Estrangement, Nature and ‘the Flesh’

Based on fieldwork with people involved in the environmental movement in Scotland, this article describes the connections they made between the future of reproduction and the future of the environment. While we are used to thinking of Euro-American kinship in terms of the passing on of biogenetic substances, in this case an ecological ethic of reproduction, which places the emphasis on considering the kinds of environments into which children will be born, is more salient. An ecological ethic of reproduction urges (potential) parents to consider whether it is responsible to bring future generations into a world with stretched and unequally distributed resources and in which the accumulated consequences of human actions may be altering not only the natural world, but also the ability to reproduce at all. Résumé À partir d'un travail de terrain parmi des sympathisants du mouvement écologiste écossais, l'article décrit les liens qu'établissent ceux-ci entre le futur de la reproduction et le futur de l'environnement. Si l'on pense habituellement la parenté euro-américaine en termes de transmission de matériel biogénétique, on remarque davantage ici une éthique écologique de la reproduction, qui met l'accent sur les environnements dans lesquels les enfants vont naître. L'éthique écologique de la reproduction incite les parents (potentiels) à se demander s'il est responsable d'engendrer de nouvelles générations dans un monde où les ressources sont surexploitées et inégalement distribuées et où les conséquences cumulées des actions humaines pourraient peser non seulement sur l'environnement naturel mais même sur la capacité de l'espèce à se reproduire. Between late 2005 and summer 2007, I conducted fieldwork in a tiny village called Spey Bay on the Moray Firth coast in northeast Scotland, amongst the people who work and volunteer in the wildlife centre there. The Moray Firth has a resident population of over one hundred bottlenose dolphins, and sightings of dolphins, seals, porpoises and minke whales are common in the summer months. Although they are aware that cetaceans are wild animals, the people who work and volunteer at the wildlife centre think of them as intelligent, social, and generally kind-spirited; they represent what is good about the natural world and the ethical imperative to conserve and protect the environment (see also Dow 2016b). The staff and volunteers of the wildlife centre in Spey Bay have placed themselves in the role of caring for these animals, and by extension the wider environment. Along with their specific interest in cetacean conservation, they are influenced by the environmental movement, which compels them to reduce their carbon emissions, recycle their waste, and consume products that have been produced and traded fairly.1 In this article, I will focus on people in Spey Bay's visions of the future, and, specifically, the place of reproduction in the future. As they recognize, while access to food and a safe environment in which to live are of course crucial to individuals' survival, the endangerment and extinction of species are ultimately caused by the failure to reproduce future generations. In the article, I will trace some of the connections people in Spey Bay made between reproduction, time, and the environment, focusing particularly on their concerns about infertility and endangerment. In thinking about the present and the future, people considered how best to manage natural resources, how to deal with natural drives, and what to do with things that humans have produced. In other words, when people in Spey Bay thought about the future, they worried most about what gets left behind for future generations. Running through all this are their ideas about the cumulative effects of human actions on the natural world and a view of the future as the accumulation of past and present events, decisions, and actions. People in Spey Bay think of having children less in terms of the inheritance of biogenetic substances and more in terms of ensuring a stable environment in which future generations can lead safe and healthy lives. I will call this an ecological ethic of reproduction. It is a model of kinship in which reproductive ethics are primarily about critically assessing the kind of world in which any future child will grow up. Rather than prioritizing a molecular perspective on the creation of new lives, which might be expected when discussing reproduction in the UK in the twenty-first century, it draws the focus out to the environmental scale – asking not whether a particular constellation of sperm, egg, and uterus will create a baby, but whether a person born in the future will be able to make a good life. As Marilyn Strathern (1992a; 1992b) has established (see also Bowlby 2013), in British kinship thinking in the late twentieth century, children were the future to their parents' past. Kinship and reproduction have been characterized by questions about the future, including the inheritance of property, the solidification of lineages, the passing on of genes, blood, and other bodily substances, and the transfer of memories, artefacts, and stories from one generation to the next. In British kinship, reproduction entails the downward, future-orientated flow of these myriad inheritances from past and present generations to those yet to come (see also Carsten 2001).2 This common-sense connection between reproduction and the future has, since the late twentieth century, most audibly manifested itself in public debates about assisted reproductive technologies (ART), with many early examples characterized by questions about what kind of future we might unwittingly create through tinkering with life itself (see Edwards, Franklin, Hirsch, Price & Strathern 1993; Mulkay 1997). Many scholars of ART have pointed out that one of the revolutionary aspects of these technologies is that they have brought the previously private matters of marital relations, reproductive health, fertility, and parenting into the public domain, though this is also within a context of shifting family structures and kinship norms. But these debates also touched on much wider questions. For example, in his interviews with people about the potential future of ART in the 1990s, Eric Hirsch (1993) found that, in working out the likely effects of these technologies, people drew on the domains of the state and market exchange, which contrasts with the sense that a separation of family from such 'public' spheres is characteristic of modern life. In her most recent book, Biological relatives, Sarah Franklin (2013: 300-5) discusses the long history of anxiety about technology being coupled with fears about the future of reproduction. She illustrates this using the case of Plato and Socrates' dismissal of the 'sterile' and 'barren' technology of writing. This ancient example of Plato and Socrates' mistrust of writing shows the ambivalence that technology commonly provokes and how vital ideas about time, progress, kinship, and inheritance are to that ambivalence. Ambivalence about technology parallels ambivalence about the future: 'It is the fear of degeneration in the wake of technological change, set against a more confident expectation of an improved, more fruitful, future, that has long characterized technological ambivalence', Franklin writes (2013: 300). One of the most striking characteristics of these fears is how quickly they turn to questions about the future of kinship and fertility. It may seem obvious that ART would provoke concerns about kinship, since many have supposed that this is what they are all about, but Franklin makes the important point that this relationship between technology and kinship is not unique to ART – it may even apply to something as (now) banal as writing. Similarly, when people worry about the future of kinship and reproduction, they may be concerned about much more than family. By positing a crisis on the global scale in which every single person is implicated, environmentalism makes connections across, and thereby potentially renders meaningless, the boundaries around domestic, local, national, and natural worlds. This is its power and its challenge. British people's concerns about human interventions in both the environment and reproduction suggest radical consequences for the concept of nature and its ability to act as the ultimate context. At the end of the twentieth century, as Strathern (1992a) has pointed out, it seemed that interfering with nature by manipulating embryos in vitro or destroying the rainforests could have epochal3 implications: human interventions, whether at the microscopic or the industrial scale, put nature's status and its future in question. Fears about the destruction of the natural world were not only potentially catastrophic in a practical sense, but also had enormous conceptual ramifications, as they created a sense that nature might not be as all-encompassing or powerful as modernist thinking had assumed. Despite these predictions about the effects of ART and environmental destruction on nature, what was less clear at the end of the twentieth century was what effect environmentalism might have on kinship. In an ecological ethic of reproduction, the importance of biogenetic substance in creating relatedness is still assumed, and the universality of the desire to have a child 'of one's own' goes unquestioned, but the main concern is whether it is responsible and ethical to bring children into a world that has been severely damaged by human actions and which has stretched, dwindling, and unequally distributed resources. An ecological ethic of reproduction is one aspect of a worldview in which humans are part of an interdependent and biodiverse environment, which cautions that straying too far from nature is dangerous for everyone, and which conceptualizes parental responsibility as reaching beyond the individual parent or nuclear family to whole communities and societies which create the conditions into which children are born. This article attempts both to describe how this reproductive ethic is manifested in Spey Bay and to suggest its wider implications for our understandings of kinship, reproduction, time, and the environment – and how they might be connected. In my fieldwork in Spey Bay, I followed Strathern's (1992a) approach of tracing analogies and connections, paying particular attention to the ways in which analogy compels action (Street & Copeman 2014). Analogies cross boundaries and show no deference for scale. It behoves anthropologists to focus on these apparent transgressions, since they can make our ways of knowing visible. In talking about reproduction, people in Spey Bay made connections between different worlds and they considered the ramifications of such connections. In conversations about reproduction, they discussed kinship, relatedness, and family, but also nonhuman animals, industry, government, the state of the natural world, and the future of humanity. People in Spey Bay worried not only about their own children or grandchildren, but also about unknown and not yet conceived future generations, including those of other species. Along with this attention to the ways in which people make connections across domains, it will become clear that there is some slippage in the kinds of environments that people in Spey Bay are concerned about in relation to reproduction. They are, certainly, explicitly informed by environmentalism and concomitant concerns about 'the environment',4 as in that which surrounds all species and provides the habitat and resources upon which we rely for survival, but they are also concerned about other environments. Their anxieties about the future of reproduction are about the domestic, economic, social, political, and ecological environments in which future generations will live. Not only is this a reflection of the capacious nature of the term 'environment', but it also indicates the fact that environmentalists are attentive