bad night in Izuka” in Narrow Road.

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Concluding Comments Traveling on and on Though I fall down dead – Clover ﬁelds. Sora46

Wandering, I have proposed here, is an activity that may be aesthetically appreciated in at least three contexts, namely in relation to the bodily moving through space, the cognition of places, and the coming to know of nature. As such, wandering also affords the aesthetic appreciation of three sorts of objects – space, place and nature – and in a specially poignant way which is not available to a person while engaged in other modes of travel or while stationary. Travel by train, automobile and airplane also puts the body in motion, and hence makes possible the experience of space. Wandering, however, is less mediated and slower than those modes of travel. The images (visual, but also aural, olfactory, kinaesthetic, tactile, and sometimes gustatory) perceived while wandering change, but in direct correlation with two distinct factors. The images experienced depend on changes brought about by the elements in the environment, from which the wanderer is not shielded in the way that other kinds of travelers tend to be. Furthermore, the images gathered depend on the amount of effort exerted through muscular activity and will. Even if at some point altitude sickness, a thunderstorm, or a swollen river slow down or halt the wanderer, she may still see this as valuable because it is a conﬁrmation of her change of location in, and of the resistance offered by, space. By being more unaided and slower than other modes of transport, wandering facilitates a denser, richer experience and, hence a better opportunity to concretely appreciate space than alternative modes of travel. Wandering also seems to provide a better way to appreciate place aesthetically than the alternatives. By being slower than other modes of travel, it allows for a more thorough engagement in all the dimensions (cultural, athletic, and creative/ productive) sketched above. Moreover, the event of coming to know a place is ephemeral for the wanderer, since for her the time to become acquainted with locations tends to be short, in comparison with explorations that may be carried out by individuals who remain in an area for longer. The result is that the time actually spent becomes more valuable, and the engagement experience may become more pointed, than it would be otherwise. (As is well known, after remaining in one location for some longer time it becomes harder to apprehend many of its features; they tend to become submerged in one’s perceptual routines.47) As far as appreciating the nature of things, it is clear that things also show their natures to us when we do not wander, as when we hurtle on elevated tracks over 46 The poem, attributed to Sora, is from Narrow Road, after their visit to Yamanka hot springs, at the moment when Sora leaves Bashō because of his stomach trouble. 47 See, for example, Italo Calvino, “Cities & Eyes 4,” Invisible Cities (London: Picador/ Pan Books, 1974/79; trans. William Weaver of Le cittá invisibili), pp. 72–3.

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the plains (never coming anywhere close to rice paddies, villages, or waterways), and through the bowels of the mountains, riding Japan’s shinkansen, the bullet train. But how deeply do we come to know the nature of plains and mountains by this mode of travel? Only that the contours of the land may be ignored, and its rocky outcrops blasted or perforated by our technology and the powers we have harnessed. Or, how much do we come to know of Mount Fuji as we hurriedly approach it, and then rapidly retreat from it, by high-speed train? Not a lot more than a series of postcards or a travel video may give us: seen through the train windows (if the blinds have not been drawn throughout, as they often are) Fuji remains a kind of sequential, almost two-dimensional object, as if seen on a television screen. The nearly vertical reach for the sky of Fuji’s slopes; the texture of the mountain’s diverse volcanic rocks; or the pinhead-sized, delicious wild strawberries and bright yellow chantarelles48 in its fragrant forests are not appreciable by high-speed train. Nowadays the summit of Haguro-san can be reached by automobile or by bus. We may compare these ways of knowing the nature of this mountain with Bashō’s who, on his arrival, was able to provide this hokku no haikai for an improvised collective poetry session with his hosts. Thank you – Snow scented South Valley.

Where the approach by bus gives us a cool, air-conditioned environment, furnished with comfortable chairs that may lull us into sleep on the windy, asphalted road, Bashō’s wandering up Haguro-san gave him a constantly changing, physically and culturally demanding experience that related him to the smell and feel of the breeze drifting down from the snowy slopes which he may have spied on the heights of nearby Mount Gassan. His embodied awareness of nature in the cool mountain breeze also reﬂected his own sweaty, heated condition, as he walked up from the hot and humid Mogami River valley, and it provided the material for the poetical conversation with his hosts, who had perhaps forgotten the blessedness of their refreshing mountain airs. So, I propose that wandering affords the aesthetic appreciation of nature in a specially adequate way, again due to wandering’s relatively unmediated character and slowness which lead to a particularly intense, direct interaction of nature with self. The implication of the self in the nature of a place is further heightened through the transitoriness of the wanderer’s presence. As noted, this transitoriness makes the subject’s experience rare and stamps it with a special value, promoting a sharpened kind of engagement or attention. As noted earlier, trends in the fabric of our contemporary world are loosening our aesthetic hold on space, place and nature. Wandering, and perhaps other, related, activities, such as gardening, may, nonetheless, still ground our lived experience. In the process of wandering, space may be felt to expand, places may

48 Cantharellus cibarius.

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be experienced as increasingly distinct, and our selves may be discovered to be in constant conversation with the rest of nature.49 Bashō reminds us that in wandering we enter the ﬂow of the universe: The months and days are travelers of a hundred ages; the years that come and go are voyagers too.50

49 This chapter was written while I was a Fellow of the Japan Foundation in the summer of 1999. I am grateful to its support as well as to Professor Fumiaki Taniguchi of Konan University, Kobe, for his generous hospitality and for the stimulating discussions on environmental thought. I am also thankful to Shelly Ridder, and to Professor Masaru Ogawa of Naruto University, for critical comments on drafts of this chapter. A Spanish language version of this paper has appeared as “Bashō y la estética del caminar: Por la recuperación del espacio, el reconocimiento de los lugares y el seguimiento de los caminos del universo,” in Luis Puelles (ed.), Estéticas: Occidente y otras culturas (special issue of Contrastes, Universidad de Málaga, 2004); as well as “El sendero al Japón profundo de Bashō y la estética del caminar: Recuperando el espacio, reconociendo los lugares, siguiendo los caminos del universo,” Páginas de Filosofía, 9, 11 (Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Argentina, August 2004), pp. 7–28. For a more in-depth study of the signiﬁcance of Bashō’s travels on “the narrow road to the interior,” also see Thomas Heyd, “The Unity of Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Interior: Vision Quest and Pilgrimage,” Poetica (2006), pp. 83–98. 50 Quoted by Shirane, Traces of Dreams, p. 245, from the beginning of Narrow Road. Bashō and Wandering Aesthetics: Recuperating Space, Recognizing Place, Following the Ways of the Universe appeared in Philosophy East and West, vol. 53, no. 3 (July 2003), 291–307.

Chapter 7

Rock Art and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Natural Landscapes Baiame and Lillies Crowned with ﬁne ﬁre, the God looks up from the rock. His tribesmen have withdrawn; Dawn waits for the mountain thrust. Like suns The ten-foot gymeas shake their lily locks. David Campbell1

Nature, and natural landscapes in particular, have long been the focus of aesthetic appreciation. It remains unclear, however, exactly what such appreciation involves. As noted previously, it cannot be modeled, for example, on the aesthetic appreciation of the design found in artworks. Because it makes little sense to look for genre, artistic skill, or intentions with regard to nature, one prominent commentator (Allen Carlson) has argued that aesthetic appreciation of nature be understood in terms of the order perceivable in nature. In this chapter I propose to follow up on Chapter 5, in which I laid out as a general principle that in aesthetic appreciation of nature any account is valuable if it helps us attend to nature. In this chapter I suggest that rock art can provide a valuable occasion for the aesthetic appreciation of natural landscapes. As such the aesthetic appreciation of rock art sites is an example of the contribution that aesthetic appreciation of cultural goods can make to the appreciation of the natural environment. Aesthetic Appreciation of Natural Landscapes This is not the place to discuss aesthetic appreciation as such in great depth but, in summary fashion, we may note that the meaning of the term “appreciation” suggests that it consists in some kind of valuational activity. In appreciating something 1 From David Campbell, “Devil’s Rock and Other Carvings” in Devil’s Rock and Other Poems 1970–1972 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1974), pp. 22–5, reproduced in Peter Stanbury and John Clegg, A Field Guide to Aboriginal Rock Engravings (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 100. In the Sydney, New South Wales, region of Australia a great proportion of the rock art consists of engravings on ground level rock surfaces. Baiame is the name of the sky god, who often has been represented in the rock art of the area. The Gymea Lily (also Flame Lily and Spear Lily, Doryanthes excelsa) generally can be found throughout southern Australia, and in particular in the Sydney region.

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one may attribute positive or negative value to it. But, what makes appreciation aesthetic? Carlson has argued that the crucial characteristic of aesthetic appreciation is that it is “‘object-ively’ guided.”2 That is, to appreciate something aesthetically is “to appreciate it as and for … ‘what it is, and not another thing.’”3 This kind of appreciation contrasts with appreciating something “subjectively,” which comes down to a form of appreciation such that “the subject – appreciator – and [his or her] properties are in some way imposed on the object, or, more generally, something other than the object is imposed on it.”4 To aesthetically appreciate something is to focus on the qualities it has as such and not on those that we wish it to have or those that would serve our own private purposes. Concretely, to aesthetically appreciate an item such as a painting may mean, for example, that we note its composition and the way its form and content relate, and that we do not view it merely as representing some aspect of the reality that we would like to exist, as when we “romanticize” something. It also means that we do not treat it as a mere reminder of a private experience associated with it, or as a potential investment, or as a usefully decorative household item. As discussed in Chapter 5, the basis for the aesthetic appreciation of nature is subject to lively discussion. Although in general the most obvious cases of aesthetic appreciation may consist in the appreciation of the design of artworks, it makes little sense to suppose that aesthetic appreciation of nature is based on how well nature is designed, that is, how well it corresponds to the intentions of its maker, or how well it is crafted (unless one simultaneously chooses to defend the thesis of divine production of nature). According to Carlson, the solution to this puzzle is that, in analogy to the appreciation of certain avant-garde art or anti-art artworks in which chance plays a large role,5 the aesthetic appreciation of nature should be understood as an appreciation of the order rather than of the design exhibited. While Carlson argues that for the appreciation of the order in nature the accounts or stories of natural science are crucially relevant, I have proposed that a great variety of accounts, scientiﬁc and non-scientiﬁc, may be appropriate. Nonetheless, Carlson’s approach does suggest an interesting starting point for the clariﬁcation of the question of how we come to see land as landscape.6 Paul Taçon, for example, challenges us to spell out what constitutes landscape. He asks, 2 Allen Carlson, “Appreciating Art and Appreciating Nature,” in Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (eds), Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975/93), pp. 199–227, p. 205. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., pp. 204–5. 5 One may consider, for example, the aesthetic appreciation of Jackson Pollock’s “dripped” paintings. Pollock denies that he designed them; chance seems to have played a large part in the order that is apparent in them. 6 Even though in some ways landscapes have human elements, this does not mean that may not also be natural. I use the term “natural landscape” to indicate that I am not here concerned with urban landscapes or industrial landscapes, for example, but the kind of landscape that opens our views toward the land insofar as natural. For further discussion of the difﬁculties surrounding the term “natural,” also see Chapter 9.

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“If there is no human boundary, mark or vantage point on the land, does landscape exist?”7 Independently of whether we think that a human intervention is needed to turn land into landscape, Taçon’s question reminds us that landscape crucially depends at least on the existence of a human point of view, or perhaps a view-point. It seems that land only becomes landscape once it has come into the conceptual “viewﬁnder” of human beings, and is not considered simply in terms of physical categories. So, we may ask, with Carlson, what order are we appreciating when we appreciate landscapes? Following my proposal, made explicit in Chapter 5, the order that we attend to as we appreciate landscapes may be given by a diversity of stories, explicitly or implicitly available to the perceivers of a particular cultural background. While some of the stories explicitly exist in the accounts told (and oftentimes re-told) by the members of some cultural group, other stories may exist implicitly in the monuments and features of the land that can be found in a certain geographical area. For members of the relevant cultural groups, monuments and other features of the land tell a story just as a book may. This is as true for the Australian Aborigines, who perceive the tracks of the Dreamtime in rock outcrops and water holes, as for Europeans or Japanese, who see ancient battle scenes on certain ﬁelds in their respective lands. Here I propose that rock art sites may provide valuable sources of implicit accounts about the land. Rock Art and Landscapes Richard Bradley and his collaborators have made the case that both rock art research and landscape archaeology could proﬁt from joint consideration.8 They show surprise at the disconnection of rock art research from the studies of the natural terrain, and propose as a method of analysis “to reunite the carvings with the rock itself and to study their detailed relationship to the local topography and its possible modes of exploitation.”9 The idea is that landscape archaeology, which primarily focuses on resources found on the land and their use, may fail to recognize important determinants of land use if it overlooks cultural markers such as rock art sites. Rock art, moreover, supposedly runs into problems due to the “subjectivity” involved in its interpretation. The suggestion is that this troublesome subjectivity can be reduced by noting relevant features in the geography in which rock art sites are embedded.

7 Paul S.C. Taçon, Review of Barbara Bender (ed.), Landscape: Politics and Perspectives, in Antiquity, 68, 260 (1996), pp. 262–3, p. 262. 8 See, for example, Richard Bradley, “Rock Art and the Perception of Landscape,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 1, 1 (April 1991), pp. 77–101. 9 Richard Bradley, Felipe Criado Boado and Ramón Fabregas Valcarce, “Rock Art Research as Landscape Archaeology: A Pilot-Study in Galicia, North-West Spain,” World Archaeology, 25, 3 (1994), p. 374. Also see Richard Bradley, An Archaeology of Natural Places (New York: Routledge, 2000), in which he argues for the interaction of culture and nature.

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By considering, for example, that a particular sort of rock art typically is found in locations where the population is present only seasonally, we learn something about the probable cultural role of those rock art sites. Similarly, by attending to the fact that rock art in certain regions generally is located at viewpoints of strategic importance (such as relating to the migration of non-domestic animals like deer), conclusions can be reached about the “marking” function of those rock art sites. This combined approach to rock art and landscapes promises to be very useful in providing explanations for the production of rock art and for particular patterns of habitation in, and use of, land. The consideration of the particular emplacements of rock art in speciﬁc geographical locations, however, may also enhance the aesthetic appreciation of particular natural landscapes. Appreciation depends crucially on the perspectives held by appreciators. This means that, even if a stretch of land objectively has a great variety of natural features to offer, it is quite possible that a person may travel through it largely without becoming aware of those features. Rock art sites may work in a variety of ways to aesthetically arrest our cognitive (and physical) movement through the land. Rock art sites may do this by providing evidence that the land, which one is in, is landscape in the original sense of the term, namely, a stretch of land “that the eye can comprehend in one view” (as can be represented by “landscape painters”). Rock art sites proclaim that the surrounding land is “a terrain in which cultural features have,” at least partially, “taken the place of those natural elements that map the world of mobile peoples.”10 In other words, rock art sites may provide substantial proof that the land has been “read,” seen, or appreciated, and probably in instructive ways for us later peoples. More speciﬁcally, we may consider that rock art sites frequently offer vantage points from which migratory or grazing animals can be observed. The representations may offer insight into the local species present at the time when the art was made, but which may or may not be extant any longer in the area. Jointly such sites may indicate some of the paths that human beings have taken across the land. They show that other human individuals have come (or perhaps periodically came) to those locations, and, in the process, probably became acquainted with the nearby stretch of land in the ways that their needs and their culture demanded. These rock art manifestations suggest that the plant and animal life in the vicinity of the sites were used in some kind of gathering, hunting, or herding way, that the proximate water sources were sought out and used, that attempts were made to avoid the predators of the area, and that, in moments of leisure, human beings may have appreciatively reﬂected on the things surrounding them. They offer testimony to us latecomers that a particular stretch of natural landscape possibly was aesthetically, as well as usefully, appreciated by our human predecessors. To illustrate how rock art sites may lead to aesthetic appreciation of the natural landscape, I give a brief description of an example from my own experience. In early August 1996, I had the pleasure of visiting with John Clegg a number of very remarkable petroglyph and pictograph sites in the Sydney, New South Wales region in Australia. Clegg guided me with the help of his marvellous capacity 10 Bradley, An Archaeology of Natural Places, p. 77.

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to perceive and make visible engravings that to most viewers are “invisible.” At Berowra Waters, on the wooded slopes at the shore of the Hawkesbury River, we examined engravings and axe-grinding grooves on both inclined and walking-level rock surfaces, and then moved on under a small overhang, located directly by the water. There we examined one of the few pictographs found in the area. It is located on the wall where it turns into the ceiling, appeared to represent a ﬁsh, and seemed to be produced with red ochre. The surface did not seem particularly suitable for applying paint, and the location seemed an odd location for a painting since it was poorly illuminated, even at noon on a bright, sunny day. While sitting down under this overhang, however, we could absorb the warmth of the sunshine on this brisk winter morning. There we had lunch, and talked about our visit. After a while we noticed that the gently moving waters of the river had begun projecting a very agitated bit of reﬂected sunlight precisely at the formerly poorly illuminated ﬁsh image. We found this phenomenon quite captivating, and began wondering if this might be an unusual occurrence. After some reﬂection and discussion we concluded that, given the angle of incidence required for the light to hit that spot, this phenomenon would only occur in the late mornings and in seasons other than summer. At this point, I ventured the hypothesis that the painter of the ﬁsh image might have chosen the location for his image as a result of having had a “dazzling sunshine” experience such as we did, perhaps while ﬁshing at the nearby spit of gravel. Admittedly, this was no more than an unconﬁrmed (and likely unconﬁrmable) speculation, but the end result was that I began to pay close attention and to aesthetically appreciate the immediate natural surrounds in a new way. I began to seek an understanding of how this area of land might have appeared to, and might have been appreciated by, the sojourners who had left the rock art behind. Conclusion Through the implicit accounts of the natural landscape that rock art sites can offer we may come to realize that “the landscape was permeated by meanings and was not simply a source of provisions” to earlier inhabitants and visitors.11 Of course, this does not mean that by attending to those implicit accounts we will have any assurance that we have reliably re-created the meanings that the land had for any of its earlier sojourners. Certainly, the explicit accounts that we derive about the sites and about the natural landscape are our own interpretations, which may be more or less true to the site and the landscape in question (depending on our imaginative capacity, our scholarship, as well as our care in observation). Nonetheless, however far we may be from the meanings assigned to rock art and to land by those earlier sojourners, it is signiﬁcant that the aesthetic appreciation of rock art sites may contribute to our contemporary aesthetic appreciation of the land as landscape. After encountering rock art sites in a stretch of land we become aware of the fact that this is land that has been seen, and as such this insight may 11 Bradley et al., “Rock Art Research,” p. 387.

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persuade us in a new way to consider attentively the land’s natural qualities. This is a way of taking note of some of the ways that the land is, and not just of the ways that the land may be used. So, insofar as the aesthetic appreciation of rock art sites may lead to a better understanding and a deeper recognition of the value of the natural environment, it may also contribute to the development of environmental conscience.12

12 I am indebted to John Clegg for guiding me to wonderful rock art sites in the Sydney area and for discussing the topics raised in this chapter with me. Rock Art and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Natural Landscapes appeared in News95 International Rock Art Congress Proceedings (Pinerolo, Italy: Centro Studi e Museo d’Arte Preistorica, 1999).

Chapter 8

After Mining Reﬂections on Reclamation through Art

… the work of art is beautiful to the degree that it opposes its own order to that of reality … Herbert Marcuse1

In this brief chapter, I apply again the general principle developed in Chapter 5, that any story that leads us to attend to nature is relevant in the aesthetic appreciation of the natural environment. Mining the land is exposing the Earth. When the thin layer of life that covers the Earth is removed we get to look at the land of our graves. In this essay, I describe my personal experiences with three ways of dealing with the Earth once its protective, life-bearing skin is peeled back. The focus of this brief chapter is on my experience with reclamation art, an activity as puzzling as it is controversial. This is a way to engage viewers aesthetically, but it need not end up aestheticizing a destructive activity. After Mining: Mending, Mourning and Minding the Earth As mentioned earlier, I grew up in a small town on the shores of the Mediterranean in Spain, a country known for its mines since the dawn of history. While I lived in that region tourism began to generate a building boom, and as long as I lived at the outskirts of this town I heard the gravel-mining operations in the nearby river valley. Later I moved to Calgary, in Canada’s West, where there also was a building boom, and of much greater dimensions. On weekends I often went for hikes or crosscountry ski trips in the nearby Rocky Mountains. My way into the mountains would be guided by the smoke and dust plume emanating from the cement factory located close to the edge of the park boundaries. Sometimes I would go to Kananaskis Country, the provincially-run buffer zone to Banff National Park, to hike up Mt. Allan, a mountain that on one side had become the site of a controversial Olympic ski development. A quarter of the way up I would be greeted by a fading sign stating that this was the site of an old coal mine, now reclaimed. I walked about the location many times without ever noticing any evidence of the former mine except for a smidgen of coal dust mingled in with the dirt. Grass had sprouted on most of the treeless, graded hillside, and only the eroding road stopping abruptly at a place that seemed to have undergone a landslide, where

1 Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 64.

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the mine presumably had been, provided a hint that human activity had taken place in the area. When I could not leave town I frequently would walk on Nose Hill, one of the gently rising elevations that surround the core of Calgary. Most of Nose Hill’s slopes were covered with prairie grasses and occasional groups of weather-beaten shaking aspen. But on the very top of the hill everything changed. Nose Hill is an esker2 left behind by the retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age. Its summit had long been mined for its gravel and the landscape there resembled images of the surface of the Moon. Here, there were only muddy pools of stagnant water and no signs of vegetation except for thistles covering the barren, machine-carved pit. Mining at the rate at which it is happening in our times certainly is inappropriate, given the commitment to sustainability agreed upon at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. There it was agreed that we would look after present as well as future generations’ needs. But, in any case, the question remains, what should we do after the mining extraction has stopped? Should we, as on Mt. Allan, attempt to mend the sites through reclamation work intended to hide our former presence there? As of late this possibility has been much castigated as either impossible or as a kind of fakery.3 One of the main concerns is that, if human activity is covered up through “restoration” or “reclamation,” to make it look as if the condition of the site were the result of natural processes, this is akin to forgery since it is supposed that nothing we human beings make can be other than artefactual. One of the feared consequences of restoration and reclamation work is that it may be used to justify incursions into relatively untouched areas on the grounds that whatever damage is brought about can be corrected afterwards without further losses. This kind of reasoning is particularly worrisome when applied to areas located in parks and wilderness refuges. We may ask, however, what might be an alternative. Should we just leave sites, such as the gravel pit on Nose Hill, to themselves, for our children’s children still to wonder about? No matter how necessary mining may be for growing populations in growing urban centers, the sites where the Earth has been disturbed in this manner have a strongly sobering effect. Unrestored mining sites are like old battleﬁelds, which can still be visited in some places in Europe: calls to mourning for the future as well as for the past. One of the possible alternatives to leaving such sites as they are, once mining activity ceases, was explored by some of the North American artists who, in the late 1960s, left their studios and literally “worked” the Earth into so-called “earthworks” or “land art.”4 Many of those artworks became controversial from both aesthetic and ethical points of view, because they were seen as involving the same kind of disturbance as mining and other earth-moving operations. Some of those artists, however, chose to work on “previously used” sites, seeking to add an aesthetic dimension to land reclamation. They sought out sites, such as strip mines, toxic waste dumps and polluted rivers, as “raw material” for outdoor artworks which have been dubbed 2 An esker is a long, sinuous ridge of ﬂuvio-glacial material composed of stratiﬁed gravel and sand. 3 See Chapter 11 for references to the literature on this debate. 4 For further discussion of this art form and additional references, see Chapter 11.

