Systematic environmental theory is way to analyze environmental concepts in a theoretical light. This frameworks looks at an object, process, or idea with four main theoretical backdrops: ontology (what is out there?), epistemology (what is the truth?), ethics (is it moral?), and power (what are the power relations?).
When explaining and understanding systematic environmental theory it is always helpful to look at an example. This post will use the work done at Hinkle Creek in Douglas County as a mini-case study. Hinkle Creek occupies a watershed northeast of Roseburg, Oregon. The creek is located in a “working forest” that harvests Douglass fir trees to help monetarily support Douglas Country. The primary objective of the Hinkle Creek Paired Watershed Study is to assess the impact that these forest management practices are having on the water quality, fisheries, and aquatic habitat of the watershed. Although this seems straightforward, it is anything but.
The Watershed Research Cooperative (WRC) is the main entity that oversees Hinkle Creek and other similar study sites. According to the website, their mission statement is to “conduct research on the effects of current and expected forest practices on intensively managed commercial forestland on water quality, fisheries and other water-related values.” The problem arises when one looks at the “cooperators” who are part of the WRC. Included in this large list of parties are The Bureau of Land Management, Douglas Timber Operators, Associated Oregon Loggers, Plum Creek Timer Company, Roseburg Forest Products, Weyerhaeuser Company, and a host of other timer-minded corporations and organizations. Many of the experts that are being consulted and resources that are being used come from these companies who have there interests solely planted in the timber industry. This is, to say the least, problematic.
So how does this fit into systematic environmental theory? Let’s start with ontology. Like I said before, ontology deals with the question “what is out there?” In “A plea for earthly sciences”, Bruno Latour argues that the difference between ‘natural’ and ‘social’ sciences has become more uncertain and argues for a redirection of attention towards ‘earthly sciences’. In defining ‘social’ Latour states that there are two kinds: number 1: social that is the creator and number 2: social that is the created. In actor network theory terms, he believes that ‘social’ is not made up of the nodes themselves, but the connections between them. These connections are “what is out there”.
For Hinkle Creek, this bring up questions like: Where is the line drawn between managing and not managing a forest? What does ecologically conscious forest management look like? and who or what is involved in/affected by ecologically conscious forest management (fisheries, water quality, etc.)?
Second comes epistemology. Epistemology is all about the study of knowledge and if there is in fact truth. N. Katherine Hayles addresses these topics in “Searching for Common Ground.” Hayles focuses on the flux and concepts and how they come together to create the cusp or where “what the individual brings” and “what is” come together. Knowledge, Hayles says, is mediated by individuals’ cusps and how their experiences, backgrounds, and upbringings inform the way they view the world. “Riding the cusp” is acknowledging that everyone has different cusps and different understandings of what surrounds them.
Some epistemic questions about Hinkle Creek include: Does ecologically conscious forest management even exist? Who is considered an expert in this field? and How do we know when we’ve reached our goal of an ecologically conscious forest management plan?
Next comes ethics. Ethics is more familiar and focuses on the moral principles that govern an individual’s or group’s behavior. There are four main branches of ethics, meta-ethics, the critical analysis of ethics, normative ethics- or constructing a general ethic, applied ethics-constructing specific ethics, and descriptive ethics- describing the system of morality in the world. “Old Growth and a New Nature: The Ambivalence of Science and Religion” by Jim Proctor deals with the topic of ethics, science, and religion. Proctor presents a study that proves the demographics of environmentalists cannot be predicted but an individual’s “degree” of environmentalism is correlated with how much that individual believes in the sacredness of nature. This brings up questions about what is sacred, why is may be considered sacred, and the moral implications that come with classifying some things as sacred, or more sacred, than others.
Ethical questions surrounding Hinkle Creek may include: Is forest management ethical? What are the implications of valuing some ecological entities over others? and Who values ecologically conscious forest management?
Finally, we have politics. Politics is synonymous with power and power relations. All social interactions have power relations embedded within them, a reason why politics are considered to be part of all social interactions. Massey relates politics to space and place in “A global sense of place.” She talks about the time-space compression and how capitalism, along with other factors, has juxtaposed things in time and space that previously weren’t possible. Her main take-home points are that place is made of links and is not a static process, places do not have boundaries (or at least they don’t define the place itself), there is no single unique identity of a place, and places are unique from internalized history even though they are globalized. What does this mean for politics? This article is saying that there is no clear boundary between the local and global. One way to think about this is by looking at the global_local binary. This binary makes it easy to implement policy but does not take into account how that policy may look to people “outside” of the local boundary.
Politics can address questions like: What are the power relations implicit in ecological conscious forest management? and Who should be responsible for ecological conscious forest management?
These are just some initial musings and this topic requires much more time and thought but I have to start somewhere.
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