to the interactions between these different environments. In other words, they are particularly concerned about the effects that humans have on the natural world, and so are attentive not only to the state of the ecological environment but also to human society. As I will show, thinking about the relationship between reproduction and the wider world is a reflection of the interdependence that environmentalists perceive between humans and nature. By following the promiscuous connections people in Spey Bay made between different domains of life, I will show their sense of the connectedness of humans and their environments, as well as the centrality of reproduction to how they think about the future. Before focusing my attention squarely on the reproduction of future generations, I will give a sense of what everyday life in Spey Bay is like, with specific reference to the problem of the proper management of waste, illustrated by the examples of public beach cleaning and household recycling. The people with whom I worked in the wildlife centre in Spey Bay, their friends and family, ranged in age from their late teens to sixties. Some had grown up in the area, but most had grown up elsewhere in Scotland or England, and a few were from Western Europe and North America. While some volunteers come to Spey Bay only for a set period of time, everyone saw it as a place in which they could build a good life, and many of the permanent staff in the centre are former volunteers who have decided to settle in the area. The thirty or so houses that make up Spey Bay sit along a road that heads north, then, just before it reaches the sea, turns left to a dead end which becomes the wildlife centre's car park. Beyond that is the mouth of the River Spey. The wildlife centre is based in a complex of buildings, now owned by the Crown Estate, which once housed a successful salmon fishing station that operated between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.5 In the 1990s, a local couple converted some of the buildings into a wildlife centre aimed at locals and tourists. Later that decade, it was taken over by an international conservation charity, which still runs the centre as its flagship national site for advocacy, education, and fundraising. While the people who work and volunteer in the wildlife centre are those most obviously involved in the environmental movement in the area, I had many conversations with visitors to the centre and other locals who are concerned about the environment and climate change. Although they might not all identify themselves as environmentalists, living 'close to nature' seems to compel people there to think about their relationship to their environment. This is in line with the mainstreaming of environmental ideas and values in the last few decades. Indeed, the Scottish Government (2014) included a pledge to pursue environmentally friendly policies in its draft constitution for a potential independent Scotland. Caring for the environment is popularly perceived (and sometimes derided) in Britain as a middle-class concern, and most of the people who work in the wildlife centre are middle class. There is certainly a congruence between their core ethical values – taking responsibility, planning for the future, and making good lives – and their own socio-economic positions, but this popular association of environmentalism with a certain class also overlooks the foundational role that many more marginalized groups have played in the environmental movement (see Taylor 2011 on environmental justice and environmental racism in the US; see also Klein 2014 for numerous examples of indigenous peoples' battles against environmental exploitation). One important aspect of caring for the environment entails recognizing that everyone will be affected by climate change, but that its effects will be unevenly distributed, and that those best resourced to cope also have the most power to prevent it. The wildlife centre in Spey Bay holds regular beach cleans on Sunday afternoons. These events represent a crucial opportunity to educate visitors about the anthropogenic pressures faced by marine creatures and their environments. At the beginning of the beach cleans, staff give the participating adults and children protective gloves, litter picks, and tips about what to look out for as they comb the shoreline for human-made debris. The rubbish is collected together further up the beach, to be sorted by staff and later removed by the local council. When they have finished collecting, participants are faced with piles of car tyres, innumerable types of plastic, rope, and netting, glass bottles and cans, and plenty of other more unusual finds besides. At this point, wildlife centre staff point out what the presence of all this rubbish might mean for the species that live in the sea. They tell children that turtles and whales often eat carrier bags, mistaking them for squid or jellyfish, and that dolphins and fish can get entangled in abandoned fishing nets. Through this example, they show them the consequences of careless waste management, or what gets left behind. They remind them not to drop litter, especially in parks and nature reserves. They encourage adults to recycle their household waste and to use reusable fabric shopping bags rather than plastic ones. Finally, they thank them and congratulate them on the important job they have done and remind them about the generous servings of cake on offer in the wildlife centre's café. Twenty-first-century environmentalism is, in many ways, a contemporary reworking of the Green movement(s) of the 1970s and 1980s, to a context of and The beach cleans in Spey Bay the connection between and the environment and the that especially about the effects of waste on the environment will bring about a in their the environmental has sometimes been explicitly and yet most people who about the environment not it to themselves from in their everyday lives. For many environmentalists in an of a more of the is to focus on questions of (see some environmental that it is too late to this and to focus on and & 2014). Klein (2014) has called for a global of our that and its core in which the natural world primarily resources for humans to is the main to catastrophic climate change. Similarly, that to prevent climate have so far been the of industrial ways of is a term that in but in the to what with household For this parallels a in focus from industrial to individual by ideas about the of waste, and as well as and early ideas about and While of people are to live their lives in more ways, these will ultimately have to be by and which far more carbon than As the beach example the management of waste is an important part of the everyday that people in Spey Bay make to their environmental though in fact when it to the management of their own household waste, it more than it When I to Spey Bay, I in the for just to the wildlife centre volunteers were a food by the that runs the and they often and They their food to be from a local While many were with their for the of natural resources and of they think that these were a of food in this particular When they had the those who had less would often and shopping with from local independent especially those that and While living in the I that the which was collected in in the would often build up for a long before with it. At the time, the not from so to prevent it into the waste had to be taken to the This was only a few the main but far to a car to the of up to people's This an for the many of whom that regular car to the were environmentally By not household they thought that the was being and them in an the of the wildlife who the volunteers to their not the centre had to be to be the of in its own staff As the only person living in the volunteer who owned a and as an rather than an I often the to the – to be and I had a for it especially since the was to In a sense, I was prioritizing our environment over the of the natural By I the volunteers in some of their about making a car by in to deal with their waste in a more environmentally friendly though of course it also as an as who was to put her environmental to one in the of as a and as so The everyday ethics of people in Spey Bay might be using term to create a by which actions that both for present conditions to in the future and the of in These of and in the future point to questions of and which are far from the of as their actions out, people in Spey Bay do some for the future, even only the future. They fear environmental crisis rather than it. of are and but to people's is one of what they now and in the future. In public debates about have concerns about what technological interventions into the creation of human life might mean for the future, from of to a of to the creation of could be with a catastrophic though up in the of such fears – rather than their – is to the These fears are not so much about the end of the world as about what might be one is taken and not they what kind of world people now and in the is from it has in his with such that the can no This into the future to which his is while the of before This is what we call environmentalism and the reproduction of children are concerned and the future. But the of reproduction and of environmentalism are not the one people in Spey Bay in of and of progress, on the they that the future is the rather than the or of the past and The of that the the the and the all But for people in Spey Bay, as is to and in the the of history is and, rather than the of the it in the future. People in Spey Bay brought up ideas of inheritance in the sense of or when we about reproduction and kinship, but they the sense that future generations will the environments that we This is in a practical sense, by their that parental responsibility with planning and creating a for children to be born who is with a used this when the conditions in which to become a and it her and anxieties for future generations, which were by everyone I the social, economic, and ecological and a the family the the and other environments in Scotland has the of the that make up the UK and is than children though this is out by Government In my with people in Spey Bay, it apparent that many were aware of this of Scotland have to and Moray in which Spey Bay is and have some of the to the Scottish Government some of this may be by of people to or their from to as a of market and of life People living in Spey Bay certainly see it as a good place in which to bring up and many of their ideas about what makes a good life are with those about what makes a stable environment in which to to and to the and to wildlife were to be to both children and The fact that could to live in houses rather than often with their own on public and was also I people in Spey Bay whether they thought the state have any role in a in Scotland, or whether it offer for to have children while they are people were with state in reproductive and that, the population in the UK as a the in Scotland was not a People perceived infertility as a which had effects on people's lives and so thought it and to access to but many about whether the much to this of its resources. While they were to the and the desire to have no one thought that having children was a commonly view amongst people in Spey Bay was that there are of children parents or in the world and many that people who to become parents or not they are consider was a volunteer in the wildlife centre at Spey was in his in a and had no though to have them in the future. everyone I with the desire to have children 'of one's this by that there is on this in terms of to his concerns about whether it was for people to turn to infertility also at the wildlife the world as and and think is itself was in her early has children and as a and was to people's to have and drew on her own of later in life to her with people technological to a the that would be to an couple a to the of the children of the and

