You can learn more about Professor Reich and his views here, robertreich.org.

I have created two new galleries for art on Practical Ethics. The first is named Altered Realities, and is a space for artistic or documentary iPhone photography that uses HRD or post processing (e.g., think Instagram). The second is Wolves, and as its name implies, is a selection of wolfish images I have accumulated over the years.

I hope you enjoy them.

Cheers.

Image: Karin Lauria, Tree Over the Assabet River, 2012. iPhone 4S + postprocessing.

The report offers four key recommendations:
1. Global poverty must end.
2. Developed and emerging economies must reduce material consumption.
3. Greater political leadership and support is needed for reproductive health and family planning.
4. The health and well being of human populations and the environment are deeply intertwined.

Other recommendations include:
* Urbanization to reduce material consumption.
* Removing barriers to primary and secondary education, especially for women.
* Further research on population and environmental dynamics.
* Establishing alternative wealth measures.
* Developing new socio-economic systems.

There is quite a lot to chew on here in terms of both ethics and public policy, so allow me to restrict myself to three comments.

First, anyone familiar with the history of environmental and development policy will not be surprised at either the subject matter or recommendations of the report. The 1960s and 1970s saw a vibrant debate over limits to growth that continues into this decade. The reasons for this ongoing debate are simple. The earth is a limited ecosystem, humans already use ecosystems services and resources at an unsustainable level (several earths worth), the biodiversity of life is experiencing a huge extinction event due to us, and habitat destruction makes ecological recovery harder every day.

Second, while this is an old debate, our recent planetary rush past the threshold of 7+ billion humans makes this a timely and important document. This is especially so as the report arrives in advance of the Rio+20 Earth Summit. One can hope it will have some impact on the deliberations in Rio, and contest platitudes associated with sustainable development.

Since the 1980s and 1990s, policy makers have tried to sidestep the debate by focusing on sustainable development. In various government and corporate circles, this amounts to a faith in limitless economic growth without environmental consequences. The idea that we can have our cake and eat it too is not entirely false. New technologies, just distribution of resources, public health, lower fertility and the like can dramatically change both the production and consumption side of the equation. It cannot, however, put off the basic truth of earthly limits, the sheer growth of human numbers, or the damage our planetary sprawl does to other life.

There are ideologues who deny this. Christian fundamentalists say the second coming of Christ means we need not worry about any of this. Market fundamentalists assume that economic exchange will motivate a solution. Technological fundamentalists believe we can invent our way out of this mess. Experience has proved them all wrong.

This is not to say we are without hope. Cradle to cradle technologies, ecological modernization (decoupling industrial production from environmental impacts), environmental justice, precautionary policies, and green politics can all make a difference. Collectively, these and other alternatives are referred to as sustainability. Sustainability in this sense is quite different from various kinds of sustainable development that cynically seek to sustain production for the benefit of a few, rather than provide equitable development or environmental protection.

Third, the report does do a good job of foregrounding a concern for human health and well being. And so it should. Human beings have an intrinsic value, and we are all part of a moral community that transcends national or political boundaries. No future policy initiatives on population and consumption will be adequate if they do not place human well being in all its dimensions squarely at the centre of our concerns. And that includes questions of public health and medical care, universal access to education, human rights, equitable development, environmental justice, and the like.

Unfortunately, the report is silent on the well being of other creatures, species and living systems. The biological carrying capacity of the planet was not made solely for humans. Non-human animals and the rest of nature deserve to be at the centre of our concerns as well. Humans — animals ourselves deserve to thrive on Earth, but so to do other life-forms and the living systems that make life possible and pleasurable.

The moral considerability of the non-human world has strong policy implications with respect to population and consumption. An example is food.

A burgeoning human population needs feeding. Developing societies also seem to desire to increase their consumption of meat. Meeting these needs and desires involves industrial agriculture, genetically modified organisms, the destruction of natural habitats, public health impacts, and substantial contributions to global climate change. This does not account for the social and economic injustices for low wage immigrant farm hands, nor the decimation of biodiversity by the bushmeat trade. I could go on.

My point of course is not that humans should not eat, although vegans offer strong arguments against diets that incorporate animals themselves. Rather I am illustrating that when we examine the ethics of population and consumption, we cannot do so in moral isolation from equally important issues affecting non-human nature. As John Muir noted, everything is hitched to everything else.

People and the Planet is the poorer for this ethical lapse. For all its virtues, I fear its impact on that ethical debates that are sure to rage in Rio+20 will be proportionally diminished.

You can find the report at http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/people-planet/report/.

Cheers

Image. Ecological Footprint. If everyone on earth lived middle class North American lifestyles, we would need approximately 5 earths to sustain them indefinitely. See http://www.footprintnetwork.org.

Must we choose people over the planet?

This is the question addressed by two essays that caught my eye in The Huffington Post during Earth Week. The first is Why Im Not An Environmentalist by Lisa Curtis (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-curtis/environmentalism_b_1443311.html?ref=green) and the second, Earth Day 2012: This Isnt About Tree-Hugging Anymore, Its About the Way We Live by Edward Norton (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-norton/earth-day-2012-this-isnt-_b_1442104.html). Curtis is an American blogger and social activist, while Norton is an American actor and the United Nations celebrity ambassador for biodiversity.

Both characterize contemporary environmentalism as primarily concerned with wilderness and wildlife, and thus out of touch with the challenges of global climate change, population growth, and equitable human development. While Curtis rejects the environmental label altogether, Norton seeks to jettison what he sees as its emotional baggage. Nortons essay is particularly smarmy on this account: This isnt about tree-hugging and fish-kissing anymore, its about the way we live. Curtis is more measured but equally polarizing: At some point in the 21st century we became tired with the idea that planet had to come before people.

I must admit to being struck by Curtis and Nortons impoverished understanding of the environmental movement. The movement has always been diverse in its concerns, from wilderness and wildlife to pollution and urban design (to name a few). And while it has adjusted its focus over time to new issues and political realities, it has actually done rather well at balancing prior commitments with new concerns. An example is environmental justice, whose issues and sensibilities have rightly infused and stand alongside the rest of environmentalism.

