The Ecocentrists

The Ecocentrists PDF Author: Keith Makoto Woodhouse
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231547153
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 543

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Book Description
Disenchanted with the mainstream environmental movement, a new, more radical kind of environmental activist emerged in the 1980s. Radical environmentalists used direct action, from blockades and tree-sits to industrial sabotage, to save a wild nature that they believed to be in a state of crisis. Questioning the premises of liberal humanism, they subscribed to an ecocentric philosophy that attributed as much value to nature as to people. Although critics dismissed them as marginal, radicals posed a vital question that mainstream groups too often ignored: Is environmentalism a matter of common sense or a fundamental critique of the modern world? In The Ecocentrists, Keith Makoto Woodhouse offers a nuanced history of radical environmental thought and action in the late-twentieth-century United States. Focusing especially on the group Earth First!, Woodhouse explores how radical environmentalism responded to both postwar affluence and a growing sense of physical limits. While radicals challenged the material and philosophical basis of industrial civilization, they glossed over the ways economic inequality and social difference defined people’s different relationships to the nonhuman world. Woodhouse discusses how such views increasingly set Earth First! at odds with movements focused on social justice and examines the implications of ecocentrism’s sweeping critique of human society for the future of environmental protection. A groundbreaking intellectual history of environmental politics in the United States, The Ecocentrists is a timely study that considers humanism and individualism in an environmental age and makes a case for skepticism and doubt in environmental thought.

The Ecocentrists

The Ecocentrists PDF Author: Keith Makoto Woodhouse
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231547153
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 543

Get Book

Book Description
Disenchanted with the mainstream environmental movement, a new, more radical kind of environmental activist emerged in the 1980s. Radical environmentalists used direct action, from blockades and tree-sits to industrial sabotage, to save a wild nature that they believed to be in a state of crisis. Questioning the premises of liberal humanism, they subscribed to an ecocentric philosophy that attributed as much value to nature as to people. Although critics dismissed them as marginal, radicals posed a vital question that mainstream groups too often ignored: Is environmentalism a matter of common sense or a fundamental critique of the modern world? In The Ecocentrists, Keith Makoto Woodhouse offers a nuanced history of radical environmental thought and action in the late-twentieth-century United States. Focusing especially on the group Earth First!, Woodhouse explores how radical environmentalism responded to both postwar affluence and a growing sense of physical limits. While radicals challenged the material and philosophical basis of industrial civilization, they glossed over the ways economic inequality and social difference defined people’s different relationships to the nonhuman world. Woodhouse discusses how such views increasingly set Earth First! at odds with movements focused on social justice and examines the implications of ecocentrism’s sweeping critique of human society for the future of environmental protection. A groundbreaking intellectual history of environmental politics in the United States, The Ecocentrists is a timely study that considers humanism and individualism in an environmental age and makes a case for skepticism and doubt in environmental thought.

The Ecocentrists

The Ecocentrists PDF Author: Keith Mako Woodhouse
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231165884
Category : Environmentalism
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
The Sierra Club and environmentalism -- Zero population growth and the politics of crisis -- A radical break : from the wilderness society to earth first! -- Public lands and the public good : Earth First! and the American West -- Earth First! Against itself -- The limits and legacy of radicalism

The Ecocentrists - a History of Radical Environmentalism

The Ecocentrists - a History of Radical Environmentalism PDF Author: Keith Makoto Woodhouse
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231165891
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Keith Mako Woodhouse offers a nuanced history of radical environmentalism in the late-twentieth-century United States. Focusing especially on the group Earth First!, The Ecocentrists explores how it challenged civilization but glossed over the ways economic inequality and social difference defined people's relationships to the nonhuman world.

Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy

Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy PDF Author: Daniel J. Shevock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351813145
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy examines the capacity of musiciking to cultivate ecological literacy, approaching eco-literate music pedagogy through philosophical and autoethnographical lenses. Building on the principle that music contributes uniquely to human ecological thinking, this volume tracks the course of eco-literate music pedagogy while guiding the discussion forward: What does it mean to embrace the impulse to teach music for ecological literacy? What is it like to theorize eco-literate music pedagogy? What is learned through enacting this pedagogy? How do the impulsion, the theorizing, and the enacting relate to one another? Music education for ecological consciousness is experienced in local places, and this study explores the theory underlying eco-literate music pedagogy in juxtaposition with the author’s personal experiences. The work arrives at a new philosophy for music education: a spiritual praxis rooted in soil communities, one informed by ecology’s intrinsic value for non-human being and musicking. Eco-Literate Music Pedagogy adds to the emerging body of music education literature considering ecological and environmental issues.

The Swamp Peddlers

The Swamp Peddlers PDF Author: Jason Vuic
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469663163
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Florida has long been a beacon for retirees, but for many, the American dream of owning a home there was a fantasy. That changed in the 1950s, when the so-called "installment land sales industry" hawked billions of dollars of Florida residential property, sight unseen, to retiring northerners. For only $10 down and $10 a month, working-class pensioners could buy a piece of the Florida dream: a graded home site that would be waiting for them in a planned community when they were ready to build. The result was Cape Coral, Port St. Lucie, Deltona, Port Charlotte, Palm Coast, and Spring Hill, among many others—sprawling communities with no downtowns, little industry, and millions of residential lots. In The Swamp Peddlers, Jason Vuic tells the raucous tale of the sale of residential lots in postwar Florida. Initially selling cheap homes to retirees with disposable income, by the mid-1950s developers realized that they could make more money selling parcels of land on installment to their customers. These "swamp peddlers" completely transformed the landscape and demographics of Florida, devastating the state environmentally by felling forests, draining wetlands, digging canals, and chopping up at least one million acres into grid-like subdivisions crisscrossed by thousands of miles of roads. Generations of northerners moved to Florida cheaply, but at a huge price: high-pressure sales tactics begat fraud; poor urban planning begat sprawl; poorly-regulated development begat environmental destruction, culminating in the perfect storm of the 21st-century subprime mortgage crisis.

Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction

Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Robin Attfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192517562
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Environmental ethics is a relatively new branch of philosophy, which studies the values and principles involved in combatting environmental problems such as pollution, loss of species and habitats, and climate change. As our environment faces evermore threats from human activities these core issues are becoming increasingly important. In this Very Short Introduction Robin Attfield traces the origins of environmental ethics as a discipline, and considers how it defends the independent value of living creatures, and the need to make decisions informed by the needs and interests of future generations. Exploring the diverse approaches to ethical decisions and judgements, he highlights the importance of making processes of production and consumption sustainable and of addressing human population levels, together with policies for preserving species, sub-species, and their habitats. Along the way Attfield discusses different movements such as Deep Ecology, Social Ecology, the Environmental Justice movement and the Green movement, and also considers the attitudes to the environment of the world's religions, including the approach from the major religions and the contributions of the indigenous religions of Asia, Africa and North America. Analysing the current threat of climate change, and proposals for climate engineering, he demonstrates how responsibility for the environment ultimately lies with us all, from states and corporations to individuals, and emphasises how concerted action is required to manage our environment ethically and sustainably. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Eco-Nihilism

Eco-Nihilism PDF Author: Wendy Lynne Lee
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739176897
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
If we were to ask what is the root cause of our current and unprecedented environmental crisis, climate change, many, particularly on the progressive Left, would refer to the excesses of capitalism—and they’d be right. In Eco-Nihilism: The Philosophical Geopolitics of the Climate Change Apocalypse, Wendy Lynne Lee demonstrates that there are no versions of conquest capital compatible with the fact of a finite planet and that a logic whose operating premise is growth is destined to not only exhaust our planetary resources, but also generate profound social injustice and geopolitical violence in its pursuit. Nonetheless, it is clear that the violence and injustice of capital is selective—some benefit greatly while others are subjugated to its pathological drive to profit. Hence, Lee argues that any comprehensive analysis of what Jason Moore has dubbed the Capitalocene must include an equally probing account of human chauvinism, that is, the axes along which capital is supplied with resources and labor. Defined in terms of race, sex, gender, and species, these axes come ready-made to the advantage of capitalist commodification. Without an understanding of how and why, humanity will remain doomed to settling for a sustainably unjust world as opposed to realizing a just and desirable one. Indeed, on our current trajectory, we may not even achieve the sustainable. The introduction of climate change into the mix of environmental deterioration, the ever-widening economic gap between global North and global South, and the accelerating violence of terrorism, civil war, and human slavery make of a warming planet a combustible world. The only way out requires ending the myth of endless resources, a rejection of climate change denial, and a radical re-valuation of human-centeredness, not as a locus of power, but as an opportunity to take moral and epistemic responsibility for a world whose biotic diversity and ecological integrity make the struggle to realize it worthwhile. This solution demands not only an end to capitalism, but the deliberate reclamation of value—aesthetic, moral, and civic—and a radical transformation of both personal and collective conscience. Lee appeals to the experiential aesthetics of John Dewey and the feminist concept of the standpoint of the subjugated. She argues for a version of the precautionary principle informed by an environmentally and socially responsible concept of the desirable future as the clearest path away from the precipice.

