Contemporary Environmentalism Research Articles

Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (review)

Reviewed by: Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future Arthur Versluis Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future Bron Taylor Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010; 360 pp. $24.95, ISBN 9780520261006 (paper). In the past few years, scholars of religion have begun to muse about the extent to which there is a developing environmentalist or "green" religion. In the latest (fifth) edition of his widely used college textbook Experiencing the World's Religions, for instance, Michael Molloy speculates about whether there is an emerging global green "super-religion." Of course, terms like that raise a host of questions, not least whether such terminology is in fact claiming a kind of ascendancy of environmentalism over traditional religions. And can one really speak of environmentalism or nature spirituality as a religion or religious tradition? In his new book Dark Green Religion, Bron Taylor, professor of Religion and Nature at the University of Florida, offers his survey of the history and contemporary influences of nature spirituality, and argues that contemporary environmentalism amounts to an emergent green religion. JSR readers will be familiar with Taylor's work from his article in our journal on the origins and history of radical environmental thought, but the scope of Dark Green Religion is far wider. Here, Taylor begins by differentiating [End Page 137] his terms, not only institutional "religion" from the more inwardly directed "spirituality," but also "green religion"—"which posits that environmentally friendly behavior is a religious obligation"—and "dark green religion"—"in which nature is sacred, has intrinsic value, and is therefore due reverent care" (10). His book focuses, then, not on how traditional religions incorporate ecological concerns, but on how we find today a growing "earth-based" global religious current that manifests itself in neopaganism as well as in a panoply of not overtly religious forms, including, Taylor holds, contemporary films, music, and art. The primary significance of this book for readers interested in contemporary radicalism is, of course, the extent to which dark green religion or spirituality informs political activism. And indeed, Taylor discusses authors with whom readers of JSR will be familiar, such as the primitivist John Zerzan and the radical environmentalist Derrick Jensen, as well as many others, both prominent and lesser known. Taylor remarks that "there is a permeable border between radical environmental spirituality and that which appears in the wider environmental milieu" (92). He mentions Jensen's encouragement of radical illegal actions (in Endgame, blowing up dams), but quickly moves to much less incendiary figures like the writers associated with the magazine Orion. He concludes the chapter on "radical environmentalism" by asking rhetorically "how long is the shadow of dark green religion?" The next chapter is on the sunny side of life—"Surfing Spirituality"—implying the shadow is not very long at all. The subtext of Dark Green Religion is expressed in the subtitle, Nature Spirituality and the Global Future. The title and the book implies that our collective global future is tied to the growth and success of environmental religion. As a result, the more activist kinds of radical environmentalism are subordinated to the more publicly palatable ones, and a group like Earth Liberation Front appears only once in the text. Of course, this makes sense because the book is primarily about nature religion, not about radical political activism. Still, JSR readers will not find here very much exploring of the radical activist "shadow" of dark green religion, and quite a bit on the sunnier subjects of surfing, films, music, and festive tribalesque gatherings. To what extent is there a movement across the permeable border between popular social manifestations like these and more radical kinds of environmentalist [End Page 138] activism? Dark Green Religion does not demonstrate much interest in this kind of question. Rather, Dark Green Religion is a significant contribution to literature on and of the phenomenon its author seeks to name and to define. And the book does describe an array of ecological impulses expressed in diverse global forms. That ecological awareness and activism are much more widespread than in the past is without doubt. That nature spirituality is to some extent waxing, I accept. Neopaganism and related new religions...

Ecology without Politics?