I also noticed a distinctive ethical subtext to their policy priorities. Both Curtis and Norton enclose their moral commitments around humanity alone. Nortons comments about kissing fish and trees is one indication, while Curtiss stark alternative between people or the planet is another. Politically, this smacks of the jobs versus the environment debate, a false dichotomy that is a favourite theme in conservative circles, and an excuse for not redressing environmental and social harms. Ethically, it creates a a false moral dilemma, unnecessarily pitting humanity against the rest of nature. In point of fact, the earth is teeming with life and living systems that share an evolutionary heritage. Many of its creatures, including us, share a range of emotional, cognitive and social abilities. Think of how we love and communicate with other animals as an illustration of what I am saying Yet the boundary that Curtis and Norton draw around moral community is so tight, it offers only mercenary policy choices about the non-human world.

I have spent over a decade researching and teaching about the environment. In that time I have taught and talked with thousands of citizens, students, scientists and natural resource professionals about the ethical norms of environmental policy. In my experience, very few of them only care about the planet because it provides physical resources and ecological services. They care because they believe all life and living systems have an intrinsic value which we as humans are obligated to respect and protect.

Most of the students and professionals I work with struggle to put these ethical thoughts and feelings into words. That is where I can be of help. Once they are able to fully express their moral sensibilities, they recognize the issues are complex, and cannot be solved through one issue, group or ideology alone. And in spite of their differences over priorities or perspectives, they tend to share a deep moral longing to be in right relationship with the entire planet, human and non-human portions alike.

They express this longing in varied ways. Sometimes it is through the language of spirituality, at other times through the science of ecology or the political idea of rights. Some are focused primarily on people and give themselves over to issues of justice, public health or development. Others focus on helping wild and domestic animals, or protecting distinctive places and wild nature. I applaud all these efforts. To paraphrase Arne Naess, the frontier of social change is long. There are many issues that deserve our attention in both the environmental and social worlds alike. There is no need to bicker over whose favoured issue is most important. If nature and society are as interconnected as environmentalists believe them to be, then (with apologies to John Muir), every problem is hitched to all the others.

Note that a recognition of intrinsic value in a more-than-human world need not and should not come at the expense of people. We have intrinsic value too. Indeed it is this intrinsic value that motivates our concern for human rights, environmental justice, equitable development, and other worthy causes. At the same time, acknowledging our own intrinsic value is no reason to deny it to animals and the rest of nature. We can readily respect and protect domestic animals, wildlife and wild nature, while standing up for the well being of humanity too.

We are not, then, presented with a Hobbesian choice between people or the planet. Rather we are faced with the challenge of doing right by people, animals and nature. Treating the planet as an instrumental resource to human ends is part of the problem, and will not help us meet this challenge even if wrapped up in words like sustainability. Instead, we must enlarge our moral community and embrace all the creatures and ecosystems of our living world. This is the ethical foundation for environmental policies worthy of being termed sustainable.

Cheers.

Image: Earth Day. Green Planet. I found this image on the web while searching for earth day wallpaper. It is taken from Alfoart.com, a site where digital artists share tutorials, templates and their work. I like to interpret the tree of knowledge as a metaphor for the ethical and cultural roots of our environmental problems, the rainbow as a reference to the diversity of life and of cultures, and the moon situating ourselves and the planet in larger spheres of concern.

There is a deeply disturbing news article in The Huffington Post on the routine shooting of pets by police in the United States.

In a story entitled Cop Shoots Dog, reporters Radley Balko and JL Greene examine the apparently common but under-reported issue of companion animals killed by police.

Some of the instances are egregious, such as shooting chihuahuas and chained dogs. Others are premeditated, such as routinely killing all the dogs present during a drug raid, irrespective of whether they pose a threat or not.

From an ethics and public policy point of view, there are at least two problems to address here. First, animals (wild and domestic) are part of a larger mixed community (the term is Mary Midgleys) to whom we have moral responsibilities. When they can, our police should therefore be protecting animals at risk, and avoiding lethal force if at all possible. Dogs being abused by drug dealers and fighting rings are in need of help, and should not be further victimized.

Second, these killings represents a failure of public policy, with few jurisdictions mandating the appropriate training for officers. Note that this training is provided free by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

Let me also be clear, here, that I do not think this is about bad cops. I am a strong supporter of the police and other emergency providers. As individuals and as a whole, they routinely perform outstanding service and have been helpful to my community and myself at many points in time.

Neither the excessive use of force in political demonstrations, or the use of unnecessary lethal force against animals, is because of corrupt or sadistic police. There can be, however, a set of norms and training that overemphasizes the use of force. We have seen evidence of this in the reaction of some police forces to the Occupy Movement protests. It should not surprise us then that the excessive use of force may affect animals as well.

There will certainly be times where the use of violence in mixed communities of people and animals is justified. Training in how to respond to such situations is indispensable. So too is adopting relevant public policies at the local, state and national levels to address this issue. Doing so will go a long way towards meeting our ethical responsibilities to the animals that share our individual and collective lives.

Cheers

Image: Dogs Shot By Police Facebook page.

On Earth Day, Karin and I spent the afternoon at Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge. It poured much of the time, so we circumnavigated the boundaries, checked out the trailheads, and watched waterfowl on the Assabet River and adjoining marshes. The swans, grebes and wood ducks were particularly beautiful that day.

To finish up Earth Week, we visited Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, a barrier island off the coast of MA, and home to a fragile dune ecology. The silence on the island, so close to a North American megalopolis (i.e., Washington DC to Boston) was amazing.

Both refuges are spectacular areas managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Featuring diverse habitats and abundant wildlife, they are places of hope for healing our troubled relationship with the natural world.

Cheers!

Images: Puffer Pond, Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge 2012; Plum Island Dunes, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge 2012.

Entitled Reflections on Earth Day, Gore credits Rachael Carsons investigations of environmental pollution for sparking the modern American environmental movement. Citing her tireless efforts to awaken our ecological consciousness, he urges us to work together for environmental protection. He is particularly focused on the power of ordinary people to improve the lives of themselves and others by taking political action. And he closes by reminding us of our responsibilities for future generations.

