What is a road map? I usually think of a road map as a plan for futurity, a way to look ahead to where I’m going. However, a road map can also have a historical function: to document and connect where you’ve been. A road map also has a linear narrative (ideally). There is an order to the places and spaces one travels. There is a continuous line with a series of destinations.
Some might perceive theory as a type of road map to an academic field. Just as one might seek out the information presented by a map to situate themselves in space, one might conceivably turn to the realm of theory to situate themselves in the landscape of literary criticism, discourses of queerness, or in our case, theoretical foundations of environmental studies and sciences. Unlike a road map, however, theory is not linear. Theory is not definite. In surveying the different papers and perspectives about various environmental philosophies, such as the state of the Anthropocene, theory is convoluted, cyclical, interpretive. The definitions of things are debated at great length and to difficult non-resolution. If people cannot decide what the destinations are in a concrete sense, how can we expect to get there?
In relation to courses such as Environmental Economics and Situating Environmental Problems & Solutions, environmental theory seems distant from tangible solutions. Even as we take real-world current events, such as the Malheur Occupation or the status of Douglas County, Oregon, as case studies with deep lessons, the application of theory to identifiable problems remains unclear. Further, some of the problems that seem easiest to identify are complicated by the application of theory. Instead of getting more clear as we think and write and theorize, “the environment” seems to only becomes more and more abstract and undefinable, as “reality” orbits further and further into the territory of the constructed. Instrumental questions and answers often assume a specific version of reality that is not necessarily as universal as one might hope. Through intensely abstract theories, instrumentalism can be derailed by nitty-gritty and maybe mind-numbing details like the etymology of “nature” and the competing value claims about the Anthropocene. This is a highly contentious topic as demonstrated by the heated debated about the objective versus subjective character of scientific knowledge.
In order to address this psychic and intellectual roadblock, we explored various methods of analysis and attempt to categorize theory into various frameworks: ethics, politics, knowledge, and reality. Analysis poses an instrumental and practical possibility. It implies data. It implies results. Oddly enough for a theory class, we began with quantitative analysis of surveys in order to generalize environmental values on local and global scales. Although the tools of analysis we used were statistical, raw data really means nothing without a narrative to cohere it and connect it outside itself. This is just one instance of how theory dismantles traditional binaries, in this case “quantitative” versus “qualitative.” In conceptualizing perspectives on theories, scholars who count “beyond two” and embrace the presence of multiplicity seemed to better describe key dilemmas in environmental scholarship.
From my academic pursuits outside (and inside) the field of environmental studies and sciences, I am predisposed to favor narrative analysis as a way to inspire connection, stimulate cultural change, and understand the aesthetic factors of words, images, and ideas. I engage with stories and tend to read all experience inside and out of the classroom as a narrative to be explored. Perhaps my project on the narratives of loss and futurity in Douglas County and its strong connection to my second major of English can demonstrate my belief in the power of stories. That being said, I appreciate the efficacy and (perceived) concreteness of numbers. But what I appreciate the most is the intersection between the two. This happens when we create narratives out of numbers (which are probably generated by narratives in the first place), but also when we derive numbers from narratives using various technologies to decipher words and stories. This, to me, is not only an important piece of interdisciplinary learning but vital to the project of communication at large.
To return to the question of why we are laboring so heavily over definitions and arguments and details, the reason many people become interested in studying environment is because they identify problems that they wish to solve. These problems are wicked complicated and incredibly diverse in scope, scale, content, location, etc. For me, reading about environmental (in)justice in the context of race and place theory drives home the “why” of my own environmental studies about landscapes and their narratives. Spatial, distributive, procedural, and recognition-related definitions of injustice carve out a more nuanced version of environmental justice that can have real-world impacts. The college campus and its network of authoritative ideologies is a very important place in this conversation, a place that contains its own nuanced version of injustice. This realization gives faith in the power and importance of academic theorizing to incite real change from real information. Even if I sometimes just think environmental theory is really really interesting.
From beginning to end, our class delved into big words in great depth and breadth. I ended the semester critically engaging with the big word “theory.” While I learned a lot about the history and etymology of theory, I end the class without perfect closure. To return to my notion that theory is not definite, I think this is an apt way to leave an semester.