Pursuing a regional approach to history puts twenty-first-century historians in the strange position of unconsciously echoing their nineteenth-century predecessors, though with differing goals. When historian Frederick Jackson Turner pronounced the Mid-Atlantic region “typically American,” he was of course intent upon divining an elusive national character, not currently a goal of historians. But Turner's frontier thesis emphasized geography and region in a way that would still be recognizable to environmental historians today. For example, Turner's observations concerning the Mid-Atlantic region hinged upon the physical geography of place, property ownership, and use of land. He noted that the Mid-Atlantic was a doorway for emigrants from all of Europe, who “entered by New York harbor” and were then intermixed; that the residents were “rooted in material prosperity” based on the land; and that the region, “with no barriers to shut out its frontiers from its settled regions, and with a system of connecting waterways,” was uniquely situated as a mechanism for the admixture of peoples. In this way, the Mid-Atlantic served as a microcosm of Turner's conception of the frontier as a churning machine that intermingled people from regions and nations to create an essentially American temperament.1Putting aside the intent behind Turner's “typically American” label, it is still possible to apply that judgment to the environmental history of the Mid-Atlantic. The region possesses the most significant concentration of urban centers in the nation, a long history of extractive industry, the legacies of early water-powered industrialization, and the remnants of some of the worst pollution disasters in American history. Along with those built environments, the region contains extensive forests with a long history of human management, complex river systems and bays, diverse colonial and pre-Columbian pasts, agricultural systems both past and current, and biological complexity in fields, forests, rivers, mountains, and shores. This diversity does not make the region unique—but it does mean that almost all of the major themes of environmental history appear in the places roughly bounded by the Atlantic, the 36th parallel, the western edge of the Appalachians, and the northern reaches of the Adirondacks.The environmental matters covered in this article have long been under discussion by scholars, but the emergence of the Marcellus shale issue has served to refocus attention on these topics, some of which had seemed to slip at least slightly from the attention of the field of environmental history. I am particularly interested in two intertwined approaches: environmental history that details the politics, policy, and popular consciousness that shape decisionmaking; and environmental history that explores the impacts of those decisions on nature and landscapes. I refer to these approaches as the history of modern environmental politics and the history of human impact on place. The distinction here lies in what the scholar initially sets out to study: (a) a political process, philosophy, or force by which environmental decisions are made, or (b) a place, landscape, topic, or species that may be transformed by those decisions. Despite this attempt at differentiation, much of the environmental history of the region remains intertwined: no matter the locale, tugging at any thread in the weave of environmental issues eventually pulls on the entire mess. Whether by examining politicians, activists, legislatures, cities, markets, corporations, landscapes, forests, or fish, the histories examined in this essay demonstrate that studying environmental topics in the Mid-Atlantic region involves a bewildering welter of forces and effects, no matter the label.Multiple works published in the last decade have focused on individual politicians or historical actors with connections to the Mid-Atlantic, with the goal of explaining their connections to larger issues in environmental politics. Char Miller produced an early example of this with his work on Gifford Pinchot, arguing that the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service “was at the forefront of those seeking international agreements to check environmental devastation.” From an outdoorsy rest cure in the Saranac Lake region of upstate New York to the managed forests of the family's “summer castle” in Milford, Pennsylvania, Miller continually links the peripatetic Pinchot to the Mid-Atlantic region.2 Similarly, Thomas G. Smith's Green Republican and J. Brooks Flippen's Conservative Conservationist attempt to explain how Republican politics were once connected to the roots of environmentalism in a way rarely seen today. Flippen locates some of Republican attorney and EPA administrator Russell Train's conservationist impulses in a personal attachment to his farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore, while Smith connects Congressman John Saylor's political action to his personal experience of nature in western Pennsylvania.3This attempt to interpret individual actors as bellwethers of larger events also frames recent studies of liberalism. A recent article by Peter Siskind on Nelson Rockefeller, for example, concludes that he “proved the most powerful and influential governor in the nation during the 1960s era, and New York continued in the vanguard of social policy experimentation.” As such, “the unfolding of racial and environmental politics explored here reveal important facets of the evolution of and tensions within post–World War II American liberalism at the state and local level.” In a similar vein, Adam M. Sowards's The Environmental Justice details the life and evolving environmental ethic of the politically active Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, complete with stories of his hearty and physically demanding outdoorsy life, and his mid-1950s public defense of the Chesapeake and Ohio Path in Maryland.4It is obvious that many historians have chosen biographies of individual political figures as a means to narrate historical change in the politics of the environment, but there are a few scholars with the even larger goal of narrating transformations in philosophy and culture. Ben Minteer takes this approach when arguing that Benton MacKaye's cofounding of the Wilderness Society, his writings, and his commitment to creating the Appalachian Trail justifies elevating him into the company of great environmentalist writers such as Lewis Mumford and Aldo Leopold. Similarly, Char Miller's immensely readable biography also argues that Pinchot's “conviction that the power of politics and government … must be employed to expand the benefits of democracy to those often excluded from civic life remains an article of faith among contemporary progressives.” Along the same lines, Adam M. Sowards declares that in increasing public involvement in resource management, Justice Douglas and the larger conservation movement “democratized conservation [as] part of a larger reform process to open up the process of governing.”5These works demonstrate that using the examples of individual actors may certainly be a fruitful route for historians to portray larger stories of environmental politics, but the increasing availability of the archival records of environmental organizations also offers a new path to the same end. Frank Uekoetter's The Age of Smoke compares air pollution control policy in Germany and the United States, with much of the focus on Pittsburgh. Uekoetter ends up analyzing eras of cooperation and confrontation in policymaking, concluding that “the age of smoke emerges as even more crucial: never before or since was the nation-state so well suited to defining and enforcing codes of acceptable conduct and creating institutions to that effect.” My own Citizen Environmentalists fits into this category. This project sifted newly available archival records to more closely examine Pittsburgh's environmental policy in the 1960s and 1970s.6 Dyana Furmansky's 2009 Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy, demonstrates how new archival sources both create and complicate new narratives of movements history. “Before Rachel Carson, Rosalie Edge was the nation's premier example of how one person could wed science to public advocacy for the preservation and restoration of the wide natural world,” writes Furmansky, but it was only through using letters and materials from the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, uncatalogued before 1999, that the author could tell this story.7Possibly the best example of a new scholarly focus on political activism within the narrative of a well-known topic comes from Elizabeth Blum's Love Canal Revisited, which re-examines the famous incident through archival records of a variety of environmental groups, producing a topical analysis distinct from that previously offered by the historical actors involved. Shifting the attention from the story of the individual activist displays the complexity of issues, ending with the argument that “environmental activism can be used to measure the acceptance of other social movements and general ideas about race, class, and gender by different groups over time.” Along the way, Blum calls our attention to the multiplicity and complexity of activist groups at Love Canal, extending the story from Lois Gibbs's Love Canal Homeowners Association to include the Ecumenical Task Force and the Concerned Love Canal Renters Association, and placing all of this in context with the contemporaneous group Women Strike for Peace. Re-examining a well-known story through newly available archival sources has yielded a very different history of environmental activism and its meaning.8While neglected overall, activism as a subject of inquiry is still at the center of many historians' work, including Olga Polmar on New Jersey's toxic heritage and unequal distribution of risk, and Heather Fenyk and David Guston on citizen activism and wetlands in Maryland.9 Michael Egan has attempted to locate models for environmental activism in nineteenth-century New York's battles over regulating milk for public health purposes, starting with the undeniably engaging declaration that “this essay is a fraud.” With the reader's attention firmly in hand, he explains that “this essay is a fraud, because it trades on the anachronistic notion that the urban reformers who pushed for quality control and public health were early environmentalists.” Still, he continues, such a mental trick is useful in understanding the roots of activism.10 Explorations of environmental activism can occur in studies of a bewildering array of environmental issues: in thinking about the sources and shapes of popular environmental protest, scholars have explored topics ranging from activists' attempts to ban logging altogether in the Allegheny Forest, to reconstruction of the devastated Nine Mile Run in Pittsburgh, to activism and real estate in New York, and to the century-long battles over development and industry on the Hudson River.11Whether concerned with an individual political actor or a group of activists, the histories of involvement in environmental politics are highly dependent on the available sources. While new sources are prompting revision, a lack of archival documents has left obvious gaps in our narratives of twentieth-century environmentalism. For example, activism that grew in response to nuclear power and weapons seems to have been barely scratched, with Thomas Peterson's book on local activism in Allegany County, New York, a rare example that demonstrates further opportunity for work. It seems odd that antinuclear activism can be such a major part of European Green politics and yet receive fairly little attention in the United States, with several major clashes in the region remaining unexamined by historians using archival sources. For example, further research is needed on Ralph Nader's Critical Mass, a mid-1960s national antinuclear group based in Washington, DC. Other organizations and nuclear plants remain unexamined, including the Indian River site on the Hudson, the Calvert Cliffs site in Maryland, and the formation of the Shad Alliance in opposition to the Shoreham site on Long Island. Calvert Cliffs seems particularly promising for future research, with late-1960s opposition to the site leading to an important 1971 federal case testing the boundaries of the new National Environmental