Anthropocentrism
-Human centered
-Human beings are the most significant entity of the universe and interprets or regards the world in terms of human values and experiences
-Humans at top of hierarchical chain of being, then to Heaven, humans are the closest thing on earth
Conservation
-Berkes: Cree wildlife management, Conservation science tends to aim for steady state
-Kimmerer: Contrasts Berkes' idea of a steady state; different amount of pecans produced every year due to certain environmental changes
- Muir
The Environment [Environments, Environmentalism]
naturalized"
- everything yet nothing
- socially constructed (according to some people)
-needs to be protected, but the problem with that is that not everyone views the environment as the same thing
Environmental Crisis" [last lecture]
-Idea of sentimental and feel of crisis, the feeling that you "can't go home
Place (Cronon)
-story about spaces
-"wilderness leaves no place for human beings"
-unnaturalness of a natural place, (wilderness is an invention/construct)
-wild country became a place not just of religious redemption but of national renewal, the quintessential location
Utopia (Guha)
Guha: Three Environmental Utopias
1.Agrarianism (Sustainability)
Technology on human scale
Thomas Jefferson and Gandhi
Cooperative communities/villages
Primary force in India
2.Wilderness Thinking / Primitivism (Diversity)
Eliminate human population
Seen
Dystopia (Morton)
Morton: 3 sections
1.Nature should be kept at a distance
2.It is not easy to grasp the idea of nature
3.Viewing nature as "out there" or unrelated to oneself makes it difficult to understand
Nature is paradoxical
Alchemy
-ethical science: doesn't reject a religious view
-Combination of moral science & empirical science
-What the science we know today came from
-Sideris says there is no ethics in science, this criticizes that
-Experimental science linking macrocosm and mic
Atheism (Sideris)
-Establishing religion inspired by New Atheism
-Use of evolution in environmental philosophy
-Science is associated with atheism (science as narrative to evolution)
Cosmology
-Study of big world/ universe
-Sideris: "Environment" is presented as "universe/cosmos
Rules-of-thumb
giving a general example- according to Prof. Gade, "stop about here" rather than "apply the brakes 25 yards before the stop sign"
-cutting down complexity to the right scale
-The objects being dealt with are complex so messages need to be on a scale that
T.E.K. (Berkes)
Traditional ecological knowledge
-Kimmerer: how the Natives knew before science proved that trees talk to each other to know how many Pecans to make that next year
-Sacred Ecology: Examines bodies of knowledge held by indigenous and other rural peoples ar
Aesthetics (Morton) [Worldview]
creates an artificial environment, a worldview with judgement
A perception of how an individual sees the world
The Sublime; Sublime transcends the object
Perception that shapes experience
Ethics
Sideris- science does not necessarily make an ethical narrative, but humans determine
Moral understanding of the world
"The environment needs an ethical framework;" science doesn't work
LaTour says "It matters most how things combine and interact
Experience
-Traditions
-what a person has done personally in their life that determines what they perceive to be nature
-nature/wilderness is an experience
- a way to approach the environment
Great Chain of Being
- everything has its 'place' -Cronon
-Hierarchy in the world (God, angels, humans, animals, plants, rocks)
-Cosmic hierarchy that placed humanity above sentient and non-sentient beings (nature)
-Medieval Christian ideology
Indigeneity ("Native")
- people frequently turn to native knowledge for environmental goals, and certain 'disturbances' challenge indigenous knowledge
Parliament of Things" (Latour)
- We are all members of the Parliament of things (like a community)
-Objects of science + Society + elements of "nature/environment" make up their objects, just as themselves
-Latour wants to think of them together not as a "theory", but as a "practice"
-
Pastoral
Agrarian, Country, farm based, ideal of romantic movement
Romanticism (Tuan)
- beyond physical embodiment
- extremes and polar opposites like "high and low"
-Polarization, extremes, & "landscapes"
-Appreciation/experience of landscapes
-Chaos/Order
Sacred (also, Spiritual-Not-Religious)
In the Light of Reverence as example
-Lakota tribe:Devils tower (climbing)
-"climbing on someone's church"
-not about legality, but respect
-"if you don't see the culture, you don't see anything"
-Narratives
-theorized as an experience that was unmediated
Sublime
-Transcends normality
- giving the ability to put someone in touch with God