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5

“reclamation art.” You might say that they were more engaged in minding than in mending or mourning the land. Can art effectively address the blight on nature caused by industrial entrepreneurship? Reclamation Art: Immolated Nature on View Although only a few reclamation art projects were actually realized in the 1970s, the art form was revitalized in the U.S. in the 1980s due to the introduction in that country of legislation requiring rehabilitation of polluted or ravaged sites.6 In Canada, reclamation art never really took off, but perhaps one should count as reclamation art outdoor works such as Noel Harding’s Elevated Wetlands (1998), installed in Toronto. This work, which has the appearance of giant molars, located in sight of the Don Valley Parkway, is intended to purify polluted water from the Don River with the help of specially selected plants rooted in ground-up soda bottles and shredded plastic ﬂuff from discarded cars.7 Elevated Wetlands displays some of the typical features of reclamation art in that it uses, and draws attention to, a serious, industrially caused, disturbance in the natural environment (in this case, polluted water). On a trip to the U.S. one late fall in the 1990s, I personally had the opportunity to consider one of the most successful reclamation artworks. The piece is known as Untitled: Johnson Pit #30 (1979), is located near Seattle in Washington State and was created by Robert Morris.8 I report here my experience at the site and the reﬂections that it generated in me and in my travel companion. Unremarkable from the outside, at ﬁrst we drive past the site but then recognize it, double back, and park just below it. The site is located in a semi-rural, semi-industrial landscape, on the steep slopes of a wide river valley, half-surrounded by a busy twolane road. Trucks are heard noisily climbing the escarpment in ﬁrst gear. Airplanes are seen and heard overhead every few minutes, rising from the Seattle-Tacoma airport. A small stretch of the six-lane Interstate 5 highway, with its slow-moving, rushhour trafﬁc, can be made out in the distance. Light but steady rain falls out of a gray, darkening afternoon sky. A woman stops to offer us a lift as we trudge up the steep hill, after we have left our vehicle by the side of the road. She thought that we had had car trouble. This is local helpfulness. Looking up, and toward the upper part of the slope, we can see two sets of crisscrossing powerlines. Bordering the site itself, just beyond a little fence, there is a considerable colony of scotch broom. Down in the valley bottom, the ﬂat roofs of the industrial parks of Kent ﬁll the plain. 5 For a listing of such sites, see, for example, Hilary Anne Frost-Kumpf, “Reclamation Art: Restoring and Commemorating Blighted Landscapes” . 6 See, for example, Joan Marter, “Nature Redux: Recent Reclamation Art,” Sculpture, 13 (November–December 1994), pp. 30–3; Harriet H. Murray, “Pits and Pitfalls: Harriet Feigenbaum’s Reclamation Art,” Women’s Art Journal, 12 (Spring–Summer 1991), pp. 29–35. 7 See Wallace Immen, “This Expressway Art Really Cleans Up,” Globe and Mail, 30 September 1998, p. A2. 8 It occupies four acres and overlooks the Boeing Information, Space, and Defense Center in the valley below.

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What is this place? My companion derides my calling it “art.” Much less does she agree with my exclamation “magniﬁcent!” Morris had reshaped a gravel pit so that from above one now looks into a wide hole about thirty meters deep, with ﬁve broad terraces on the hill side, and three on the valley side. The terraces are covered with tall grass, yellowed and golden, fallen over like tufts of hair. Each of the terraces follows a wavy line connecting two ovals that open to each other. It reminds me of the way embryos are pictured as lying in the womb; here the “head” is facing up alongside the escarpment, and the “stomach” is cuddled against the hill side. Standing on the rim of the hillock delineated by the three terraces facing the valley, one feels exposed, fully available to the roaring surrounds. As soon as one begins descending the terraces to the pit below, the roar of the place becomes mufﬂed. Deep down on the ﬂoor of the hole one feels that one is in one’s own private space. The trucks climbing, still visible at the point where one’s visual ﬁeld and the road meet, and the continuing air trafﬁc overhead, now matter less. It is a place for looking up at the swinging curves of the terraces, at the bundles of golden grass. As we walk along the surprisingly dry, well-drained, pit bottom, I feel as if caressed by the undulating terrain. Then, suddenly, while in the lens of this deep and wide hole, I realise that I am now even more exposed to prying eyes than before while walking on the rim. The sense of exposure now competes with the sense of privacy ﬁrst noted. This experience leads me to ask a number of questions, such as, what was this place before it became the “Robert Morris Site”? Apparently it was a gravel pit, a gash in the side of the escarpment. And now, what is it? Not a celebration of nature. Nature stands stolidly in the background, as my companion points out, represented by a dark wall of needle trees on the top of the hill. This site does not constitute a “restoration of nature,” however we may interpret this term. It is a creation that uses the denuded and excavated gravel pit, the roaring vehicularized human beings on the adjacent road and in the sky, the brooding needle trees on the hill above, and the exotic scotch broom on its side, and, surprisingly, turns it all into a site of sensuousness. It had become a place of sensuous beauty – despite the ubiquitous turmoil. As we walk back to our vehicle, down the steep slope along the shoulder of the road, we note how the site abruptly hides itself behind its massive outer walls. From below the rim of the pit, this is just another pile of pushed gravel, poorly restored, offering the searching eye at most a few brambles and some young poplars. Later, home in my familiar urban and academic surroundings, I sought to ﬁnd out what Morris had in mind when he made this work. I discovered that it was part of an experiment on a grand scale. The King County Arts Commission and the King County Department of Public Works had agreed to sponsor the reclamation of eight severely stressed environments, ranging from gravel pits to a strip of abandoned land along the noisy Seattle-Tacoma airport. The idea seems to have been to marry the availability of abundant “raw material” for newly fashionable earthworks with the redemptive power of art, in order to bring about a new form of salvage of land. I asked myself why artists were engaged to bring about these attempts at reclamation. I wondered, as Nancy Foote9 and others had, why these sites were not 9 Nancy Foote, “Monument–Sculpture–Earthwork,” Artforum, 18, 2 (October 1979), pp. 32–7, p. 37.

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left to landscape designers to turn them into “parks,” complete with the “‘pedestrian amenities’ – benches, picnic tables, parking lots and trash baskets” that the public probably prefers to art? I concluded that maybe allowing artists to take over these places must have seemed like a convenient shift of responsibility away from the actual guardians of such places, the civic authorities that administer, or at least authorize, the transformation of natural spaces into sources and sinks for industrial and consumer throughput. Perhaps it was believed that if a gravel pit or a landﬁll site can be turned into an artwork, viewers would forget the troubled history of those places. Distraction as a strategy for inducing loss of awareness has worked well enough in other circumstances. This raises the question that my companion had raised, namely, what makes these sites art? That is, why should one not simply dismiss them as highbrow landscape engineering with a pretty label? Moreover, by what standards are these hybrids of land reclamation, sculpture and gardening, to be assessed? These are questions that deserve longer treatment than I am ready to give them here. Nonetheless, I will offer some initial considerations here. We may think of artworks as distinct from the rest of what human beings make by their intended completeness and their ability to point beyond the everyday. In a sense each artwork is in its own world. This is most evident to us in novels: The characters in such ﬁctions have a “life” of their own which they will always live according to the writer’s decisions. Nothing in our everyday can affect their story once the writer has declared that the story is complete. This seems just as true of paintings, songs, or sculptures, even if their supports (the paint on canvas, the books with notes, the recording, or the stone, respectively) may degrade due to the inclements of our everyday. Even while the world of the artwork is complete, insofar as nothing could be added or taken away without making it a different work, this does not mean that it has to function in an isolated way from our everyday reality, or that artworks have to constitute “pretty illusions,” intended to draw our attention away from the everyday. It seems rather that, as Herbert Marcuse proposes in the epigraph of this chapter, artworks pretend to be separate from the rest of our everyday reality while speaking to it.10 Interestingly, site-speciﬁc artworks such as earthworks may be described by Michel Foucault’s term “heterotopias,” which makes reference to spaces that contest all other spaces, spaces that are “as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as [our ordinary human-made spaces] are messy, ill-constructed and jumbled.”11 Thinking back to the Robert Morris site, I sense that its design exhibits a certain aesthetic perfection through the contrasting prospects of its layout. At ﬁrst, I feel that as an inscription of sensuousness on a heavily disturbed portion of escarpment it drew me away from the harsh realities of my everyday, like an escapist movie or novel might. But then I notice that, while trying to ﬁgure out the artwork, I became clearly conscious of the car and airplane trafﬁc in the gray background. It seemed that the 10 Also see my “Understanding Performance Art: Art Beyond Art,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 31 (January 1991), pp. 68–73. 11 Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” diacritics, Spring 1986, pp. 22–7, p. 27, translation of “Des espaces autres,” Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité (October, 1984). For further discussion of the notion of heterotopias, see Chapter 11.

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artwork only mufﬂed the roar of all-consuming artifactuality that surrounds it on every side, while eventually drawing my attention to it. The site teased and pleased my eyes with its undulating contours, while I was also staring at man-high tree stumps, coated with dark preservative material, the only reminders that the site may once have been part of the forest. The solemn, brooding wall of needle trees on the top of the hill, located beyond the conﬁnes of the site starkly conﬁrm the anti-illusory character of the artwork. But, as noted, the place certainly does not constitute a celebration of nature. Conclusion From Morris’s “Keynote Address,” held at the opening of the King County reclamation works, I learn that he had warned the public that “[i]t would perhaps be a misguided assumption to suppose that artists hired to work in industrially blasted landscapes would necessarily and invariably choose to convert such sites into idyllic and reassuring places, thereby redeeming those who wasted the landscape in the ﬁrst place.”12 This artist-reclaimed site indeed loudly proclaims the ambivalence inherent in reclamations of industrially stressed sites. Reclamation by artists does not necessarily issue in aesthetization. In the case of Untitled: Johnson Pit #30, the artistic intervention did not neatly rehabilitate a site in such a way that unsuspecting, later-coming visitors might be led to the illusion that this is an undisturbed patch of pristine nature. It seems that, in transforming the old gravel pit into an artwork, Morris quite masterfullly makes us reﬂect on the denatured character of the place. Paradoxically, the work transforms the site while it also preserves its history. This reclamation artwork turns the immolation of nature into beauty – while putting that same immolation on view.13

12 Quoted in John Beardsley, Earthworks and Beyond (New York: Abbeville/Cross River Press, 1984), p. 94, from Robert Morris, “Robert Morris Keynote Address,” in Earthworks: Land Reclamation as Sculpture (Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1979), p. 16. 13 I am indebted to Lisa Edwards for stimulating discussions concerning this artwork. Spanish versions of this chapter have been published as “Después de explotar las minas: subsanar, llorar y honrar la tierra,” Centro Cultural Canadá, 20 (Córdoba, Argentina, Canadian Cultural Centre, 2004), pp. 66–71, and “Más allá de la minería: (la)mentar, (en)mendar, y (re)memoriar Pachamama,” Círculo Hermenéutico, 5 <www.circulohermeneutico.tk> (accessed 20 February 2006). After Mining: Reﬂections on Reclamation through Art is a signiﬁcantly modiﬁed version of “Revisiting the Artistic Reclamation of Nature,” The Trumpeter, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1998), trumpeter.athabascau.ca/content/v15.1/heyd.html.

PART III Culture and Nature The ﬁrst part of the book explored various ideas related to the development of environmental morality, in which the encounter with nature played an important role as stimulus and content of environmental conscience. The second part focused on environmental aesthetics and the ways in which this kind of encounter may contribute toward an environmentally aware and benign culture. The supposition underlying this third part of the book is that we need to have a clear idea of how nature and culture are related if we are to transform our societies in such a way that our encounter with nature may be harmonious and not destructive. Chapter 9 addresses the relationship between nature and culture in a general way, in the context of the distinction between natural and cultural heritage. My proposal is that, although quite distinct, the concepts of nature and culture are not in opposition to each other, and that this allows us to conceive of human activity in the natural environment in interesting and productive ways. The three following chapters give substance to this idea in a variety of ways. Chapter 10 continues with the exploration of the potential of indigenous, site-speciﬁc art for drawing our attention to the natural environment. My focus here is on boulder structures that model a relation to land that is an alternative to the relation to land that is typical in contemporary industrial societies. In Chapter 11, I discuss another way of modeling an appropriate relation to land, namely through the activity of nature restoration. The puzzle under consideration is how restoration may avoid the charge of creating mere artefacts. I suggest that the puzzle can be solved in a satisfactory way if we come clear on what sort of activity restoration is, and conclude that restoration can make good sense if carried out with certain safeguards in place. Finally, Chapter 12 proposes that there are thoroughly cultural creations that, through their considerate approach in the use of natural materials, can contribute to a new conception of the relationship between human and non-human natural beings. The case under consideration concerns botanic gardens, which are the product of a very particular cultural development but are fully dependent on plants as essential constituents.

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Chapter 9

Nature, Culture and Natural Heritage Toward a Culture of Nature

Culture and nature have long been considered in opposition to each other. Some commentators have supposed that culture really is part of nature, since all human activity is natural in some sense, while others have supposed that the natural really is a part of cultural, since everything we think or say about nature is produced from a human perspective. The relation between nature and culture is also an issue that needs to be clariﬁed in the context of the inclusion of “cultural landscapes” as a category for protection in the World Heritage Convention in the 1990s. In this chapter, I launch a reﬂection of how these various categories are related and suggest that nature can be understood as an important, distinctive category, despite the interpenetration of the natural and the human-made. I will argue that culture and nature need not be conceived in opposition to each other, and, furthermore, that it makes sense to speak of and pursue a culture of nature. Ultimately this reﬂection should serve as a foundation for the development of an environmentally benign culture. I begin by considering the notion of natural heritage, as developed in relation to the World Heritage Convention, the questions that have been raised regarding the idea of nature, and the supposed contrast between nature and culture. I continue by taking note of the manner in which the idea of culture functions, how nature and artiﬁce relate to culture, and show what it means to speak of a culture of nature. I conclude with a sketch of the consequences that these considerations have for natural heritage conservation,1 and for our understanding of the relation between natural and cultural heritage. Nature and Culture Reconceiving natural and cultural heritage The idea of heritage, like the idea of inheritance, involves reference to something that comes from the past and is legitimately enjoyed by some person or persons in the

1 In this chapter I do not speciﬁcally distinguish between conservation and preservation (and, so, use them interchangeably) mostly because the discourse regarding the protection of natural heritage is generally carried out in terms of “conservation.” The interchangeable use of these terms in this context is harmless, moreover, since here I am not concerned with the motivations for interacting with nature in a certain way (for our vs. for its own sake) but with the kind of cultural fabric that will bring about, or maintain a certain state.

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present. Heritage, however, involves further reference to something fundamentally shared in common, perhaps by all those who belong to a nation, ideological afﬁliation, or other afﬁnity group. Hence, one speaks of national heritage, the heritage of the abolitionists, or the heritage represented by Moorish architecture. As such, heritage belongs to some group in a trans-temporal manner: it is something to be enjoyed not only by certain people in this generation, but also by the relevant set of people across time, possibly for indeﬁnitely long future periods. Consequently, heritage, in contrast to inheritance, may be deﬁned as the stock of valued goods passed on from the past to the present; the integrity of which is to be protected, possibly to be enjoyed and to be augmented, but not to be used up, before being passed on to the future. The distinction between natural heritage and cultural heritage is conceived in terms of their respective provenances, natural and human, respectively, which imply distinctive values. The terms “natural heritage” and “cultural heritage” have received increasing recognition ever since the signing of the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage (World Heritage Convention, in short), originally adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972. In the Convention’s “Mission Statement,” the two sorts of heritage are described thus: Cultural heritage refers to monuments, groups of buildings and sites with historical, aesthetic, archaeological, scientiﬁc, ethnological or anthropological value. Natural heritage refers to outstanding physical, biological, and geological formations, habitats of threatened species of animals and plants and areas with scientiﬁc, conservation or aesthetic value.3

The World Heritage Convention does acknowledge that there are some sites best described as having mixed value, insofar as they combine features valuable from both the natural and the cultural points of view: “works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view.”4 The World Heritage site of Þingvellir is an example of a mixed site, since for Icelanders it boasts both cultural and natural values in a manner similar to, for example, Kakadu in Australia.5 2 Certain kinds of inheritance, as well as certain kinds of heritage, however, seem rather to be borne than enjoyed, if they involve a disagreeable condition. This may be for a variety of reasons. We speak of the weight of history as a kind of “heritage” which brings on physical as well as psychological burdens, which later generations must bear, as, for example, after a war or after a disaster of some sort. But even ostensibly positive things can be hard to bear if the obligations that they bring along issue in hardships for those involved, as, for example, when the artistic or natural goods passed on are expensive to maintain or to protect. Here I will not address this issue further, but primarily focus on the idea that both heritage and inheritance concern some thing or things that are identiﬁed as valuable by some person or group of persons at some point in time. 3 World Heritage Convention Mission Statement, issued May 2000, updated 1 June 2000 . 4 Ibid., emphasis added. 5 (Þingvellir is pronounced similarly to “Thingvellir.”) Sometimes there may be an interesting interaction of the distinct cultural and natural values attributed to a site. For example, according

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The prima facie distinction between natural and cultural heritage was questioned in a fundamental way in the 1990s, leading to the adoption of the notion of “cultural landscapes” as a category for protection by the World Heritage Convention.6 Mechthild Rössler points out that: … cultural landscapes … illustrate the evolution of societies and human establishments throughout the ages, as inﬂuenced by the advantages or the constraints of their natural and social environment. They are therefore an addition to, rather than a replacement of, mixed properties (i.e. those that match up to both natural and cultural criteria).7

Cultural landscapes directly acknowledge the joint action of human and natural forces in the generation of certain heritage sites, but this new category also raises questions regarding the source of the value of other sites. It can be argued that cultural heritage sites, such as Angkor (Cambodia), at least partially acquire their worth through being situated in a certain natural environment (a tropical rainforest), while the value of natural heritages sites, such as Yellowstone National Park, depends at least in part on their contrast to humanly transformed environments (the roaded, urbanized U.S.). These circumstances make opportune a reassessment of the relation between nature and culture as they come to bear on the notion of natural heritage. Questioning nature To date, much of the motivation for setting up nature reserves and national parks, and for designating some of those areas as World Heritage Sites, has arisen from the conviction that the few remaining portions of “pure,” untouched nature should be preserved in their original state. As a result, resident human populations typically have been relocated outside such protected areas (while management teams, along with guards and scientiﬁc researchers, are allowed in). As of late, this neat picture has begun to fall apart for a diversity of reasons. On the one hand, there are those who proclaim that we are at “the end of nature” since, through active colonization and, in any case, through aerial transport, all parts of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, as well as generous portions of its subterranean and submarine areas (and even some parts of extra-terrestrial space), have been affected by human activity.8 Moreover, the global climate change to which humanity to Ólafur Páll Jónsson (letter to the author, 12 December 2005) “the fact that Thingvellir is culturally very important has played a substantial role in the protection of nature there.” 6 The present criteria concerning cultural landscapes are to be found at under Operational Guidelines, Ch. 1, Part C, “Criteria for the inclusion of cultural properties in the World Heritage List,” sections 35–42. For discussion, see Mechthild Rössler, “The Integration of Cultural Landscapes into the World Heritage,” “Conserving Outstanding Cultural Landscapes,” and “Protecting Outstanding Cultural Landscapes” in World Heritage Newsletter, 1–3, pp. 15, 14–5, and 15, respectively, (1993), also found at . Also see Bernd von Droste, Harald Plachter and Mechthild Rössler (eds), Cultural Landscapes of Universal Value: Components of a Global Strategy (Stuttgart/New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1995). 7 Rössler, “The Integration of Cultural Landscapes,” p. 15 (emphases added). 8 See for example, Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House, 1989).

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has contributed through the large-scale burning of fossil fuels over the last sixty years, will affect basic conditions for most, if not all, of the planet’s living things. So, is there any “real,” not anthropogenically altered, nature to be protected? On the other hand, the study of cultural landscapes has led to the question whether “pure” nature areas are really desirable since, at least under certain conditions, higher biological diversity may be found in areas actively modiﬁed by human beings than in areas without human presence. In a classical study, Gary P. Nabhan and his colleagues, for example, determined that, with respect to two oases on either side of the U.S.–Mexican border, the one on the Mexican side, still used for agriculture, had greater biodiversity than the one on the U.S. side, managed as a people-excluding nature reserve.9 Since the 1992 Rio World Summit, biodiversity has been recognized as one of the most important indices of natural areas. So, why seek out and protect purportedly virgin nature if humanly modiﬁed areas may have greater biodiversity? Furthermore, some claim that nature is an arbitrary, cultural construct.10 First, from a semiotic perspective, all classiﬁcatory categories are a function of the differences inherent in a system of signs. Hence, the category “nature” is said to be a function of the historically contingent existence of a certain system of signiﬁers (in European languages), which makes the distinction “natural vs. non-natural” the result of arbitrary (conventional) linguistic facts. In this context it is, moreover, relevant that, at least in European belief systems, nature historically was seen as dangerous, exploitable, and intrinsically inferior to human beings. Since nature was associated with women and non-European, indigenous peoples, and these categories have been associated with inferior status, some have supposed that distinctions between the natural and the non-natural play into a noxious kind of duality, implicated in oppressive, patriarchal and colonial power relations.11 Second, it is also argued that empirical investigation shows that the conceptual contrast which leads us to distinguish between the natural and the humanly inﬂuenced part of the world is not universal but, rather, idiosyncratic to certain peoples, such as those of European culture.12 The conclusion, once again, is that to distinguish some parts of the world as natural in contrast to others is parochial and arbitrary. Finally, some propose that, by separating out certain areas as national parks or nature reserves, the essence of nature – wildness, precisely – is extirpated from 9 Gary P. Nabhan, A.M. Rea, K.L. Reichardt, E. Mellink and C.F. Hutchinson, “Papago Inﬂuences on Habitat and Biotic Diversity: Quitovac Oasis Ethnoecology,” Journal of Ethnobiology, 2, 2 (1982), pp. 124–43. Also see Tim Peschel, Vegetationskundliche Untersuchungen der Wiesen und Rasen historischer Gärten in Potsdam (Stuttgart, 2000), who reports on hundreds of species found within these parks but not generally outside. But see Holmes Rolston, “The Wilderness Idea Reafﬁrmed,” The Environmental Professional, 13 (1991), pp. 370–77, in critique of Nabhan et al. 10 Also see Philippe Descola, Par-delà nature et culture (Paris: Gallimard Editions, 2005). 11 For discussion see Val Plumwood, “Toward a Progressive Naturalism,” in Thomas Heyd (ed.), Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), Chapter 2. 12 See, for example, T. Ingold, “Culture and the perception of the environment,” in E. Croll and D. Parkin (eds), Bush Base: Forest Farm. Culture, Environment and Development (London: Routledge, 1992).