Ecology without Politics? Catriona Sandilands (bio) The Ecological Thought. Timothy Morton. Harvard University Press. http://www.hup.harvard.edu. 184 pages; cloth; $39.95. In the final paragraph of Ecology without Nature (2007), Timothy Morton, having spent 200 pages arguing against the idea of Nature that informs most ecocriticism, makes a plea for politics. Specifically, he argues that "ecological criticism must politicize the aesthetic," by which he means not only getting rid of a consumerist, aestheticized Nature that is "over there," but also avoiding the opposite temptation to "join the nonhuman," thereby collapsing aesthetic distance but remaining caught in our own assumptions. We need instead to hold "our mind open for the absolutely unknown that is to come." Ecological politics, for Morton, thus involves acknowledging that we have the choice to hang out in the muck and muddiness of uncertainty—or more precisely, that we must begin ecological criticism from the obligation (shades of The Communist Manifesto [1848]) to "constantly and ruthlessly reframe our view of the ecological." The Ecological Thought is, by Morton's own admission, the "prequel" to Ecology without Nature. Although written accessibly to appeal to a more-than-ecocritical audience (the interested scholar can follow the trail of endnotes), there is no question that the book demands of its readers a ruthless reframing of ecological views. He begins with an argument familiar to readers of Ecology without Nature: that the modern era, even as it developed the possibility of ecological thought, has made that thought impossible to achieve because of our reliance on ideas of (external) nature, wilderness, and the like. The more we struggle to preserve Nature, the less we see what's really going on in the world of human encounter and connection with other beings. What we need is something entirely different: not just ecological thinking, but "the ecological thought," which is, as he writes, "the thinking of interconnectedness" itself, meaning both thinking about it and thinking from it. And the rest of the book spells out, employing an eclectic range of ideas and thinkers (Charles Darwin to Buddhism, Blade Runner [1982] to William Blake), what that thinking means, why it's a better view of nature than Nature, and what the consequences might be of the radical openness that he understands as integral to this ecological thought. The book is divided into three main chapters: "Thinking Big," which introduces two key ideas in the work, the mesh and the strange stranger; "Dark Thoughts," which expands on these concepts and reacquaints us with Morton's "dark ecology," a critical counterpoint to the "bright green" optimism in which he sees so much contemporary environmentalism unfortunately mired; and "Forward Thinking," which involves neither apocalypse nor prelapsarian fantasy nor posthuman deconstruction, but rather thinks "how to care for the neighbor," the absolute Others with whom we are inextricably interconnected. To suggest that these chapters present a mounting, linear argument would be, however, to misrepresent the book entirely: appropriate to the interconnected world Morton is describing—the mesh—the book does not offer so much a clear starting and ending point as it does a palimpsest of paths designed to disorient conventional environmental thinking in favor of a radical ecological uncertainty. Morton's case for the relevance of Darwin's evolutionary story of "proliferation, randomness, contingency, and useless display" thus joins up with Emmanuel Levinas's insistence on our "infinite obligation to others" (the kernel of Morton's idea of the strange stranger) and both weave through "a discussion of time…a detour through Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, then return." Time-lapse photography meets algorithms (with a little glimpse into monster movies) to explore an understanding of daffodils not as independent living beings but as little, moving compositions of formal processes, the same ones that produce human beings: "material organization turns out to be sets of formal relationships, not squishy stuff." And an interesting discussion of ecological art includes, among other things, fractal geometry, Virginia Woolf, John Cage, and noir film. I am less concerned than some readers might be with the slightly dizzying quality of these collected trains of thought, partly because I think it is appropriate to the...

Introduction: From Phosphate Springs to ‘Nordstream’: Contemporary Environmentalism in the Baltic States

Introduction: From Phosphate Springs to ‘Nordstream’: Contemporary Environmentalism in the Baltic States

Elitism, Pluralism, or Resource Dependency: Patterns of Environmental Philanthropy among Private Foundations in California

We map the distribution of environmental grants provided by selected California foundations in 2000 and the degree of dependency of the grantees on foundation support to test theoretical claims about foundations' role in contemporary environmentalism. Contrary to assertions by critics of elitism, there is no consistent favoritism of the so-called ‘mainstream’, ‘flagship’, national environmental organizations as recipients of foundations' grants. Instead, donors support a variety of causes with varying levels of funding based on recipients' perceived expertise and needs—a finding consistent with pluralist and resource-dependency arguments. On the receiving end, we find that the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have greater reliance on foundation money are those which are younger, have fewer paying members, and are not involved in local-level or toxics issues. Overall, we find that no single theory can adequately explain the trends in giving and in dependency. Future research building on these findings can proceed along two directions: a theoretical path in search of a more universal theory of foundation giving; or an empirical path focusing on clarifying different types of NGO grantees, the longitudinal patterns of environmental giving, and the impact of foundation funding on NGO grantees.