Gores mentioning our moral responsibility to future generations is a common enough, but I wish he had shared more on its implications for public policy. Caring about the future of our children and their children after them is a profoundly ethical concern. It demands that we see the ethical implications for tomorrow of our environmental policies today. At the same time, even more difficult questions arise when we consider our responsibilities to other animals and the environment itself.

If you have read Gores other work, such as Earth in the Balance (1992), you will discover his answer to such questions lays in eco-theology. Gore believes we are custodians of Gods earth, a complex and delicate creation that is not only instrumentally valuable as a resource for human ends, but as the direct handiwork of God, intrinsically valuable in and of itself. Gore can sound ambivalent about this at times, talking about dominion and the meaning of life being to glorify the creator. But what that means in practice, as evidenced through his lifes work, is a caring stewardship and reverence for our planet.

I do not share Gores religious beliefs. Even so, I respect the insight that emerges from them, and honour the moral sensibilities from which that insight springs. In the words of a Hebrew prophet, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the childrens teeth are set on edge (Ezekiel 18:2). Our actions today will have consequences for many generations to come.

Cheers

Image: Unknown.

I am very pleased to announce that Practical Ethics is being relaunched today.

I have taken something of a sabbatical from the blog over the last year. I appreciate those of you who have written me and asked when I would start writing again. It has been some time, but I hope not too long!

I used the blog for teaching purposes for some years, both at Tufts University and Williams College. When I moved to the Marsh Institute of Clark University as a research scientist, I was no longer teaching full time. This was a golden opportunity for me to reconsider the technology and content of the site. So in the late spring of 2011, I announced a hiatus in postings.

I had two goals to achieve during this hiatus. My first was to adopt a more refined design, simplified structure, unified navigation, stronger visual feel, and robust platform for interactive media. To accomplish this, I completely transitioned to a Web 2.0 platform. Practical Ethics is now fully hosted on my own server running WordPress software. The superb Brunelleschi theme by Kit MacAllister provided exactly the design elements I was looking for. The Ethos blog is now gone as a separate entity, and has become the main page of Practical Ethics. The rest of the old website has been pulled into the blog itself, while the galleries have been entirely reset and expanded.

My second goal was refocusing the blogs content. There are countless blogs of opinion, and I wanted something more educational with a critical edge. Picking up on the popularity of the policy oriented posts from the past, I decided to refocus my emphasis on ethics and public policy. Few policy blogs explicitly address the ethical meanings and implications of public policy. Even fewer use the tools of interpretive policy analysis to help tease out the moral values used to create, administer and contest public policy. Yet ethics and interpretive policy analysis are indispensable if we are to fully evaluate the policies that so greatly impact the well being of our individual and collective lives. I believe this focus will provide greater coherence to the blog, while allowing me to make connections between social and environmental ethics.

Overall, I hope you will like the changes to Practical Ethics.

Cheers, Bill

Well, the spring semester is over, and all grades are filed. It has been a good semester. I am particularly pleased with my student’s final papers. Members of both my interpretive environmental policy course as well as the senior seminar on sustainability have turned in insightful work.

So this blog will be going on hiatus for a year. There are several projects requiring completion that will consume my attention over the next six months. After that, I have a backlog of reading to catch up on.

In my spare time, I will work on a thorough revision of the website. I’m going to begin a process of streamlining the structure and code in advance of moving to a Web 2.0 platform. I have additional thoughts on refocusing the content of the blog, but need to give that a bit of thought first. I hope that taking a bit of time out will help me see the blog and its role with fresh eyes.

I will resume posting sometime in the new year.

Cheers, Bill

The value of a college degree varies by major, field and highest degree earned. There is some interesting data from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, encapsulated in the report What’s It Worth? The Economic Value of College Majors.

Note that this data only represents the value of a bachelors degree alone. Many fields such as ethics and public policy require a masters or doctorate, which is not covered in this data. In addition, the study does not include specific data on majors in interdisciplinary fields like animal studies and environmental studies. And of course, this study says nothing about the personal and political values of less remunerative majors, quality of life, or vast differences of individual economic and social circumstances.

Use this information to help you think about, not make, your choices about a major.

You can read a short overview of the report at the The Chronicle of Higher Education, or download the full report from Georgetown.

Cheers, Bill

Please remember that final papers in all my courses are due on Friday at midnight via email attachment. In the final rush to finish up, don’t forget to consult the Style Guide, and check that your citations and references are in Author-Date format. Recall too the various writing resources listed on this blog, and the library website.

Cheers, Bill

Administration
Our final week of classes! You’ve been a great class, and I’m going to miss our conversations together.

For those of you who are seniors, the end is finally here. It is the end of the line, so stay focused to finish up, and enjoy your well earned graduation.

Old Business
Last week we discussed symbolic actions and objects, and how they inform the interpretation of public policy. We examined salutes, American exceptionalism, the confederate battle flag and public space in Columbia (South Carolina), cars and public space in Brazil, endangered species lawsuits and legislation, natural resource agency politics, the concept of umbrella species, political art, and animal art . All this from the perspectives of ritual analysis, myth analysis, and discourse analysis. From a hermeneutic point of view, this wide variety of phenomena can be considered as texts to be read for their meaning and implications.

To finish off the week, we also undertook a detailed interpretation of the movie Avatar. What we found is that Avatar is more than a simple action movie, or a straightforward critique of American military adventurism and neo-colonialism. There are layers of ethical meaning about the well-being of people, animals and nature embedded throughout the film, albeit subordinated to its composition as a mass market block-buster.

New Business
Tuesday is the due date for the first draft of your interpretive policy analysis (IPA) paper.

Recall that this paper builds upon and extends your previous abstract and case study, with an interpretation of the policy meanings and implications of the case itself. While it would be preferable to triangulate on this using interview, immersion and documentary evidence, given the context of this class, you’ll be looking at secondary qualitative data and analysis via documents and articles.