Policy Act.12While the histories of environmental politics discussed in the previous section start with individual politicians, activists, political battles, or organizations, the works in the next category seem to focus on a place and subsequently examine the impact of changing policies on that subject. The works grouped below begin with a locale, landscape, flora, fauna, ecosystem, or region as a subject. By necessity, they also include explorations of the attempts of institutions, organizations, and governments to choose and pursue a certain path in relation to that subject.There are a few trends among these works on the national level. For example, it has become standard practice for environmental historians to adopt a city or a region as a topic, with prominent examples dealing with Seattle, Boston, and St. Louis. The particular advantage here is the opportunity to narrate the long-term impacts of changing policy on a specific environment. Matthew Klingle's account of Seattle, for instance, shows the human alteration of land and water that latecomers to the city might assume were natural formations, while Michael Rawson demonstrates the surprising interplay of science, politics, and culture in fashioning both the city of Boston—built in large measure from landfill—and the expectations of its inhabitants.13Another scholarly trend is the way that environmental historians have been pulled into newly invigorated discussions of the developing powers and responsibilities of governments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Following William Novak, many scholars outside of environmental history are describing a complex evolution of conflicting and competing forces within a multilayered and occasionally contradictory American state. These historians question the traditionally derided weakness of federal government in the nineteenth century. Many explore the foundations of private property, the police power to infringe upon that property, and alternative locations of power within municipal, civic, or voluntary institutions.14 This has obvious implications for those who are writing histories of human impacts on the environment. A 2012 article by Jessica Wang that is ostensibly about dogs and animal control in New York City, for instance, actually ends up being an example of “one of innumerable areas of everyday public policy in which voluntary associations continue to wield police power, perform public functions, and exercise state authority alongside formally constituted governmental agencies.”15 These words could clearly apply to hundreds of different conservation agencies, sportsmen's groups, county foresters, and state departments of natural resources.Within the Mid-Atlantic, choosing to write about a region, watershed, or metropolitan area can the and impact of government the for example, is a that an wide array of to on the complex at the of the The of this work both with and from their concluding that “the Chesapeake story is a for those who would to on the of a very or understanding of the way the a long of on fish, and William the concluding essay for the that are as many of the past of the Chesapeake as there are and scholars to The here the of any government or decisions based on an understanding of the physical on a the other recent works have attempted the same of analysis on the state and metropolitan with an on government New Jersey's on both the natural and the of the region that have in an that New important for understanding the twentieth-century and their natural Similarly, on and its and the the use of power to or that who from that produced environmental and who the health and on race, class, and work is also to scholars outside of the field of environmental and ends with a essay from that all historians of environmental activism on the of these David The of New York attention in the category of regional environmental While it does not extensive new research, it is a argument for the of regional environmental to a general or it is possible that many could be examined in this way, in history While still that the of human using as a category of argues that boundaries often are the physical boundaries of even more that policies have in environmental and in New York the state as a him to examine the specific and long-term physical impacts of state policy on forests, air and urban or preservation of forests, and to be a popular topic for historians. historians have focused on the forests of the Mid-Atlantic region in the last including on and in on and on New York's David on the on activism and the and on the in Many of these are concerned with and preservation and the powers and of organizations and with those project is as argues for the of and New policies in the early twentieth the state of Appalachian forests today. is of the of conservation in New York, an approach that to the that early also how the human and natural of a were to be these there is also significant work on the the of New York and New and in the of process by which private or public into has been particular in the of state and This is a subject that explores in his on the Allegheny while at a popular also G. on the political battles groups, private property and state and federal Similarly, Adam Sowards's The Environmental Justice an of the over the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal into a national This in the a prominent for Mid-Atlantic as it the to nature in places were The over often larger policy to who declares that examining the complex history of the Appalachian Trail of the complex conservation and social of water that the Mid-Atlantic seem to have significant attention from scholars, particularly in attempts to explain policy This of takes this approach in Long Similarly, The and examine the histories of Maryland's and battles environmental groups, the industry, and are also of particular with and David works on the River as to a more obvious example of John New York's River as one of its case studies of the of actually an essay that explores both the of urban water policy and a regional understanding of urban environmental David has built on a long of historical writing about New York water the development of the water system from the nineteenth through the the of a regional approach to urban echoing William and Matthew and have all about the and the and environmental legacies of that as with its natural the extensive systems its and past and the impact of political of to historians of the are the in which in the nineteenth had and often on a of and As writes in an of system of water a new built that the emergence of a in the of both and Peter have situated and the of the Canal with the formation of the modern American state. As puts the history of the demonstrates a the of the United as a power and as a in the and focus on the of the private the of federal and state action in the This is as an history by seemed to a in a multiplicity of to the over as to significant urban the Mid-Atlantic would seem to many more for ranging from metropolitan to the of in the and of the Hudson River air pollution is also of to historians studying a region that was once the center of and is still to its urban These historians often out that the impact of air pollution is rarely about the it also the larger and of As David writes about smoke the and could which of urban such as and and which such as the of private property and private and have all on air pollution topics in New York City, Pittsburgh, and the pollution and its control is clearly a significant topic of research, but New York and there is work on the topic, with the possible of Mile of from water to air to the built has significant attention in the The Mid-Atlantic was the of the first and the area is with for historical analysis of the and impact of The topic is immensely at the municipal, and all to the and of and historical subject of the twentieth century. Adam emphasized the of in his work The in the on the New locates a powerful and a activism that from major As he “the was a in a in public in a of private and public many other scholars have examining of in New The of is one of works in that has a book on Pittsburgh's while works on and to topic a decade has an of on that explores the racial and of as have environmental so to or control The impacts of those and policies on and are clearly an area of The Mid-Atlantic has produced significant on extractive industry, with and and being offers into the impact on and culture of an that nineteenth-century that as well as the their very of the its and how those be managed and has examined the of state in producing different in the of nineteenth-century and arguing that the evolution of impacts of major extractive industry in these histories of and make it surprising that has so little for this and political By and in have been the of and many to the and local response in historical For example, while with a land ethic that with also that the region was a for opposition and policy was in the Appalachian that the first state and a for federal of the and had such major is as a to historians because it takes place essay with a to Frederick Jackson Turner and his that the Mid-Atlantic was the one “typically American” region in the historians are not of but there is an of his of politics and place in the works As a regional Turner many of the of historians interested in environmental politics and his thesis on the of upon defining regions by physical and with the of industry, and resource by that and these topics once recent studies of the Mid-Atlantic noted this significant for further work in the region The environmental twentieth-century with topics to the activism of the environmental movement has left explored by scholars in environmental or political but by environmental historians. As such, there are important gaps in the to histories of environmental organizations and The the Mile and the the Shoreham nuclear power in more histories through archival and about Marcellus and the of for histories of land in New York and work on the history of antinuclear activism is as new have been in 2012 for the first nuclear plants to be built in the United since Mile has other western nations to from nuclear of specific also seem at least by environmental has a story as complex as the Hudson has as many stories to tell as the the metropolitan of the Eastern a regional and the subject of could be as as The of from power plants the forests, and of the region for a and to international attention in the and but the subject has not yet been explored through archival sources. For that in the environmental impact of the War could be the in Maryland, of in and even more in the works on the Mid-Atlantic, and environmental policy in there also to be a lack of focus on policy institutions and the of the individual city or and the large of federal David The of New York is an and the way to a new for environmental This of work to a larger while for of different environmental or and within is still much work to be at this of as by recent work the of and federal policy work would with the of many both from within and environmental who are in of the of the American these the larger matter of the of the environmental movements of the twentieth The here is over the of modern environmentalism had any significant impact on the course of history. In the published The of Environmental several historians question the of an environmental For example, Frank Uekoetter upon the of to on policy and “the environmental may one more a In the same declares while “the as an important … never was influential to as a for an in the history of modern the of the of this Adam argues that the environmental and in was a of of and a to make a a of activists, and This is a and any of the political or movements to human action in relation to their change the course of human or are the forces of and of property very the question environmentalism Mid-Atlantic might be an place to any to these and it is that environmental historians be in the region for some to Environmental never to refocus our in a history that explores the foundations and of that and while Marcellus shale is our the next is the with trends in the nature of archival and a in environmental this means that the history of recent environmental politics and the physical impacts of policy is into a more of published research in environmental and most continue to in the