Transforming environmentalism: Warren County, PCBs, and the origins of environmental justice

Contemporary public policy circles are quick to acknowledge that factors contribute to ill health and pose a particular threat to poor and minority communities. But public officials rarely examined the distribution of hazards such as polluted air and contaminated water. In the 1980s, as toxic waste facilities proliferated, the justice movement demanded that impoverished communities no longer be burdened by excessive risks. In Transforming Environmentalism, Eileen McGurty explores a moment central to the emergence of the justice movement. In 1978, residents of predominantly African American Warren County, North Carolina, were horrified to learn that the state planned to build a landfill in their county to hold forty thousand cubic yards of soil that was contaminated with PCBs from illegal dumping. They responded to the state's plans with a four-year resistance, ending in a month of protests with over 500 arrests from civil disobedience and disruptive actions. McGurty traces the evolving approaches that residents took to contest environmental racism in their community and shows how activism in Warren County spurred greater political debate and became a model for communities across the nation. Transforming Environmentalism explores how the specific circumstances of the Warren County events shaped the formation of the justice movement and influenced contemporary environmentalism.

Toward a Political Rehabilitation of Environmentalism

At present, the progress achieved by the environmental movements of the 20th century is being challenged or arrested on many fronts. Environmental legislation at the national level has encountered limits to its efficacy, liberalizing trends in global trade policies continue to undermine such legislation, and, particularly in the United States, publics have become increasingly hostile to many aspects of the environmentalist agenda. In his book Community and the Politics of Place, Daniel Kemmis provides a critical analysis of some limitations of contemporary American politics and focuses on the potential role of place in edifying more participatory forms of democratic practice. Kemmis’s book is becoming a foundational work in environmental thought because it speaks to the crises of contemporary environmentalism by presenting an alternative vision of political practice that has the potential to lead to more effective environmental policies while also mending the public image of environmentalism.

Does Environmentalism Have a Future?

There is a paradox at the heart of contemporary American environmentalism. On the one hand, its organizations are generally larger, stronger, better funded, and more knowledgeable than ever before. Membership has grown in recent years; there are now more than eight million dues-paying members of the major national organizations-and many more in local and statewide organizations-compared to about two million in 1980. Moreover, polls consistently show very high levels of public support for environmental protection, levels that would be the envy of many progressive movements.

The Atlas of US and Canadian Environmental History (review)

