Environmental pragmatism is a new strategy in environmental thought. It argues that theoretical debates are hindering the ability of the environmental movement to forge agreement on basic policy imperatives. This new direction in environmental thought moves beyond theory, advocating a serious inquiry into the merits of moral pluralism. Environmental pragmatism, as a coherent philosophical position, connects the methodology of classical American pragmatic thought to the explanation, solution and discussion of real issues. This concise, well-focused collection is the first comprehensive presentation of environmental pragmatism as a new philosophical approach to environmental thought and policy.
Society and the Environment examines today's environmental controversies within a socio-organizational context. After outlining the contours of 'pragmatic environmentalism', Carolan considers the pressures that exist where ecology and society collide, such as population growth and its associated increased demands for food and energy. He also investigates how various ecological issues, such as climate change, are affecting our very own personal health. Finally, he drills into the social/structural dynamics (including political economy and the international legal system) that create ongoing momentum for environmental ills. This interdisciplinary text features a three-part structure in each chapter that covers 'fast facts' about the issue at hand, examines its wide-ranging implications, and offers balanced consideration of possible real-world solutions. New to this edition are 'Movement Matters' boxes, which showcase grassroots movements that have affected legislation. Discussion questions and key terms enhance the text's usefulness, making Society and the Environment the perfect learning tool for courses on environmental sociology.
The growing literature on Environmental Ethics has ballooned into a separate sub-field within philosophy, involving ethical studies concerning the value of other species, of ecosystems, and of the environment of all living things as a whole. Some consider Environmental Ethics to be a revolution in ethics which will completely change the human-centered orientation of morals and reorient it to include all species, ecosystems or the larger biosphere. This volume explores pragmatist approaches to ethics that can be used for environmental issues. Pragmatism may provide both a more defensible theory of non-anthropomorphic and intrinsic value than other ethical schools, and, more generally, supply an alternative model of what environmental philosophy could be. The holism of pragmatists constitutes a challenge to value and ethics centered in the individual, and a useful ground for more holistic theories of value which, some have argued, is more suitable to an environmental, as opposed to a humane, ethic. The authors of this bookOCOs chapters defend their understandings of pragmatism in the course of explaining contemporary ways to reconstruct central foundations to environmental ethics."
Look out for David Owen's next book, Where the Water Goes. A challenging, controversial, and highly readable look at our lives, our world, and our future. Most Americans think of crowded cities as ecological nightmares, as wastelands of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams. Yet residents of compact urban centers, Owen shows, individually consume less oil, electricity, and water than other Americans. They live in smaller spaces, discard less trash, and, most important of all, spend far less time in automobiles. Residents of Manhattan—the most densely populated place in North America—rank first in public-transit use and last in percapita greenhouse-gas production, and they consume gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid-1920s, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. They are also among the only people in the United States for whom walking is still an important means of daily transportation. These achievements are not accidents. Spreading people thinly across the countryside may make them feel green, but it doesn’t reduce the damage they do to the environment. In fact, it increases the damage, while also making the problems they cause harder to see and to address. Owen contends that the environmental problem we face, at the current stage of our assault on the world’s nonrenewable resources, is not how to make teeming cities more like the pristine countryside. The problem is how to make other settled places more like Manhattan, whose residents presently come closer than any other Americans to meeting environmental goals that all of us, eventually, will have to come to terms with.