As part of our discussion on Tuesday, don’t forget to bring a complete draft of your IPA, and prepare a statement of how you are using two concepts from the interpretive turn to explore your policy topic.

After we finish our discussion, I’ll administer the course evaluations. I’ll need a volunteer to drop off the evaluations in Paresky.

See you soon!

Cheers, Bill

For more on Rob’s wonderful work, see his section in the Muse Gallery (click the menu link above), or visit his website at roberthite.com.

Administration
Two weeks left before finals week. This week will be the last week of lectures and presentations. Please recall that next Tuesday is the due date for a first draft of your IPA paper. Remember that as part of our discussion of your drafts, be prepared to share how you used two concepts from the interpretive turn to explore your policy topic.

Old Business
Last week we explored the symbolic language of Obama’s Inaurgural Speech and 2010 State of the Union. We identified the dominant terms, themes and metaphors of his speeches, specifically freedom, capitalism, and equality. We then interpreted what this language meant in light of American political culture, Obama’s neo-liberal policies, his secondary emphasis on community, work and sacrifice, Isaiah Berlin’s concepts of negative and positive liberty, the national motto of France (liberty, equality, fraternity), and American civil religion. Artifacts of meaning, the hermeneutic circle, exegesis and hermeneusis, and other interpretive tools were the methodological basis for exploring these justifications of Obama’s policy vision. We then applied these insights to environmental policy via the ethics and politics of wolf recovery.

New Business
This week we’ll complement what we learned about symbolic language, with readings on symbolic action and symbolic objects. Yanow introduces us to a variety of suitable methods, including ritual analysis, myth analysis, and contextualist interpretations of objects such as urban spaces and guns. As you read through these methods, recall that they all rest on the hermeneutic idea of text-metaphors, that is, like language, actions and objects can be read for their meanings as if they were texts.

Why then didn’t Yanow simply talk about different kinds of texts and their interpretation? One reason is her training in the theory of symbolic interactionism, a mode of interpretation similar to hermeneutics. Symbolic interactionism is quite popular in American anthropology and sociology, and a key player in the emergence of qualitative methods in the social sciences.

One feature I would like to draw your attention to here social interactionism’s epistemology (theory of knowledge; ways of knowing). Symbolic interactionism generally presupposes a constructivist epistemology, meaning that it believes the meaning and production of knowledge derive from one’s social interactions with others and society. Think of this interactionism as similar to what hermeneuticists mean by the meaning of a text being connected to context and intertextuality.

Yet hermeneutists and social interactionism differ slightly. The constructivism of symbolic interactionism and kindred theories can become ossified around the meaning and interpretations of individual human beings. This can make it hard for constructivists to recognize how information from the natural world, the communication of other non-human subjects, or policy discourses can shape our knowledge. This is not to deny the insight of symbolic interactionism — meaning is embedded and created in a social context. But there are many constructivists who claim knowledge is determined or imprisoned by our social context.

Without denying the insights of symbolic interactionism, hermeneuticists offer an alternative, interpretivist epistemology. Our knowledge of both the human and non-human worlds is an interpretive act, one in which social interactions and context are formative, but also one where information of the natural world (e.g. the natural sciences) and communication with non-human beings, can be just as important. It is this wider horizon of interpretive possibilities that allows hermeneuticists to feel some degree of comfort in falsifying erroneous beliefs (e.g. wolves kill for sport and intentionally cause suffering) as well as recognize an intrinsic moral value in the world, one that stand independently from the moral valuations of humans.

That said, there are many varieties of constructivist and interpretivist epistemologies, and they overlap substantially. Sometimes the difference is simply semantic. Yanow illustrates this by introducing us to some of the methods of symbolic interactionism, while at the same time embedding these methods into a larger hermeneutic frame of reference. So I write this to give you a heads up to look out for the presuppositions behind these and other theories about our ‘ways of knowing’.

With these insights in mind, we switch gears away from ‘explicit’ environmental policy issues, to one of popular culture — the movie Avatar. A hugely successful action movie, Avatar’s viewers lost little time in finding the symbolic meanings embedded in its language, actions and objects. Whether explicitly theorized or not, Avatar was ‘read’ as a ‘text’ with implications for social and environmental policy. Some have even said the movie is a moral critique of our world today, and an ethical vision of what it ought to be in the future (that would be me). What Avatar means to its author(s) and its viewers (including yourself) should be at the centre of your thoughts as you view the movie.

And speaking of movies as text, there is a wonderful video for interpretive policy analysis from last week’s news. Watch Obama’s remarks at the 2011 White House Correspondence Dinner. The event is highly symbolic at many levels, especially with reference to the ‘birther’ claims that Obama is not an American and therefore ineligible to hold the Presidential office. Donald Trump, the most recent birther-in-chief and member of the audience, was thoroughly (and not kindly) roasted by both Obama and the comedian Seth Meyers.

Images: James Cameron, Director of the movie Avatar, protesting the planned Belo Monte Dam with indigenous Brazilians from the Arara Tribe who live along the Xingu River. Members of the Arara invited Cameron to join them because they saw in the Na’vi’s struggle with humanity, something akin to their own struggles with colonialism. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/world/americas/11brazil.html.

Administration
Three weeks left to go. It feels like we only started the semester a few weeks ago!

Old Business
None.

New Business
If we look back over the semester, we’ve learned about the interpretive turn in public policy, the social forces that along with government produce public policy, the variety of discourses that are both root and fruit of environmental policy, and the ethical dimensions of those discourses. Much of this work has been historical and theoretical, with illustrative case studies from real life.

For the final leg of our term together, we are going to focus on Interpretive Policy Analysis as a methodology. Allow me to draw out two meanings of methodology.

The first is the academic study of the methods of research. Methodologist are those skilled in the knowledge and practice of how a field of study conducts research. When you pick up a book devoted to quantitative or qualitative methods, you are reading the work of someone who is a methodologist.

The second meaning is more complex — selecting the theory and methods most appropriate to studying a particular topic. Note the three elements here: theory, method, topic. Each may stand on its own, but to generate useful or truthful knowledge about a topic, one must carefully choose an appropriate theory and method to help one’s investigation.