Reviewed by: The Atlas of US and Canadian Environmental History Matthew Evenden The Atlas of US and Canadian Environmental History. Edited by Char Miller. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. viii, 248, illus. US$150.00 This atlas could best be described as an edited collection of illustrated entries on important problems in the environmental history of Canada and the United States, as much an encyclopedia as an atlas. The volume makes no pretence to North American coverage; Mexico does not appear in these pages. Seven chapters organize the over ninety entries into key themes, defined by process and period rather than place. The volume opens with two chapters on European expansion: the colonial era and conflict from 1492 to the 1850s. Two chapters on industrialization and the conservation era organize entries covering the period from 1850 to 1920. Another chapter, 'From the Depression to Atomic Power,' brings the volume up to the 1960s. Two final chapters treat the rise of the environmental movement and contemporary environmentalism. Within each chapter recurring organizational categories (Agriculture; Wildlife and Forestry; Land Use Management; Technology, Industry and Pollution; Human Habitats; and Ideology and Politics) ensure a continuity of focus. Over the course of the volume, nevertheless, one moves from broadly conceived entries and change on a continental scale to increasingly topical and politically-oriented problems. The rationale for this design and emphasis is not clearly articulated. Somewhat unusually for a North American volume of this kind, there is a range of Canadian and trans-national entries written primarily by Canadian scholars. Particularly valuable entries that provide crisp and balanced introductions to complex topics include those by Larry McCann on urban parks, Alan MacEachern on conservation, Jennifer Read on the Boundary Waters Treaty, and George Warecki on wildlife preservation. One suspects that the inclusion of so many Canadian or trans-national entries is due to the participation of Canadian historian Jennifer Read as 'editorial adviser' to the project, though her role is not specified in the editor's brief preface. Most atlases consist primarily of maps. This atlas consists primarily of words, graphs, and images. Entries for such topics as the fur trade, sustainable forestry, and the collapse of inner cities and industrial centres contain no maps. In fact, only slightly more than half of the atlas entries contain small inset maps. The best maps in the volume are the reproductions of historical cartography or those that have been previously published. The maps drawn specifically for this project are poorly conceived and sometimes misleading. Many of the maps simply reproduce data or maps taken from government Web sites and construct them [End Page 638] at a scale that is hard to comprehend. One map of the East Coast fisheries, for example, encompasses a vast section of the continent, extending west to Saskatchewan, even though all of the relevant data, drilled down in coloured dots, are to be found along the East Coast. A map of the numbered treaties neglects to include all of the treaty areas. Another on Canadian land use locates Native reserves with red dots that bear no connection to scale. This gives the uninformed reader the mistaken impression that a vast portion of British Columbia's land base, for example, is bounded within Native reserves, even though most of the reserves identified by a red dot encompass a small area. On the same map, national parks are identified in green with small parks appearing as green dots. In locations where national parks exist near to reserves, red dots trump green. An entry on Canadian dams and rivers contains only those dams and sites mentioned in the text, but not others relevant to the subject. Given that the author of the entry, Jean Manore, has written widely on river-development problems in Canada, one can assume that these absences were produced at the cartographic and editorial end of this project and not necessarily at the hands of the individual entry author. The Historical Atlas of Canada may well have conditioned Canadian historians to expect a good deal from historical atlases. At their best, historical atlases should contain original research and maps that present spatial data clearly and in a visually attractive manner...

Embodying the Environment in Everyday Life Practices

This paper suggests ways in which ‘the environment’ needs to be reconfigured so that it better resonates with how people are experiencing politics, nature and everyday life. Through empirical research on environmental concerns and everyday practices, this paper sketches a framework through which the values associated with contemporary environmentalism might be developed in a more reflexive relationship to wider transformations in society. In particular, the research critically evaluates the standard storyline of a ‘global nature’ under threat and in need of collective action by a global imagined community. In contrast to rhetorics of the global environment, this paper explores ways in which the environment is being embodied, valued and experienced in an array of social practices. The paper further outlines the significance of such embodied practices as significant yet undervalued points of connection for wider, global environmental issues.