Introduction The concept of ‘wellbeing’ is typically thought of in human-centric ways, referring to the affective feelings and bodily sensations that people may have which inform their sense of health, safety, and connection. However, as our everyday lives, identities, relationships, and embodiments become digitised and datafied, ‘wellbeing’ has taken on new practices and meanings. The use of digital technologies such as mobile and wearable devices, social media platforms, and networks of information mediate our interactions with others, as well as the ways we conceptualise what it means to be human, including where the body begins and ends. In turn, digital health technologies and ‘wellness’ cultures such as those promoted on social media sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook have also shaped our understanding of ‘wellness’ and ‘wellbeing’, their parameters, and how they ought to be practiced and felt (Baker; Lupton Digital Health; Lupton et al.). For millennia, aspects of human bodies have been documented and materialised in a variety of ways to help people understand states of health and illness: including relationships to the environments in which they lived. Indigenous and other non-Western cosmologies have long emphasised the kinds of vibrancies and distributed agencies that are part of reciprocal more-than-human ‘manifestings’ of kinships, and have called for all people to adopt the role of stewards of the ecosystem (Bawaka Country et al.; Hernández et al.; Kimmerer; Rots; Todd; Tynan). In Western cultures, ideas of the human body that reach back to ancient times adopt a perspective that viewed the continuous flows of forces (the four humours) in conjunction with the elements of air, wind, earth, and fire inside and outside the body as contributing to states of health or ill health. It was believed that good health was maintained by ensuring a balance between these factors, including acknowledgement of the role played by climactic, ecological, and celestial conditions (Hartnell; Lagay). A more-than-human approach is beginning to be re-introduced into Western cultures through political activism and academic thinking about the harms to the planet caused by human actions, including global warming and climate crises, loss of habitats and ecological biodiversity, increased incidence of extreme weather events such as bushfires, floods, and cyclones, and emerging novel pathogens affecting the health not only of humans but of other living things (Lewis; Lupton Covid Societies; Lupton Internet of Animals; Neimanis et al.). Contemporary Western more-than-human philosophers argue for the importance of acknowledging our kinship with other living and non-living things as a way of repositioning ourselves within the cosmos and working towards better health and wellbeing for the planet (Abram; Braidotti; Plumwood). As these approaches emphasise, health, wellbeing, and kinship are always imbricated within material-social assemblages of humans and non-digital things which are constantly changing, and thereby generating emergent rather than fixed capacities (Lupton "Human-Centric"; Lupton et al.). In this article, we describe our More-than-Human Wellbeing exhibition. To date, new media, Internet, and communication studies have not devoted as much attention to more-than-human theory. It is this more-than-digital and more-than-human approach to health information and wellbeing that marks out our research program as particularly distinctive. Our research focusses on the many and varied digital and non-digital forms that information about health and bodies takes. We are interested in health data as they are made and form part of the objects and activities of people’s everyday lives and aim to expand the human-centric approach offered in digital health by positioning human health and embodiment as always imbricated within more-than-human ecosystems. We acknowledge that all environments (natural and human-built) are intertwined with humans, and that to a greater or lesser extent, all are configured with and through the often exploitative and extractive practices and ideologies of those living in late modern societies in which people are positioned as superior to and autonomous from other living things. Together with more-than-human scholarship, we take inspiration from work in which arts-based, multisensory, and museum curation methods are employed to draw attention to the intertwining of people and ecologies (Endt-Jones; Howes). Our exhibition was planned as a research translation and engagement project, communicating several of our studies’ findings in arts-based media (Lupton "Embodying"). In what follows, we outline the concepts leading to the creation of our exhibits and describe how these pieces materialise and extend more-than-human concepts of wellbeing and care. Five of the exhibits we created for this exhibition are discussed. They all draw on our research findings across a range of studies, together with more-than-human theory and medical history (Lupton "More-Than-Human"). We describe how we used these pieces to materialise more-than-human concepts of health, wellbeing, and kinship in ways that we hoped would provoke critical thought, affective responses, and open capacities for action for contributing to both human and nonhuman flourishing. The background, thinking, and modes of making leading to the creation of ‘Cabinet of Human/Digital/Data Curiosities’, ‘Smartphone Fungi’, ‘Hand of Signs’, ‘Silken Anatomies’, and ‘Talking/Flowers’ are explained below. Bodily Curios Vaughan Wozniak-O’Connor and Deborah Lupton. Cabinet of Human/Digital/Data Curiosities. Reclaimed timber, found objects, resin 3D prints. 2023. Fig. 1: Cabinet of Human/Digital/Data Curiosities. Fig. 2: Detail from Cabinet of Human/Digital/Data Curiosities. The objects we have placed in Cabinet of Human/Digital/Data Curiosities (figs. 1 and 2) mix together such things from the past as prosthetic human eyeballs and teeth used in medicine and dentistry in earlier eras. This collection of found and manufactured objects, both old and new, draws on the concept of the ‘cabinet of curiosities’, also known as cabinets of wonder, which first became popular in the sixteenth century. Artefacts were assembled together for viewing in a room or a display case. The items were chosen for being notable in some way by the curator, including objects from natural history, antiquities, and religious relics, as well as works of art. These collections, purchased, curated, and assembled by members of the nobility or the wealthy as a marker of refinement, knowledge, or social status, were the precursor of museums (Endt-Jones). We see digital devices such as mobile phones as one of a multitude of ways that operate to document and preserve elements of human embodiment – indeed, as contemporary ‘cabinets of curiosities’. Our cabinet also refers to the tradition of medical museums, which display preserved human organs, body parts, and tissue in glass bottles for pedagogical purposes. Under this model of health, specimens of both ‘ideal’ health and also ‘ill’ health – abnormalities in the flesh – were documented as a means of categorising wellbeing. Museums such as these would often treat diseased and disabled bodies as oddities and artefacts of ‘curiosity’. In this work, we reimagine and wind back this way of thinking, through displaying and drawing attention and curiosity towards signs of the body and the everyday. We are showing that wellbeing is more than a process of categorisation, comparison, or measurement of ‘ideal’ or ‘abnormal’; it is in the traces we leave behind us when we return to the earth. Our information data are human remains, moving as endless constellations of the interior and exterior of the body (Lupton Data Selves). In this artwork, both reclaimed wood and 3D-printed resin were used as a synergy between the natural and synthetic. Taking our cue from the manner of display of these items in medical museums, we have added our own curios, including 3D-printed body organs sprouting fungi (fig. 2), as a way of demonstrating the entanglements between humans and the fungal kingdom. Interspersed among these relics of human bodies is a discarded mobile phone with its screen badly shattered. It is displayed as a more recent antiquated object for making images and collecting, storing, and displaying information and images about human bodies, which itself is subject to disastrous events despite its original high-tech veneer of glossy impermeability. Technologies are more-than-flesh as human-made simulacra of body parts. Our wellbeing is sensed and made sense of through bodies’ entanglements of human and nonhuman. These curios both materialise traces of our bodies and wellbeing and extend our bodies into the physical spaces we inhabit and through which we move. Reading the Traces and Signs Vaughan Wozniak-O’Connor and Deborah Lupton. Smartphone Fungi. Recycled European oak, 3D printed resin, CNC carved plywood. 2023 Vaughan Wozniak-O’Connor and Deborah Lupton. Hand of Signs. Laser-etched walnut and plywood. 2023. Fig. 3: Smartphone Fungi. / Fig. 4: Detail from Smartphone Fungi. Wellbeing is also a process of mark-making, realised through the reciprocal impressions we leave on each other and the world around us. In Smart Phone Fungi (figs. 3 and 4) we capture the idea of ‘recording’ that takes place between people, technologies, and the natural world. It was inspired by a huge tree which members of our team noticed on a bush walk in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney, Australia. Growing from this tree were fungi of similar size and shape to the smartphone that was used to capture the image. In our interpretation, a piece of reclaimed timber was used to represent the tree, itself marked by its human use, and fungal shapes replicating those on the tree were produced using computer numerical controlled (CNC) carving. The central timber