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those areas. The argument is that true (wild) nature must be “free,” but once an area is designated as a park or reserve, it is fenced in, large animals living in it often are radio-collared and regularly culled, ﬁres are suppressed, and the whole area generally tends to come under intense observation and management. Arguably, these measures are taken to protect such areas from external incursions and to maintain the ecological “balance” of the ecosystem, but, in the process, such areas lose some of the original, wild qualities for which they were conserved.13 In light of these various considerations, it may seem inadvisable to insist on the conservation of areas for their “natural” heritage value as opposed to their value as a “cultural” heritage. I argue that the considerations adduced should, rather, lead us to re-examine the relation between human beings and nature. Are nature and culture opposites? Many authors directly treat nature and culture as opposites, culture being equated with the human-made, while nature is considered the realm untouched by culture.14 Although this contrast reﬂects a certain common usage, there is reason to reassess its utility. Beginning with the notion of nature, it is notable that some of the things which human beings make and do, intuitively speaking, rather seem to ﬁt in the “nature” category: human beings gather food, seek safety and make shelters; they reproduce through sexual intercourse, gestation, and by giving birth to children; they breathe, they digest, and so on. Such “natural” activities always are overlaid with a particular culture’s impress, but, as such, they are of the same kind as those of relevantly similar non-human animals. “Culture,” moreover, is a term with a complex set of referents.15 One can stipulate that it stand for whatever is made by human beings, but, taking into account the rather “natural” human behaviors noted above, we may recall that we have more precise terms for the human-made, namely “artefact” and “artiﬁcial.” From a pragmatic point of view, the category “natural” simply marks off the non-artiﬁcial from the artiﬁcial. Conceiving of the human-made as artefacts and the artiﬁcial has the advantage, moreover, that artiﬁciality can easily be seen as graduated, according

13 For discussion of the role of parks, see, for example, Thomas H. Birch, “The Incarceration of Wildness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons,” Environmental Ethics, 12 (Spring 1980), pp. 3–26. Regarding the relation of wildness and certain human activities, see Mark Woods, “Ecological Restoration and the Renewal of Wildness and Freedom” in Heyd, Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, Chapter 10. 14 But see, for example, Bruno Latour, We have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, trans. by Catherine Porter of Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essais d’anthropologie symmétrique (Paris: La Découverte, 1991)), who argues that “the very notion of culture is an artifact created by bracketing Nature off. Cultures – different or universal – do not exist, any more than Nature does. There are only naturescultures …” (p. 104), Also see Yrjö Haila, “Beyond the Nature-Culture Dualism,” Biology and Philosophy, 15 (2000), pp. 155–75. 15 See Tim Ingold, “Introduction to culture,” in Tim Ingold (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 327–49.

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to the degree of human intervention.16 For instance, if I pick an orange, squeeze it, and immediately drink the juice out of a glass, this juice is more natural and less artiﬁcial than the “orange drink” which I might synthesize from orange-similar ﬂavors and vitamin C, adding water and orange coloring to this, storing this brew in a plastic bottle, and eventually serving it in a polyurethane cup. One may wonder, though, what exactly makes something artiﬁcial if the ultimate “raw material” for human activity originally always is something natural. It may at ﬁrst seem that the degree of artiﬁciality of some thing simply depends on the amount of arte, that is, technique or technological intervention applied to the pre-existing natural material. This turns out to lead to intuitively paradoxical consequences, however, since often the technologically more sophisticated interventions are the ones that cause less disturbance in nature.17 It is clear, in any case, that human activity, technically mediated in some fashion or other, can interfere more or less with the course that things would take in the absence of humanity. So, even if all of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere has by now been affected by anthropogenic phenomena, such as air pollution or global warming, we can still speak of many areas of the globe as being highly natural and only negligibly artiﬁcial. In short, my analysis leaves an important role to the term “nature,” since it designates those portions of the world of another form of spontaneity than the human.18 Importantly, hence, the distinction between what is called “nature” and what is not is not eliminable on the basis of the supposed arbitrariness of such designations. At least among the cultures with roots in Europe (that is, those of “the West”), the terms “nature” and “natural” have rather deep signiﬁcance, insofar as they designate fundamental ontological categories. The identiﬁcation of nature with dangerous forces needs to be thought through carefully since, even when “natural disasters,” such as ﬁres, ﬂoods, or earthquakes hit human communities, human lives and goods typically are at risk because of decisions to locate in risky areas (such as near forests, on ﬂoodplains, or on 16 As noted, this way of characterizing the natural is a matter of convenience or pragmatism. Also see John Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature (London: Duckworth, 1974), who makes a similar proposal (fn. p. 5). Though we cannot broach the topic here, the distinction becomes more problematic once we incorporate the notion that, in some fundamental way, human beings are also natural. One may, however, perhaps speak of the contrast between human artefacts and artefacts made by other beings since ethologists tell us that a number of other animal species make simple tools, shelter, and so on. 17 I am thankful to several colleagues, especially to Bob Bright, who helped me come clear on this point. 18 By the term “spontaneous” I mean the expression of a being’s own way, that is, the expression of its speciﬁc qualities. Also see Aristotle’s account of the nature in Physics, Book II, Chapter 1. He proposes that “All things existing by nature appear to have in themselves a principle of motion and of standstill … ” (Physics, II, 1, 192b, 13–5) In this way each natural thing has its own “autonomy” or spontaneity. (I am indebted to Taneli Kukkonen for clarifying this point. The ﬁrst entry under “spontaneous” in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary states that spontaneous means “proceeding from natural feeling or native tendency without external constraint”; its third entry proposes “controlled and directed internally”; its ﬁfth is “developing without apparent external inﬂuence, force, cause, or treatment.”

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faultlines). Nature’s imperviousness to domination, be it in resistance to biocides or to disaster-preventive measures, indicates, furthermore, that nature cannot properly be associated with the inferior and manipulable. In other words, nature is not a model of the subservient. Hence, associating women and indigenous people to nature should not lead to a reinforcement of oppressive, patriarchal and colonial power relations. To say that such nefarious power relations are justiﬁed because they are “natural” is simply a poor attempt to justify attitudes based on ignorance of the complexity of the natural world. Human dependence on nature’s autonomous functioning, and nature’s continued supply of essentially free, highly valued goods to humanity (as a sink for human waste products, and as a source of basic biological resources) rather highlights nature’s beneﬁcent role. Moreover, even if other peoples divide up the world by different ontological categories than we do, this is a moot point. Every society makes distinctions in the perceived world that it interacts with. Even if other people have not seen the need to distinguish between the human-made and the non-human-made in the manner that people of European cultural origins do, this is no reason to suppose that the distinction is useless to us or without foundation. This leaves us to consider the question whether it makes sense to preserve certain areas as examples of “pure” nature, given that, at least in some cases, certain indices of naturalness, such as biodiversity, at times seem to argue for human intervention. Before addressing this question, I consider in more detail the relation of nature (and its opposite, artefactuality), on the one hand, to culture, on the other, by taking into account some of the discussions on the deﬁnition of the term “culture” in anthropology. The Culture of Nature Understanding culture E.B. Tylor deﬁned “culture” as that “complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by an individual as a member of society.”19 As Lee Cronk reports, since the time that Tylor offered his deﬁnition there has been a tendency to narrow the concept to the cognitive components of his notion.20 J.H. Barkow considers culture to be “a system of socially transmitted information.”21 Others emphasize the fact that culture is not something private, but, rather, something in which more than one individual participates. For example, J. Tooby and L. Cosmides deﬁne culture as “any mental, behavioral, or

19 E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom (London: J. Murray, 1871), cited in Lee Cronk, “Is there a Role for Culture in Human Behavioral Ecology?,” Ethology and Sociobiology, 16 (1995), pp. 181–205, p. 182. 20 Cronk, “Is there a Role,” p. 182. 21 J.H. Barkow, Darwin, Sex and Status: Biological Approaches to Mind and Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1989), cited in Cronk, “Is there a Role,” p. 182.

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material commonalities shared across individuals.”22 These considerations, therefore, speak against equating the human-made with culture tout court, since what some particular individual does or makes need not be representative of any one group’s commonalities. The etymological root of the word “culture” is found in the Latin term colere, which refers to the activity of working the land and creating places for living there. This root meaning of “culture” is preserved in terms such as to “cultivate” and “agri-culture.” At this point the inherent normativity of the term “culture” comes to the foreground as exhibited in value-laden expressions such as “uncultivated” and “uncultured.” The positive value intended to be conveyed by the term “culture” and its derivatives is clearly detectable, for example, in John Locke’s (ethnocentric) declaration that the lands of the Americas are not worth much until cultivated by the (European) colonists. The normative aspect of the term is also evident in the meaning of the German word “Kultur,” which stands for the value-laden terms “civilization” and “high culture” in English. Culture in these senses is taken to express what makes human beings truly human, life really worth living, and the “barbarous” supposedly so deserving of rejection. This is a use of the term that has given expression to ethnocentric and anthropocentric sentiments, but need not. I use here a concept of “culture” that takes into account its characteristic aspects, including its normativity, albeit without opening up the term to discriminatory discourse. The points noted above, including the positive normative load contained in the ideas of “cultivation” and of becoming “cultured,” suggest that the core meaning of the term has to do with the actualization of valuable qualities23 that are potentially present in certain things. The term “culture” is applied in this sense when we speak of the shaping of food-productive land (agriculture),24 but also of the “shaping” of certain intentional soundscapes (the creation and appreciation of music), of our imagination (the creation and reception of literature), or of society (the development and application of political theory and of diplomacy). In each case, “culture” makes reference to the eliciting, or to the enabling of the reception, of certain potentially present qualities of things (land, aural space, the imagination, human society) valued by us. To summarize, my proposal is that we take culture to be constituted by ways of acting and perceiving, based on particular skills, beliefs, types of knowledge, and habits, that are more or less disseminated across individuals, that are not inborn but rather invented, modiﬁed and passed on, and that are valued because they may bring forth certain inherent qualities of some thing, capacity or process. Using this understanding of culture we may ask how nature and culture are related to each other. 22 J. Tooby and L. Cosmides, “The Psychological Foundations of Culture” in J. Tooby and L. Cosmides (eds), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 19–136, cited in Cronk, “Is there a Role,” p. 182. 23 This explains why we may feel that to speak of culture as the culprit of depravity, war, or environmental devastation contains a contradiction. 24 In a related vein, Jules Pretty, Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature (London: Earthscan, 2003), reminds us that originally “agriculture was interpreted as two connected things, agri and cultura” (p.xii).

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Relating nature and culture As of late, biologists and anthropologists also credit about a dozen species of nonhuman animals with culture.25 The classic case of culture in non-human animals is constituted by the macaques in Japan who followed the example of a particular individual, Imo, who had begun washing her dirt-covered sweet potatoes before eating them (thereby facilitating the appreciation of the speciﬁc, valued qualities of the tubers, formerly masked by dirt). Another striking example is furnished by a species of bird called tits (the great tits, Parus major, and blue tits, Parus caeruleus, both Passeriformes, Paridae) that learned to perforate the lids of milk bottles in a particular area in Britain, whereupon the skill slowly spread to other tits.26 Some apes trained in human sign language, furthermore, have taught others, which is a clear case of culture transmission; in this instance the chain begins with human beings and then continues among our primate cousins. Chimpanzees in the wild, as well as orangutans and whales, have also been credited with culture.27 These observations speak against identifying culture merely with the human realm.28 Furthermore, since culture has the connotation of eliciting speciﬁc, valuable qualities from things,29 I posit that, in analogy to the culture of vinous beverages (viti- and vini-culture), the culture of sound harmonies (music), and the culture of dexterous movement (sport), there is or can be a culture of nature.30 Such a culture of 25 This heavily debated topic is often studied under the rubric “social learning”; see, for example, Cecilia M. Heyes and Bennett G. Galef, Jr. (eds), Social Learning in Animals: The Roots of Culture (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1996). But see David Premack and Ann James Premack, “Why Animals have neither Culture nor History,” in Ingold, Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, pp. 350–65. 26 J. Fisher and R.A.Hinde, “The Opening of Milk Bottles by Birds,” British Birds, 42 (1950), pp. 347–57: and R.A. Hinde and J. Fisher, “Further Observations on the Opening of Milk Bottles by Birds,” British Birds, 44 (1952), pp. 393–6. 27 See A. Whiten et al., “Cultures in chimpanzees,” Nature, 399 (17 June 1999), pp. 682–5; Carel P. van Schaik et al., “Orangutan Cultures and the Evolution of Material Culture,” Science, 299, 5603 (3 January 2003), pp. 102–5; Hal Whitehead, “Cultural selection and genetic diversity in matrilineal whales,” Science, 282 (1988), pp. 1708–11. 28 But see Luc Ferry, The New Ecological Order, trans. Carol Volk (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), who maintains that culture is an exclusive feature of humans, which distinguishes us from nature, in particular animals: “… man is the antinatural being par excellence” (p. xxviii). 29 I leave open whether those qualities deemed valuable are valued for their own sakes or for instrumental reasons. Often one type of quality is valued in different ways by different people and at different times. The ambience of a forest, for example, may ﬁrst be appreciated for itself, then for its therapeutic values, and then again for itself. 30 The term “culture of nature” has been used by others in a variety of senses, which only partially overlap with the meaning I give the term here. Alexander Wilson, The Culture of Nature (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1991), for example, titles his book this way. His title is to highlight that nature is not separate from humanity. He intends to show that “nature is part of culture” insofar as “humans and nature construct each other.” (pp. 12–3) I tend to agree but think that the term “culture of nature” should be reserved for the more speciﬁc notion that I propose here. Andrew Light, “Restoration, Autonomy and Domination,” in Heyd,

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nature consists in the shareable ways of acting and perceiving that reveal the speciﬁc, valuable qualities of nature.31 Practicing the culture of nature It may seem that, if a culture of nature implies that one should act on nature, one will through this action ipso facto turn nature into an arte-fact. In reply, I propose that culture, properly understood, implies the development, and not the suppression, of some thing’s spontaneity. How else could one expect creativity to emerge in any of the arts, for example? I suggest that we may act on nature without necessarily increasing its artiﬁciality. Protecting an area that we designate as a nature reserve or national park, for example, is a way of acting on nature that (notwithstanding the management to which such areas are subjected) may allow for freer development of the spontaneity of nature within those boundaries than would otherwise take place. A culture of nature is concerned with preserving natural things from becoming artiﬁcial things, such as an industrial forest or cropland managed by agribusiness; such as a roadway or a mining area; or such as a genetically modiﬁed organism, or a radioactive environment. A culture of nature calls for interventions that protect natural sites and processes from further incursions in order to facilitate their own kind of spontaneity. This equally applies to (apparently) pristine areas as to areas where there already is cohabitation between human and non-human nature. In places which already have been culturally modiﬁed, a culture of nature may help bring about, and help us perceive, natural qualities that might not ﬂourish, or be evident, otherwise.32 As noted above, at some places and in some times, traditional forms of agriculture and certain forms of landscaping have brought about cultural landscapes with a complexity of ecological niches that favor a greater biological Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, Chapter 9, also uses the term “culture of nature” but to refer to the relationship of humanity with nature in general. 31 Also see Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, especially Chapter 2, where he discusses a tradition in European thought that posits the possibility of human “cooperation with nature” pursued for the joint good of human beings and non-human nature. He points out that “to ‘develop’ land, on this way of looking at man’s relationship to nature, is to actualise its potentialities, to bring to light what it has in itself to become, and by this means to perfect it” (p. 32) Passmore (Chapter 2), moreover, gives an historical account of the idea of cooperation with nature, pointing to its mostly Pelagian origins, and refers to further development of it in modern times by J.G. Fichte, P. Teilhard de Chardin and Herbert Marcuse. 32 Various authors have taken this viewpoint, for example, Beat and Beatrix Sitter-Liver, “Preface,” in Beat and Beatrix Sitter-Liver (eds), Culture within Nature: Culture dans la nature (Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences; Basel: Wiese, 1995), who speak of the necessity of “an understanding of culture within nature” (their emphasis) leading to “practical ways which may lead to a sustainable dwelling of human beings, [and] of all living beings, within the realm that nature offers” (p. 13). The idea of working with and within nature has a long ancestry in some cultures and subcultures. Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature, argues that the culture of cooperation with nature exists in European cultures at least since the time of the Stoic Posidonius (p. 33). He, like others, also points out that “the ideal of ‘conforming to nature’, of working with, rather than against, its grain, has been tremendously powerful in Chinese thought …” (p. 26).

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diversity than would be found in such environments, either if worked with industrial agricultural techniques or if not worked at all. It is not clear to me that such cultural landscapes are worth creating merely for the sake of such increases in biodiversity, but, where there are other legitimate reasons for transforming the land (such as for food production to satisfy genuine need), these approaches can at least claim to have elicited the ﬂourishing, and not the suppression, of certain natural qualities, thereby balancing out, up to a point, the artiﬁciality generated. Drawing Conclusions Consequences for natural heritage conservation The idea that certain types of human activity are compatible with respect for the integrity of nature, and therefore have a legitimate place in nature, is not new, of course. A number of poets, natural scientists and philosophers, such as Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin, assumed this view, which has a diversity of intellectual ancestors in Spinoza and some ancient schools of philosophy (also in China). The crucial question, however, is what responsibility human beings have toward their natural environment. Notably, given the analysis of the idea of heritage sketched above, the idea of natural heritage implies the assumption of responsibility for the conservation of at least some portions of nature.33 I propose that natural heritage conservation may be one way of engaging in a culture of nature. This, though, is to acknowledge that designating a portion of nature as heritage implies an active, concerted kind of engagement with natural spaces and processes – even if only to keep further human intervention at bay. From this perspective, the question is how human beings may relate to non-human nature so as to respect its spontaneity, that is, the expression of its speciﬁc qualities. Hence, insofar as what we might call “culturing” consists in preserving and eliciting certain inherent qualities of things or processes, the application of this notion to natural heritage sites has important consequences for the practice of conservation. First, given that at this point in the history of our planet human interaction with nature, at many levels and in various ways, is inevitable, we need to think through how best to proceed.34 Rather than advocate a policy of apartheid between human beings and non-human nature for some few areas, leaving the rest open to the pursuit of unregulated, individual and corporate proﬁt, the perspective opened up by the idea of a culture of nature is of a more inclusive reﬂection on our impact on the non-human parts of nature.35 On this view, human presence may be quite acceptable, even in certain parks and nature reserves, depending on the type of engagement. 33 Also see John L. Hammond, “Wilderness and Heritage Values,” Environmental Ethics, 7 (Summer 1985), pp. 165–70. 34 We are involved. To deny this would be a form of bad faith (in Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist sense). 35 This is not to say that advocates of parks and reserves are not aware of the need for a wide-ranging, nature-respectful approach to all of human interactions with nature, of course. (I thank Philip Cafaro for reminding me of this.)

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As noted in Chapter 4, in many parts of Amazonia, native people and extractivists practice a sustainable kind of use of rivers and forests which respects the spontaneity of natural things (their manner of use of the environment allows those natural things to express their speciﬁc qualities). Both the source of their livelihood and the integrity of their environment are threatened, however, by expansionist cattle rangers and mining interests. As the world has recently found out, on the occasion of the brutal murder of Sister Stang (a case similar to the assassination by ranchers of Chico Mendes in the 1980s),36 the latter will not stop at anything to satisfy their interest in increasing proﬁts. As I also pointed out earlier, even the creation of parks and nature reserves in such areas can threaten the livelihood of local people, while, paradoxically, being counterproductive from the point of view of nature conservation, since the people, who would have been watching that fragile ecosystems remain in functioning order, generally are henceforth excluded from those areas.37 The idea that we may engage in a culture of nature means, among other things, that nature conservation and preservation in natural heritage sites (and elsewhere), intended to maintain the ﬂourishing of nature’s spontaneity, in many cases need not exclude human beings. As such, this perspective gives support to the efforts of local people to protect their traditional, sustainable use and tenure on the land, and underwrites recent, new initiatives that favor the inclusion of traditional, resident populations in national parks and biosphere reserves if their activities do not suppress the expression of nature.38 In this sense the notion of a culture of nature gives support to the attempts at protective management of forest and lake areas by Amazonian rubber-tappers, artesanal ﬁshers and indigenous people.39 Secondly, because this perspective openly acknowledges that designating certain areas as parks or nature reserves is dependent on particular cultural perspectives, it facilitates reﬂection about the relative arbitrariness of the particular boundaries established by such designations. That is, this perspective considers the creation of parks and natural reserves as a normally very useful,40 but potentially limiting, 36 Sister Dorothy Stang was murdered 12 February 2005. Francisco Alves Mendes Filho, known as Chico Mendes, was murdered 22 December 1988. See Michael Astor, “Activist nun shot dead in Amazon rainforest,” The Guardian (14 February 2005) ; “The Assault Continues – state of the Amazon since Chico Mendes’ death 10 years ago,” International Wildlife (November 1998) . 37 Further on the possibilities of protecting human communities together with natural environments, as made evident in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking America, see Chapter 4. 38 Also see J. Baird Callicott, Larry B. Crowder and Karen Mumford, “Current Normative Concepts in Conservation,” Conservation Biology, 13, 1 (1999), pp. 22–35, on two contrasting schools of conservation philosophy, one of which treats human beings as separate from, and one of which considers human beings as part of, nature. 39 See Antonio Carlos Diegues, “Recycled Rain Forest Myths” in David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus (eds), The World and the Wild (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001), pp. 155–70, p. 165. 40 As noted, since this perspective allows for the supposition that the natural contrasts with the artefactual and that the contrast may come in degrees, we may legitimately designate

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enterprise since it may be accompanied by the supposition that surrounding areas are open for unrestrained exploitation, notwithstanding the impacts of those activities on relatively untrammeled natural areas. For example, it may seem that a park area is well protected through regulations aimed at keeping people out of its especially vulnerable core areas. Nonetheless, if the areas outside the core, or those surrounding the park, are perceived as “recreational” or “multiple use” areas, the result may be that the conservation of the core areas soon will be merely nominal. (Migrating patterns may become disrupted due to lack of linked protected territories, core areas may be affected by wastes from mining, by silt-clogged creeks due to poor logging practices, or by reduced species diversity due to hunting in adjoining areas, and so on.) Recognizing that the designation and maintenance of certain areas as parks and reserves is a fundamentally cultural matter, and noting that the protection of such cordoned-off areas may, by itself, be insufﬁcient to stem environmental degradation of the region, this perspective alerts us to the necessity of self-critically reassessing the cultural make-up of our societies. From this perspective, more than protected status per se, natural areas require the development of appropriate attitudes in surrounding residents and visitors.41 As such, a nature-afﬁrming culture of nature will transform human activities in all environments, whether the activities primarily affect areas designated for human use or areas set aside as natural reserves. Third, the perspective outlined, furthermore, draws attention to the interdependence of particular cultures of nature, as they have developed among certain indigenous peoples, and the conservation of natural environments as natural heritage areas.42 It thereby points to the signiﬁcance of learning from the peoples who have had long-term, diachronic direct contact with natural spaces, have developed local knowledges of their environments (an idea recognized in recent research under the rubric “Traditional Ecological Knowledge”), and have adopted sophisticated ways of respectfully co-habiting with nature.43 Similarly, it points toward the an area as natural heritage if its degree of artiﬁciality is low and the designation foreseeably will serve to preserve it from further artiﬁciality. Christopher Preston has pointed out, however, that, in order to make such distinctions in practice, one would need to develop further an epistemology for distinguishing degrees of artiﬁciality and politically defensible cut-off points for areas to be protected from further intervention (letter from Christopher Preston, Winter 2003). 41 Also see Chapter 2. 42 I am supposing that there is not just one way of acting toward any part of nature that may be considered appropriate to the task of allowing for the actualization of the speciﬁc qualities that it potentially has, though up to this point I was speaking of culture of nature in the singular. Rather, such culturing of nature may be carried out in a diversity of ways even if some may be more appropriate to the goal of allowing for the spontaneity of nature than others. (As has been reported, indigenous people have not always managed to ﬁnd naturerespecting ways before certain species were hunted to extinction, but this does not mean that people with long residence in place have not generally found ways of sustainably living on the land.) 43 Also see Chapter 5, which argues that a diversity of cultural perspectives can be useful in aesthetic appreciation, and hence protection, of nature; and see Thomas Heyd, “Indigenous