The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century

Review: The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century By William A. Shutkin Reviewed by Pramod K. Nayar University of Hyderabad, India William A. Shutkin. The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2000. 273 pp. ISBN 0-262-19435-X (hardcover). US$27.95. Acid-free paper. Smog is democratic, declared Ulrich Beck. Environmental degradation is the most egalitarian of problems. And it is this assumption that informs William Shutkin's The Land That Could Be. Shutkin's work, drawing upon his experience as activist (he is the founder of New Ecology, Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and co-founder of Alternatives for Community and Environment), envisages a new direction for contemporary environmentalism. Shutkin begins by suggesting that environmentalism thus far has taken two trajectories: the romantic-progressive and the mainstream-professional. The romantic-progressive strain, steeped in nostalgia for a past golden age, has simply critiqued development without offering viable alternatives. The mainstream-professional was restricted to the educated, affluent classes, and visualized environmentalism strictly in politico-legal terms. In place of these two models Shutkin suggests a civic environmentalism that takes into account racial, cultural, and regional inequalities. Shutkin suggests that a civic environmentalist democracy will be less of a top-down, professional (p.19) approach than a local, pluralistic, multicultural one. Shutkin's emphasis is on the role of the local communityincluding residents, businesses, government agencies-in disseminating environmental consciousness and effecting earth-friendly local policy changes. The community, therefore, is the central player here. While Shutkin acknowledges the importance of national policy initiatives like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act (1970), he argues that for environmental justice to become a reality, it will require than pan-national policies: it requires grassroots understanding and tackling of problems. To this end, Shutkin suggests that the new civic environmentalist model will be participatory and will emphasize community development initiatives where diverse components like the social, economic, political, and environmental mesh together. Using case studies like the Dudley Street Neighbourhood Initiative Realization Plan, the case of Bay Area's Transit Village, and Colorado's Cattlemen's Land Trust, among others, Shutkin puts forth the case for a localized approach to environmental thinking and activism. Civic democracy, as Shutkin terms it, is more than just community participation and conversion; it is rooted in a place, a physical environment conducive to collective action and community building (p.31). A community feedback system, environmental education about local hazards, alternatives and development, Industrial Ecology (IE) informed by a sense of environmental justice and environmental health is the real solution to contemporary environmental problems. …

Environmentalism, New Social Movements, and the New Class: A Cross‐National Investigation*

AbstractThe environmental movement is one of the most successful social movements in recent decades, garnering substantial public support throughout western Europe and the United States. Environmentalism is also considered a key “new social movement” (NSM), assumed to share fundamental characteristics with other NSMs such as the women's, antinuclear, and peace movements. Using the results of a 1990 cross‐national survey of western Europe and the United States, we examine three broad suppositions regarding public support for the environmental movement and other NSMs. We first examine the idea that the general public distinguishes between two branches of contemporary environmentalism—the more traditional one of nature conservation and the newer, broader one of general environmental protection—and find that the general publics in 18 nations make little distinction between them. We next examine the degree to which public support for environmental protection is related to support for other NSMs, and find a strong relationship between the two‐thereby validating a widely assumed but seldom‐tested tenet found in the NSM literature.Finally, we examine the presumed bases of support for environmental protection and other NSMs, particularly the notion that NSM supporters are drawn heavily from the “new class.” We find that demographic variables, including membership in the new class, are poor predictors of support for the goals of NSMs in general and of support for environmentalism in particular.

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR STUDYING ENVIRONMENTAL MENTALITY AND BEHAVIOR

Introduction We proceed from a broad definition proposed by Milton (1996:33): is a concern to protect the environment through human effort and responsibility wherever and in whatever form it exists, and we will use this term rather loosely, synonymously with such concepts as mentality or friendliness. Environmentalism is a certain way of thinking about the environment and a practical way of relating to it. Modern environmentalism as a particular field of thought and actions is quite a recent invention, its emergence is usually dated to late 1960s and early 1970s, resulting from various intellectual developments and forms of practice. Macnaghten and Urry (1998:73) describe contemporary environmentalism as risen from ... English Romanticism, the traditions of preservationism, critique of postwar modernization, science-based critiques of unlimited growth, the expansion of ecology and nature conservation expertise, the counter-cultural movement, the mediatization of social life.... Environmentalism is a complex social phenomenon, covering various forms of thought and practice, including new elements of individual lifestyle (selective consuming, recycling), green-colored group initiatives (from local save the forest initiatives to Greenpeace actions), and global political programs, conventions and agendas. common denominator for such a variety of forms is a concern about the state of natural environment, and a concern about human-nature relations. Environmentalism became one of the most influential social and political paradigms of the late 20th century, remaining at the same time quite controversial. First of all because it has started to question the very foundations of the mainstream Western political and economical establishment, trying to find the balance between the obviously contradictory forces of a modern world. As Matthew Gandy (1997:154) describes it: The postmodern era, as distinctive historical period since the early 1970s, is a deeply paradoxical one for environmental discourse. On the one hand, social and economic developments have facilitated the emergence of post-material political concerns with lifestyle issues such as environmental quality. On the other hand, the underlying dynamic of global social, economic and political change has been towards neoliberal deregulation, higher levels of worldwide consumption and an acceleration in environmental degradation and resource use at a global level. Contemporary environmental discourse has scarcely begun to reconcile these contradictory developments. emerging need for such a reconciliation has inevitably meant that environmental issues gradually overcame the limits of being a field of study predominantly for natural sciences. Contemporary environmentalism is first of all a social and political issue, studied by very different disciplines, from biology to economy, from psychology to law and medicine. In this article we will make an attempt to approach the issue from the social-psychological viewpoint. Our aim is analytical--to clarify the main concepts that are used when speaking about environmentalism in the context of person-nature relations. We will also present some hypotheses about the specific features of environmentalism in transitional societies, which might stand as a framework for empirical studies of the issue in this part of the world. Components of environmentalism Departing from the person-environment interaction perspective, empirical manifestations of environmentalism may be analytically divided into three kinds of phenomena. Firstly, a cognitive representation about the situation in the natural and human world, secondly--an evaluation or standpoint in relation to this situation, thirdly--an activity or restraint from activity in relation to the environment. first, cognitive (or non-evaluative) component of environmentalism may be revealed in generalized and specific knowledge (and misconceptions) about the environment and environmental consequences of human activities; ecological beliefs and belief systems; representations of public environmental debates on environmental issues; categories, meanings and explanations that are organized in the form of lay theories and myths of nature; perception and understanding of ecological threats and available options, etc. …

