The Logic of Environmentalism: Anthropology, Ecology and Postcoloniality

206 Pages·2005·1.021 MB·English

by  Vassos Argyrou

The Logic of Environmentalism
First published in 2005 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
©2005 Vassos Argyrou
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
ISBN 1-57181-984-3 (hardback)
ISBN 1-84545-105-8 (paperback)
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The Logic of Environmentalism
Anthropology, Ecology and Postcoloniality
Vassos Argyrou
Berghahn Books
New York • Oxford
Studies in Environmental Anthropology
and Ethnobiology
General Editor:Roy Ellen, FBA
Professor of Anthropology, University of Kent at Canterbury
Interest in environmental anthropology has grown steadily in recent years,
reflecting national and international concern about the environment and
developing research priorities. This major new international series, which
continues a series first published by Harwood and Routledge, is a vehicle for
publishing up-to-date monographs and edited works on particular issues, themes,
places or peoples which focus on the interrelationship between society, culture
and environment. Relevant areas include human ecology, the perception and
representation of the environment, ethno-ecological knowledge, the human
dimension of biodiversity conservation and the ethnography of environmental
problems. While the underlying ethos of the series will be anthropological, the
approach is interdisciplinary.
Volume 1
The Logic of Environmentalism
Anthropology, Ecology and Postcoloniality
Vassos Argyrou
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Contents
Prelude vii
1. First Change 1
‘The Idea of Nature’ 1
‘If we have no rivers, we make canals’ 7
‘Europeans are devotees of power’ 16
‘The Leap Across the Centuries’ 26
2. Second Change 37
‘Only One Earth’ 39
‘This Sacred Earth’ 50
‘Our Debt to the Savage’ 61
3. The Logic of the Same 73
The Phenomenology of Change 73
‘The Age of the World Picture’ 88
Pure Humanity 102
4. ‘Beyond Humanism’: and further to the other side 119
‘The Religion of Humanity’, the Religion of Gaiaand other
Homologies 119
Pure Being 134
5. No Change 159
On Hegemony 159
The Double Bind 164
Bibliography 179
Index 187
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Prelude
For a long time, by all accounts the last few centuries, nature was perceived as an
intractable domain of utility and danger which, as the language of the nineteenth
century would have it, was to be mastered, tamed, brought under ‘man’s’ control,
bent to his will, forced to reveal her secrets, compelled to satisfy his needs and
minister to his happiness. Such was the ‘physics’ of the modernist paradigm, the
dominant view of the physical world encountered among important people
engaged in serious business – people doing science, theorising about the nature
and meaning of the world, inventing or using technology, running nations,
companies, nations through companies and, of course, empires. The corollary to
this vision was that ‘man’ could, and should do all of the above. For it was only
to the extent that he asserted himself in this way that he would fulfil his destiny
and become what he was meant to be – the Subject of the world and in control
of his destiny. In this vision too, those ‘men’ who had a different view of
themselves and their physical surroundings were perceived, treated and quickly
learned to treat themselves as ‘primitive’ or, as in the postwar, postcolonial
lexicon, ‘traditional’ and ‘underdeveloped’. Such was the ‘anthropology’ of the
modernist paradigm, the dominant definition of what it means to be a human
being and its humanism – both the belief in the unlimited powers of ‘man’ and
its vision of human unity – which generated the conviction that certain ‘men’
were entitled, indeed, burdened with the responsibility of mastering Other ‘men’
in order to humanise them.
In less than three decades, the modernist ‘physics’ and ‘anthropology’ have
been transformed fundamentally, indeed, in many ways practically reversed. In
the paradigm that has now become dominant, nature is neither refractory nor a
state – ‘the state of nature’ – and a predicament. On the contrary, as most people
would now say, it is a system of immense complexity that hinges on a precarious
balance currently under severe strain, a fragile domain of life that must be
urgently protected and cared for, both for its own sake and ours. ‘Man’ too is no
longer the Subject of the world and the indisputable master of nature, but a
cautious, sensible and responsible steward. He has been drastically reduced in size
viii Prelude
and now emerges as the ‘human being’, a being among other beings in the world
and dependent on nature for his every need and very survival. As for those ‘men’
who were once thought to be ‘savage’ and ‘backward’ and in need of
enlightenment, they too emerge in a different light. They are now seen as victims
of a monumental historical misunderstanding, are portrayed, and have learnt to
portray themselves, as living embodiments of an urgently needed ethic of respect
for nature, as repositories of a simple yet profound wisdom that the West has long
lost in its heedless march for progress. They have been transformed into those
who will ‘enlighten’ the world with this forgotten wisdom and can therefore be
called, without the risk of misunderstanding, ‘indigenous and traditional
peoples’. Such is the environmentalist vision of the world, its ‘physics’ and its
‘anthropology’, a vision held with as much conviction and certainty as the
modernist vision ever was.