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value we can derive from considering the delicate interplay of appreciative stances involving nature and culture in rock art (traditional petroglyphs and pictographs) and contemporary land art sites.44 Understanding the continuity of natural and cultural heritage sites Conceiving of natural heritage conservation as a form of culture of nature points toward continuity of natural and cultural heritage sites. The crucial factor that makes a site more an example of natural rather than cultural heritage consists in the value that one attempts to protect and enhance: the spontaneity of nature vs. the spontaneity of human beings. At a site such as Angkor, (besides warding off looters) the efforts of conservationists mostly are directed toward the protection of its buildings and sculptural works from the effects of the tropical rainforest environment. Even though Angkor may be said to beneﬁt aesthetically from the spontaneity of nature, which provides its superb setting, its architectural values are also harmed by the vegetation that surrounds and sometimes engulfs its buildings. At Yellowstone the situation is reversed: conservationist and preservationist efforts are directed toward the protection of its relatively humanly untrammeled condition. Even while the park aesthetically beneﬁts from the contrast provided by urbanization in the rest of the country, it is harmed by the effects of its special character, which attracts ever more tourists, and by the humanly generated pollutants that reach it from outside its borders. Cultural landscapes, such as many of the prairies generated by Native ﬁre regimes in North America, the Sans-Souci gardens in Potsdam, or the Ifugao rice terraces in the Philippines (recently declared a World Heritage Site), constitute examples of a culturing of the interaction between nature and human beings.45 The value that conservationists try to maintain and enhance in such places is a kind of human spontaneity that does not overwhelm the spontaneity of nature – but plays into it. This is a difﬁcult combination to achieve, but, for this reason, perhaps the more remarkable where it is successful.46

Knowledge, Land Ethic and Sustainability,” Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History (2000) . 44 See Chapter 7, for an argument that links the aesthetic appreciation of rock art with the development of respect for the natural environment. Also see Thomas Heyd, “Rock Art Aesthetics: Trace on Rock, Mark of Spirit, Window on Land,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57, 4 (Fall 1999), pp. 451–8. 45 For discussion see, for example, Harald Plachter and Mechthild Rössler, “Cultural Landscapes: Reconnecting Culture and Nature,” in von Droste, Cultural Landscapes, pp. 15–8. 46 There is considerable literature out on how to put this idea into practice, beginning with the work of authors such as Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1971; John Wiley & Sons, 1992 reprint), or E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), and continuing presently with diverse proposals on living sustainably. Also of interest in this context are the essays by diverse authors contained in Heyd, Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, which engage the question whether the spontaneity of

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Final summation In sum, I have discussed the relationship between nature and culture in the context of the preservation or conservation of natural heritage, and concluded that culture need not be conceived as antagonistic to nature. Rather, a nature-afﬁrming culture is possible.47 Insofar as natural heritage calls for the recognition of, and respect for, certain spaces such as nature reserves and national parks not made through human artiﬁce, natural heritage conservation may be a kind of culture of nature and as a contribution to the development of an environmental culture. Moreover, insofar as in certain sites natural and human spontaneity may intermingle in harmonious ways, there also is reason to consider the conservation of cultural landscapes as a form of culturing of nature.48

nature may be understood in terms of “autonomy,” and, if so, what this implies for human action (such as agriculture or restoration) that affects non-human nature. 47 In this chapter I did not seek to give an argument for respecting the integrity of natural environments, entities or processes. My intention was, rather, to set the stage for such arguments by sketching the cultural preconditions required for the practical effectiveness of such arguments. See Heyd (ed.), Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, and Chapter 2, for further thoughts on these matters. 48 This chapter has grown out of earlier essays presented at various learned meetings, including the Nature and Culture – Ambivalent Dimensions of Our Heritage UNESCO Symposium, Potsdam, June 2002; International Society for Environmental Ethics meetings, Paciﬁc APA, San Francisco, CA, April 2003; Western Canadian Philosophical Association meetings, Seattle, WA, October 2003; and Department of Philosophy Colloquium, University of Victoria, January 2005. A related essay appeared as “Natural Heritage: Culture in Nature” in Sieglinde Gauer-Lietz (ed.), Nature and Culture – Ambivalent Dimensions of our Heritage (Paris: UNESCO, 2002). I thank all discussants, especially Christopher Preston and Jason Kawall, Philip Cafaro, Katya Mandoki, Scott Woodcock and Angus Taylor, as well as the anonymous referees of Environmental Ethics and Ólafur Páll Jónsson, for comments that have helped me strengthen this chapter.

Nature, Culture, and Natural Heritage: Toward a Culture of Nature appeared as Environmental Ethics (2006), 339–54. Permission for reproduction granted.

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Chapter 10

Northern Plains Boulder Structures Art and Heterotopias

An invisible grid, with Native boulder structures at its imaginary crossing points, is laid over the northern part of the Plains of North America. Attempts to determine the meaning of these structures for their original builders and users have been fraught with considerable difﬁculties. It is important that these boulder structures be considered from the perspective of their signiﬁcance for descendant First Nations, but these structures, furthermore, have, or should have, signiﬁcance for the nonNative people of the Northern Plains region. I propose that there are good reasons for considering these boulder structures as art. I suggest, moreover, that medicine wheels be examined from the perspective of the study of places (chorographia), and conclude that these aboriginal boulder structures function as sites that question and interrogate all other sites (heterotopias). As argued in the last chapter, culture and nature need not be conceived as in opposition to each other. Cultural goods, moreover, may have an important role in the development of a better understanding of how human beings may locate themselves in the natural environment in a more suitable, and less destructive, way. In this chapter, I consider the potential of this kind of indigenous site-speciﬁc installation for thinking afresh the relation of contemporary inhabitants with the land in the Northern Plains region (see Figure 10.1). Definitions and Explanations “Medicine wheel” is the name given since the late 1800s to a kind of boulder structure found in the Northern Plains of North America. The name has been applied in a generic manner to boulder structures that are relatively similar to the Bighorn Wheel on Medicine Mountain, Wyoming, in distinction to smaller and less complex stone circle structures (such as those often called “tipi rings”). Signiﬁcantly, although the name “wheel” is used in contemporary classiﬁcation, it is misleading if considered as an indication of the image that its original builders may have had. Wheels were probably unknown in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans. Medicine wheels, moreover, usually are not completely circular. Instead of radial symmetry, some of these structures have a tendency towards bilateral symmetry, a feature common to all the vertebrates that were known to the Plains Indians.1 1 Michael Wilson, “Sun Dances, Thirst Dances, and Medicine Wheels: A Search for Alternative Hypotheses,” in Megaliths to Medicine Wheels: Boulder Structures in Archaeology,

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Figure 10.1 Majorville Medicine Wheel After a careful survey of the diverse structures usually called medicine wheels, John H. Brumley has offered the following descriptive deﬁnition: All medicine wheels consist of a combination of at least two of the following three primary components: (a) a prominent centrally located stone cairn of varying size; (b) one or more concentric stone rings of generally circular shape; and/or (c) two or more stone lines radiating outward from a central origin point, central cairn or the margins of a stone ring2

Medicine wheels are often situated on knolls overlooking the prairie, and are mostly found in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and less frequently in Montana and northern Wyoming. It is likely that the majority are accretional, having achieved their present shapes through additions over a long period of time. Although some medicine wheels are of very recent origin, others are of great age: the original installation of the Majorville Medicine Wheel, for example, seems to date back ﬁve thousand years. There is great diversity of form among the sixty-seven structures accounted

Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Chacmool Conference (ed. by Michael Wilson, Kathie L. Road and Kenneth J. Hardy (Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Archaeological Association, 1981), pp. 333–70, pp. 346–7. 2 John H. Brumley, Medicine Wheels on the Northern Plains: A Summary and Appraisal (Archaeological Survey of Alberta: Archaeological Survey of Alberta Manuscript Series, No. 12, 1988), p. 3. But see Andrew Nikiforuk, “Sacred Circles,” Canadian Geographic, 112, 4 (1992), pp. 51–60, p. 54, who quotes Michael Wilson saying that “Brumley’s deﬁnition leaves out a whole variety of closely related stone spokes, circles and simple cairns.”

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Figure 10.2 Drawing of medicine wheel

for by Brumley. Although generally not discussed in these terms, medicine wheels often have considerable aesthetic interest. One of the wheels has the shape of a turtle, some resemble nerve cells, while others look like sea urchins. Much as in nonﬁgurative painting, values, such as rhythm in the spoke patterns and spatial relations among the various elements, contribute to their aesthetic effect.

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Considerable effort has been exerted in the determination of the meaning or function of these structures. In many cases it has been possible to establish their meaning for the First Nations people of the area. The medicine wheel of Steel (his real name was Ski-matsis, or, in English, Fire Steel), a great Blood warrior, was built in 1940 as a memorial.3 Moreover, reports from Native consultants indicate that the Big Horn medicine wheel may have been used for vision quests.4 Nonetheless, the great age of some of these structures, and the fact that there is considerable uncertainty about the identity of the inhabitants of this area at various points in historic and prehistoric times,5 leaves the determination of the original meaning of these structures quite unsettled. The hypotheses posited range from the supposition that the wheels served as “stone age calendars,” to the view that they had a role in the periodic thirst dance (also called sun dance).6 It is, of course, quite possible that, given the variety of peoples with quite diverse cultures who may have participated in the installation and use of these structures, each wheel had multiple functions.7 The combined picture created by the testimony of contemporary Native people about the meaning of these structures for them, and by the archaeological research about their original functions, certainly contributes to the appreciation of these installations as meaningfully inscribed, culturally structured entities; it saves us from the ethnocentric supposition that the Northern Plains may have been cultural wastelands, patiently awaiting the arrival of their branding by feudal ranching and industrial farming practices. Nonetheless, neither Native nor archaeological accounts fully plumb the signiﬁcance of these sites for contemporary non-Native peoples in the region. Unreﬂected, the more fanciful accounts proposed are, moreover, absorbed much too easily by the dominant culture as entertaining but emasculated folklore. I propose that, from the point of view of contemporary mainstream North American culture, these structures deserve consideration as art.

3 Hugh A. Dempsey, “Stone ‘Medicine Wheels’ – Memorials to Blackfoot War Chiefs,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, 46, 6 (1956), pp. 177–82. 4 Wilson, “Sun Dances, Thirst Dances, and Medicine Wheels,” pp. 337–8. 5 Richard G. Forbis, “The Direct Historical Approach in the Prairie Provinces of Canada,” Great Plains Journal, 3 (1963), pp. 9–16. 6 It is to be noted that deconstructionist theory has thrown into question the very idea that the intentionality of the builders and users of prehistoric sites is something stable that can be found or reconstructed; see, for example, Whitney Davis, “The Deconstruction of Intentionality in Archaeology,” Antiquity, 66, (1992), pp. 334–7, p. 336, who notes that “we cannot dig up ideas.” We may assume, however, that we are on relatively safe ground as long as we only seek to establish the functions of items, and not the intentions of the individuals who made those items. 7 Wilson, “Sun Dances, Thirst Dances, and Medicine Wheels,” p. 336. Also see Robert G. Bednarik, “Rock Art as a Cultural Determinant,” Survey: Bolletino del Centro Studi e Museo d/Arte Prehistorica di Pinerolo, 7–8 (1991–92), p. 14, who argues that “the older rock arts were … integrated into [newer] belief systems, [and] reinterpreted … .”

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Figure 10.3 Drawing of medicine wheel

Medicine Wheels: Boulder Art Prehistoric pictographs and petroglyphs generally are described as “rock art,” despite the general reluctance of archaeologists to engage themselves in their

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artistic interpretation. For example, while urging a certain degree of caution in the interpretation of the petroglyphs and pictographs found at Writing-On-Stone in southern Alberta, Martin P.R. Magne and Michael Klassen freely and repeatedly make reference to those manifestations as “rock art.”9 Similarly, in a recent paper on southern African pictographs, in which he recommends that linguistic data be considered alongside ethnographic data, J.F. Thackeray frequently refers to the manifestations in question as “rock art.”10 Thackeray even notes that “The art has been referred to as ‘The San artistic achievement’” without considering it necessary to raise the question whether these manifestations should be referred to as art.11 It seems that the appropriateness of calling prehistoric manifestations “art” only becomes subject to examination when manifestations other than pictographs and petroglyphs are under consideration. Paul S.C. Taçon, for example, raises this question with respect to the legitimacy of calling certain prehistoric stone tools “art.”12 He notes that the reluctance to consider stone tools as art partially arises from the lack of “a cross-cultural, non-biased deﬁnition of art.”13 Without claiming to develop criteria that justify the appellation “art” for any one manifestation, he suggests, nonetheless, that “many forms of stone tools produced over the past 6000 years in western Arnhem Land” be considered as art because these tools “have both aesthetic and symbolic value which inﬂuenced their manufacture.”14 The literature dealing with the deﬁnition of art is large.15 Prima facie the range of options is great: some only admit as artworks items created with the intention of making art; others require an art-making tradition as a prerequisite for an object to be a candidate artwork. Presumably, if one settled on a particular deﬁnition one could reach a decision on the issue whether medicine wheels should be considered art. Given the ongoing debate regarding the nature of art, having to settle that question would take us

8 But see, for example, Christopher Tilley, Material Culture and the Text: the Art of Ambiguity (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), who is quite willing to interpret archaeological givens. Regarding the willingness to speak of “Ancient Amerindian Art,” and to call “artists” those who fashioned paintings, sculptures, etc. in the Early Americas, see, for example, George Kubler, Esthetic Recognition of Ancient Amerindian Art (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1991). Also see Thomas Heyd and John Clegg (eds), Aesthetics and Rock Art (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), about the issue of aesthetics and rock art. 9 Martin P.R. Magne and Michael Klasen, “A Multivariate Study of Rock Art Anthropomorphs at Writing-On-Stone, Southern Alberta,” American Antiquity, 56, 3 (1991), pp. 389–418. 10 J.F. Thackeray, “On Concepts Expressed in Southern African Rock Art,” Antiquity, 64 (1990), pp. 139–44. 11 Ibid., p. 139. 12 Paul S.C. Taçon, “The Power of Stone: Symbolic Aspects of Stone Use and Tool Development in Western Arnhem Land, Australia,” Antiquity, 65 (1991), pp. 192–207. 13 Ibid., p. 192. 14 Ibid., p. 194. 15 See Stephen Davies, Deﬁnitions of Art (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1991); also see his Philosophy of Art (Blackwell, 2006); and Francis Sparshott, The Theory of the Arts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982).

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16

too far aﬁeld from our purpose. Here I intend to postpone entering that debate, and to limit myself to the observation that, given their aesthetic qualities and their potential for symbolic interpretation (as described above), there is as much reason to consider medicine wheels in terms of a sort of “boulder art” as there is for calling pictographs and petroglyphs “rock art.” Medicine wheels, moreover, share crucial family resemblances with certain contemporary artworks in the category “earth art” or “land art,” which lends further reason to the proposal that medicine wheels be considered art. Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Walter de Maria and Richard Long have carried out artworks that in various respects resemble medicine wheels. Heizer’s Five Conic Displacements, Double Negative, and Complex One, Walter de Maria’s Lightning Field, as well as Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Amarillo Ramp, are all located in remote, relatively inaccessible locations. Similarly to medicine wheels, these works introduce marks into the landscape which turn the surrounding land and sky into an all-encompassing stage and mute audience. Some earthworks resemble medicine wheels more straightforwardly than others, though. As has been noted in the art historical literature, some earthworks, such as Heizer’s and Smithson’s are best seen as extensions of minimalism and conceptual art. For example, when asked about the role of landscape in his decision to move out of his New York studio into the Nevada desert, Heizer replied that he has “no interest in landscape in terms of art … American landscape art is one thing but my work doesn’t have anything to do with that, it has to do with materials. I went to those places for material.”17 Consistent with these statements, the monumental earthwork resembling Central American pyramids called Complex One has been ﬁtted with a “plaza,” located in an excavated depression, intended to obscure from view the surrounding mountain ranges. Richard Long’s land art, in contrast, seeks the integration with the place that it is situated in. Besides considering his programed walks as art (sometimes he walks straight lines over hills and creeks; sometimes he walks all the roads within a certain perimeter), he also builds stone circles and stone lines in remote locations. He says of these structures that “These works are made of the place, they are a re-arrangement of it and in time will be re-absorbed by it.”18 Similarly to Heizer’s works, his stone circles and stone lines depend on local materials; unlike Heizer’s works, however, Long’s land art also gains its standing from the character of the preexisting place. Long does not attempt to separate his pieces from the rest of the place as Heizer does by excavating and building obstacles to a free view; Long builds his pieces with the help of, and into, the place. In Long’s works, one indeed ﬁnds strong resemblances with medicine wheels, which also are made from the materials of the place, and which seem to be carefully located in order to suit the preexisting place. My argument so far has been that it is reasonable to consider medicine wheels as art. Interpretations of tribal artefacts by non-Native people as art have been 16 But see Heyd and Clegg, Aesthetics and Rock Art. 17 Michael Heizer and Julia Brown, “Interview,” in Julia Brown (ed.), Michael Heizer: Sculpture in Reverse (Los Angeles, CA: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984), p. 11. 18 Richard Long, “Words After the Fact,” in R.H. Fuchs (ed.), Richard Long (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1986), p. 236.

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subjected to severe critique in the recent past, however.19 For example, with regard to the Museum of Modern Art exhibition “Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art,” it has been argued that the categorization of tribal artefacts as art is equivalent to a co-optation of non-European cultures. The co-optation occurs through a process of decontextualization that “transforms cultural objects into contentless forms that can be recontextualized by another culture.”20 James Clifford points out that “Since 1900 non-Western objects have generally been classiﬁed either as primitive art or as ethnographic specimens.”21 Either form of “cultural salvage” seems to fragment the integrity of the tribal artefacts in question. The problem at hand seems to be related to the problem concerning “Understanding a Primitive Society,” already debated some time ago between Peter Winch and Alasdair MacIntyre.22 The issue in that debate concerns the manner by which the anthropologist is to proceed if, once she has understood something in one culture’s terms, she hopes to make it understood in her original culture’s terms. If, as is likely, there are concepts in one culture that the other one fails to have, then some kind of “salvage” operation seems inevitable. This is why it may have been tempting to understand tribal artefacts “either as primitive art or as ethnographic specimens.” The search for an appropriate, non-ethnocentric approach to tribal artefacts, however, is a challenge that cannot be avoided once the existence of such artefacts has been recognized. Clifford suggests that a non-ethnocentric approach may consist in giving equal importance to the meaning that such artefacts have in their original cultural milieu as they do in non-Native (European, Canadian, or US American) cultures.23 When applied to our encounter with medicine wheels, Clifford’s suggestion resolves into the importance of seeking and recognizing both the contemporary and the original Native meanings of these structures, while pursuing an understanding of their signiﬁcance to contemporary non-Native peoples. For a ﬁrst approximation to the contemporary non-Native signiﬁcance of these structures, their exemplary integration in the landscape (which contrasts so notably with most of the interventions of our own industrial, exploitation-oriented societies) may be taken into account. Moreover, full recognition of their integration in the land may be facilitated by our conceptualization of these structures as art. On the one hand, recognition as art should counteract the obfuscating tendency to view these structures merely as quaint “mysteries,” and, on the other hand, recognition as art should undermine the temptation to view these structures in a sterile manner as objects of merely “empirical” investigation.

19 James Clifford, “Histories of the Tribal and the Modern,” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 20 Joseph Traugott, “Native American Artists and the Postmodern Cultural Divide,” Art Journal, 51, 3 (1992), pp. 36–43, p. 42. 21 Clifford, “Histories of the Tribal and the Modern,” p. 198. 22 Alasdair MacIntyre, “Understanding Religion compatible with Believing? And the Idea of a Social Science,” and Peter Winch, “Understanding a Primitive Society,” both in Bryan R. Wilson (ed.), Rationality (Worcester: Basil Blackwell, 1970. 23 See Clifford, “Histories of the Tribal and the Modern.”

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In addition to viewing medicine wheels as artworks, one may focus on them as sites, as places that transform the surrounding space. In a little-studied text, Michel Foucault has very productively extended his analysis of practices to the study of our apportionment of space into places.24

Figure 10.4 Drawing of medicine wheel

24 Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” diacritics (Spring 1986), pp. 22–7; translation of “Des espaces autres,” Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité (October, 1984).

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Medicine Wheels: Heterotopias Chorographia, a type of descriptive geography ﬁrst practiced by the Greek Strabo (63 BC?–AD 24?) and by the Roman of Spanish origins, Pomponius Mela (ﬁrst century AD), may be an approach to places worth returning to.25 At this point in time most of the Earth’s surface has been charted and measured, but, as Michel Foucault points out, places are more than locations in space. That is, places are sites in space that phenomenologically represent “a set of relations … which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another.”26 The notion of place is largely getting lost in a society that actively supports the proliferation of establishments such as identical-looking fast food outlets, gas bars, and super-malls, and that largely disorients by images from anywhere, which in turn are reproduced anywhere else, on ubiquitous television screens. Foucault supposes, however, that: … perhaps our life is still governed by a certain number of oppositions that remain inviolable, that our institutions and practices have not yet dared to break down. These are oppositions that we regard as simple givens: for example between private space and public space, between family space and social space, between cultural space and useful space, between the space of leisure and that of work.27

Interestingly, Foucault speaks of a type of place that may help clarify the contemporary signiﬁcance of medicine wheels. He says that there are some places that are similar to those that traditionally have been called “utopias”; these other places he calls “heterotopias” since heterotopias are real places but “present society in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down.” Consequently, heterotopias are “something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia.”28 Heterotopias “have the curious property of being in relation with all other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reﬂect.”29 To illustrate, “The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment

25 Pomponius Mela, Chorographie, translated by A. Silberman (Paris: Société d’édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1988). A related undertaking is the analysis of landscapes in terms of their symbolic meaning or iconography see, for example, Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels (eds), The Iconography of Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 26 Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” p. 23. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., p. 24. More recently the term “heterotopia” has been popularized by Gianni Vattimo, The Transparent Society (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press; Cambridge: Polity; 1992); trans. David Webb from La società transparente (Garzanti, 1989). He gives the term a different sense than Foucault, though. He traces what he sees as a transition from the idea of utopia to the idea of heterotopia as the movement from monolithic to pluralistic conceptions of the good life and of the good society. 29 Ibid.