Although this book is about the newly emerging academic field of environmental communication, it is also about voice and practical activism. Shane Ralston contends that a deeply pragmatic form of environmental communication has the potential to transform the way environmental activists speak about their methods and goals - moving them toward a rhetoric of eco-justice.Sometimes looking forward requires stepping back - in this case back to two progressive era thinkers who revolutionised our outlook on social and environmental justice: John Dewey and Aldo Leopard. The author argues that the impoverished state of present day studies in environmental communication can be traced to a shallow conception of the pragmatic - a conception that can be made deeper through recourse to Dewey's and Leopold's ideas. Originating from their philosophies are twin rhetorics of control and restraint, thatwhen balanced define a rhetoric of eco-justice. This new approach to speaking about environmental matters proves helpful for contemporary environmental activists - particularly when working in the areas of wilderness preservation, gardening politics, global climate change and environmental justice
In The Landscape of Reform Ben Minteer offers a fresh and provocative reading of the intellectual foundations of American environmentalism, focusing on the work and legacy of four important conservation and planning thinkers in the first half of the twentieth century: Liberty Hyde Bailey, a forgotten figure in the Progressive conservation movement; urban and regional planning theorist Lewis Mumford; Benton MacKaye, the forester and conservationist who proposed the Appalachian Trail in the 1920s; and Aldo Leopold, author of the environmentalist classic A Sand County Almanac . Minteer argues that these writers blazed a significant "third way" in environmental ethics and practice, a more pragmatic approach that offers a counterpoint to the anthropocentrism-versus-ecocentrism—use-versus-preservation—narrative that has long dominated discussions of the development of American environmental thought. Minteer shows that the environmentalism of Bailey, Mumford, MacKaye, and Leopold was also part of a larger moral and political program, one that included efforts to revitalize democratic citizenship, conserve regional culture and community identity, and reclaim a broader understanding of the public interest that went beyond economics and materialism. Their environmental thought was an attempt to critique and at the same time reform American society and political culture. Minteer explores the work of these four environmental reformers and considers two present-day manifestations of an environmental third way: Natural Systems Agriculture, an alternative to chemical and energy-intensive industrial agriculture; and New Urbanism, an attempt to combat the negative effects of suburban sprawl. By rediscovering the pragmatic roots of American environmentalism, writes Minteer, we can help bring about a new, civic-minded environmentalism today.
Environmental pragmatism is a new strategy in environmental thought. It argues that theoretical debates are hindering the ability of the environmental movement to forge agreement on basic policy imperatives. This new direction in environmental thought moves beyond theory, advocating a serious inquiry into the merits of moral pluralism. Environmental pragmatism, as a coherent philosophical position, connects the methodology of classical American pragmatic thought to the explanation, solution and discussion of real issues. This concise, well-focused collection is the first comprehensive presentation of environmental pragmatism as a new philosophical approach to environmental thought and policy.
In this book Robert Brulle draws on a broad range of empirical and theoretical research to investigate the effectiveness of U.S. environmental groups. Brulle shows how Critical Theory--in particular the work of Jürgen Habermas--can expand our understanding of the social causes of environmental degradation and the political actions necessary to deal with it. He then develops both a pragmatic and a moral argument for broad-based democratization of society as a prerequisite to the achievement of ecological sustainability. From the perspectives of frame analysis, resource mobilization, and historical sociology, using data on more than one hundred environmental groups, Brulle examines the core beliefs, structures, funding, and political practices of a wide variety of environmental organizations. He identifies the social processes that foster the development of a democratic environmental movement and those that hinder it. He concludes with suggestions for how environmental groups can make their organizational practices more democratic and politically effective.
Did you know that by failing to negotiate her starting salary for her first job, a woman may sacrifice over a half a million pounds in earnings by the end of her career? Yet, as research reveals, men are four times as likely to ask for higher pay than are women with the same qualifications. In this eye-opening book, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever draw on research in psychology, sociology, economics and organisational behaviour as well as dozens of interviews to explore the personal and societal reasons why women seldom ask for what they need, want and deserve at work and at home. Why Women Don't Ask - a sensation when published in the US in 2003 - is a call to arms that will help you recognise the ways in which our culture perpetuates inequalities - and how you can begin to overcome them.
In a world of dwindling natural resources and mounting environmental crisis, who is devising ways of living that will work for the long haul? And how can we, as individuals, make a difference? To answer these fundamental questions, Professor Karen Litfin embarked upon a journey to many of the world’s ecovillagesÑintentional communities at the cutting-edge of sustainable living. From rural to urban, high tech to low tech, spiritual to secular, she discovered an under-the-radar global movement making positive and radical changes from the ground up. In this inspiring and insightful book, Karen Litfin shares her unique experience of these experiments in sustainable living through four broad windows - ecology, economics, community, and consciousness - or E2C2. Whether we live in an ecovillage or a city, she contends, we must incorporate these four key elements if we wish to harmonize our lives with our home planet. Not only is another world possible, it is already being born in small pockets the world over. These micro-societies, however, are small and time is short. Fortunately - as Litfin persuasively argues - their successes can be applied to existing social structures, from the local to the global scale, providing sustainable ways of living for generations to come. You can learn more about Karen's experiences on the Ecovillages website: http://ecovillagebook.org/