What is one to make of an event of such magnitude and complexity? How is
one to understand the emergence of the environmentalist paradigm, its
ascendancy and apparent success in such a short time? From which perspective,
angle of vision, theoretical orientation should one approach it? There are, to be
sure, answers to these questions. One could say, for example, as most people
would probably say, that there was little choice in the matter. The threat of an
imminent ecological collapse meant that humanity would either mend its ways
urgently and drastically or eventually perish. Belatedly, if not too late, practical
reason and common sense won the day.
It is true, of course, that there are ecological facts which document the
‘environmental crisis’ in detail and with precision and although there are also
counter-facts – increasingly so – or different interpretations of the same ecological
facts, my aim in this book is not to dispute them. To do so, to take sides in the
debate over facts would be to reduce environmentalism to a question of scientific
objectivity. It would then be possible, hypothetically at least, to prove or disprove
ecological facts and, depending on the outcome, to confirm environmentalism in
its truth or debunk it as fiction. This would be a rational procedure. Indeed, to a
large extent, it is on this assumption that the debate over facts is based – the
assumption, that is, of rational actors making informed and rational decisions
about the state of the world. Yet things are far murkier and convoluted.
Environmentalists and their modernist critics cannot agree on the facts – what is
to count as a fact, how those that do count are to be interpreted or what they
should mean. And the facts themselves, notoriously, do not speak for themselves
and cannot act as final arbiters and guarantors of their truth. Nature, things
themselves have long been muted. And although this is only a historical
phenomenon that may come to pass, we, in the meantime, have no choice but to
speak for them, to listen attentively to their silence and to translate it, arbitrarily
but necessarily, into what we think it means. I am well aware that positivists, naïve
realists and no doubt environmentalists would disagree with this line of
Prelude ix
reasoning. There will be, however, many opportunities in this book to revisit the
issue and, as I will try to show, although they may not agree, nor can they do
without this sort of reasoning.
What I propose to do in this book, then, is to treat the environment as an
issue which is neither of the order of truth nor of the order of ideology and false
consciousness. I propose to treat it as part of that difficult, dense and ambiguous
middle ground that constitutes the realm of culture. My concern is with a prior
and more fundamental question than the debate over facts, namely, the question
of the facts’ own cultural conditions of possibility. Having emerged in specific
social contexts, facts circulate and become the object of belief as much as of
disbelief, discussion and debate, truths to be upheld or fictions to be rejected. No
doubt they are often also a matter of indifference and apathy. The prior question
has do with how they emerge and circulate, how their silence is overcome and we
get to hear them speak through the inevitable interpreters. What sort of
conditions must be fulfilled for ecological facts to emerge and circulate? To be
more precise, what sort of cultural assumptions must be in place for these facts
to become visible, which is not to say merely observable, identifiable and
quantifiable – the greenhouse effect, for instance – but more importantly, value-
able, charged with the kind of relevance, significance, gravity and urgency that
distinguish the attitude of the activist and the converted from that of the passive
observer, sceptic or critic? More broadly, what is the cultural context that renders
the environmentalist vision of the world a viable proposition, an issue to be
taken up in earnest and pursued in its practical implications and consequences?
I do not pretend to have answers to all of these questions or to answer them in
detail. But I do attempt an answer, however rudimentary it may be. Nor, it
should readily be apparent, am I proposing a causal explanation. My aim is to
sketch the conditions and conditionings without which the environmentalist
vision of the world could not have emerged and would not have become a
serious and legitimate proposition. That it has emerged and has been taken up
in earnest cannot be reduced to these conditions partly because of the sheer
complexity of the phenomenon and no doubt also because, having emerged, the
meaning of environmentalism can neither be dictated nor controlled. As will
become apparent in the subsequent discussion on how non-Western
governments and bureaucracies understand the ‘environmental crisis’, it has
acquired a life of its own.