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when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.”30 Exemplary are what he calls “crisis heterotopias.” Crisis heterotopias, as found in traditional societies are “privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis: adolescents, menstruating women, pregnant women, the elderly, etc.”31 Crisis heterotopias are places that make reference to the normal condition, and at once call that normalcy into question precisely by giving a place to the extra-normal or extra-ordinary. Without going into any further detail here, it is notable for our purposes that in Foucault’s view heterotopias Have a function in relation to all the space that remains … Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory. Or else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled.32

According to Foucault, in European-inﬂuenced contemporary societies, the theater, the cinema, the garden, museums, libraries and barracks function as heterotopias. The cinema, for example, creates illusions that make us question our categorizations of real space; museums and gardens create real space that in their “perfect” order of things cause dislocations in our perception of ordinary space. In other words, heterotopias serve as places of disturbance; their existence unsettles the regular categorization of our living space. Given this description it would seem that certain artworks are also examples of heterotopias. Cubist paintings, such as Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon may create illusions that denounce our apprehension of real space in terms of orderly, frontally perceived images as illusory. Alternatively, rigorously planned Renaissance city squares are real spaces that, in their designed perfection, recall and highlight the messy, ill-constructed spaces in which most of us actually live. I propose that, insofar as they have the ability to interrogate the interventionist space of our contemporary industrial societies, the sites called “medicine wheels” function as heterotopias. Medicine wheels seem to be, in Foucault’s terms, “places outside of all places”; in their resistance to interpretation according to instrumental notions, they return our gaze unto the prairies, turned denatured, overgrazed cattle pastures, and unto the once verdant river valleys, turned into ﬂooded, megaproject water reservoirs.33 Insofar as medicine wheels are structures

30 31 32 33

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 27 (emphasis added). Such as the Oldman River valley in Alberta.

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built with and into and not against, the land, as are most of our modern societies’ interventions in the landscape, they are “a kind of effectively enacted utopia.”34

34 A version in Spanish appeared as Thomas Heyd, “Estructuras de Cantos Rodados de las planicies de Norteamérica: ‘Arte y Heterotopía,’” Arkeos, 10 (special issue on European Prehistoric Art – Methodology and Contexts, 2000), pp. 231–44. Northern Plains Boulder Structures: Art and Heterotopias. A version of this paper appeared as “Northern Plains Boulder Structures: Art and Foucauldian Heterotopias” in Éric Darier (ed.), Foucault and the Environment (Routledge, 1998), 152–62.

Chapter 11

Nature Restoration Without Dissimulation Learning from Japanese Gardens and Earthworks

On the face of it, the expression “nature restoration” may seem an oxymoron, for one may ask whether it makes any sense to suppose that human beings could restore that which is not human. Several writers recently have argued that, strictly speaking, this is nonsense and, furthermore, that the conceptual confusion involved may lead to ethically problematic consequences. In this chapter, I begin by discussing the problematic perceived in the notion of nature restoration. I proceed to consider Japanese gardens and earthworks, insofar as both types of art forms foreground the relationship of artefactuality to nature. I conclude that the counterintuitive way in which these arts engage us with nature may help us understand the manner in which nature restoration is plausible and reasonable, and that it models, moreover, an appropriate relationship with land. Nature Restoration and its Problems One might suppose that nature restoration is a straightforward matter. Given the systematic incursion of human activities in nature, and given the ever-increasing pace at which this incursion is happening, it would appear no more than common sense, or perhaps common decency, to return to a natural condition as much as possible of what we have appropriated.1 This simply is a matter of restitution.2 Recently, a variety of questions have been raised with regard to both the feasibility and the reasonableness of restoration. Without attempting to be comprehensive here we may note that restoration may mean a) mending or repair of an existing thing, b) full re-creation of a particular, formerly existing thing, c) full re-creation of a formerly existing sort of thing, or

1 For a defence see, for example, Alastair S. Gunn, “The Restoration of Species and Natural Environments,” Environmental Ethics, 13 (1991), pp. 291–310. 2 Restitution in the case of nature, of course, opens up a number of questions concerning the subject of restitution. If there is a duty of restitution in the case of environmental degradation, who should be the beneﬁciary of the restitution? See Christopher Stone, Should Trees Have Standing? – Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects (Portola Valley, CA: Tioga Publishing Company, 1974), for an argument to the effect that damaged nature itself, not human users of natural spaces or goods, should be the legal beneﬁciary.

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d) reestablishment of formerly existing natural processes.3 In every one of these cases, restoration is intended as a productive process initiated and designed by human beings.4 If we apply this general conception of restoration to cultural artefacts such as buildings, we can already gather some of the problems that may arise in restoration of nature. We may think, for example, of the Waldheim Chalet near Cradle Mountain in Tasmania (Australia), or of the Frauenkirche in Dresden located in Saxony (eastern Germany). The Waldheim Chalet, originally constructed at the beginning of the twentieth century, had long been considered “one of Tasmania’s cultural icons,” but fell into disrepair, and was demolished for safety reasons in 1976. As a result of “public disbelief and outcry,” the Chalet eventually was reconstructed, partially with materials salvaged from the original building.5 The Frauenkirche was destroyed along with the rest of the city of Dresden during carpet-bombing raids in the Second World War intended to cause terror in the population to the point that the Nazi government would ask for an end to the war. Under the impetus of German reuniﬁcation the church has been completely rebuilt, also partially utilizing materials salvaged.6 Both of these are attempts at re-creation of a particular, formerly existing thing, and questions have been raised about the meaningfulness and value of these actions. To begin with, one may wonder about the degree to which reconstruction may accomplish replication, given that materials, techniques and environmental conditions change over time. In the case of the Waldheim Chalet, we may take into account that the replica is going to be different from the original, among other things, for safety and longevity reasons, in order to prevent having to replace it once again in short order. This type of problematic we may call the imperfect imitation objection. Then there is the problem of strict irreplaceability (much emphasized by Robert Elliot7), for no two things with distinct historical beginnings are identical with each other. In other words, even if, contrary to reasonable expectations, the Frauenkirche were replicated to the degree that experts could not detect that it is a copy, it would still differ from the original in its historical provenance. As Elliot has argued, 3 For further discussion of the diverse ways in which restoration may be understood, see Robert Elliot, Faking Nature (London: Routledge, 1997), especially pp. 97–111. It is also to be noted that much of the relevant literature speaks of “ecological” restoration (the restoration of ecological functioning), while I have chosen to discuss the more general case of nature restoration which, in any case, should include the concerns of ecological restoration as a particular variant. 4 Some, furthermore, speak of restoration when they mean reclamation of a particular location, for its former uses or former ways of functioning. I do not discuss this connotation of the term since reclamation might be considered a sort of second-order activity: reclamation either is achieved through restoration as repair, as recreation or as reestablishment of what there was previously, or through some other ﬁrst-order activity. 5 R.R. Saunders, “Waldheim Chalet: A Link Between Tasmania’s Cultural and Natural Heritage,” in C. Michael Hall and Simon McArthur (eds), Heritage Management in New Zealand and Australia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) pp. 157–65. 6 Dieter Zumpe and Dieter Krull, Memento Frauenkirche: Dresden’s Famous Landmark as a Symbol of Reconciliation, trans. Ralf Jaeger (München: Huss Medien/Verlag Bauwesen, 2001). 7 Robert Elliot, “Faking Nature,” Inquiry, 25 (1982), pp. 81–93; and Elliot, Faking Nature.

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historical provenance, however, has an impact on the way we value certain things such as cultural icons and, hence, the value of these replacements is not likely the same as the value of originals.8 Furthermore, there is the problem of possible deception. When I visited the Frauenkirche in 2000 the (re-)construction site was surrounded by scaffolding and signs that loudly advertise that it was under reconstruction, but eventually visitors to Dresden may end up deceived into believing that the building is much older than it is, which may contribute to the loss of awareness of the terrible destructiveness of the Second World War. With regard to nature restoration, problems similar to those that arise in the case of cultural artefacts arise. First, it has been questioned to what degree our techniques can replicate what nature has made. This obviously is a complex and rather puzzling problem when non-human nature rather than another human maker is to be imitated. To this must be added the replacement problem. As developed by Robert Elliot in his paper “Faking Nature,” the issue is that, insofar as nature restorations are made by human beings at some point after at least partial destruction of the original, they fail to have the “causal continuity with the past” which wild nature has. And, insofar as we value nature’s independent or autonomous development, given that restorations have an interpolated human activity as origin, they fail to have the particular value of original nature.9 The idea is that, just as even a perfect reproduction of a Rembrandt painting is not, and should not be, valued in the same way as the original, even a perfect re-creation of nature is not comparable in value to the original that it is meant to replace. To pretend that restoration has not taken place at such places leads to the problem of possible deception. For this reason nature restoration has been compared to (ethically problematic) fakery, forgeries and big lies, whereby restoration amounts to a kind of fraud).10 Nature restoration, however, is subject to a further complicating problematic, namely its artefactuality or artiﬁciality.11 While the fact that the restoration of the Waldheim Chalet is an artiﬁcial reconstruction poses no further problem, since the original itself was an artefact, in the case of the restoration of nature such artiﬁcial production seems to generate an insurmountable difﬁculty. The problem has its origin in the idea that the natural is thought of as something not authored or made by human beings.12 But, from 8 Elliot has argued that, in the case of nature, the value of replacements is less than the original. Perhaps one needs to be more global in the assignment of value, though. In the case of a cultural icon, for example, the loss of value in replacements in comparison with originals will be very heavy, but we can imagine circumstances in which such a loss may be at least partially compensated by new facilities (such as enhanced safety, protection from environmental damage, or from vandalism, and so on) only available in the replacement. 9 As noted above, although Elliot takes it for granted that the value of the restoration will be less than the original, we should perhaps rather say that the value will be different and dependent on a rather global evaluation of the restored item. 10 See Elliott, “Faking Nature”; Elliot, Faking Nature, and Eric Katz, “The Big Lie: Human Restoration of Nature,” Research in Philosophy and Technology, 12 (1992), pp. 231–41. 11 Especially see Eric Katz, Nature as Subject: Human Obligation and Natural Community (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleﬁeld, 1997). 12 As we have seen in previous chapters, it has been argued by various authors that, in some senses, human beings are part of nature too. We can grant this but still insist that the

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this point of view, all (human) attempts at nature restoration must fail since it would be an inherently contradictory affair. Obviously, these diverse problems will appear less serious the more restoration is accomplished with the aid of natural processes, thereby functioning as a form of assisted re-generation.13 Nonetheless, insofar as restoration is initiated and designed by human beings, it may be argued that its product is always a kind of artefact, no matter how much natural processes are involved. Hence, we need to ask whether there is any point in proceeding with nature restorations. I propose that, to obtain a clearer view of the kind of interaction with nature that is represented by nature restoration, we consider two site-speciﬁc art forms: Japanese gardens and earthworks. The reason for focusing on these art forms is that, in contrast to paintings and sculptures, which in the past have been drawn upon to help clarify the conceptual status of nature restoration, Japanese gardens and earthworks are exemplary as works that directly seek to represent a distinct relationship of human beings to nature.14 Japanese Gardens and Earthworks Gardens constitute manipulations of nature par excellence.15 This is particularly obvious in European formal gardens. Those gardens freely make use of shrubs and ﬂowering plants to exhibit patterns intended to represent various abstract ideas, such as order in the universe or the hegemonic power of a potentate. The situation is subtly different in the case of traditional Japanese gardens (see Figure 11.1).16

artefactual has to be deﬁned in contradistinction to the natural. See Chapter 9. 13 On assisted regeneration as a kind of benevolent restoration, see Andrew Light, “Restoration, Autonomy, and Domination,” in Thomas Heyd (ed.), Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 14 For a philosophical discussion of the continuity between gardens and earthworks, see Stephanie Ross, “Gardens, Earthworks and Environmental Art,” in Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (eds), Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 158–82; for a discussion of that continuity from an art criticism point of view, see Lucy R. Lippard, Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), especially pp. 197–242. 15 Also see Chapter 12 with regard to the special character of gardens as spaces that are between the natural and the humanly made or artefactual. 16 Comparisons between European formal gardens and Japanese gardens can be found in Bandana Purkayastha, “Italian Renaissance and Japanese Zen Gardens: An Approach for Introducing Cultural Landscapes,” Journal of Geography (May/June 1993), pp. 420–26; Hong-Key Yoon, “Two different Geomentalities, Two Different Gardens: the French and the Japanese Cases,” GeoJournal, 33, 4 (1994), pp. 471–7. Of course, in Japan one can also ﬁnd a diversity of garden styles that are modeled on gardens from other parts of the world, such as Korea or Europe. Here I use the expression “Japanese gardens” to make reference to a certain set of traditional garden styles. Such garden styles were ﬁrst systematically described in Tachibana-no-Toshitsuna’s eleventh-century work, Sakuteiki: The Book of Garden, trans. Shigemaru Shimoyama (Tokyo: Town and City Planners, 1985).

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Figure 11.1 Kitanomaru garden, East Imperial Palace garden, Tokyo

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Certainly it is a mistake to suppose that all Japanese gardens are of one sort; quite to the contrary.17 Without concerning ourselves here with ﬁne distinctions it is notable that, in contrast with formal European gardens, Japanese gardens generally aim to portray nature in its essential characteristics.18 Some typical Japanese gardens, such as Kenroku-en in Kanazawa, attempt to capture the interplay of plant life, wind and salt water along the Japanese coast through the image of gnarled pine trees planted on the shores of a pond with an irregular shoreline. Other Japanese gardens seek to remind onlookers of remote mountain valleys by displaying creeks ﬂowing amid oddly shaped rocks on shaded mossy hillsides.19 A focus on nature as found in one’s own region is emphasized by the preference for local vegetation, and by the incorporation of natural scenery lying outside the garden proper (shakkei) through the deliberate creation of openings between trees and shrubs. Stones, which constitute a fundamental part of Japanese gardens, are carefully selected for their weathering and are placed in such a way that they give viewers the sense that they “naturally” belong where they are, and in the combinations in which the viewers ﬁnd them. As such, these forms of gardening attempt to emblematically represent (or present) the processes and spaces found in wild nature, away from city and practical concerns of human life. It is to be noted, however, that, although tended with great care, these gardens are said to represent the Japanese “appreciation for incompleteness” (encompassed in the terms shibui and shibusa). For example, the pine tree representing the forests along the weather-beaten coast is not allowed to attain its full stature, as would be desired by foresters in healthy specimens, but is constantly pruned in order to gain and retain its gnarled appearance, while the rocks displayed may be so oddly shaped that a builder would probably reject them. These kinds of choices reﬂect the idea that “nothing should be too perfect or it will fall short of reality and become artiﬁcial.”20 Another commentator notes that “absolute perfection … would fail to embody beauty” since it is “through imperfection that perfection is recognized and beauty appreciated. A form that was perfect would be static and dead.”21

17 There are various ways of classifying them. Sima Eliovson, Gardening the Japanese Way (London: George Harrap, 1971), pp. 58–67, divides them by two types (Stroll and Viewing) and according to three styles (Water Garden, Dry Garden and Tea Garden). Also see Toshirō Inaji, The Garden as Architecture: Form and Spirit in the Gardens of Japan, China and Korea, trans. Pamela Virgilio (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1998), originally published as Teien to jūkyo no ariyō to misekata, miekata: nihon, chūgoku, kankoku (Tokyo: Sankaidō, 1990); Josiah Conder, Landscape Gardening in Japan (New York: Dover, 1964; originally published 1912). 18 See, for example, Allen Carlson, “On the Aesthetic Appreciation of Japanese Gardens,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 37 (1997), pp. 47–56, pp. 52–3. 19 Most striking are “dry gardens” such as the north garden at Daitokuji Daisen’in in Kyoto. For illustration see, for example, Inaji, The Garden as Architecture. 20 Eliovson, Gardening the Japanese Way, p. 28. 21 Mark Holborn, The Ocean in the Sand, Japan: From Landscape to Garden (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1978), p. 22.

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The consequence is that symmetry, as is common in French formal gardens, typically is shunned.22 Instead, gardens are laid out in a manner that recalls complex, evolved natural areas, mimicking the sea with its islands, riverine valleys and mountainous areas. In addition to these empirically relevant factors, one may note that Japanese gardens ultimately hark back to traditional Japanese beliefs according to which one can perceive spiritual existences (kami) in prominent natural features, such as old trees, weathered stones, or certain mountains. Throughout the course of Japanese history various layers of nature-related signiﬁcance were added, culminating in the adoption of gardening by Zen Buddhism as a way to illustrate the underlying unity of all things (see Figure 11.2).23

Figure 11.2 Zuiho-in Zen temple garden, Daitoku-ji, Kyoto

In the tea garden, the express intent is to induce reﬂection and thoughtfulness on the way to the teahouse and its ceremony. All in all, these various strands of ideas behind the history of Japanese gardens crystallize in the notion that nature is not to be subordinated by human beings. Rather, it is supposed that, insofar as we are part of nature, or perhaps 22 Also see Donald Keene, “Japanese Aesthetics,” Philosophy East and West, 19 (1969), pp. 293–326, for an account of the typical characteristics of Japanese aesthetics, which among other things include irregularity. 23 Regarding the role of Zen Buddhism in Japanese gardening see, for example, A.K. Davidson, Zen Gardening (London: Rider, 1982). For an authoritative history of Japanese gardening, see Loraine Kuck, The World of the Japanese Garden: From Chinese Origins to Modern Landscape Art (New York: John Weatherhill, 1968). The classic on Japanese gardens is Tachibana-no-Toshitsuna, Sakuteiki.

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in some sense even “identical” to it,24 we can gain insight into the proper place of human beings by reﬂection on autonomous nature as presented in the garden.25 Many who have visited Japanese gardens will agree that these gardens tend to be very effective in inducing a high level of appreciation for nature as displayed there. The philosopher Allen Carlson goes so far as to argue that the aesthetic appreciation elicited by Japanese gardens is such that the sort of critical attitude that he deems appropriate for the appreciation of artworks is out of place there.26 Rather, although qua gardens they are artefacts, he proposes that they are more ﬁttingly appreciated as nature is. This sort of observation may lead us to conclude that Japanese gardens provide ﬁrst-rate models for nature restoration because, while artefactual, they make us feel that we are surrounded by nature. As we will see below, however, this is a highly paradoxical judgment. If Japanese gardens appear like examples of the closest that art may come to nature restoration, earthworks likely are considered the most removed from it. Earthworks are a kind of site-speciﬁc art that came into prominence in the late 1960s and has more or less ﬂourished since then.27 As various authors remind us, these often aesthetically captivating objects have been made ever since prehistoric times, although they have not been recognized as art until recently.28 The term “earthwork” is not well deﬁned and is often used interchangeably with “land art” or “earth art.” Typically, earthworks consist of large-scale works, carried out with heavy machinery. Some of these sites function as a form of industrial reclamation (for example, Robert Smithson’s Broken Circle/Spiral Hill, 1971). Land art tends to represent a gentler approach to the terrain than earthworks. Characteristically, land art may consist of the arrangement of stones (in circles, long lines, or in piles, for example) preexistent on the surface of a site, as was carried out by Richard Long while on extended walks in remote locations in South America and Britain. Andy Goldsworthy similarly stacks stones or icicles, if he does not create even more ephemeral leaf or petal structures to be taken away be rivers and tides. Here I propose exclusively to focus on those site-speciﬁc works (usually labelled “earthworks”) which, as is common for the works of Smithson and Michael Heizer, require a considerable amount of disturbance of earth and other natural materials, and which explicitly treat land at a particular site, with its rock and dirt, as mere material. The motivations for each instance of earth working vary, of course, but 24 See Holborn, The Ocean in the Sand, especially pp. 57–8, on the role of Zen in the perception of this identity. Also see Yuriko Saito, “The Japanese Appreciation of Nature,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 25, 3 (1985), pp. 239–51. The practical signiﬁcance of this notion of identity of human beings and nature, as developed in Japanese thought, has recently been considered critically; see Megumi Sakabe, “Surrealistic Distortion of Landscape and the Reason of Milieu,” in Eliot Deutsch (ed.), Culture and Modernity: East–West Philosophic Perspectives (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), pp. 343–53. 25 Also see Purkayastha, “Italian Renaissance and Japanese Zen Gardens,” p. 421. 26 Carlson, “Japanese Gardens,” especially pp. 51–2. 27 See Alan Sonﬁst, Art in the Land: A Critical Anthology of Environmental Art (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1983), and Stephanie Ross, “Gardens, earthworks, and environmental art,” in Kemal and Gaskell, Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts, pp. 153–82. 28 See, for example, David Bourdon, Designing the Earth: The Human Impulse to Shape Nature (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995); also see Lippard, Overlay.

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the underlying idea in such works is to make good use for art of spaces and earth as found in abundance in places such as deserts, mesas and dry lakes.

Figure 11.3 Michael Heizer, Double Negative Mormon Mesa, Overton, Nevada

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Figure 11.4 Michael Heizer, Double Negative Mormon Mesa, Overton, Nevada Michael Heizer’s Double Negative (1969–70), for example, is located in a bend of Mormon Mesa at Virgin River, near Overton, Nevada (see Figure 11.3). It consists of an incision, 30 feet wide, 42 feet deep and 100 feet long, into the edge of one side of the mesa, and continued across a wide gap on the other side in an identical manner.29 In the process, Heizer moved 240,000 tons of rhyolite and sandstone. He explained 29 See John Gruen, “Michael Heizer: ‘You Might Say I’m in the Construction Business’,” Artnews (December 1977), pp. 97–9, p. 97.

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that he was interested in drawing attention to the “negative space” encompassed in the total distance of 1500 feet (457.2 meters); the piece, he claimed, is about absence.30 Notwithstanding the artistic merit of earthworks, they have been severely criticized by environmental aestheticians and environmental ethicists, such as Carlson and Peter Humphrey, respectively. Carlson thinks that such works constitute an “aesthetic affront to nature” because, in the process of their creation, they neglect to respect the aesthetic value of preexisting nature.31 Humphrey objects to such works because of their present and/or foreseeable future negative ecological consequences.32 It may be questioned, however, whether singling out earthworks in this manner is justiﬁed. Certainly earthwork artists are not doing anything very different from what their non-artist contemporaries in industry are doing when mines are dug or urban developments and highways are blasted through hills and glades. If earthworks are “affronts to nature,” large-scale industrial developments must be considered much more intrusive.33 This circumstance makes one wonder whether the negative aesthetic assessment of the relatively minor incursions into the land represented by these earthworks does not stand for an excessively conservative preference for the merely utilitarian over the artistic avant-garde, the reasoning being perhaps that we see an obvious direct beneﬁt in those mines, new roads and new suburbs, but not in this apparently intrusive kind of art. Also, since earthworks are hard to make or to get funded, very few actually are realized. So, although making earthworks, as deﬁned here, indeed causes a certain ecological disturbance in natural spaces, it seems that painters, with their oil paints and turpentine, or silk-screen artists, with their emulsions, washes and degreasers, are doing more damage to the fabric of the Earth in the aggregate and in the long run. Nonetheless, it seems quite clear that earthworks are, if anything, counter-images to what nature restoration may be, but perhaps this judgement is too precipitated. Artifice and Nature As noted, Japanese gardens may seem veritable models for nature restoration, both in execution and underlying ideology, while earthworks may seem to represent the very opposite. However, even if Japanese gardens may constitute highly engaging representations of the essence of nature, both their creation and their maintenance require thoroughgoing artiﬁce. Just like the “Arcadian,” pastoral English gardens, designed by Lancelot “Capability” Brown (1716–83), Japanese gardens may require considerable earth moving, water basin creation, rock transport, planting, and continuous upkeep. Walking in a Japanese moss garden, for example, means that one likely will see teams of gardeners removing even the smallest bit of grass, while, when admiring the gnarled pine tree that reminds us of its counterpart by the seascape, we may also 30 See Bourdon, Designing the Earth, p. 218. 31 See Carlson, “Is Environmental Art an Aesthetic Affront to Nature?”. 32 Peter Humphrey, “The Ethics of Earthworks,” Environmental Ethics, 7 (1985). 33 But see Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 175–93, for a defense of large-scale agriculture. One should, however, suppose that those uses of land also are a form of neglect for preexisting nature.