At the dawn of environmental philosophy, Asian thought, especially Japanese thought, was expected to be a plentiful source of inspiration to improve the relationship between human beings and nature. However, the influence ofAsian thought upon environmental philosophy seems to be very limited, or remains superficial. Concepts and theories in this field are almost all Western, while genuine Asian concepts and theories hardly appear outside studies about particular Asian cases. This paper compares the modern, Western, environmental mind and the natural thought found in Japanese culture. Through this comparison, we see the characteristics ofboth more clearly, in terms ofadvantages and limitations. To this end, this paper, firstly, analyzes the concept ofanthropocentrism, secondly, shows how Western environmentalism attempts to overcome anthropocentrism, and thirdly, considers anthropocentrism and nonanthropocentrism in Japanese culture.

In an attempt to insulate ourselves from danger and pain, our anthropocentric culture coaxes us into a psychological survival strategy which involves constructing, identifying with, and inhabiting the constricted and impermeable boundaries of a supposedly separate and detached self. The foreclosure of the boundaries of a constricted self isolates and alienates the self from others and from the world, shackling, restricting, and perverting the full and natural experience of our sense of care, compassion, and connection. Habitually experiencing ourselves as separate, we are denied the fullness of the experience of our whole selves, and we strive in vain to fill up the resulting vague sense of emptiness and discontent. Further, this sense of alienation from nature inevitably leads to the possibility of devastating effects for nature. A description of the experience of “self as part of nature” is presented and elaborated using results from phenomenological research on the structure of this experience: The grip of exclusive identification with one’s habitual, constricted sense of self is relaxed, allowing one’s self to reinhabit genuine but habitually vacated regions of self, to reemerge from its supposed separateness and extend its relatedness out into what was formerly lived as dissociated aspects of self. The core constituents involve the simultaneous unfolding of the transcendence of the habitual constricted sense of self, an increase in permeability of self boundaries and sense of intermingling connectedness, and a transcendent psychological identification with a profound sense of wholeness of self-in-relation with the rest of nature. The contentions of Deep Ecology are supported: The experience fosters a more ecocentric identity, profoundly inclining one toward care and compassion toward the natural world. This experience is found to be of the transpersonal type, a necessary, but often lacking, compliment to the personally based form of identification.

The present study seeks to explore the Eco- psychological interconnections in the context of two novels The Vegetarian and We do not Part written by Han Kang. Hence, the Primary focus of the study has been to examine the way human psychological state is interviewed with nature, ecological degradation and societal norms. Theodore Roszak (1992) concept of ecopsychology has been employed as the framework, while textual analysis method has been used for the purpose of data analysis. The findings revealed the emotional trauma and a sense of alienation that the both protagonists felt stemming from modern disconnections with the natural world. The findings also provide an insight ecological issue manifest with the human psyche especially in terms of gender, identity and cultural expectations.