Warren County, NC, and the Emergence of the Environmental Justice Movement: Unlikely Coalitions and Shared Meanings in Local Collective Action

Warren County, North Carolina, is heralded as a watershed event of contemporary environmentalism, as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement. This article identifies four requirements for the emergence of a social movement (cultural frames, social networks, disruptive action, and political opportunities) and argues that all four were met in the Warren County situation. The article then illustrates how the master frame of environmental justice emerged out of the specific collective action in Warren County. Lastly, the article shows how criteria for waste management decisions have shifted as a result and how these decision processes have become more participatory.

The natural and the artefactual: the implications of deep science and deep technology for environmental philosophy

In this book, philosopher Keekok Lee challenges one of the central assumptions of contemporary environmentalism: that if we could reduce or eliminate pollution we could 'save' the planet without unduly disrupting our modern, industrialized societies. Lee argues instead that the process of modernization, with its attendant emphasis on technological innovation, has fundamentally transformed 'nature' into just another manmade 'artefact.' Ultimately, what needs to be determined is if nature has value above and beyond human considerations, whether aesthetic, spiritual, or biological. This provocative book attempts to reconfigure environmental ethics, positing the existence of two separate ontological categories-the 'natural' and the 'artefactual.' Natural entities, be they organisms or inert matter, are 'morally considerable' because they possess the ontological value of independence, whereas artefacts are created by humans expressly to serve their own interests and ends.

Conflitos sociais contemporâneos: considerações sobre o ambientalismo brasileiro

Este ensaio se utiliza do instrumental analítico da teoria da ação sobre movimentos sociais e conflitos sociais contemporâneos, bem como de reflexões sobre ONGs, para esboçar um modelo explicativo que dê conta de aspectos relevantes do ambientalismo contemporâneo. Parte-se da hipótese de que a crise que afeta lideranças e militantes ambientalistas é provocada pela sua dificuldade de, por um lado, constituir-se como um único ator social portador de um projeto cultural de sociedade e, por outro, de desempenhar o duplo papel de ator social e agente político. A partir daí, propõe-se compreender a mudança provocada pela ação das ONGs ambientalistas em sua dimensão cotidiana. As ONGs desempenham papel predominante no profundo processo de aprendizado social que mobiliza categorias muito variadas de sujeitos e, também, no estabelecimento definitivo de um campo especificamente ambiental. Além do debate teórico nacional e internacional sobre o tema, essas considerações também se baseiam em observação direta do cotidiano de ambientalistas desde a CNUMAD-92.