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be looking at crutches intended to hold up its precariously balanced branches which are a product of decades-long cosmetic pruning. In fact, Japanese gardens may be as thoroughly artefactual as their various European counterparts. Ironically, earthworks, which when ﬁrst executed resemble lands that cry out for restoration, eventually tend to turn into the opposite. In as much as earthworks when ﬁrst executed may resemble industrial interventions in the land, after some time they are redeemed back by nature. This is the case with many of the early pieces. I discovered this through personal experience when I sought out Heizer’s Double Negative in 1994. The site is quite a distance from Las Vegas or even from the nearest town, in a desert environment little hospitable to human beings. To my surprise, the site had changed considerably from its appearance in the photographs in circulation, which date back to 1970 when the work was ﬁrst made. Those photographs (which still are being reproduced in publications printed as late as 1995) show a neat cut in the rocky mesa, intended to illustrate Heizer’s desire for works that demonstrate “durability and precision.”34 In 1994, though, I could see that on both sides of the earthwork the walls had begun to crumble, large rocks and mud washed out of the walls had accumulated in the supposedly empty spaces of each “negative,” and various local plants had taken root here and there. These counterintuitive (see Figure 11.5) observations regarding Japanese gardens and earthworks lead me to a consideration of the larger context in which our appreciation of these artworks ﬁgures. My personal experience is that neither Japanese gardens nor earthworks make me feel uncomfortable, despite the evident display of human control implied in their thoroughgoing artefactuality. In contrast, I ﬁnd quite disturbing the fashionable, aestheticizing landscaping designs, featuring ponds and manicured lawns, built in order to raise the value of upscale real estate in Canadian cities. Similarly, I wonder about the sense of creating deep gashes in native rock, carried out simply to speed up automobile trafﬁc, especially when the consequence is that previously remote natural areas will thereby open up to unbridled development.35 In fact, we can imagine instances in which the appearance of a Japanese garden or of a site-speciﬁc earthwork approximates that of corresponding commercial-industrial undertakings, and still be struck by a signiﬁcant difference. My guess is that the difference in our reactions has something to do with the fact that, qua artworks, Japanese gardens and earthworks make a claim as expressions of a certain sensibility, and, as such, they invite us to look beyond their immediate, practical impact on human interests. That is, as artworks they represent calls to let our imagination wander and to conjecture about the insights that may have inspired their authors to make each particular work at the particular location chosen, with those materials, and with that appearance. Concretely, Japanese gardens usually incite us to remember those pristine natural spaces in hills and glades that may be hard to reach for urban-bound citizens, while earthworks, in comparison, call for our consideration of human disturbances of such wild nature. In these ways, Japanese gardens and earthworks enunciate very particular, contrasting sorts of human-nature relationships. So, what can we learn from these contrasting sorts of interventions in nature? Japanese gardens are like ﬁngers pointing to what nature has to offer to us. By 34 Bourdon, Designing the Earth, p. 216. 35 This is of concern, for example, in Extremadura, Spain, where, as a result of European Union road-building grants, former wildlife refuges are in danger of disappearing.

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Figure 11.5 Double Negative Corte de Tierra. Illustration by Elke Haeberlein making a space for asymmetries and for (what seem to be) imperfections, they also put human lives into the context of nature, suggesting ways in which the skewedness and imperfections in our lives may be acceptable. These gardens promote “the look from above” sought by the ancient European schools of philosophy (for example, the Stoics and Epicureans): even if from close-up our lives may seem twisted and accidental, they may make some sense when seen in relation to nature.36 36 On ancient European schools of philosophy as ways of life, see Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995).

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Moreover, by making us feel comfortable in what seem to be natural spaces, Japanese gardens help to make alien nature somewhat less alien, without failing to point out with their unexpected turns and vistas that nature will be surprising at times. Furthermore, by creating the illusion in the visitors of being in natural spaces – while simultaneously displaying the illusory character of those spaces through diverse gardening props – they bridge the gap between the artefactual and nature without denying it. Earthworks, in contrast, are like ﬁngers pointing to what little we human beings offer in exchange for nature. They show this by mimicking the rough handling of wild, natural spaces carried out by our entrepreneurs and whitewashed by our policy makers on a daily basis. The difference between earthworks and industrial interventions in nature is that earthworks, insofar as not otherwise useful, leave the onlooker no choice but to reﬂect on the place of human intervention in wild nature and, in this way, may lead to renewed attention to the supposedly justiﬁed interventions in nature of the everyday. Furthermore, at least in many cases, to look at earthworks is also to look at the wilderness that surrounds them. While gazing at Double Negative’s cut into the subsurface of the land, for example, we come into the presence of the workings of the Earth from a long time back, the distant mountain ranges with their impregnable walls, and the daunting desert ﬂoor that calls on the eye to travel to a far horizon. Together, all these facets of the land, highlighted by the sitedness of the artwork, function as reminders of the otherness of nature, of its alien character. They also are warnings about the blindness that results from coming too close to nature in the process of treating it as mere material for our passing consumptive urges: if all we see is a future mine or road or housing development, we may fail to see all those other faces that nature freely offers. While earthworks are artefacts without any pretense of representing nature, they, like Japanese gardens, may also provide us with something like a connection between the artefactual and the natural. Even if these works represent assaults on nature, calculated aesthetic affronts if you will, they are also essentially human gestures in nature. Even if we ﬁnd distasteful the sort of disturbance of the land that they represent we may, nevertheless, recognize ourselves in them. This is similar to what happens when in the theatre we recognize ourselves in the tragic heroes Oedipus or Medea of ancient Greek tragedy: we may not like the role, but, by adopting it for a time (at least in imagination), we may come to understand another facet of what it is to be human. Similarly, we may not feel inclined to identify with the sort of gesture earthworks represent, but, by taking ownership of those gestures, we may be more able to think about what it means to be human surrounded by non-human nature. Moreover, while in the case of Japanese gardens we can only ﬁght their illusory appearance of naturalness by noting the markers of their utter artiﬁce in the pruning and other constant manipulations to which they are subjected, in the case of earthworks we have the opposite task. We can only grasp that they have a relevance that goes beyond their nature-assaulting artefactuality by noting how they expose us to nature in the raw. These two sorts of art make both epistemological and moral points. They present alternative ways of cognizing nature and our relationships with it, and, consequently, raise the issue of how we should act with respect to nature.

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Nature Restoration Without Dissimulation As discussed, Japanese gardens and earthworks can bring us closer to nature by pointedly different strategies. Japanese gardens and earthworks seem to show that even very considerable interventions in nature can aid, rather than hinder our appreciation of nature – as long as those interventions are distinguishable from nature’s doing. In this way, both types of art forcefully argue against dissimulation. Dissimulation, as Jean Baudrillard has reminded us, is to feign not to have what one does have, while simulation is to feign to have what one does not.37 Nature restoration is not the act of nature. This equally applies to the four modes of restoration sampled above (repair, recreation of particular things, recreation of types of things, and re-establishment of natural processes): in every one of these cases, to some extent, restoration is the result of human designs and aims. While the problems of imperfect restoration may be gradually diminished through the development of technique, the replacement problem, and the associated problem of possible deception which arises if restorers hide their human interventions in nature, has no such solution. I propose that the only appropriate way to mitigate these problems is to avoid dissimulation in nature restoration. Acknowledging that nature restoration creates artefacts obviates the question whether the product of restoration can replace the original, and, by leaving sign of human agency at restored sites, the problem of possible deception, and the consequent charge of fakery, forgery, or big lies can be avoided. Making human agency in nature restoration evident, moreover, may generate some of the beneﬁts that we noted in the appreciation of Japanese gardens and earthworks. Just as, through their attempt to emulate natural spaces, Japanese gardens direct our attention beyond their visible borders onto wild nature and its processes, leaving evidence that restorations are human attempts at imitating non-human nature may similarly stimulate in us the desire to better understand natural spaces and processes. And, just as through their rough handling of land earthworks invite reﬂection on the troublesome character of human agency in wild nature, leaving evidence on a restored site of the human activities (for example, industrial) that took place prior to, and through the process of, restorative work may help us to grieve for the natural integrity that has already been lost through accident, carelessness and greed. In other words, human agency in humanly stressed areas, which subsequently have been restored, should be openly displayed so that visitors may beneﬁt from the fact that restoration is a way of relating the artefactual and the natural. In this way, nature restoration may bring us closer to non-human nature, even if in a round-about way. Practically, what does this mean? It suggests at least a judicious combination of a policy of letting be, insofar as natural processes can be allowed to come into their own again through it, and a policy of intervention, to remove human-created obstacles to those natural processes,38 all the while leaving clear sign of what the 37 Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (Foreign Agents Series; New York: Semiotext(e), 1983). 38 R. Attﬁeld, “Rehabilitating Nature and Making Nature Habitable,” in R. Attﬁeld and A. Belsey (eds), Philosophy and the Natural Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 45–58.

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human, artefactual contribution is. So, this might mean to regrade old roads in remote areas in such a way as to make their renewed use unlikely, but not in such a manner that one cannot tell that human beings have transformed the land because all trace of human intervention is hidden. And it might mean to take logging and road-building debris out of creeks to enable local ﬁsh species to reclaim them, but probably not to rebuild them in such a way that they appear untouched by human activity. Certainly our limited ability to make peace with the land through restorative work can in no way justify further entrepreneurial incursions into what little wild nature is left.39 Treating the land as a mere resource available to unbridled exploitation by our own generation and banking on the expectation that nature restorers will be able to hide the damage later is like bombing cities, with their people and cultural goods, in the expectation that the economic growth to follow destruction will pay for their reconstruction later. But, where the damage has already been done, it would seem justiﬁable and important to help the land recover some of its lost vitality. In those cases it is relevant that the less artiﬁcial the intervention, and the less dissimulated it is, the more plausible nature restoration will be. In this way nature restoration may be doing right by our own and future generations, and the land itself. Insofar as nature restoration exempliﬁes a relationship of care for the land, it also serves as a model for the kind of relationship that we need to develop with the rest of nature. 40

39 In this context the politics of restoration are of crucial importance. See Andrew Light and Eric S. Higgs, “The Politics of Restoration,” Environmental Ethics, 18, 3 (1996), pp. 227–47. 40 Diverse versions of this essay have appeared. This chapter is closest to “Nature Restoration Without Dissimulation: Learning from Japanese Gardens and Earthworks,” Essays in Philosophy (January 2002). Other versions include “La restauración de la naturaleza con relación a las obras de la tierra (earthworks) y el arte de los jardines japoneses,” Estudios Filosóﬁcos, 3, 152 (Universidad de Valladolid, Spring 2004), pp. 77–85; “Gardens and Nature Restoration,” AE: Journal of the Canadian Society for Aesthetics (Special issue on Garden Aesthetics, ed. by Manon Régimbald, September 2001). In my initial research for this chapter, which involved a trip to the site of Double Negative in Nevada and to the Japanese garden in Edmonton, I greatly beneﬁted from discussions with Karen Baltgailis. Subsequent visits to several Japanese gardens in Japan were facilitated by a Fellowship by the Japan Foundation in 1999. Nature Restoration Without Dissimulation: Learning from Japanese Gardens and Earthworks has appeared as “Nature Restoration Without Dissimulation: Learning from Japanese Gardens and Earthworks,” Essays in Philosophy Vol 3, No 1, (January 2002), online journal at: http:// www.humboldt.edu/~essays/. With permission of the editor, Michael F. Goodman..

Chapter 12

Botanic Gardens as Collaboration Between Humans and Nature To walk through the Marimurtra botanic garden overhanging the rocky coast of Catalonia is to walk through a peculiar kind of wonderland.1 Shortly after traversing an area planted with subtropical specimens, with some sections dedicated to endemics of the Canary Islands and some featuring cacti from Mexico and California, I gaze up to the heights of Chilean palm trees and, not much further aﬁeld, at otherworldlyseeming Araucarias from the Andes Cordillera. Just around the corner I am taken back to the environment of my childhood, as I face the kind of maquis which populates the dry hills on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. And down the path the signs inform me that I am traversing Australian malle, South African ﬁnbos, Californian chaparral and Chilean espinal. Nine time zones further west, in the Strybing Arboretum, which really is another botanic garden located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, I ﬁnd another sample of plants from the ﬁve areas of “Mediterranean climate” of our planet, in other words, plants from countries from around the Mediterranean Sea, South-western Cape (South Africa), Southern California, and Southern and South-western Australia.2 But in the Strybing garden the humid, cool air coming from the nearby Paciﬁc also makes it possible for me to walk into a nearby, hundred-year-old grove of redwood trees, very similar to the groves I know from my present-day homeland on the West Coast of Canada. To enter a botanic garden is to enter a really existing, perfect, space.3 Botanic gardens present us with spaces such as we would never ﬁnd in agricultural or urban environments, or even in untouched nature, since it is unlikely that one would ﬁnd such concentrations of diverse species, and, furthermore, from all over the world, in such limited spaces of the natural environment. These humanly arranged spaces are also different from other gardens insofar as their plant populations are not merely regimented to present us with decorative arrays, intended to please the eyes of

1 See . 2 See . 3 It is to enter what Michel Foucault calls a “heterotopia,” that is, a space that contests all other spaces and is “as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as [our ordinary spaces] are messy, ill-constructed and jumbled” (Michel Foucault, “of other spaces”, Diacritics (Spring 1986), pp. 22–7, p. 27). For further discussion of the notion of heterotopias, see Chapter 10.

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the beholder. Botanic gardens seem highly paradoxical: They present nature to us without arising naturally, and they are artefacts without being artiﬁcial.4 These puzzling facts about botanic gardens may lead us to ask, what is a botanic garden? What functions does it fulﬁll? And, what may be its signiﬁcance in our societies? In the following I begin by attempting to answer the questions what a garden is and what distinguishes botanic from other gardens. After this I propose to consider three distinct perspectives on botanic gardens. I conclude with a discussion of some of the ways in which botanic gardens may be seen to contribute toward seeing plants as subjects rather than as mere objects. In this way, botanic gardens demonstrate that thoroughly cultural creations can bring us into a deeper relationship with non-human nature. Gardens and Botanic Gardens What constitutes a garden as a garden is itself a debated matter. Frequently the notion of garden is etymologically traced to terms indicating an enclosed, or walled in, space.5 Since there are many gardens, however, that fail to be enclosed in an obvious manner other criteria are pursued, such as that a garden is a space that is designed, or that contains plant life, or that is open to the sky.6 Nonetheless, for each of those proposals counterexamples can be found, so that one may despair to ﬁnd a deﬁnition and, ﬁnally, settle for a view, inspired by Wittgenstein’s account of language games, according to which a garden should have some key features, none of which are either necessary nor sufﬁcient, though.7 So, gardens are described as a kind of space that may be bounded in more or less explicit ways, may have plants but need not, may be explicitly designed but may also

4 In these ways they share some to the inherent ontological tensions also present, for example, in restored landscapes and Japanese gardens. See Chapter 11. Professor Frank Felsenstein of Ball State University points out that the objects in “the cabinet of curiosities,” which were “highly popular among literati and men of science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” could also “be described as ‘artefacts without being artiﬁcial’” (letter from Frank Felsenstein to the author, 19 May 2005). 5 See Anne van Erp-Houtepen, “The Etymological Origin of the Garden,” Journal of Garden History, 6, 3 (July–September 1986), pp. 227–31. 6 See, for example, Mara Miller, The Garden as an Art (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), Chapter 1; Stephanie Ross, What Gardens Mean (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988), Chapter 2; John Dixon Hunt, “Gardens: Historical Overview,” in Michael Kelly (ed.), Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 271–4. Also see Thomas Leddy, “Gardens in an Expanded Field,” British Journal of Aesthetics, 28, 4 (1988), pp. 327–40. Of further interest is Tom Turner, Garden History, Philosophy and Design 2000 BC to 2000 AD (London: Spon Press, 2005; I owe this reference to Beverly Brown). 7 See Stephanie Ross, “Gardens, earthworks, and environmental art,” in Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (eds), Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), who argues similarly.

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be generated in less systematic ways, and so on. Perhaps the most fundamental idea is that a garden is or has been tended, or cared for, and is not entirely “wild,”9 though one may wonder about the degree of “tending” necessary to speak of a garden.10 (Is a space that is planted with trees and vegetables at one time, and then left to itself, still a garden after one year? After ﬁve years? After ten or ﬁfty?) Botanic gardens are gardens, but of a special sort. Deﬁnitions found in encyclopedias do not help much in the determination of their special character. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, says that a botanical garden is “a collection of living plants designed chieﬂy to illustrate relationships within plant groups.”11 Another source admits that a deﬁnition of botanic garden is difﬁcult, and eventually makes reference to a text issued by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which deﬁnes it as a “garden containing scientiﬁcally ordered and maintained collections of plants, usually documented and labeled, and open to the public for the purposes of recreation, education and research.”12 A similar emphasis on function is exhibited in the Chicago Botanic Garden Encyclopedia of Gardens History and Design, which deﬁnes botanic gardens as “collections of living plants that in the present day have four major functions: scientiﬁc inquiry, botanical and horticultural education, public recreation, and landscape aesthetics.”13 Turning to the historical evolution of botanic gardens, we may take note that they emerge out of medieval Physick Gardens, which were small gardens with diverse healing plants, attached to monasteries. As argued in a magisterial way by John Prest, 8 Which features are considered key depends on the particularities of each society that creates spaces that end up labeled (or translated as) “gardens”. See, for example, Toshirō Inaji, The Garden as Architecture: Form and Spirit in the Gardens of Japan, China and Korea, trans. Pamela Virgilio (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1998), originally published as Teien to jūkyo no ariyō to misekata, miekata: nihon, chūgoku, kankoku (Tokyo: Sankaidō, 1990), for a discussion of what is key to the idea of a garden in various periods and in three different Far Eastern countries. What is deﬁned as a garden also depends as on the purposes of those discussing the concept. 9 I owe this insight to John D. Ambrose (letter from John D. Ambrose to the author, 26 May 2005). Also see Michael Pollan, Second nature: a gardener’s education (New York: Laurel, 1992; Dell, 1991). 10 See, for example, J.A. Gutiérrez, who describes the Maya tradition of creating gardens that after several years of planting revert into forest: “Agricultura de roza y dinámica demográﬁca en una comunidad maya,” Etnoecológica, 1, 2 (October 1993) . 11 New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Micropaedia (2002), pp. 407–8, p. 407. 12 New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening (London: MacMillan Press, 1992), pp. 374–7, p. 375, citing Botanic Gardens Conservation Secretariat, Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy (International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Botanic Gardens Conservation Secretariat, 1989). [no page number indicated; this Strategy is also supported by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)] As Ambrose points out, the documentation of plant collections in botanic gardens includes information on the wild source the specimens come from, the veriﬁcation of identity performed, how they survive hard winters, etc. These matters provide an important, “basic distinction from a show garden” (letter, 26 May 2005). 13 Jeannie Sim, “Botanic Garden,” Chicago Botanic Garden Encyclopedia of Gardens History and Design, Vol. 1 (Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001), pp. 172–75, p. 172.

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the discoveries in the late Renaissance of formerly unknown plants from far-away lands led Europeans to self-conscious attempts to recreate the Garden of Eden.14 The supposition was that the lands, new to Europeans, encountered in the Americas and elsewhere, might contain the missing species originally present in the famed original Garden.15 An amalgamation of the notion of Eden and of mythical gardens, as described by Virgil and others from Europe’s classical antiquity, led to the conﬂation of the idea of Eden with the idea of walled gardens which the ancient Greeks knew as “Paradise” (a notion which they adopted after their own transcontinental travels, and their consequent encounter with Persian culture). Today’s botanic gardens also ﬁnd their predecessors in a variety of subsequent developments. For instance, gardens, which accumulated great diversity of exotic plants, were built and maintained as a sort of living warehouses intended to supply the expanding colonial powers, particularly Britain, with productive plants (such as cocoa and tea) for dissemination in the territories they occupied around the world during the period of colonization.16 Some gardens with “exotic” plants, such as citrus trees, set up at crucial stopover places (as on the southern tip of Southern Africa), played an extremely important role in protecting British mariners from the ravages of scurvy. Moreover, as Loren Russell mentions, “many of the present great botanic gardens are directly descended from private estates, where the collections [resulted from] a mix of acquisitiveness (or conspicuous consumption) and enthusiasm for natural history. [They were] equivalent to the natural history ‘cabinets’ which led to natural history museums.”17 Eventually gardens containing large collections of plants became sites for research associated to universities. With the turn toward research dependent on laboratory techniques, maintaining living plant collections became relatively irrelevant for botanical research,18 with the consequence that in many places botanic gardens lost 14 John Prest, The Garden of Eden: The Botanic Garden and the Re-Creation of Paradise (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981). 15 Interestingly, Eugene C. Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988), p. 83, argues that the introduction of exotic species into European gardens forced “garden enthusiasts to accept new and wilder standards of beauty.” 16 See Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the Improvement of the World (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000); Lucile H. Brockway, “Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Garden,” American Ethnologist, 6, 3 (August 1979), pp. 449–65. But see Jim Endersby, “A Garden Enclosed: Botanical Barter in Sydney 1818–1839,” British Journal for the History of Science, 33, 118 (September 2000), pp. 313–34, for other motivations in the creation of botanic gardens. Also see J.L. Maldonado Polo, “The Botanical Expedition to New Spain, 1786–1803: Mexico City’s Botanical Garden and Professorship in Botany” (in Spanish), Historia Mexicana, 50, 1 (July–September 2000), pp. 5–56. 17 Letter from Loren Russell to the author, 24 May 2005. 18 Ibid. Russell thinks, though, that “it’s correct to say that current research is MORE dependent on living material than in the past [when dried herbarium material sufﬁced for much of the published work]. However, the current research is often narrowly focused, so that living material is acquired or grown, then disposed of after the project is completed. Increased ease of travel has also made it seem inefﬁcient to maintain material for future research – in theory you just go out in the ﬁeld when you need something … the historic maintenance of living

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much of their former sources of ﬁnancial support. Most recently there has been a renaissance of botanic gardens in two independent ways, namely as recreational spaces and as sites for the conservation of endangered plant species. While botanic gardens may be suited more or less well for these functions, I propose a third type of function for these spaces, namely as models for collaborative relations between human beings and the natural world. I discuss these three perspectives next. Three Perspectives Botanic gardens as recreational displays Botanic gardens have been signiﬁcant in European cultural recreation in a diversity of ways, including as inspiration for poetry.20 Due to ever-expanding urbanization, and the concomitant shrinkage of pristine natural spaces, the idea that the collections of plants in botanic gardens be considered as displays serving recreational purposes has been gaining popularity among lay persons as well as a number of gardens spokespersons. It was already argued in 1956 in the American Journal of Botany that, due to the loss of importance of botanic gardens from a purely scientiﬁc point of view, these sites be promoted for their contribution to human welfare in other ways, including as “facilities … for passive, educational, cultural and meditative recreation.”21 The idea that botanic gardens serve recreational purposes was echoed a year later in the same journal in an article which bemoaned that not enough was being done to reach the public. The author’s suggestion was to actively develop courses for the broad public in topics ranging from horticultural techniques to plant species recognition, thereby making “botany socially useful and widely interesting.”22 Some garden managers go so far as to advocate “opening the garden gates” not just to scientiﬁcally interested laypersons and gardeners but to the clientele for “Gift shops, food services, weddings, memorial services, corporate parties, children’s

collections was more often justiﬁed for teaching purposes, particularly at the undergraduate level. Also it was often based on very cheap labor and little capital investment. That’s all changed, making it now difﬁcult to obtain support.” 19 See, for example, Arthur W. Hill, “History and Functions of Botanic Gardens,” Annals of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, 2 (February–April 1915), pp. 185–235, for an early twentieth-century account of the history of, and functions attributed to, botanical gardens; for a more recent assessment see Therese O’Malley, “Art and Science in the Design of Botanic Gardens, 1730–1830,” in Garden History: Issues, Approaches, Methods (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1992), pp. 279–302. 20 For instance, see Donald M. Hassler, Erasmus Darwin (New York: Twayne, 1973), Chapter 2. Also see Kate Sterns, “Come into the garden, Maud (Looking for paradise in botanical gardens),” Queens Quarterly, 109, 3 (Fall 2002), pp. 411–19. 21 R.J. Seibert, “Arboreta and Botanical Gardens in the Field of Plant Sciences and Human Welfare,” American Journal of Botany, 43 (1956), pp. 736–38, p. 738. 22 George S. Avery Jr., “Botanic Gardens – What Role Today? An ‘Operation Bootstraps’ Opportunity for Botanists,” American Journal of Botany, 44 (1957), pp. 268–71, p. 271.