For instance, if I wanted to study cosmology, I’d select the astronomical theories and methods most conducive to the astral phenomena that interested me. Seeking intelligent life in the galaxy will entail different theories and methods than will studying the origins of black holes. So too, if you seek to understand the values and norms embedded in environmental policy, you will want to select a methodology best able to help you accomplish your research.

Now as we’ve learned, the naturalistic model of the social sciences asserts that those theories and methods used in the natural sciences are simply to be adapted to the ‘science of man’ [sic]. After its many failures and cul-de-sacs, we know this is simply not true. This in spite of the substantial interest groups in the academy that cloak themselves in the garb of naturalistic science as they pursue personal, ideological and material self-interests.

Yanow’s book Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis is a refreshing breath of fresh perspectives in this regard. She provides a robust (but not exclusivist) methodology to study the meanings and values of public policy. Significantly, she complements what we have already learned from Dryzek’s theoretically oriented discourse analysis of environmentalisms. Yanow, however, is much more explicit about her methodology. Learn how she goes about exploring the meanings (e.g. beliefs, values, feelings) about public policy, and you will never again be at a loss when interpreting the meaning of environmental policy. You will also find her methodology a great, step by step guide to writing your final interpretive policy analysis on an environmental issue.

We’ll start this week with a review of Yanow’s hermeneutic presuppositions about interpretive communities — the hermeneutic circle, text-metaphors, artifacts of meaning, and the like. We’ll then move on to her discussion of symbolic language. And we’ll conclude with an interpretation of the symbolic language of President Obama’s Inaugural Address and State of the Union, 2010.

If you’d like to read a bit more about methodology in the context of environmental discourse, see my blog entry, Discourse and Wolves. This features an extract from a journal article that was originally intended for an edited volume on wolves, but was censored at the last moment by the editors for it’s interpretivist approach.

For a more theoretically oriented treatment of the issue, have a look at my 2004 book chapter, The Quality of Ethics: Moral Causation in the Interdisciplinary Science of Geography. In Geographies and Moralities: International Perspectives on Justice, Development and Place, eds. Roger Lee, and David M Smith, 231-244. London: Routledge. Yanow and her colleague, Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, also have an excellent edited volume on the subject, Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn (2006).

See you soon.

Cheers, Bill

Administration
Believe it or not, we only have four weeks of classes left. Please remember that your final test and interpretive policy analysis are due in only 3+ weeks from now.

Old Business
None.

New Business
As we’ve noted previously, discourses are akin to language. We have them and use them without ever being entirely in control of them. Because of this they emerge, grow, evolve, wither, perhaps die or rejuvenate in ways that are also beyond our total control.

For instance, the environmental discourses of Survivalism and Prometheanism may be said to have their roots in the scientific ecology of the 20th century. Whatever its flaws, survivalism accepted the lessons of closed ecological ecosystems while prometheanism clung to a vision of man’s [sic] mechanistic mastery of nature. So too, the discourses of administrative rationalism and democratic pragmatism can be traced back to the progressive movement in the US, and before that to the social administration of Canada and Great Britain. In a similar manner, the discourses of economic rationalism, ecological modernization and sustainability have significant roots in conservative and neoliberal capitalist ideology.

Green Consciousness and Green Politics also have deep roots. Some of these roots lay in 18th century romanticism, and its trenchant critique of the Enlightnement, industrialism and anthropocentric humanism. Romanticism was a complex intellectual movement with many strands. It was not a simple contrast between reason and emotion, science and faith, that apologist for positivism and its variants like to propagate. And the organicist, nature-centred sensibilities of portions of romanticism did play a role in the emergence of an ‘ecological conscience’. Other roots lay in the radical political visions and social experiments that, however marginalized at their birth, have played an outsized role in political life. Democracy, feminism, socialism, and animal rights are but a few of these political visions that continue to reshape our political life to this day. Dryzek’s chapters on green consciousness and green politics demonstrates the variety, vitality and tensions between these alternative discourses.

It may be tempting to dismiss this diversity of moral and political viewpoints as unrealistic, utopian, and impractical. Whether you believe this to be true or not, it is a mistake to do so hastily. Consider that every major extension of political rights and responsibilities the world over has been preceded by ideas and movements that the ‘mainstream’ deems deviant, dangerous, or radical. The history of moral and political progress is our historical evidence for this. Movements for national liberation, anti-colonialism, economic justice, women’s suffrage and equality, peace, and environmental protection would not have been possible if people had not adopted and adapted discourses to help them think and act outside the box, so to speak.

One contemporary case in point is the Bolivian Law of Mother Earth, which establishes intrinsic moral value and legal standing for people, animals and nature. This is but one of many efforts underway in Ecuador, Spain, Germany, and other countries.

Before class on Tuesday, read the following news report — Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for Mother Earth (The Guardian) — and peruse The Pachamama Alliance website (especially the About page and the Initiatives pages).

After you do so, ask yourself the following questions.
* What is the relationship between green consciousness and green politics?
* How do these laws and organizations represent the family of green radical discourse?
* How do these laws and organizations challenge the other families of environmental discourses?

See you soon.

Cheers, Bill

Image: Ant-globalization protesters at the G20 summit in London, 2009. The Guardian.

His talk is entitled ‘Consulting the Genius of Place’, and will be held in Brooks Roger at 20:00.

Jackson will also be available to meet with folks from 09:30-10:30 on Wednesday morning in Paresky.

Definitely have a look at The Land Institute’s website. Co-founded by Jackson over 30 years ago, the institute works to ‘develop an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops’. For those of you interested in the conflict over economic and policy structures that privilege industrial farming while marginalizing sustainable agriculture, have a look at the institute’s white paper, 50-Year Farm Bill, and its other publications.

Administration
None.

Old Business
Now that you’ve had a chance to look over your first test in greater detail, we’ll field questions about them together at the beginning of class on Tuesday.

New Business
The Survivalist family of discourses came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s. A parallel development was taking place with the emergence of the Problem-solving family of administrative rationalism, democratic pragmatism and economic rationalism. While survivalist discourse did not disappear, it was problem solving discourse that held educational and political sway in the late 1970s through the 1990s. Both families of discourse are well represented in environmental thought and practice today.