Bounded People, Boundless Lands: Envisioning a New Land Ethic

One of the main challenges of contemporary environmentalism is to find an enduring, more ethical way for people to live on the planet. In Bounded People, Boundless Lands, legal scholar Eric T. Freyfogle asks a series of pointed and challenging questions about the human quest for ecological harmony. Deftly interweaving moral and ethical considerations with case studies and real-life situations, Freyfogle provides a deep philosophical examination of personal responsibility and the dominion of human beings over the earth.

Bhagavadgītā, Ecosophy T, and deep ecology

This article analyses the influence of Hinduism on Ecosophy T. Arne Naess in several of his environmental writings quotes verse 6.29 of the Bhagavadgitā, a Hindu sacred text. The verse is understood to illustrate the close relationship between the ideas of oneness of all living beings, non‐injury and self‐realization. The article compares the interpretations of the verse of some of the most important Hindu commentators on the Bhagavadgitā with the environmentalist interpretation. There is no agreement in the history of the Hindu tradition on the meaning of the verse. The interpretation of Ecosophy T contrasts sharply with the interpretations of the Hindu monastic traditions but has similarities with the twentieth‐century social activist interpretations of Mohandas K. Gandhi and S. Radhakrishnan. In Ecosophy T aspects of this social activist version of Hinduism have been creatively reinterpreted in the context of contemporary environmentalism.

On Environmentality: Geo-Power and Eco-Knowledge in the Discourses of Contemporary Environmentalism

T his study examines how discourses of nature, ecology, or environment, as disciplinary articulations ofeco-knowledge, might be reinterpreted as efforts to generate systems of geopower over, but also within and through, Nature for governance of modern economies and societies. The thinking of Michel Foucault, particularly his notions of sexuality and bio-power as mediations for discursively formed discipline, provides a basis for this reinterpretation, because many of terms associated with the environment are perplexing until one puts them under a genealogical lens. These dynamics have been at play for nearly a hundred and thirty years-or at least since self-consciously ecological discourses were formulated by George Marsh (1885) or Ernst Haeckel (1866) in nineteenth century-but their operations are particularly apparent today. While many examples of such tendencies might be mobilized here, this examination of geo-power systems as a mediation of

Environmental leadership: From compliance to competitive advantage

Contemporary environmentalism in leading companies has become an integral part of organizational strategy. Such a proactive, advantage-driven approach involves change at every level. This article describes the best practices of firms who have integrated environmentalism into their business planning and operations in ways that translate to bottom line benefits. The experiences of these firms carry a clear and urgent message— companies that continue to approach environmental problems with band-aid solutions and quick fixes will ultimately find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Ecology and carnival: Traces of a ?green? social theory in the writings of M. M. Bakhtin

Visions of a life in harmony with a bountiful natural world have long pervaded human history, from Hesiod's Golden Age to the medieval Land of Cokaygne and contemporary environmentalism.2 Yet with some important exceptions most notably the social ecology of Murray Bookchin, the "post-industrial utopianism" of Rudolf Bahro, Andr6 Gorz, and Herbert Marcuse, and in certain strands of feminist and ecological thought it is only relatively recently that radical social theory has aimed at a systematic analysis of our problematic relation with the non-human world and reflected upon the possibility of a "reconciliation" of humanity and nature in the context of an imagined "good society."3 It is my contention here that such current attempts to rethink human-nature relations find substantial, if perhaps unexpected, support in the idiosyncratic and heterodox writings of the Soviet cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. As it stands, this assertion may seem rather odd, for whereas Bakhtin's intellectual career encompassed a prodigious range of topics, from the phenomenology of perception to the history of the European novel, the issue of human-nature relations received little direct or sustained attention in his writings. Nonetheless, my argument is that his theories do contain a number of elements that are at least compatible with several recent critiques of "human-centered" instrumental reason, which have been entirely overlooked in the existing literature of Bakhtin.