Jagged Terrain: Cronon, Soule´, and the Struggle over Nature and Deconstruction in Environmental Theory

Chaloupka, William

doi:10.1080/10402130050007502

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Brown (1995, p. 39) describes as 'feminist panic' the exuberant criticism that confronted intellectuals who argued that the subject positions and strategic choices she details as resentful feminism should be confronted. Of course, environmentalists have had their own panic over precisely these issues (Chaloupka 2000). Some of the reactions to Nordhaus and Shellenberger seem precisely evidence of panic.…”

Section: Resentmentmentioning

confidence: 97%

The environmentalist: ‘what is to be done?’

Chaloupka

2008

Environmental Politics

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Section: Resentmentmentioning

confidence: 97%

The environmentalist: ‘what is to be done?’

Chaloupka

2008

Environmental Politics

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“…The biocentric critics of postmodernism conflate under that term a broad array of widely divergent approaches, ranging from neo-Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial (or anticolonial) theory to poststructuralist and explicitly deconstructivist or postmodernist critical strategies. For a response to their critiques, see Chaloupka (2000).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Multicultural Ecology

Ivakhiv

2002

Organization & Environment

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T he debate between realists and constructivists has polarized much environmental scholarship in recent years. Although social constructivist accounts have proven fruitful in making sense of a wide range of social phenomena, their more recent application to natural phenomena, and especially to environmental issues, has raised questions that prove discomforting for many environmental scholars and activists. The dilemma raised by constructivists is this: If nature, wilderness, ecology, and the environment are all socially constructed-ideas about the world rather than the world itself-what is it exactly that environmental protection efforts are fighting to defend and preserve? 1 This debate flared up among environmental scholars following the publication of William Cronon's (1995a) article "The Trouble With Wilderness" and the edited collection Uncommon Ground (Cronon, 1995b). Although not an entirely original argument (see, e.g., Callicott, 1991;Nelson, 1996), Cronon's cultural and historical deconstruction of the wilderness idea managed to make it into the popular press, with an excerpt published in The New York Times. In a series of articles and magazine editorials, conservation biologist Michael Soulé (1995), Earth First! cofounder Dave Foreman (1996/1997), biocentric deep ecologists George Sessions (1995a) and Paul Shepard (1995), and poet Gary Snyder (1996 responded by decrying Cronon and his postmodern deconstructionist allies as new enemies of environmentalism, responsible for what Soulé and Lease (1995) called a "social siege of nature" that ostensibly both parallels and supports the physical siege of nature by industrial society.

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“…It seems that many of these researchers and practitioners perceive the science of ecology as relatively insulated from the silty waters of culture. They assert that at a time of global environmental destruction, critical theorists who question the epistemological underpinnings of conservation can inadvertently arm anti-environmentalism or otherwise sew disunity among an already fragmented movement [10,11]. This sustained divide between traditional ecology and a conservation practice that acknowledges contingency [3,12] continues to frustrate efforts to assimilate theory into practice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-Placing the Desert in the Conservation Landscape: Charisma and Absence in the Gobi Desert

Lezak

2018

Land

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Across the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia, millions of newly planted trees struggle to survive amid adverse ecological conditions. They were planted by a wide variety of actors in an attempt to protect, restore, or modify the local environment, despite evidence of their negative consequences upon local ecosystems. This paper investigates how these afforestation projects both challenge and affirm recent theoretical work on conservation, while also providing key insights into the decision-making framework of land management across the world’s third largest desert region. This analysis, supported by evidence from corporate practice, government policy, and participant observation, builds primarily on the work of Jamie Lorimer and other authors who identify the charisma of certain species as a primary driver of contemporary conservation. But the case of afforestation in the Gobi is inadequately explained by a desire to protect individual species; rather, I show how the charisma at the level of the landscape influences conservation practice. I extend this analysis to suggest that the management of deserts worldwide may be mediated by their perception as absent or empty spaces, thus explaining projects like afforestation which seem to re-place rather than conserve. Using the framework of absence and presence to better understand land use and environmental governance could have implications extending well beyond the Gobi Desert.

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Jagged Terrain: Cronon, Soule´, and the Struggle over Nature and Deconstruction in Environmental Theory

Cited by 6 publications

References 1 publication

The environmentalist: ‘what is to be done?’

The environmentalist: ‘what is to be done?’

Toward a Multicultural Ecology

Re-Placing the Desert in the Conservation Landscape: Charisma and Absence in the Gobi Desert

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