The family of Sustainability discourses came to prominence in the early 1990s, and over time has become the dominant discourse of environmental politics and environmental studies. One sees this in the common framing of environmental policy around concerns over sustainability, as well as the emergence of sustainability studies programs that supplement or eclipse environmental studies. This state of affairs is variously praised and critiqued, depending on whether or not one thinks sustainability adequately captures the full range of theories, methods and topics of environmental politics and environmental education.

Dryzek divides sustainability discourses into two types: sustainable development and ecological modernization. The first is something pitched towards the Global South (a.k.a. third world, developing world), the second to the Global North (a.k.a. first world, developed world). Both are visions of how extant or emerging industrial, capitalist societies can have their cake and eat it too — economic growth, environmental protection, and in some cases, social justice.

Just what sustainability means, however, is hotly contested. Because it has become a ‘master frame’ — an almost required mode of interpretation — it is invested with very different meanings. For global corporations it can primarily be a rationale for continued economic growth and profiteering. For local ngos, it can be a focus on sustainable livelihoods. For environmental and animal protectionists, it can be a vision of how we ought to live in shared landscapes with non-human others.

We’ll be taking a detailed look at these sustainability discourses this week. As you read through the material, ask yourself the following questions:

* How do you define sustainability?
* Did your definition differ before and after you completed the readings? How?
* How do you find out what kind of sustainability someone is referring to?
* What role should concerns about environmental and social justice play in sustainability?
* Is sustainability only for people, or for animals and the rest of nature too? What would that mean?

Finally, in light of this week’s guest lecture, ask yourself: ‘what vision of sustainability is being promoted by Wes Jackson’?

See you soon.

Cheers, Bill

Announcements
Welcome back to the second half of the semester.

Administration
I’ve returned your test scores and case study papers to you via email attachment. I’ll distribute your tests during our first class together. Please check your email (and spam folder if necessary), and if you do not have something from me, let me know and I can resend.

Old Business
Before Tuesday’s class, I encourage you to have a look at the slide shows we produced for the policy discourse of administrative rationalism. This will help remind you of some common features of environmental discourse that will facilitate our discussion of democratic pragmatism and economic rationalism.

New Business
On Tuesday I will be discussing democratic pragmatism and economic rationalism in some detail, and along with administrative rationalism, contrasting all three species of these ‘problem solving’ discourses. I’ll also start our discussion of moral values and moral community, key concept in understanding the normative dimensions of environmental policy.

I’m looking forward to see you folks again.

Cheers, Bill

Image: The image above is from rexcurry.net, an attorney advocating free market environmentalis, eco-capitalism, libertarian environmentalism… and manateee farms. The specialty tags being marketed here exemplify the emphasis on privatization, a prominent theme in the discourse of economic rationalism.

Announcements
It is the last week of classes before spring break!

Administration
A few updates about this coming week.

First, Test 1 is this Tuesday. Pay close attention to your essential readings from Yanow, Moyer, and Dryzek, as well as the core readings used to frame the history and meaning of interpretive policy analysis — Lynn, Fischer, Jennings, Smith, and Yanow.

Recall that I am primarily interested in your knowledge and application of conceptual tools. Look over the lecture slides and your notes with care to review the concepts most important to our discussions. As part of this, note that I place great emphasis on concept maps and diagrams. It may be worth your while to be able to reproduce these maps on your own. ‘;-)

As only one concrete illustration, we have been discussing discourses of environmentalism, and how they inform environmental policy. It might be a good idea to commit to memory Lynn’s concept map of discourse, as well as Dryzek’s classification of environmental discourses. This goes for other visual aids we have encountered throughout the term.

Second, your case study paper is due this coming Friday at midnight via email attachment. On Thursday, please bring a draft of your paper and specific questions about its format or content that you would like to discuss with the class as a whole. By sharing our individual questions together, we’ll contribute to the shared knowledge of the whole group. That will make for better preparation and papers all around.

Old Business
Before we start the test, come prepared to ask whatever questions you like!

New Business
Per your request we’ll begin placing a bit more emphasis on ethics and environmental policy. While this course is not focused on questions of ethics and environment policy (that’s my Ethics and the Environment course), moral values are such an important part of policy debate that ignoring them is unwise. Since we are operating as a presentation-based tutorial, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble fitting small doses of this in. This won’t involve any new readings, but rather a few conceptual tools you can use to unravel the moral dimensions of policy.

Cheers, Bill

Image: The Fab Tree Hab from TerreForm. The Fab Tree Hab envisions a fusion of living and built structures as one means of reintegrating human habitations into the ecological community. It is an ‘out there’ idea for now, but were it possible, implementing such an idea would entail profound changes in building codes, zoning, urban planning, and housing subsidies — all concrete manifestations of public policy. One can only imagine the debate over the moral motivations and/or implications of putting this design vision into practice.

The sixth week of the semester, and there are only two more weeks before spring break.

Announcements
None

Administration
All of you should have received your policy paper abstracts back via email attachment. If you did not, please let me know as soon as possible and I will look into it. After reading some very good work, the one general piece of advice I want to stress is focus. The best abstracts were built around a single policy document, such as a law or white paper, and not a major topic that includes so many subtopics it is difficult to know where to go with either your research or writing. So if you have not as of yet chosen a specific enough topic, then it is time to drill down and find it. Please don’t hesitate to chat with me more about this so I can be of help to you too!

Old Business
Last week we began our discussion of the concept of discourse, and what this reveals about humanity’s troubled relationship with the environment. Discourse links language, action, objects and institutions together as both informed and informing of our patterns of thought and expression. Think worldviews and ideology, and you’ve got a rough sense of what interpretivists mean by discourse.

The first discourse we examined was survivalism, an environmental discourse that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Stressing limits to stocks natural resources, carrying capacity for population growth, and absorptive capacity for pollution, survivalism is still prevalent today, particularly in the form of warnings about global climate change. Spaceship earth was one of its signifying metaphors.