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programs and bus tours … .” This approach is advocated in part due to the perceived need to attract large numbers of visitors in order to maintain botanic gardens in good order (to balance the books) but also, supposedly, in order to “ﬁnd relevance” for botanic gardens. The end point of such trends, given the inherent potential of such gardens as tourist attractions, may lead to their assimilation to theme parks.24 For better or for worse, these developments reﬂect the increasing integration, since the early twentieth century, of all goods (including cultural goods) into a global consumerist grid.25 Interestingly, the idea that botanic gardens may serve recreational purposes, and even function as theme parks, is perhaps not so far removed from their original conception as re-creations of Eden. As such, the collections of plants were valued for external, religiously inspired, reasons: the reconstitution of Paradise. There certainly are signiﬁcant differences in attitude when we move from conceiving botanic gardens as sites designed and stocked for the recuperation of the complete prelapsarian ﬂora,26 to perceiving them as living botanic encyclopedias, and from there to seeing them as entertaining displays in kaleidoscopic theme parks. These approaches share, however, the viewpoint that such sites are something like living museums or archives. The underlying theme in such approaches to botanic gardens is that some human beings, at some point in time, sought out diverse exotic and domestic species, brought them into the designed environment from the wild, and now these specimens of their descendants are presented to academic and lay publics alike as displays of natural forms that may be useful in some way: from the point of view of religion, or for the completion of natural history, or for recreational or entertainment purposes. From these points of view the relation between human beings and the plants in the gardens is a relation of subject to possession, that is, of subject to object. 23 Frank Robinson, “The People-Plant Connection,” Public Garden (April 1996), pp. 18–20, 43, p. 20. 24 Botanic gardens certainly distinguish themselves from the type of theme parks, epitomized by Disneyland, which simulate the real world with fake materials, but may approximate their intent to entertain. For discussion on theme parks such as Disneyland, see Umberto Eco, “Travels in Hyperreality,” in Travels in Hyperreality: Essays, translated by William Weaver (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), pp. 1–58. For discussion of the terms “simulacra” and “simulation,” see Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations,” in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, edited by Mark Poster (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 166–84. He argues that much of our contemporary, human-made, world is becoming something akin to such theme parks. Also see Thomas Heyd, “Dance Today: Art of Body Among Simulacra,” Journal of Aesthetic Education, 34, 2 (Summer 2000), pp. 15–26. 25 Russell (letter, 24 May 2005) mentions that “there’s another ‘purpose’ for gathering rare plants – commercial introduction of ornamental [or sometimes edible] plants.” He points out that some horticultural directors of botanic gardens “have been able to ﬁnance a more traditional collection by building ‘name labels’ for their introductions. For instance, Denver Botanic Garden releases ‘PlantSelect’ forms through the large Colorado nursery business, and in return gets some support for exploration for new plants.” 26 That is, the full set of ﬂora we suppose existed in the Garden of Eden before “The Fall” into sin of humanity in the Garden of Eden.

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Botanic gardens as sites for plant conservation The shrinkage of natural spaces, insofar as it entails the elimination of habitat for wild species, has led to the proposal that botanic gardens may serve as locations for ex situ conservation of plants.27 This second, less clearly human-centred, perspective consists in conceiving of botanic gardens as havens from the ravages of human enterprise and carelessness, which are decimating plant biodiversity at an increasingly alarming rate. The role of botanic gardens in the conservation of plant species is a debated topic, though. Some argue that the preservation of the gene pool is only possible in situ and that preservation ex situ is nonsense both 1) because of the loss of gene diversity in the relatively small populations present in botanic gardens, and 2) because such preservation is useless if the habitats, from which the plants have been extracted, have been destroyed.28 Others, in contrast, agree that botanic gardens should be active players in an integrated strategy for plant conservation, but seek to reorient the focus of the management of these sites.29 The present strategic insertion of botanic gardens into the IUCN’s plans for conservation of nature30 ﬁts well with the idea, noted already, of re-creating a site at which the diverse species, which, allegedly, once populated the Garden of Eden, may now be reassembled and conserved at deﬁnite locations under the protective eyes of human guardians (gardeners). From this perspective, botanic gardens function as biodiversity reserves. Seen in this way, the relation between human beings and plants in the gardens is one of subjects, qua guardians, to wards, and the relationship may be called stewardship. Seeing botanic gardens as biodiversity reserves means that the plants preserved are being held in store for some, as yet unspeciﬁed, purpose: Regeneration of species, ex situ? Museal display for future generations? Or, preservation for their own sake? In other words, the ultimate attitude towards plants represented by this conception of 27 As proposed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in their Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy. 28 Professor. Volker Melzheimer, “The task of a botanical garden through the ages” (in German: “Die Aufgaben eines Botanischen Gartens im Wandel der Zeiten”), Der Tropenlandwirt, Beiträge zur tropischen Landwirtschaft und Veterinärmedizin, 97 (April 1996), pp. 113–25. Also see James P. Folsom, “The Issues and Ethics of Plant Collections,” Public Garden (October 1996), pp. 24–9, who asks whether conservation for reintroduction is a realistic and ethically defensible goal. Folsom also raises ethical concerns about the ethics of collecting plants in general and speciﬁcally in foreign countries. 29 See Mike Maunder, Sarah Higgens and Alastair Culham, “The effectiveness of botanic garden collections in supporting plant conservation: a European case study,” Biodiversity and Conservation, 10 (2001), pp. 383–401. John D. Ambrose points out that “a third reasonable view is that ex situ must only be seen as a short term pursuit, in the context of the larger task of restoring habitats and getting the species in question back in nature – the arc is of little use if it is not steered back to land. If they are not reconnected back to nature then they are essentially the ‘living dead’” (letter, 24 May 2005). Also see John D. Ambrose, “The Role of Botanical Gardens and Non-Governmental Organizations,” Proceedings Workshop on National Policy Issues in Plant Genetic Conservation Ottawa Ontario Canada 2001 (Ottawa: Canadian Agricultural Research Council, 1991), pp. 47–50. 30 See IUCN’s and WWF’s Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy.

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botanic gardens is not determined in some deﬁnite way, and may range from one that relates to plants as mere objects to one that treats them as full-blown subjects. Botanic gardens as sites of human–nature cooperation Along the continuum just suggested, we may consider a third perspective for botanic gardens. If we take on a perspective which goes as far as possible toward the notion that plants may also be subjects,31 how do we see the relationship between human beings and plants in a botanic garden? Certainly we cannot fail to see ourselves as subjects, but we do not necessarily have to relate to the non-human as mere objects. There is the possibility of conceiving the other, human or non-human, as partner, who can be engaged in cooperative or collaborative ways.32 In fact, gardens in general, have variously been described as constituting collaborative endeavors between “nature” and “culture.”33 John Dixon Hunt, for instance, speaks of the garden as “a site of conﬂict or dialogue,” where “the most important [among those conﬂicts and dialogues, concerns] its accommodation of both nature and culture.”34 Donald Crawford, moreover, has elaborated a notion of dialectical relationship in the context of nature and art, which may well apply to gardens.35 On Crawford’s account, “In a dialectical relationship, the two terms of the relation designate conﬂicting forces. It is common … to apply this relation to cases in which the conﬂicting interaction brings into being some third object.”36 Human beings 31 See Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World (New York: Random House, 2001), for an interesting attempt to think of plants as subjects. For a discussion of nature as subject in a wider sense, see Eric Katz, Nature as Subject: Human Obligation and Natural Community (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld, 1997). Also see Thomas Heyd (ed.), Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 32 Also see John Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature (London: Duckworth, 1974), especially Chapter 2. As noted earlier, Passmore discusses a tradition in European thought that proposes that human beings may “cooperate” with nature, thus pursuing the combined good of human beings and non-human nature. He notes that “to ‘develop’ land, on this way of looking at man’s relationship to nature, is to actualise its potentialities, to bring to light what it has in itself to become, and by this means to perfect it.” (p. 32) Passmore, furthermore, provides an historical summary of the idea of cooperation with nature, tracing it primarily to Pelagian sources and pointing out how the idea has been developed in modernity by J.G. Fichte, P. Teilhard de Chardin and, in the 20th century, by Herbert Marcuse. 33 My view is that nature contrasts with human-made artefacts rather than with culture; see Chapter 9. Also see Pollan, Second Nature, and John D. Ambrose and H. Kock, “In search of a new landscape: bridging the nature-culture rift,” Wildﬂower, 9, 4 (1993), pp. 17–9. 34 Hunt, “Gardens: Historical Overview,” p. 272. 35 Dialectical relationships generate new, and possibly interesting, resolutions from opposing or contradictory elements. The simultaneous need to protect one’s own interests and the desire for good neighborly relations may generate the impulse to agree to compromises that may not have been there before, for example. 36 Donald Crawford, “Nature and Art: Some Dialectical Relationships,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Autumn 1983), 49–58, p. 49. I am indebted to

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typically attempt to exert control over the plants present in their gardens, seeking to suppress certain species (considered weeds) and to give support to the ﬂourishing of others (considered useful or decorative). So, gardens, qua hybrid spaces made by the interaction of human beings and plants, may be seen as the product of (relatively) conﬂicting forces, insofar as human beings seek to impose their objectives on (more or less resistant) plants inhabiting a garden. Nonetheless, all gardens (as do all artefacts) allow for gradations in the extent to which their “materials” are allowed free expression of their characteristic or speciﬁc features. Collaboration, in any case, has to be preponderant in the relationship between human beings and plants in gardens, for these collectivities only ﬂourish if gardeners work with, rather than against, the natures of the plants living at those sites.37 It may be objected that gardens need not be truly dependent on the cooperation of plants since some, such as Japanese dry gardens, do not have any plants in them at all. Botanic gardens, however, are distinct in this respect because of their unabashed commitment to botanic, that is, plant, content. Furthermore, in contrast to other gardens that include topiary, for example, botanic gardens are special because they present botanic species as such, allowing much freer expression to the natural spontaneity of their residents, that is, plants. (This is particularly evident in greenhouses of botanic gardens, where priority clearly is given to the physical well-being of plants over that of human beings.38) In Crawford’s terms one may say that (ideally) in botanic gardens a “dialectics of nature and art is achieved through a synthesis of opposing forces, artifactual and natural, but without either the natural or the artifactual losing its identity.”39 So, my proposal is that botanic gardens, qua sites created to present plants as such, may be seen as places that explicitly present the possibility of collaboration between human art and natural spontaneity. From this third perspective, botanic gardens constitute places especially suited for reﬂection on the relationship between human beings and plant nature; they are sites in which the human and the non-human are conceived as mutually interacting subjects.40 In Aristotelian terms, one may say

Tom Leddy for drawing my attention to Crawford’s paper as a reference point for this essay. 37 Mara Miller, “Gardens: Gardens as Art,” Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, edited by Michael Kelly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 274–80, p. 279, cautions, however, that the term “collaboration” “is appropriate only if one recognises that it implies in the garden a response or an interplay of a very different kind than is found among human collaborators” because of the lack of intention and judgment present in the natural forces which are active in gardens. 38 See, for example, Gordon Wright, “Ultimate Climate Control: The reconstructed U.S. Botanic Garden Conservatory’s integrated mechanical systems provide tailored environments for 4,000 varied plants,” Building Design and Construction, 44, 1 (2003), pp. 16–43, who boldly states that “The requirements of plants take precedence over the comfort of human visitors in a greenhouse environment.” 39 Crawford, “Nature and Art”, p. 57, emphasis added. 40 Also see Hargrove, Foundations of Environmental Ethics, p. 83, who says of the nonformal garden, resulting from the import of botanical specimens to Europe, that “the plants

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that in botanic gardens human beings supply (some of) the environmental conditions as “efﬁcient causes,” while the plants supply their species-speciﬁc “formal causes.” Collaboration with Nature There is a long tradition in the study of gardens which takes note of the collaboration necessary for their realization. Dixon Hunt has recounted how two Italian Humanists, Bartolomeo Taegio and Jacopo Bonfadio, (apparently independently) described garden art as the creation of a “third nature” through active cooperation of human beings and nature. Garden art was thought to rival both the nature belonging to the gods (wild nature, assumed to be “ﬁrst nature”) and humanly made landscapes (artefactual nature, originally called “second nature” by Cicero), such as are created through agriculture, urbanism, and so on.41 I pursue a little further the notion of collaboration with nature by considering botanic gardens as sites of experiments and as models. Sites of experiments Botanic gardens may be viewed as sites of experiments in two senses. Gardens in general are places of trials, of discovery of what works and what does not. Michael Pollan writes “for nature as much as for people, the garden has always been a place to experiment, to try out new hybrids and mutations.”42 This is especially true of botanic gardens since they generally attempt to accommodate species that, because of differences in climate, competition, lack of progenitors nearby, and so on, would not have volunteered in the areas where the gardens are located.43 Botanic gardens also may be seen as experimental spaces of another kind. Besides its reference to trials of the kind we know from the scientiﬁc context, the English term “experiment” has the meaning of experience. (This meaning was common in seventeenth-century English, and also is preserved in the Spanish and French near-homonymous terms.) Consequently, one may say that botanic gardens constitute sites of experiments in a double manner: insofar as new relations of plants to environment are being tried out and insofar as these assemblages afford new experiences. We may specify these “experiments” a little further. Collaborative experiments in botanic gardens may be perceived as operating at the single plant level, in the sense that botanic gardens may allow for the full expression of a great variety of were elevated to the status of self-contained and self-organizing entities worthy of admiration and study for their own sake.” 41 John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2000). Also see Cicero, De natura deorum 2.152 (Venice, 1508; Paris, 1511; Basel, 1531); also found in Cicero’s Three Books Touching the Nature of the Gods (London, 1683). 42 Pollan, Botany of Desire, p. 185. 43 But see Iain M. Robertson, “Botanical Gardens in the Contemporary World,” Public Garden (January 1996), pp. 16–21, who argues for the importance of native plants in botanic gardens, even weeds!

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specimens. This differentiates botanic gardens from other kinds of gardens, insofar as most gardens suppose restrictions in order to either ﬁt a criterion of decorative value or some other use value, limiting thereby a) the degree to which any one plant may ﬁnd expression, and b) the diversity of species included. (That is, non-botanic gardens are much more likely to restrict full expression of any one plant through pruning, and to limit variety by relatively more narrow selections of plants.) Gardens, of course, are more than assemblages of individual plants: they are also arrangements of space. Hence, botanic gardens may also be experiments in the reproduction of communities of plants (or of ecosystems) distributed across space in a certain way. For each type of ecosystem represented, one may seek particular arrangements of space in order to create the best conditions for the expression of the interplay of species typical of really existing plant communities, representing them thereby. For example, in the new Barcelona Botanic Garden, conceived by Joan Pedrola as a network of triangular spaces (ﬁtoepisodios), marshland species are portrayed in the lowest triangle, ﬂanked by two spaces in which the most related, relatively humidity-seeking species sets are located just above it, and so on.44 In any case, experimentation in botanic gardens needs to be carried out in a different spirit than in the manner promoted by Francis Bacon, who argued that we need to manipulate nature so she would give up her secrets. The experiments in botanic gardens, rather, involve plants and human beings in collaborative living situations: new phyto-adaptations are being tried out, while new experimental spaces for the encounter of human beings with plant life are being set up. Models Gardens, understood as “third nature,” that is, as existing sites that are hybrids of nature and human activity, may be seen to represent,45 in a general way, the potential for collaboration between human beings and plants. Given their primarily botanic content, botanic gardens turn out to be particularly poignant representations of this potentiality.46 These gardens also point to, or signify, plant life and particular plant 44 Joan Pedrola’s triangular grid system brings together strict scientiﬁc taxonomic considerations, on the one hand, and schematic models of the geographic distribution of plant ecosystems, as found in their original natural spaces, on the other. See Joan Pedrola, “El Nou Jardí Botànic de Barcelona,” Revista de Catalunya, 60 (1992), pp. 62–73. Also see B.J. Brown, “Beauty and a botanic garden – A Barcelona garden’s unusual geometry provides ground for Mediterranean plant communities,” American Society of Landscape Architects, 91 (August 2001). The triangular grid system of the Jardí Botanic de Barcelona originally conceived by Pedrola was realized by Carlos Ferrater and José Luis Canosa. 45 At least up to the invention of the English landscape garden, gardens often explicitly were constructed with representational functions in mind: the main areas were meant to represent the hierarchies present in human society through regular, easily surveyed patterns, while mazes, for example, stood for forests and, in general, the wild. See Hunt, Greater Perfections. Also see Stephanie Ross, “Gardens” in Kemal and Gaskell, Landscape, Natural Beauty and the Arts. 46 See Miyuki Katahira, “Approaching Zen Gardens: A Phenomenological Approach,” Analecta Husserliana, 58 (2003), pp. 69–84, passim and p. 83, for a critique of garden appreciation through the imposition of some external code because it may lead to the loss of

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ecosystems, by presenting the visitors with exemplars.47 In these ways botanic gardens may lead to the recognition of plants as subjects. Such examples may, in turn, facilitate our perception of other spaces in our environment in which collaborative rather than merely exploitative relations with the natural world may be established. So, while the experiments in perception facilitated by botanic gardens are limited, of course, in time and space, they can serve as models for more extended experiments outside botanic gardens: for example, in the gardens adjoining people’s homes, in city parks, and perhaps, up to a point, in the agricultural lands outside our cities. Fortunately the notion that the collections amassed in botanic gardens should be given an educational role has taken wide root, and is echoed in a variety of programs, both for children and adults.48 In light of our present discussion, those programs should be designed to take into account questions such as the following: What do we need to focus on in order to perceive botanic gardens as places in which human and plants interact as subjects? How may we avoid perceiving botanic gardens either as merely entertaining displays of plant collections, or as mere living archives of plant species? How should we conceive of the space in botanic gardens so that we do come to reﬂect on the possibility that we may be partners with plant life, and not just its owners or protectors? Summary and Conclusion Botanic gardens may be seen from a number of perspectives along a continuum which, at the extremes, pits human beings as subjects against plant life as objects. According to the ﬁrst perspective discussed, human beings are conceived as subjects that relate to plants simply as things which are there to be known and/or enjoyed by us. On the second perspective, human beings as subjects undertake to protect plants as things that constitute part of a “needy nature.” From the third point of view, the relationship is more even-handed: even if we will always conceive of ourselves as subjects, this perspective considers the possibility that plant life, as present in the botanic garden, may be conceived as another subject, since from this point of view “speciﬁcity.” The approach proposed here does not commit this fault, though, since it proposes to move from the speciﬁc to the general and not the other way. 47 It can be argued that gardens represent their constituents through what Nelson Goodman has called “exempliﬁcation.” See Nelson Goodman’s distinction between denotation and exempliﬁcation as two modes of reference or representation in his Languages of Art (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1972). 48 See, for example, “Biodiversity – a new Education Programme Devised by the University of Oxford Botanic Garden,” Journal of Biological Education, 30, 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 7–8; Paul Bennett, “Landscape for Learning,” Landscape Architecture, 88, 7 (1988), pp. 70–101; H. Hammatt, “The art of landscape – A botanical garden becomes an arena for nature-based sculpture and a living laboratory for design students (The South Carolina Botanical Garden),” Landscape Architecture, 91, 2 (February 2001), p. 36. (In a letter of 8 June 2005 to the author, Beverly Brown has shared with me the following insights from her teaching experience: “I tell my students that every plant has a story to tell. Most of us aren’t very good at ‘speaking plant’ and don’t understand what they are trying to tell us. (Is it a dry climate, moist? good nutrition? sufﬁcient pollinators or none? fruit dispersed by wind? animals? a hard climate to live in?, etc. )”

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the focus is on the interaction of collaborating, and hence reciprocally inﬂuencing, entities, each with its own integrity.49 Botanic gardens offer themselves as sites of experiments instantiating collaborations between human beings and plants. Those exempliﬁcations of collaboration between plant life and human beings can serve as models for places in which our own creativity and the spontaneities of plant lives can mesh in mutually generative, rather than destructive, ways.50 Aldo Leopold had claimed that we need to develop a land ethic such that homo sapiens change “from conqueror of the land community to plain member and citizen of it.”51 By conceiving of ourselves as subjects facing the other beings of the natural world as mere objects, we alienate ourselves from that non-human part of our world, turning ourselves into aliens in the land. Botanic gardens, as models of another form of cohabitation with nature than the exploitative, may help us ﬁnd our place among the other species of the land.52

49 See Elaine P. Miller, “Vegetable Genius: Plant Metamorphosis as a Figure for Thinking and Relating to the Natural World in Post-Kantian German Thought,” in Bruce V. Foltz and Robert Frodeman (eds), Rethinking Nature: Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 114–34, for an account that highlights the signiﬁcance of plants as a way of thinking nature. Also see Goethe, who modeled this way of approaching nature. For discussion see David Seamon and Arthur Zajonc (eds), Goethe’s Way of Science (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). 50 Also see Robertson, who claims that the botanic garden is “uniquely suited to address … our relationship to nature” (“Botanical Gardens in the Contemporary World,” p. 17). Moreover, see Candice A. Shoemaker, “Plants and Human Culture,” in Joel Flagler and Raymond P. Poincelot (eds), People-Plant Relationships: Setting Research Priorities (New York: Food Products Press/Haworth Press, 1994). 51 See Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic,” in Christine Pierce and Donald VanDeVeer (eds), People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (Belmond, CA: Wadsworth, 1st edn, 1995), pp. 142–51, p. 143; reprinted from Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). For further discussion of Leopold’s land ethic, see Chapter 2. 52 I also discuss the theme of ﬁnding a place or home among the other species of the land in Chapter 3. Interestingly, it seems that simply being present in botanic gardens can have a positive effect in stress reduction. See, for example, Tammy Kohlleppel, Jennifer Campbell Bradley and Steve Jacob, “A Walk through the Garden: Can a Visit to a Botanic Garden Reduce Stress?,” HortTechnology, 12, 3 (July–September 2002), pp. 489–92. This chapter began in conversations with Joan Pedrola. I am indebted to him for his encouragement in pursuing this topic. I am grateful for helpful and encouraging comments by two anonymous referees of Environmental Values, as well as to several kind correspondents who suggested some of the bibliographical material presented here. Botanic Gardens as Collaboration Between Humans and Nature appeared as “Thinking through Botanic Gardens,” Environmental Values, Vol.15 (2006), 197–212. Permission for reproduction granted.

