Lecture 10: Greeen Thinking Part Three: Social Ecology Putting people Back In Can liberate humanity and the environment at the same time. Thinkers in this camp often try to marry socialist-type visions with ecological concerns. Consumer
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Presentation Transcript
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Lecture 10: Greeen Thinking Part Three: Social Ecology<br>
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Putting people Back In Can liberate humanity and the environment at the same time.
Thinkers in this camp often try to marry socialist-type visions with ecological concerns.
Consumer culture and the growth model: bad for people, bad for the Earth.
“Affinity” between anarchism and ecologism.<br>
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A Bit About Anarchism What anarchism is not:
Unconstrained violence.
Chaos.
Libertarianism.
An easily identifiable, complete doctrine--
rejects fixed doctrines<br>
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The anarchist critique Without leadership/government.
Anarchy is order!
Human nature: positive and co-operative.
All forms of domination are negative.
schools
religion
capitalism: property is theft!
The modern state is (one of) the worst.<br>
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The anarchist vision Without capitalism or centralized government.
The alternative?
syndicalism, mutualism, co-operatives.
Names associated with anarchism:
William Godwin (1756-36): social critic.
Proudhon (1809-65): libertarian socialism.
Revolutionary anarchists e.g. Bakunin (1814-76); Kropotkin 1842-21).
Emma Goldman (1869-1940).
Noam Chomsky, a self-declared “anarcho-syndicalist”.<br>
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Murray BookChin (1921-2006) Key thinker in social ecology and also to contemporary anarchist thought.
Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971) and Ecology of Freedom (1982).
Fiercely critical of Marxism and class-based analysis.
“Social ecology is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological problems originate in deep-seated social problems. It follows, from this view, that these ecological problems cannot be understood, let alone solved, without a careful understanding of our existing society and the irrationalities that dominate it. To make this point more concrete: economic, ethnic, cultural, and gender conflicts, among many others, lie at the core of the most serious ecological dislocations we face today—apart, to be sure, from those that are produced by natural catastrophes.” (1993)
“Municipal libertarianism” based on strong faith in democratic participation.<br>
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Eco-Feminism Affinities between feminism and ecological thinking?
But does this dualism just reinforce gender stereotypes?
Intersectionality perhaps gives us another way of thinking about this.
e.g. consumerism bad for women, environment, indigenous peoples.
Similarity between violence against nature, violence against women.<br>
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Green Thinking and Social Thinking now Climate change emerges as the most important issue.
Coalescence around the idea of a “just transition”:
ecological and social justice goals must be pursued together.
perhaps not as radical as eco-anarchism, but similarly “humanist” ?<br>
