After the first few weeks of class I am starting to piece together what Environmental Theory actually means. Not only for my sake but also so when people ask me what classes I am taking, I can explain to them what a class called Environmental Theory is about.
I did not give a second thought about what environmental theory was when I signed up to take the class. It was not until the first day that I began to realize what I had gotten myself into. Jim Proctor’s stood up in front of the class and began to explain what he wanted to accomplish, “We’re not on the cutting edge of this field of study, we’re on the bleeding edge.” This was a clear indication of what was to come.
The first few classes left me mostly confused and frustrated. There was a lot of talk about “isms” like ecocentrism, reductionism, and holism, many of which I did not fully comprehend. We discussed different types of theories in different fields and tried to parse out what “theory” actually means. Jim had us read an article he collaborated with some other scholars to write about the role of theory in environmental studies and sciences. It was a lot to digest.
I was not quite sure whether or not I wanted to keep the class and with the end of the add drop period signaling impending doom, I called up my brother to distract myself from this looming problem. I told him about my class and my struggles and this thing called praxis, something we had discussed briefly on the first day. The idea of praxis is normally defined as being separate but not divorced from theory. Praxis represents practice, or the difference between theory and the act of doing. What was strange for me was the idea that theory could exist without leading to practice. I always thought, as Jim quipped in his article, “theories are ideas that take us places.”
My brother responded to my worries with a story about his friend Harry. Harry is my brother’s roommate and friend. In the sprawling metropolis of New York City, he buys all organic food and supports local farmers. One day my brother brought home a package of bacon that had not been organically/sustainably/locally sourced and this made Harry mad. Very mad. How could such an educated person, he said, do something so stupid as to buy meat that he knows is coming from animals that are being treated inhumanely? How could my brother vote with his money to support such a horrible industry? We talked about this for quite a while and discussed why I sided with my brother. Wasn’t it more ignorant of Harry to believe that his decision to buy organic bacon would have any more of a positive impact on the meat industry than my brother’s decision to buy Oscar Mayer would have a negative one? Was Harry just making himself feel better by buying the types of food that he did? Is there anything wrong with that?
We both had to go so the conversation ended. I few days later I received this email from my brother:
“The divide between those who seek to promote the good and those who are compelled by their life circumstances to stop the bad is one that has persisted in social movements for generations. On one side are those whose life circumstances and identity compels them to confront the structures that hold them in a degraded state – the resistance movement. On the other side, those of us who hold the unearned privileges that allow us to build alternatives while skirting around the current order when we like.”
(A quote from a recent edition of Bitch a publication put out by BitchMedia)
To me this is about praxis because it demonstrates the way our myopic theories can lead to ineffective practices and the way that ineffective practices can lead back to inadequate theorization.
Harry and the food elite are those who seek to promote the good while holding the unearned privilege of being insulated from the bad he supposedly wants to eradicate, ignoring the fact that their unearned privilege is available to them precisely because it is unavailable to others.
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Finally things kind of clicked. Environmental theory is a way to navigate other theories in different disciplines and try to take meaningful action based on those ideas. Harry’s actions are not wrong, maybe just misinformed by shortsighted theories. Environmental studies and sciences, as Jim’s article argues, is a problem oriented field and without theories in the field of environmental studies, any action that is taken has the potential to be ineffective, inadequate, or at the wrong scale.
I think I get it. I think I get it?
This class is sure gonna be a bumpy ride.
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