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Afterword

Enabling an Environmental Culture In the preceding chapters I have introduced various ways in which our encounter with nature may engender and support an environmental culture, by which I mean beliefs, values, habits and practices supportive of a kind of human livelihood that is attentive to the ﬂourishing and character of the natural environment in which we are embedded. As noted, our encounter with nature is constant and ubiquitous, since in some sense we are part of the natural world and live in it. But even if we think of ourselves as distinct from the rest of nature, because we introduce human artefacts and increasingly replace natural things with synthetic substitutes, our interaction with the natural world is ceaseless since we depend on it for all our resources (food, energy, raw materials for building shelters, and so on). Nonetheless, the encounter with nature does not by itself lead to an environmental culture, as described here. What is needed, rather, is the development of a particular kind of sensitivity that may be characterized as environmental conscience, aesthetic appreciation of nature, and a general cultural outlook that recognizes the interplay between cultural and natural goods. For this reason I have proposed that we reﬂect on environmental ethics, environmental aesthetics, and the roles of cultural sites that are in dialogue with nature. The overall point of view of this book can be summarized by the idea that awareness of non-human nature can inform human culture in important ways, and that culture need not be thought of as in opposition to nature, even if many human activities do degrade nature.1 Given that we are thoroughly cultural beings, it is imperative that we take note of the cultural dimension of our perspectives on nature.2 While editing this book I have been challenged by some of my colleagues and friends to further spell out how reﬂection on the cultural dimension of the encounter with nature can make a difference in an increasingly economic growth-oriented world, in which people are captive of their needs, desires, interests and behavioral patterns as consumers and income-earners. While the kind of reﬂection advocated in this book may support a disposition to take greater care of fragile environments and to make our society more sustainable in a true sense, there remains the question 1 See Chapter 9 for clariﬁcation on the speciﬁcs about how I conceive that they are related. 2 See John W. Bennett, Human Ecology as Human Behavior: Essays in Environmental and Developmental Anthropology (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 1996), p. 36, on a conception of culture, as background (“precedents”) for adaptations to environmental change, guided by factors described by the terms “norms, values, role expectations, prestige and the like.” He also points out the importance of a cultural transition in order to obtain effective change in our behavior toward the natural environment.

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of what concretely is required to make those dispositions practically effective so as to bring about a transformation of our societies toward environmentally sensitive ways of functioning. Here I lay out a brief sketch of what might be a response to this question. Bringing about Change Bringing about change with regard to environmental problems can be seen in light of several factors. Generally, when the question comes up regarding what we might do to overcome the present trends that continuously lead us toward greater environmental degradation, the ﬁrst, very reasonable answer offered, is that we need to acquire well-grounded knowledge. Scientiﬁc research to determine the causes of environmental degradation is of fundamental importance, and generally receives considerable support in western societies. Often it seems to be assumed, though, that knowledge of the causes of environmental problems, and of the diverse effects that they have on our world, should bring about change by itself. When a problem is identiﬁed, a practical solution of a technical or managerial sort, which might get us out of the problem (or at least lessen its effects), usually is sought and proposed. In other words, there is a tendency to immediately move from the awareness of a problem to the proposal of a set of technical, organizational, or economic solutions to engage in. The development of such solutions calls for research and creativity, and should doubtlessly be supported. We do need to determine the technical, organizational and economic changes that must be implemented if organic agriculture is to ﬂourish, if we are to switch to commuting to work by bicycle and by public transit, if we are to prevent environmental pollution by industrial enterprises, and so on.3 For authentic progress toward the goal of minimizing our societies’ ecological footprint, and achieving sustainability, it is equally necessary to envision what a society, which has undergone a complete overhaul of its activities, may look like.4 What often is lacking, however, is an analysis of how general awareness of environmental problems and their solutions may be generated, once the knowledge of problems 3 See, for example, Guy Dauncey with Patrick Mazza, Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change (Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2001), who propose actions that various segments of society, including individuals, citizen organizations, cities, towns, counties, businesses, states, provinces, national governments and intergovernmental bodies can engage in, to address the environmental problem entailed by a particular phenomenon, namely, climate change. 4 See, for example, Lester R. Brown, Christopher Flavin and Sandra Postel, “A Vision of a Sustainable World” in Louis P. Pojman, Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application (Belmond, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 4th edn, 2005), pp. 670–77; reprinted from Lester R. Brown (ed.), The Worldwatch Reader (New York: Norton, 1991). By “sustainability,” I mean conditions such that allow for the joint ﬂourishing of human beings and of the natural environment on which they act and on which they depend. Regarding the concept of ecological footprint, see M. Wackernagel and W. Rees, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth (Gabriola Island, Canada and Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers. 1996).

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has been developed and solutions have been proposed. What, furthermore, largely remains unclear is how citizens who have become aware of problems and potential solutions may become motivated to act so some reasonable solution actually is realized. In other words, what requires much more attention is how willingness to act on environmental issues comes about. As discussed in Chapter 2, knowledge, awareness and willingness to act are interrelated. Willingness to act seems dependent on a particular kind of experience which generates awareness and emotional involvement and mediates commitment to certain values. The feeling and knowledge that we are in this together, that other beings inhabiting our natural environment also have intrinsic value, and that future generations may suffer considerable losses in quality of living if present trends continue, may all contribute to willingness to act. Following Aldo Leopold, we may call the readiness to act on environmental issues “ecological conscience.”5 As noted in Chapter 2, the development of ecological conscience in itself is a signiﬁcant challenge. However, even if there is sufﬁcient knowledge of causes and solutions, considerable awareness of particular environmental problems, and people are motivated to act, much depends on the third factor, namely, capacity to act. The capacity to act of individual citizens, to bring about changes in the ways in which we affect the natural environment, itself depends on a number of factors, including knowledge about what the problems are and what might be possible solutions, but also on other factors such as the presence of appropriate material, technical and societal conditions. In many industrialized societies, the material and ﬁnancial resources and the technical expertise to counteract environmental degradation are available but it may still be difﬁcult for individuals to accomplish much because of the absence of certain social infrastructures that may be described as “institutions.” The Role of Institutions The term “institution” may suggest the idea of formalized, explicit ways in which our societies are organized, such as universities, churches, prisons, or municipalities, represented by more or less recognizable physical structures, such as buildings and campuses, and behavioral patterns, such as lecture seminars, liturgies, roll calls, or elections. I propose to use the term “institution” in the broader, sociological sense in order to make reference to practices, relationships, or organizations in society governed by either formal and explicit, or informal and merely implicit, rules or guidelines that direct the aims and behaviors of people.6 Western societies, for example, have institutions such as marriage, municipality, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Earth Charter, and conscription, that are 5 Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic,” in Christine Pierce and Donald VanDeVeer (eds), People, Penguins and Plastic Trees (Belmond, CA: Wadsworth, 2nd edn, 1995), pp. 142–51, passim; reprinted from Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). 6 Such rules and guidelines may be adopted by people for themselves in a self-conscious way, or they may arise through cultural evolution, imposition by powerful groups, such as religious bodies (the Church in Mediaeval times), or political entities (the state in fascist and state socialist sates), and so on.

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relatively formal, but also institutions such as friendship and mourning, which are relatively informal. It seems that, in addition to relevant knowledge, awareness of environmental problems and potential solutions, and good will, both formal and informal institutions are important in bringing about positive change. We may think of recycling as an example of a normatively guided activity that has become a more or less formal institution in most western countries. It is formal insofar as there are public or semipublic bodies that take care of gathering, reusing and reconverting materials that might otherwise end up in landﬁll sites. It is informal insofar as individuals may undertake to reuse and reconvert materials without the support of such formal bodies, but on the grounds that this behavior is supported by societally approved norms. In many countries under development, recycling may not exist as an institution or, if it exists, is pursued purely as an informal institution.7 Recycling constitutes a speciﬁc response to a particular set of environmental problems, which in this case primarily is the prevention of quickly exceeding the capacity of landﬁlls. In contrast to such problem-speciﬁc institutions that respond to particular problems in an ad hoc fashion, the increasing interconnection of environmental problems and their synergistic nature suggest that another type of institution may also be necessary. While problem-speciﬁc institutions deal with one type of problem at a time, what we may call “enabling institutions” deal with problems more generally. With regard to environmental problems, this kind of institution may facilitate access to knowledge about environmental issues to the broad public, help create awareness and motivate to act, and also support the establishment of relevant problem-speciﬁc social, political and material infrastructures.8 Such environmentally enabling institutions may facilitate environmentally appropriate behaviors in all spheres of life, including those mentioned earlier: to increase the consumption of local, organic products by creating economic structures in support of local, organic farmers, and the distribution of their produce; to make bicycle commuting easier by promoting the creation of bike trails; to enable positive environmental action at the workplace by giving legal (and moral) protection, and even encouragement, to those who speak out in favor of environmentally responsible ways of managing enterprises and against environmentally harmful (and illegal) activities; and so on.9 7 Regarding recycling opportunities and challenges in a Southern context see Jutta Gutberlet, Recovering Resources – Recycling Citizenship: Urban Poverty Reduction in Latin America (Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming). 8 See, for example, Steve Lonergan, “The Human Challenges of Climate Change,” in H. Coward and A. Weaver (eds), Hard Choices: Climate Change in Canada (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier, 2004), pp. 45–69, on the importance of institutions in order to address the phenomena of global climate change. 9 As discussed in Chapter 3, decisions taken at the workplace, especially those taken by individuals employed by major corporations, can have very powerful consequences for our natural environment. Many individuals in western societies may feel cornered into supporting unsustainable forms of gaining our livelihood and economic security because the corporate world, which employs them, generally demands the maximization of proﬁts – even at the expense of environmental health.

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Focusing brieﬂy on the workplace, we may note that there are several types of institutions that may support the environmental engagement of employees at the workplace.10 Institutions that support socially and environmentally responsible business practices make it easier for employees with environmental conscience to make their voices heard. Institutions that support employee participation in workplace decisions, for example, by promoting the idea that employees should be represented on the board of directors, or by promoting cooperative enterprises (in which employees are joint co-owners), can facilitate the efforts of environmentally concerned employees in the introduction of environmentally appropriate practices.11 In summary, once a disposition to care for the natural environment has been developed, certain conditions may still be required if these dispositions are to be practically effective in bringing about positive change. In addition to knowledge based on well-grounded research, awareness and motivation to act are needed, along with conditions that support the capacity to act. Capacity to act depends on cognitive, material and technical conditions, but also on social factors such as the existence of institutions that support individuals in their endeavors to lead environmentally responsible lives. In order to bring about change we need to pay close attention to those factors that may enable an environmental culture. Final Summation The question concerning what will bring about signiﬁcant positive change in our societies is of fundamental importance if we are to succeed in developing an effective environmental culture and sustainable societies. Here, in this Afterword, I have only been able to hint at some of the research questions that need to be pursued. Obviously they require separate, interdisciplinary treatment.

10 For details on environmental ethics at the workplace, see Chapter 3. 11 On cooperativism in general, see the British Columbia Institute for Cooperative Studies . Because co-op shareholders are not absentee owners, easily replaced by market ﬂuctuations, as is the case with corporations that trade on the stock market, managers of cooperatives may not feel the same pressure to pursue growth at any cost. Insofar as members of cooperatives are co-owners and participate in decision making, they usually are much less ready to sacriﬁce environmental health simply to increase monetary proﬁt. Since cooperative organizations typically are local affairs, this fact may motivate members to take care of the long-term consequences of their activities. It is easier to include goals, such as respect for sustainability, among organizational goals when the shareholders are also the people who are involved in the day-to-day operation of the organization and may be directly exposed to the consequences of the policies decided on. A further, encouraging aspect about institutions, such as cooperatives, that actively involve their members is that participation in them tends to be intrinsically rewarding, and that they have valuable training effects, serving as models for other institutional developments. Moreover, at a time at which individuals in western societies feel increasingly isolated from each other, institutions that offer opportunities for creative, reciprocally supportive engagements may also be perceived to have considerable value from the social point of view.

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My aim in this book has been to weave together a tapestry of research questions and methods in the hope of encouraging readers to think, feel and live afresh our relationship with the non-human natural environment. I have suggested that the encounter with nature may play a crucial role in the development of a culture that fully takes into account our interdependency with the non-human parts of the natural environment. We need to explore in greater depth the question how we might reconﬁgure our cultural imaginary so as to give the natural environment an appropriate place in it. In addressing the explicitly cultural dimension of the changes needed to move our societies toward greater sustainability, we may discover that, if we are attentive to our encounter with nature, we may also able to ﬁnd a home there as “fellow citizens of the land.”

Index

aesthetic appreciation 77–120 passim especially 79–92 aesthetics passim, especially 101 environmental 77–120 passim, especially 79 of wandering 93–108 passim, especially 97, 101–08 Amazonian region 63, 68, 98, 132 anthropocentrism 39–41 Aristotle, Aristotelian 35n, 175–6 artefactual, artefactuality, artiﬁcial passim, especially 127–8 autonomy of nature 33–35 Barkin, David 59–60, 66, 70–72 “Sustainability: The Political Economy of Autonomous Development” 71n “Water and Forests as Instruments for Sustainable Regional Development” 70n Bashō, Matsuo 93–108 Oku no Hosomichi 93–108, especially 94 Baudrillard, Jean 165, 172 Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings 172n Simulations 165n “Simulacra and Simulations” 172n Berleant, Arnold 79 The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (with Calson) 79n bo tree, bodhi tree 5–8 Boff, Leonardo 64–65 Saber Cuidar: Ética do humano – compaixão pela terra 64n Bookchin, Murray 47, 63, 74 “Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future” 47n Toward an Ecological Society 74n “What is Social Ecology?” 74n

boulder structures, boulder art 139–50 Callicott, J. Baird 2, 19, 134 “Current Normative Concepts in Conservation” 134 In Defense of the Land Ethic 2 Carlson, Allen 79–92 Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture 79 The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (with Berleant) 79 Clegg, John 101, 109 A Field Guide to Aboriginal Rock Engravings (with Stanbury) 109n Aesthetics and Rock Art (with Heyd) 101 climate change 1–11, 125, 182–4 collaboration with nature 176–8 community with nature passim, especially 42, 57–76, 85–7 cooperatives 54–55, 185 Cruikshank, Julie 8–10 Do Glaciers Listen? 9 “Glaciers and Climate Change: Perspectives from oral tradition” 9 “Nature and culture in the ﬁeld” 9 culture passim, especially 123–37 and nature 123–9 of nature 129–33 cultural landscapes 123–37, especially 125–26, 132–3, 136–7 Dewa, The Three Mountains of (Dewa Sanzan) 93–7 dissimulation 151–166 see also simulation 165, 172 Double Negative (Heizer) 145, 159–61, 163 Dreaming, The 187

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earthwork 115–20 passim, especially 116; 145; 151–66 passim, especially 158–61 ecological footprint 18 environmental aesthetics 79–92 environmental conscience 15–36 passim environmental critiques 44–9 environmental culture 181–6 passim, especially 181 environmental degradation passim, especially 2 environmental ethic 57–76 passim, especially 73 environmental ethics 15–36 passim environmental morality 15–36 passim environmental responsibility 49–55 ethic 73n ethics passim, especially 2–24 ethnoecology 61–3, 75 expropriation 59–60, 72 Foucault, Michel 98, 119, 147–50 heterotopia 148, 150, 167 “of other spaces” 98n Gaia Hypothesis 43 garden 5–6, 151–66, 167–79 botanic 5–6, 167–79 Japanese 151–66 Gutberlet, Jutta 184 Recovering Resources – Recycling Citizenship 184 haiku 94–5 Haan, Norma 29, 32 interactional model of morality 29 “Processes of Moral Development: Cognitive or Social Disequilibrium?” 29 Heizer, Michael 145, 158–60 Double Negative 145, 159–61, 163, 166 heritage 123–37 cultural 123–5 natural 123–37 heterotopia 148, 150, 167 Heyd, Thomas 2, 8, 19, 22, 33, 62, 101, 108, 120, 136, 172 Aesthetics and Rock Art (with Clegg) 101n

“Dance Today: Art of Body Among Simulacra” 172n “Indigenous and Scientiﬁc Knowledge Revisited” 33n “Indigenous Knowledge, Emancipation and Alienation” 33n Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature 2n “The Unity of Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Interior” 108n Higgs, Eric 64n, 166n Nature by Design 64 “The Politics of Restoration” (with Light) 166 Horwitz, Wendy A. 31–2 “Developmental Origins of Environmental Ethics” 31n human-environmental relationship 57–76 indigenous knowledge 33, 66 Ingold, Tim 25, 126–7, 131 Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology 127n “Culture and the perception of the environment” 126n “Hunting and Gathering as Ways of Perceiving the Environment” 25n institutions 181–6 Japanese garden 151–66 Jelen, M. Umweltbewußtsein bei Jugendlichen (with Szagun, Mesenholl) 27n Kant, Immanuel 17, 21, 23, 39–40, 44–45 Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals 23 Katz, Eric 65, 153, 174 Nature as Subject 153n, 174n “The Big Lie: Human Restoration of Nature” 153n “The Liberation of Humanity and Nature” 65n Kohlberg, Lawrence 28–9, 33 “Stage and Sequence” 28n The Philosophy of Moral Development 28n land art 116, 136, 145, 158 land ethic 19, 21n, 22, 42, 179

Index landscapes 8–11, 16, 25, 67, 73, 84–5, 88, 90, 103, 109–14 passim 117, 120, 123–37, 148, 154, 168, 176 cultural 123–37, especially 125–6, 132–3, 136–7 natural 109–14 passim sentient 8–11 Latin America 57–76 passim distinctiveness 58–61 Leff, Enrique 62–3, 71 Green Production 63 Leopold, Aldo 19–22, 30, 42, 55, 179, 183 “Land Ethic” 21n liberation ecology 61, 64 Light, Andrew 64, 166 “Restoration, Autonomy, and Domination” 166 “The Politics of Restoration” (with Higgs) 64n Long, Richard 145, 152, 158 Low, Bobbi (and Ridley) 15–18 “Can Selﬁshness Save the Environment?” 16n “Why We’re not Environmental Altruists – And What We Can Do About It” 16n medicine wheels 139–50 Mesenholl, Elke 27, 31 “Environmental Ethics: An Empirical Study of West German Adolescents” (with Szagun) 27n Umweltbewußtsein bei Jugendlichen (with Mesenholl, Jelen) 27n moral development 28–30 moral responsibility 23, 30, 34, 43, 49, 55–6 moral signiﬁcance 22–24, 31, 36 Morris, Robert 117–20 Untitled: Johnson Pit #30 117, 120 Naess, Arne 48 “Self Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World” 48 nature passim, especially 123–7 and culture 123–9 as subject 65, 174–8 passim Oku no Hosomichi (Bashō) 93–108, especially 94

189

Passmore, John 19, 45, 128, 174 Man’s Responsibility for Nature 128n, 132n, 174n perceptual salience 87–88 place (and space) passim, especially 93–108, 135, 145, 139–50, 179 plant conservation 173–4 Plumwood, Val 23, 35, 49, 64, 123 “Nature, Self and Gender” 23n political ecology 63, 65 reclamation art 115–20 resistance 57–76, especially 70–1 restoration 12, 26, 64–5, 70, 75, 116, 118, 127, 131, 137, 151–66 restorative ecology 61, 63–5, 75 Ridley, Matt (and Low) 15–18 “Can Selﬁshness Save the Environment?” 16n “Why We’re not Environmental Altruists – And What We Can Do About It” 16n rock art 88–9, 101, 109–14, 136, 142–5 Rolston, Holmes 42, 83 “Duties to Endangered Species” 42n “Does Aesthetic Appreciation of Landscapes Need to be Science– Based?” 83n “The Aesthetic Experience of Forests” 83n “The Wilderness Idea Reafﬁrmed” self realization 35, 48 selﬁshness 15–9, 36 Seligman, Clive 24, 32 “Environmental Ethics” 24n Serres, Michel 36 Natural Contract 36n shaman 93, 96–100 simulation 165, 172 see also dissimulation 151–166 social ecology 47, 60–1, 63, 74–5 space (and place) passim, especially 93–108, 139–50, 167–9, 177–8 spontaneity 2, 35, 128, 132–7, 175 Stanbury, Peter 109 A Field Guide to Aboriginal Rock Engravings (with Clegg) 109

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story, stories (of nature) 79–92, 111, 115, 178 subject (nature as) 65, 174–8 passim sustainability 57, 62–5, 67, 69, 71, 75–6, 116, 136, 182, 185–6 sustainable development 45, 57, 62, 64 Sylvan (Routley), Richard 19 “Is there a Need for a New, an Environmental, Ethic?” 19n Szagun, Gisela 27, 31 “Environmental Ethics: An Empirical Study of West German Adolescents” (with Mesenholl) 27n Umweltbewußtsein bei Jugendlichen (with Mesenholl, Jelen) 27n

Toledo, Víctor 62, 64, 69, 71 “Biodiversity Islands in a Sea of Pasturelands” 69n “Principios Etnoecológicos para el Desarrollo Sustentable de Comunidades Campesinas e Indígenas” 71n “Sustainable Development at the Village Community Level” 62n traditional ecological knowledge 62, 135 Turner, Nancy 62 Earth’s Blanket 62n

Taçon, Paul 88, 110–1, 144 Review of Barbara Bender (ed.), Landscape: Politics and Perspectives 111n “The Power of Place” 88n “The Power of Stone” 144n

value passim, especially 39–40

Untitled: Johnson Pit #30 117, 120 see also Morris, Robert 117–20

wandering aesthetics 93–107 passim, especially 97, 101–7 ways of knowing 15, 28–36, 61–2 workplace 37–56, 184–5