Migrants, Vagrants, and the Making of the Anthropocene

Virtually everyone values some aspect of the natural world. Yet many people are surprisingly unconcerned about environmental issues, treating them as the province of special interest groups. Seeking to understand how our appreciation for the beauty of nature and our indifference to its destruction can coexist in us, Shierry Weber Nicholsen explores dimensions of our emotional experience with the natural world that are so deep and painful that they often remain unspoken.The Love of Nature and the End of the World is a gathering of meditations and collages. Its evocations of our emotional attachment to the natural world and the emotional impact of environmental deterioration are meant to encourage individual and collective reflection on a difficult dilemma. Nicholsen draws on work in environmental philosophy and ecopsychology; the writings of psychoanalytic thinkers such as Wilfred Bion, Donald Meltzer, and D. W. Winnicott; and ideas from Buddhist and Sufi traditions. She shows how our emotional responses to the vulnerabilities of the natural world range from intense caring and compassion, through grief and outrage, to diffuse depression. Individual chapters focus on silence and the process whereby we move from the unspoken to the spoken, the love of nature, the perceptual reciprocity with the natural world to which we might mature, beauty in the human and natural realms, the psychological impact of the destruction of the natural world, and reflections on the future.

“People live here, they die here so they must leave traces.” (Read 140) “Whatever colonialism was and is, it has made this place unsettling and unsettled.” (Gibson, Badland 2) Introduction What does it mean for [a] country to be haunted? In much theoretical work in film and Cultural Studies since the 1990s, the Australian continent, more often than not, bears traces of long suppressed traumas which inevitably resurface to haunt the present (Gelder and Jacobs; Gibson; Read; Collins and Davis). Felicity Collins and Therese Davis illuminate the ways Australian cinema acts as a public sphere, or “vernacular modernity,” for rethinking settler/indigenous relations. Their term “backtracking” serves as a mode of “collective mourning” in numerous films of the last decade which render unspoken colonial violence meaningful in contemporary Australia, and account for the “aftershocks” of the Mabo decision that overturned the founding fiction of terra nullius (7). Ray Lawrence’s 2006 film Jindabyne is another after-Mabo film in this sense; its focus on conflict within settler/indigenous relations in a small local town in the alpine region explores a traumatised ecology and drowned country. More than this, in our paper’s investigation of country and its attendant politics, Jindabyne country is the space of excessive haunting and resurfacing - engaging in the hard work of what Gibson (Transformations) has termed “historical backfill”, imaginative speculations “that make manifest an urge to account for the disconnected fragments” of country. Based on an adaptation by Beatrix Christian of the Raymond Carver story, So Much Water, So Close to Home, Jindabyne centres on the ethical dilemma produced when a group of fishermen find the floating, murdered body of a beautiful indigenous woman on a weekend trip, but decide to stay on and continue fishing. In Jindabyne, “'country' […] is made to do much discursive work” (Gorman-Murray). In this paper, we use the word as a metonym for the nation, where macro-political issues are played out and fought over. But we also use ‘country’ to signal the ‘wilderness’ alpine areas that appear in Jindabyne, where country is “a notion encompassing nature and human obligation that white Australia has learned slowly from indigenous Australia” (Gibson, Badland 178). This meaning enables a slippage between ‘land’ and ‘country’. Our discussion of country draws heavily on concepts from Ross Gibson’s theorisation of badlands. Gibson claims that originally, ‘badland’ was a term used by Europeans in North America when they came across “a tract of country that would not succumb to colonial ambition” (Badland 14). Using Collins and Davis’s “vernacular modernity” as a starting point, a film such as Jindabyne invites us to work through the productive possibilities of postcolonial haunting; to move from backtracking (going over old ground) to imaginative backfill (where holes and gaps in the ground are refilled in unconventional and creative returns to the past). Jindabyne (as place and filmic space) signifies “the special place that the Australian Alps occupy for so many Australians”, and the film engages in the discursive work of promoting “shared understanding” and the possibility of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal being “in country” (Baird, Egloff and Lebehan 35). We argue specifically that Jindabyne is a product of “aftermath culture” (Gibson Transformations); a culture living within the ongoing effects of the past, where various levels of filmic haunting make manifest multiple levels of habitation, in turn the product of numerous historical and physical aftermaths. Colonial history, environmental change, expanding wire towers and overflowing dams all lend meaning in the film to personal dilemmas, communal conflict and horrific recent crimes. The discovery of a murdered indigenous woman in water high in the mountains lays bare the fragility of a relocated community founded in the drowning of the town of old Jindabyne which created Lake Jindabyne. Beatrix Christian (in Trbic 61), the film’s writer, explains “everybody in the story is haunted by something. […] There is this group of haunted people, and then you have the serial killer who emerges in his season to create havoc.” “What’s in this compulsion to know the negative space?” asks Gibson (Badland 14). It’s the desire to better know and more deeply understand where we live. And haunting gives us cause to investigate further. Drowned, Murderous Country Jindabyne rewrites “the iconic wilderness of Australia’s High Country” (McHugh online) and replaces it with “a vast, historical crime scene” (Gibson, Badland 2). Along with nearby Adaminaby, the township of Old Jindabyne was drowned and its inhabitants relocated to the new town in the 1960s as part of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme. When Jindabyne was made in 2006 the scheme no longer represented an uncontested example of Western technological progress ‘taming’ the vast mountainous country. Early on in the film a teacher shows a short documentary about the town’s history in which Old Jindabyne locals lament the houses that will soon be sacrificed to the Snowy River’s torrents. These sentiments sit in opposition to Manning Clark’s grand vision of the scheme as “an inspiration to all who dream dreams about Australia” (McHugh online). With a 100,000-strong workforce, mostly migrated from war-ravaged Europe, the post-war Snowy project took 25 years and was completed in 1974. Such was this engineering feat that 121 workmen “died for the dream, of turning the rivers back through the mountains, to irrigate the dry inland” (McHugh online). Jindabyne re-presents this romantic narrative of progress as nothing less than an environmental crime. The high-tension wires scar the ‘pristine’ high country and the lake haunts every aspect of the characters’ interactions, hinting at the high country’s intractability that will “not succumb to colonial ambition” (Gibson, Badland 14). Describing his critical excavation of places haunted, out-of-balance or simply badlands, Gibson explains: Rummaging in Australia's aftermath cultures, I try to re-dress the disintegration in our story-systems, in our traditional knowledge caches, our landscapes and ecologies […] recuperate scenes and collections […] torn by landgrabbing, let's say, or by accidents, or exploitation that ignores rituals of preservation and restoration (Transformations). Tourism is now the predominant focus of Lake Jindabyne and the surrounding areas but in the film, as in history, the area does not “succumb to the temptations of pictorialism” (McFarlane 10), that is, it cannot be framed solely by the picture postcard qualities that resort towns often engender and promote. Jindabyne’s sense of menace signals the transformation of the landscape that has taken place – from ‘untouched’ to country town, and from drowned old town to the relocated, damned and electrified new one. Soon after the opening of the film, a moment of fishing offers a reminder that a town once existed beneath the waters of the eerily still Lake Jindabyne. Hooking a rusty old alarm clock out of the lake, Stuart explains to Tom, his suitably puzzled young son: underneath the water is the town where all the old men sit in rocking chairs and there’s houses and shops. […] There was a night […] I heard this noise — boing, boing, boing. And it was a bell coming from under the water. ‘Cause the old church is still down there and sometimes when the water’s really low, you can see the tip of the spire. Jindabyne’s lake thus functions as “a revelation of horrors past” (Gibson Badland 2). It’s not the first time this man-made lake is filmically positioned as a place where “violence begins to seem natural” (Gibson, Badland 13). Cate Shortland’s Somersault (2004) also uses Lake Jindabyne and its surrounds to create a bleak and menacing ambience that heightens young Heidi’s sense of alienation (Simpson, ‘Reconfiguring rusticity’). In Somersault, the male-dominated Jindabyne is far from welcoming for the emotionally vulnerable out-of-towner, who is threatened by her friend’s father beside the Lake, then menaced again by boys she meets at a local pub. These scenes undermine the alpine region’s touristic image, inundated in the summer with tourists coming to fish and water ski, and likewise, with snow skiers in the winter. Even away from the Lake, there is no fleeing its spectre. “The high-tension wires marching down the hillside from the hydro-station” hum to such an extent that in one scene, “reminiscent of Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)”, a member of the fishing party is spooked (Ryan 52). This violence wrought upon the landscape contextualises the murder of the young indigenous woman, Susan, by Greg, an electrician who after murdering Susan, seems to hover in the background of several scenes of the film. Close to the opening of Jindabyne, through binoculars from his rocky ridge, Greg spots Susan’s lone car coursing along the plain; he chases her in his vehicle, and forces her to stop. Before (we are lead to assume) he drags her from the vehicle and murders her, he rants madly through her window, “It all comes down from the power station, the electricity!” That the murder/murderer is connected with the hydro-electric project is emphasised by the location scout in the film’s pre-production: We had one location in the scene where Greg dumps the body in some water and Ray [Lawrence] had his heart set on filming that next to some huge pipelines on a dam near Talbingo but Snowy Hydro didn’t […] like that negative content […] in association with their facility and […] said ‘no’ they wouldn’t let us do it.” (Jindabyne DVD extras) “Tales of murder and itinerancy in wild country are as old as the story of Cain in the killing fields of Eden” (Badlands 14). In Jindabyne we never really get to meet Greg but he is a familiar figure in Australian film an