The book is based on three guiding assumptions. First, that environmentalism
produces a more objectified, totalising and unifying vision of the world than the
vision of the modernist paradigm. Second, that to understand the meaning of the
former, one has to begin with the meaning of the latter. And third, that what
above all is at stake in the environmentalist effort to save nature is not modernist
culture, as its apologists fear, but power, the ability of a group of societies to define
the meaning of the world for everyone, yet again. The book’s central theme
x Prelude
concerns the apparent reversal of the modernist ‘physics’ and ‘anthropology’ in
environmentalism, the transformation, that is, of intractable nature into a fragile
domain of life and of ‘man’ the master of nature into the ‘human being’. I treat
this reversal as a ‘phenomenon’, a reality experienced and acted upon and hence
as something whose truth cannot be questioned or doubted. What is to be
doubted rather is the assumption – of environmentalists themselves, their
modernist critics as well as the dictates of common sense – that because
environmentalism reverses the modernist vision of nature and humanity, it also
constitutes a radical rupture with the modernist paradigm. The argument
developed in this book is that at a more fundamental level than the
phenomenological, environmentalism reflects a return of the same, the
reproduction of the same sort of global power relations and the same sort of logic
that mark the modernist paradigm at its core.
The Same is a cultural logic and a cultural product. It is a systematic way of
imagining and doing, what above anything else defines the modernist subjectivity
and makes it what it is – a subjectivity that constantly strives for unity, purity and
innocence because it can find its rationale and reason of existence nowhere else
except in such a vision of the world. The Same of the modernist paradigm is
Humanity and its humanism, which is epitomised in all those attempts to efface,
by proving groundless, the divisions of the Same – divisions based on class,
gender, race, ethnicity and cultural difference, to mention only the major ones.
The Same of environmentalism, in turn, is the Same of the modernist paradigm
incorporated into, but in no way negated by, a grander domain of unity, purity
and innocence. And it is reflected in the environmentalist effort to efface the
greatest of all modernist divides – the division between Humanity and Nature –
as in the claim that ‘all is One’, for instance, or, in the less radical, more
‘mainstream’ environmentalist version, that ‘we are part of nature and nature is
part of us’. Environmentalism reflects a return of the Same because it operates on
the basis of the modernist logic. In this non-phenomenological and more
profound sense, it differs from the modernist paradigm only to the extent that it
takes the logic it has inherited to its logical and onto-logical conclusion. I should
perhaps reiterate that this argument is not meant as a causal explanation of
environmentalism. No doubt the environmentalist vision of the world could not
have emerged without the underlying assumptions that constitute the logic of the
Same. Yet this is not to say that it can be reduced to it. It would be more accurate
to say that environmentalism was an immanence, a cultural possibility inherent
in the modernist paradigm triggered by the conjunction of specific historical
circumstances and events, a virtual reality waiting for actualisation.
Environmentalism reflects a return of the same of the modernist paradigm in
another, equally important sense. As I have already suggested, this is the same of
power, the ability of a group of societies to define and redefine, construct and
reconstruct the order of the world and the world order. Environmentalism repeats
Prelude xi
the historical gesture that marked the colonial enterprise and its civilising mission.
The rest of the world is once again presented with a new reality – presented, that
is, faitaccompli– and is expected, cajoled, encouraged, assisted, threatened to take
a stance and come to recognise it as such a reality. And just as surely, the rest of
the world responds in the manner that marked its confrontation with and
accommodation of the modernist vision during colonial times. It acts suspiciously
– for it is still burdened with the legacy of modernism – doubts, questions, rejects,
negotiates, moves strategically and tries to gain advantage, co-opts, recognises,
endorses. It engages, in short, in that wide range of practices which, to paraphrase
Bourdieu, constitute the complicity that unites the rest of the world, as the ‘Rest’,
with the West in disagreement or, what is another way of saying the same thing,
the disagreement that divides it and the West in complicity. The ‘Rest’ does
everything that needs to be done – unwittingly and unwillingly no doubt – to
ensure that it remains locked in that relationship which ties it to the West and
defines it as an irredeemable Otherness. Which is not to assign blame or to
suggest that anyone has escaped this predicament and can talk about it from the
outside.
This book, then, is about how the world changes but remains the same –
despite phenomena to the contrary, and all good intentions notwithstanding.
Not a very profound thought perhaps, but at the threshold of what promises to
be another two hundred years of (post)colonial solitude, surely a necessary one.
Vassos Argyrou