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EcoTypes: Exploring Environmental Ideas

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Domain

FIRST PUBLISHED December 29, 2016

Domain

Should we approach environmental issues by focusing more on ideas and beliefs, or on material practices and behaviors?

Related main theme: Knowledge (Old/New)

 


Survey Items


Survey Results


Deep Dive

Philosophers and scientists have long pondered the domains of mind vs. matter. The EcoTypes Domain axis likewise ponders our emphasis on ideal vs. material dimensions of environmental issues—what we think vs. what we do.

Survey Items

EcoTypesAxisArrow-GreenNoVert

Ideal Pole

  • Environmental problems will only go away if we focus on our values and paradigms, not just our practices and behavior.
  • The best way to change damaging ecological practices is to reexamine basic ideas about our relationship to nature.

Material Pole

  • Environmental solutions require changing things that govern what we do, like laws and policy, not just changing our values.
  • Environmental problems are less due to our shortsighted values than our economic and political practices.

Survey Results

This histogram shows the overall distribution of averaged responses, from fall 2018 to now, to the survey statements above. Which side are most responses on? Is there general agreement or disagreement among responses so far?

How do your own responses compare with these overall results? To answer this question, find the personal report you received by email and compare your average response to this axis.

Do most respondents agree with you? Disagree with you? Are most responses to the right or the left of you? What does this say about your responses as compared with overall responses?

Deep Dive

Extended Overview
Cited References
Extended Overview

If one pauses for a moment to consider the causes of, and solutions to, environmental problems, our answers can be organized under two broad conceptual domains, here called ideal vs. material realms. In brief, the ideal domain refers to things we think or feel, whereas the material domain refers to things we do. (Note that this difference is not exactly the same as being idealistic vs. practical.) While both domains are arguably of environmental significance, relatively little environmental scholarship attends to both realms equally, and distinct patterns of emphasis or deemphasis can be traced in many popular environmental movements. It is worthwhile, therefore, to pay attention to how we give priority or (de)emphasis to these two domains.

First, some broad background. The distinction between ideal and material domains has important metaphysical and theological roots, ultimately resonating with certain forms of dualism present in a wide range of philosophical and religious traditions, where dichotomies between mind and body, or consciousness and matter, are common—indeed, some well known approaches to religion (e.g., Eliade 1959) are inherently dualistic along broadly material/ideal lines. But material/ideal dualism has a particular history, and in the case of western scholarship has been evident at least from the mid-17th century, inheriting “…an overall framework of ideas about humanity and nature, rational mind and causal matter…that we may refer to as the Modern world view” (Toulmin 1992, 107-8).

In the social sciences, the relationship between material and ideal domains (given various names, such as action vs. consciousness) has been a key area of debate. On the one hand, the classic social theorist Max Weber claimed “Very frequently, the ‘world images’ that have been created by ‘ideas’ have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed” (Weber et al. 1991, 280), whereas the notion of base and superstructure in Marxist theory is generally understood to accord causal priority to the material realm; Marx (1904, Preface) famously said “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”

Commonly, then, various scholarly subfields emphasize one or the other of these two domains, and here we can find clues toward their relative role in the context of environmental issues. In many humanities and interpretive social science fields the emphasis has long been on the ideal realm (e.g., thought, emotion, culture, religion), and even more recent theories in these fields such as new materialism (e.g., Bennett 2009) still carry a strong focus on meaning. Whether at individual or institutional scales, insights from these fields generally point to the significance of ideas in the context of environmental issues. One key example, for instance, is the role of nature religion and spirituality (e.g., Albanese 1991, Pepper 2005, Taylor 2010).

In contrast, other social science fields such as economics or political science focus primarily on behavior and material (e.g., economic or political) relations between people. Insights from these fields often suggest important material dimensions of environmental issues, i.e., what we do and not just what we think or feel. The material domain is the primary realm in which environmental policy is generally discussed and debated, including, for instance, economic pricing and (dis)incentives (Goodstein and Polasky 2014), or international laws and regulations (Chasek, Downey, and Brown 2017).

Emphasis on the material or ideal domain, as one finds in various academic fields, seems harmless enough. But this tendency can lead to the philosophical position of monism, a repudiation of dualism in which all existence is ultimately Matter or Mind—two very different worldviews! And these respective worldviews still very much influence the ways we approach environmental issues, leading scholars like David Pepper to adopt idealism vs. materialism as two contrasting “ways ahead” in resolving ecological crises (Pepper 1996, 295-322).

Perhaps more than other EcoTypes axis, then, it would initially seem that the ideal vs. material binary is an artificial one, that in fact both are equally significant. But the Domain axis presents an opportunity to reflect on our basic assumptions about mind and matter—the ideal and material domains—and how they differentially shape our approach to environmental issues. Though everyone may broadly agree that both are related and significant, many of us actually lean one way or the next in the environmental context—thus this longstanding debate continues!

Cited References
371577 domain items 1 author asc https://jimproctor.us/ecotypes/wp-content/plugins/zotpress/
Albanese, Catherine L. 1991. Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bennett, Jane. 2009. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Chasek, Pamela S., David L. Downie, and Janet Welsh Brown. 2016. Global Environmental Politics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Goodstein, Eban S., and Stephen Polasky. 2014. Economics and the Environment. 7th ed. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Global Education.
Marx, Karl. 1904. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. New York: The International Library PubCo.
Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. 1st American edition. Harvest Book 144. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Pepper, David. 1996. “Chapter 6: Ways Ahead.” In Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction, 295–326. London: Routledge.
Pepper, David. 2005. “Utopianism and Environmentalism.” Environmental Politics 14 (1): 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/0964401042000310150.
Taylor, Bron Raymond. 2010. Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Toulmin, Stephen. 1992. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Weber, Max, Hans Heinrich Gerth, and Bryan S. Turner. 1991. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

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