This paper charts the emergence of agrarianism as a philosophical thought, situates its development within other ideas such as Romanticism and Transcendentalism, and how agrarian thought intertwined with ecocritical literary analysis. The premise of this study is that within the current state of environmental crisis and degradation, the insight from agrarianism can provide an alternative environmental imagination to reconsider the position of humanity in the wider world. This study applies intellectual history as the framework on how the concepts and theories interacted and influenced other social/cultural/intellectual developments. Agrarianism celebrates rural life and agriculture as a response to industrialization, championed by thinkers like Emerson and Thoreau, who see it as a path to a more meaningful existence. It then examines how agrarianism intersects with ecocriticism, an environmental literary perspective that emerged in the 1960s. Agrarianism contributes significantly to ecocriticism, particularly in its critique of industrialization, exemplified by Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." Both perspectives emphasize a holistic approach to the environment, emphasizing the interconnectedness of humans and nature. Wendell Berry's ecological agrarianism embodies these principles, stressing sustainable agriculture and environmental care. In conclusion, this paper highlights agrarianism's historical significance and contemporary relevance, illustrating its convergence with ecocriticism in their shared commitment to environmental ethics and preserving the natural world. Keywords: Agrarianism, ecocriticism, environmental philosophy, transcendentalismAbstrakTulisan ini memetakan kemunculan agrarianisme sebagai sebuah pemikiran filosofis, menempatkan perkembangannya dalam gagasan lain seperti Romantisisme dan Transendentalisme, dan mengkonstruksikan korelasi pemikiran agrarian dengan analisis sastra ekokritik. Premis penelitian ini adalah dalam kondisi krisis dan degradasi lingkungan yang dihadapi masyarakat secara global, wawasan agrarianisme dapat memberikan alternatif imajinasi lingkungan untuk mempertimbangkan kembali posisi umat manusia di dunia yang lebih luas. Penelitian ini mengadopsi sejarah intelektual sebagai kerangka kerja untuk memahami bagaimana konsep dan teori-teori tersebut saling berinteraksi dan memengaruhi perkembangan sosial, budaya, dan intelektual lainnya. Agrarianisme merayakan kehidupan pedesaan dan pertanian sebagai respons terhadap industrialisasi, dipromosikan oleh pemikir seperti Emerson dan Thoreau yang melihatnya sebagai jalan menuju keberadaan yang lebih bermakna. Kemudian, makalah ini mencermati bagaimana agrarianisme mempunyai kesamaan perspektif dengan ekokritik,perspektif sastra lingkungan yang muncul pada tahun 1960-an. Agrarianisme memberikan kontribusi besar bagi ekokritik, terutama dalam kritiknya terhadap industrialisasi, yang diwakili oleh "Silent Spring" karya Rachel Carson. Keduanya menekankan pendekatan holistik terhadap lingkungan, menekankan keterkaitan antara manusia dan alam. Agrarianisme ekologis Wendell Berry mewujudkan prinsip-prinsip ini, menekankan pertanian berkelanjutan dan perawatan lingkungan. Sebagai kesimpulan, makalah ini menyoroti signifikansi historis agrarianisme dan relevansinya dalam konteks kontemporer, menggambarkan konvergensinya dengan ekokritik dalam komitmen bersama terhadap etika lingkungan dan pelestarian dunia alam.Kata kunci : agrarianism, filosofi lingkungan, transcendentalisme, ekokritik

Naturalizing phenomenology – A philosophical imperative

The Beagle record: By R. D. Keynes. Pp. 409. Cambridge University Press, London. 1979. £30.00

Over 60 years ago C. Wright Mills wrote: contemporary society itself, with its alienating methods of production, its enveloping techniques of political domination, its international anarchy—in a word, its pervasive transformations have shaped the very ‘nature’ of man and the conditions and aims of his life. Neither view could address the fundamental concerns of classical social theorists - what Mills called the “sociological imagination” - how the historical changes that came with the rise of rational, capitalist, modernity, with its complex division of labor, shaped human nature as seen in an individual’s biography (experiences) and his/her life course. In late 1950s C. Wright Mills claimed that American sociology had lost its way, it had failed to live up to the promises of its founders. For Mills, the rapidly growing urban labor forces of white-collar workers, namely clerks, salespersons, and service workers, faced a new kind of alienation.

It is often claimed by environmental philosophers and green political theorists that liberalism, the dominant tradition of western political philosophy, is too focused on the interests of human individuals to give due weight to the environment for its own sake. In "How to be a Green Liberal", Simon Hailwood challenges this view and argues that liberalism can embrace a genuinely 'green', non-instrumental view of nature. The book's central claim is that nature's 'otherness', its being constituted of independent entities and processes that do not reflect our purposes, is a basis for value and can be incorporated within liberal political philosophy as a fundamental commitment alongside human freedom and equality. Hailwood argues that the conceptual resources already exist within mainstream liberalism for a thoroughly non-instrumental perspective. Adopting a rigorous philosophical approach Hailwood tackles a wide range of themes across environmental ethics, including holistic theories, deep ecology, eco-feminism and eco-anarchism, as well as issues in value theory and political philosophy more generally. In making the case for liberalism's green credentials "How to be a Green Liberal" is a formidable challenge to recent green political theory and will be required reading not only for students of political philosophy but for all those interested in the natural world and man's relationship to it.

Integral Ecology As Theosemiotic: A Case For A Pragmatist Theological Ethics