Survivalism itself was responding to an industrial view of the world, because its presupposition and committments constitute the antithesis of most environmental discourses . At first Dryzek refers to this in a general way, as industrialism. Later on he specifies two versions of industrialism in the discourse of prometheanism and cornucopianism. Prometheanism emphasizes the role of human technology laissez-faire capitalism in the control of nature to meet the material interests of human beings. It is complemented by a companion discourse of cornucopianism, which believes the resources of the earth are somehow inexhaustable. This can be a tad confusing as it is unclear what Dryzek means at this junction. Are prometheanism, cornucopianism and industrialism the same, subtypes of one or the other, or something else?

For my part, I find it helpful to think of industrialism as a resonant set of discourses bearing a family resemblance. For instance, despite differences in their economic theory, marxism and capitalism are both industrial points of view, sharing a common set of presuppositions about ‘metabolizing’ the earth as a resource for human beings. To understand the distinctiveness of industrialist discourses we need to examine its anthropology (view of humanity), epistemology (beliefs about what is knowledge), ontology (beliefs about how the world works), and axiology (beliefs about what has value).

As diverse as this family of discourses may be, they share at least three moral commitments in common.

The first is in anthropocentrism, the belief that only human beings have intrinsic moral value. The rest of the world — all its animals, ecological communities, and physical systems — is simply of instrumental value, tools and resources for human beings to use. One therefore only has responsibilities to human beings, and all else is but a distraction.

The second is their belief in the unilinear ‘development’ of human kind, whether this is phrased in terms of Tyler’s ‘stages of civilization’, Marx’s ‘historical materialism’, or Rostow’s development theory. Industrialism conceives of ‘primitives’ living like ‘animals’ before the light of science and power of technology raise them up to our current way of life in the world. It thus becomes our moral duty to bring others into our way of life.

The third is a faith in the power of instrumental reason, technology, secularism, science, and urbanism to control nature, and thus provide infinite material well being and social stability. The American pragmatist termed this aspiration ‘the moral equivalent of war’. Marxists, ‘the domination of nature’ thesis. Contemporary social theorists, ‘the social construction of nature’.

If you would like to learn more about industrialism and how it plays the foil to environmentalism, allow me call several books to your attention.

Sibley, Mulford Q. 1977. Nature and Civilization: Some Implications for Politics. Itasca: F. E. Peacock.

Worster, Donald. 1985. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. Second ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Manes, Christopher. 1990. Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

With respect to survivalism, I was struck by several newspaper articles last week that traded on the discourse of a finite earth facing catastrophic threats to nature and the human civilization in general. Science online published an article, Are We In The Middle of a Sixth Great Extinction?, and the Washington Post carried an opinion piece entitled, A Climate Change Activist Prepares for the Worst.

Don’t get me wrong. Scientists have been talking about the sixth great extinction for some time now. And rapid climate change will certainly turn the world upside down according to the US military and security think tanks. It is not that I doubt them per se. Rather I’m trying to point out that the survivalist discourse is deeply embedded in our ways of thinking about the environment. Whatever it’s insights and/or errors, it deserves to be identified and understood as such. You’ll find that doing so helps you understand the views of environmentalists and non-environmentalists alike.

To my mind, two books best exemplify the survivalists discourse, especially as it is translated out of the conservation sciences and into environmental policy. They are:

Catton, William R. 1982. Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. Urbana: University of Chicago Press.

Ophuls, William. 1977. Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity: Prologue to a Political Theory of the Steady State. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.

New Business
This week we’ll be examining the discourse of prometheanism (a direct and conservative response to survivalism), as well as administrative rationalism (a technocratic continuation of the the conservation movements government based management of natural systems).

Image: Thomas Cole, Prometheus Bound (1847). Oil on canvas.

Is it already the fifth week of the semester? Time is flying by!

Announcements

Today is the last day of February. And its beginning to ice over.

Administration

Thank you for your policy abstracts. I’ll mark them up using the comment function and return them to you one week from now. In the meantime, please remember that your policy case study paper is due three weeks from this coming Friday.

Old Business

Last week’s evening with Jen Jones (Program Officer, IHP) on “Invasion of the NGOs” was fascinating. A few thoughts of my own to share.

Jones, who is a good friend and someone I admire greatly, offered a blistering critique of Western conceptions of culture, nature and development, while challenging assumptions about the benevolence of international development aid, as well as big non-governmental organizations (BINGOs) like the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy. According to her, BINGOs are beholden to large funders that coopt these ngos into tools of corporate greed or foreign policy. And these neocolonial policies are about advancing western interests, with negative consequences for local peoples and their environments.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with her critique, it was very informative and beautifully illustrated using a case study of national parks and reserves in Tanzania, particularly how the Masai people and the Serengeti plain are affected by conservation policies. Personally, while I recognize that individual ngos may do wonderful work, the larger structural framework of neocolonialism can work against people’s rights, interests and well being. I do not want to overgeneralize here. Nonetheless, the spectre of neo-colonialism is an important concern that we must consider.

We lunched together that afternoon, and talked about her upcoming presentation in detail. I’d complement her critique with a few comments on its implicit moral discourse.

I think the social justice dimensions of her position are clear and persuasive. There are the undeniable needs and human rights of the region’s people to consider. This includes political autonomy and access to local resources free of neocolonial control. So too her argument that environmental protection serving western interests can have a negative impact on a regions wildlife and wild lands. Think exploitative ecotourism, de-peopled national parks, poaching by international criminal gangs, forced agricultural resettlement, and the like.

At the same time, note the implications of framing the Serengeti as a ‘resource’ and not a ‘community’. The Serengeti-as-resource implies an anthropocentric worldview that conceives of animals and ecosystems as nothing more than instruments to human needs. It foregrounds the interests and conflicts of its human inhabitants, yet backgrounds the well being of its many non-human inhabitants. And since oppressed peoples are often treated ‘like animals’ by privileged elites, their well being is sacrificed in analogous ways. So by engaging in the resource framing of the Serengeti, we end up reinforcing the very instrumental rationality and technocratic sensibilities that are at the centre of Jones’ critique of neocolonialism.