Ecological Ethics

Ecological Ethics PDF Author: Patrick Curry
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745651267
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the highly successful Ecological Ethics, Patrick Curry shows that a new and truly ecological ethic is both possible and urgently needed. With this distinctive proposition in mind, Curry introduces and discusses all the major concepts needed to understand the full range of ecological ethics. He discusses light green or anthropocentric ethics with the examples of stewardship, lifeboat ethics, and social ecology; the mid-green or intermediate ethics of animal liberation/rights; and dark or deep green ecocentric ethics. Particular attention is given to the Land Ethic, the Gaia Hypothesis and Deep Ecology and its offshoots: Deep Green Theory, Left Biocentrism and the Earth Manifesto. Ecofeminism is also considered and attention is paid to the close relationship between ecocentrism and virtue ethics. Other chapters discuss green ethics as post-secular, moral pluralism and pragmatism, green citizenship, and human population in the light of ecological ethics. In this new edition, all these have been updated and joined by discussions of climate change, sustainable economies, education, and food from an ecocentric perspective. This comprehensive and wide-ranging textbook offers a radical but critical introduction to the subject which puts ecocentrism and the critique of anthropocentrism back at the top of the ethical, intellectual and political agenda. It will be of great interest to students and activists, and to a wider public.

Sociological Theory and the Environment

Sociological Theory and the Environment PDF Author: Riley E. Dunlap
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742501867
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Nearly all of the major perspectives, focal points and debates in environmental sociology are reflected in this collection of essays. The volume exceeds the bounds of conventional theory by surveying societies and their natural biophysical environments.

Vexing Nature?

Vexing Nature? PDF Author: Gary Comstock
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792379874
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Vexing Nature? On the Ethical Case Against Agricultural Biotechnology is a collection of philosophical essays on the ethical dimensions of agricultural biotechnology and genetically modified (GM) crops. Agricultural biotechnology refers to a diverse set of industrial techniques used to produce genetically modified foods. Genetically modified (GM) crops are plants manipulated at the molecular level to enhance their value to farmers and consumers. The ethical issues discussed in Vexing Nature? On the Ethical Case Against Agricultural Biotechnology are diverse and complex. Comstock addresses such concerns as the possibility of genetic engineering producing unanticipated allergens in previously safe foods, unexpectedly toxic health supplements, novel GM diseases, environmental catastrophe, bizarre new lines of animals possessing genes taken from humans, exceedingly wealthy corporations more powerful than the nations trying to regulate them, bankrupted family farmers in the US and Europe, exploited peasant farmers in developing countries, inhumanely treated animals in our labs and on our farms, and corrupted attitudes to nature among our children. In a fascinating narrative account of a journey that began in 1988 and ended twelve years later, Comstock tells the story of how he, an early and somewhat vocal critic of agricultural biotechnology, changed his mind about the ethical acceptability of GM organisms (GMO). Once tempted to oppose all uses of genetic engineering in agriculture, Comstock came to believe that many uses are morally justifiable, and even required. Vexing Nature? On the Ethical Case Against Agricultural Biotechnology explains his early, anti-GMO, position; the ethical, environmental, economic, social justice and animal rights arguments that led him to reverse himself; and the implications of his new position for public policy.