- John Muir finding solace in the mountains because they are sublime
-Kant, says that something is sublime when the experience transcends the object
-Tuan: beauty in an object, "s
Wilderness
-Cronon, the trouble with wilderness in that people have a preconceived notion of what it should be rather than appreciating what is already around them. The idea that nature should be 'untouched by man' when the reality is that at this point, everything
Fikret Berkes (resource management)
-Sacred Ecology
-rules of thumb
-"complex system thinking" and "fuzzy logic"
-example: cabbage tree
-challenges for indigenous knowledge
-Conservation, essentialization?, appropriation?, NGO's, Ideological extraction
William Cronon (environmental history)
-Trouble with Wilderness
-unnaturalness of such natural place
-wilderness is human construct, invented
-tree in the garden is just as wild as the tree in the "wilderness"
-idealizing and romanticizing wilderness creates a separation between human and nature
-wilderness is all aro
Carolyn Finney (geography- black faces, white spaces)
-our idea of the environment is very much shaped by our privilege
-enviro is socially constructed
-asymmetrical power
Ramachandra Guha (environmental history)
-believes that there is a struggle between one set of good ideas and opposing set of evil ones (in relation to environment)
-advocating for the conquest of nature vs. pleading for human submission to natural process
-discussion example: do we use technolo
Alexander von Humboldt (adventurer)
-The Invention of Nature
-inventing nature
-interconnectedness
Robin Wall Kimmerer (environmental biology)
-Braiding Sweetgrass
-Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge are compatible
-Pecan trees "talk" to each other
-Now backed by science
-enviro known through beliefs and practices
-Rules of thumb
-SaLAMANDERS
-some collateral damage we're okay with
Bruno Latour (history of science)
-We have never been Modern
-PARLIAMENT OF THINGS"
-Overcome separateness of categories like society and nature
-We can't be modern because modern=the divide between society and nature.
-nature, society, and science overlap
Timothy Morton (literature, eco-criticism)
-Ecology Without Nature
-Nature is an aesthetic idea
-old ideas of nature obstructing new ecology
-Romantic aesthetic of nature
-other aesthetics (virtual, digital, etc.) very similar to today's environment
-nature is a paradoxical object
-ambient poetics: a way of conjuring up
John Muir (preservationist)
-nature as a religious experience
-nature is one
-unities
-"Father of National Parks"
-eternal harmony
-hope to see God, holy place
-Hetch Hetchy
-Founded the sierra club, and help with the national parks
(a bro to teddy)
Lisa Sideris (religious studies/ethics)
-Genesis 2.0
-science cannot provide a basis for morals/ethics/religion
Henry David Thoreau (transcendentalist)
-Walden
-early adopter of conservation ideology
-finds a "power" or "otherness" in nature
Yi-Fu Tuan (geography)
-Romantic Geography
-emphasizes place, home
-extremes
Mat?� Th�pila / Devil's Tower
the controversy between the native people using the tower as a place for ceremonies and the clash between them and the rock climbers, especially during the month of june- the state park could only ask that the people respect the native american ideals, bu
Yosemite (Sierra Nevada Mountains)
-"Yosemite is the most beautiful place on earth, there's no doubt about it"
-Yosemite is a paradise- saved by humans, which contributes to the beauty
-John muir- thought about what a single drop of snow melt experienced as it dives off the cliffs
-Once yo
Longfellow, "Autumn
Pastoral themes (pastoral defined above)
Brings in ideas of european tradition
Not very natural, very supernatural and romanticized
Thoreau, "The Pond in Winter
Literal answer: fish/pond
Figurative answer: Heaven (he says he discovers that Heaven is both above and below), history
1. Explain two examples of traditional (meaning community-based [Berkes], native or indigenous) ecological knowledge, in context. How is knowledge the same or different in both cases?
1. The example of the almond trees 'speaking' to each other so they don't get eaten by the bugs. There is a real life explanation (tree hormones that activate certain reactions within the tree) but the TEK version is that the trees speak with one another.
Is environmental science ethical?-Sideras
-Kimmerer "collateral damage
Where is the sublime landscape?- use Tuan and Cronon
Examples during discussion (from Tuan)
Tuan- a feeling, Romantic, beyond the physical environment itself
Mountains
Solar system
Oceans
Forests
Deserts
Marsh
What we said about each of these things in discussion: look at each of these places from a differe