In interpretive theory and method, we term this the presence of absence. What that means, in this case, is that an anthropocentric moral discourse is influencing environmental policy and practice, even when it is absent from direct discussion and consideration. If we are to fully benefit from Jones’ critique, then we will have to address the moral values that inform environmental policy, as well as thinking about the well being of the entire Serengeti community, human and non-human alike.

New Business

The comments above are a nice segue into the next section of our course, environmental discourses.

Up to now, we have been talking about the environment comparatively little. Instead we have been illustrating interpretive public policy with a range of social and international policy issues, the revolutions in Algeria, Egypt and elsewhere to be precise. This will change as we begin discussing John Dryzek’s The Politics of the Earth (2005).

Dryzek’s book is a fulsome investigation into the characteristics and variety of those discourses most used to frame our understanding of the environment. What surprises most of my students is the sheer variety of environmental discourses, and the diversity of their presuppositions, worldviews and implications. Survivalism, prometheanism, administrative rationalism, democratic pragmatism, economic rationalism, sustainable development, ecological modernization, green consciousness, green politics — these are some of the discourses that Dryzek identifies as shaping our individual and collective understanding of the environment and environmental policy.

As you read the first couple of chapters, on discourse itself and survivalism, think about the following questions.

What are your own ideas about the environment?

What do you assume should be the relationship between people, animals and nature?

What about your own beliefs resonates with industrialism or survivalism?

See you soon!

Cheers, Bill

We are now in the fourth week of Envi 309 Understanding Public Policy, and will finish up our discussion of how social movements drive changes in public policy. A stunning example of this is occurring in North Africa and the Middle East as I write.

Announcements
On Wednesday evening, 23 February, Jen Jones of the International Honours Program will be speaking in Paresky Auditorium at 8:00 p.m. Her title is ‘Invasion of the NGOs: Nature, Territory, and Identity in Tanzania’.

Jen is a good friend, and a former visiting professor in Environmental Studies at Williams College. She runs a fascinating study abroad program, Beyond Globalization. Here is the description. If you are interested in study abroad, I cannot recommend a better person or program with whom to share the experience.

Beyond Globalization
Reclaiming Nature, Culture and Justice
Rapid economic globalization has dramatically altered business paradigms and government policies with unprecedented effects on societies and cultures, ecosystems and health, justice and equality. These changes have precipitated a widening sense of urgency and a search for new economic, cultural and political options in the face of conflicting worldviews and increasing identity assertion.

Students in IHP’s Beyond Globalization program meet some of the world’s most important critics of current patterns of development and connect with a diversity of social movements and individual initiatives that are confronting the consequences of a globalized economy. They experience firsthand a variety of contested development programs and projects, and witness the emerging alternatives being tried to recover and maintain a just and sustainable world.

From Tanzania to New Zealand, India to Mexico, students visit urban and rural landscapes and communities affected by globalization. Drawing on the fields of anthropology, ecology, economics, environmental policy and politics, they examine how globalization, development and progress affect the planet and its inhabitants.

Most important, students learn how to see and experience the rich diversity and plurality of the world and how to interact with others. Going beyond mere empathy, they try to find shared ground for the creation of equitable and sustainable alternatives, harmonious coexistence, and ways to make a difference in their own world.

Key Questions
* What are the alternatives and possibilities being regenerated, imagined, and implemented for a just and sustainable world?
* Which voices, social movements and ideas currently resist and challenge dominant development paradigms and policies?
* What are the pathways now opened for dignified work and meaningful life?
What is the role and responsibility of each of us in addressing the broader human and ecological dimensions of globalization and in finding our own place and destiny?

Administration
We will review how tests work in this course on Tuesday, so please read your Test document (from Glow) before class. Recall that your first, in-class presentation will happen this coming Thursday. At midnight on Friday, you also turn in the abstract for your policy papers (i.e. case study, interpretive policy analysis) via email attachment. I’ve previously stressed the importance of following the Style Guide in terms of formatting and sourcing. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to bring them up during class or office hours.

Old Business
None

New Business
In last week’s discussion of Moyer’s Movement Action Plan (MAP), we covered definitions of social movements, models and theories of power, strategies for social change, and the role of movement activists. We learned that good public policy is not something created by individual citizens asking governments to do the right thing, but by groups of citizens exercising collective agency to demand governments act for the public good.

We shall pick up where we left off, and discuss the eight stages of social movements, and the various ways those stages impact policy discourse. I’ll also be discussing the meaning and role of non-violent direct action (NVDA) in social movements, and illustrating MAP and NVDA with current events from Northern Africa and the Gulf States.

In preparation for the latter, please read the following newspaper articles. They discuss some of the features and thinks who worked with the Serbian, Ukrainian, Tunisian, and Egyptian youths whose network and organization were key to the emergence of these revolts against dictatorial regimes.

A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History, New York Times

Gandhi in Tahrir Square, Tikkun Daily

Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution, New York Times

Watching Protesters Risk it All, New York Times

In addition, you may be interested in downloading and reading the work of Gene Sharp, the leading theorist of strategic nonviolence. His short ebook, From Dictatorship to Democracy, is indispensable for understanding how repressive and violent regimes can be resisted by social movements composed of grassroots citizens. For more on Gene Sharp’s work, see the Albert Einstein Institution website.

Cheers, Bill

Image: Tahrir Square protest at night, via Twitter on 07 February 2011.

Charles Blow of the New York Times illustrates this well through an opinion piece entitled Empire at the End of Decadence. He says in part:

America is great in many ways, but on a whole host of measures — some of which are shown in the accompanying chart — we have become the laggards of the industrialized world. Not only are we not No. 1 — “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” — we are among the worst of the worst.

Yet this reality and the urgency that it ushers in is too hard for many Americans to digest. They would prefer to continue to bathe in platitudes about America’s greatness, to view our eroding empire through the gauzy vapors of past grandeur.

He goes on to use portions of a comparison of advanced economies by the International Monetary Fund (hardly a radical rag) to drive home his point. The chart is reproduced below.

It is worth thinking about

Cheers, Bill