Ecological Beliefs Research Articles

The character of ecology

Contrary to many contemporary readings of ecological thought, the internal structure of both the political beliefs and philosophy is immensely complex and tangled. Existing typologies neither pay sufficient attention to this internal complexity, nor to the problematic and tense relationship of the philosophical ideas and political aspirations. All analyses of these questions are handicapped to some degree by a resistance to classification within the ecology movement itself. However, an analysis of the various ecological beliefs reveals a typology which both shows affinities with aspects of traditional ideologies, and also illustrates a cross cutting of familiar ideological loyalties. This typology does not offer any placebo to these dilemmas. Conversely it charts the subtle shifts in meaning and allegiance between various contributions to ecological thought. Distinctions within the typology are made for heuristic purposes; they are not hard and fast exclusive dichotomies. There is a subtle ‘shading over’ of concepts through a spectrum of judgements and positions. Thus, differences are not wholly exclusive. At times they represent slight but significant shifts of emphasis. The typology thus displays the internal complexity of ecological thought and consequently exhibits its character as a movement.

Earth Rising: Ecological Belief in an Age of Science by David Oates

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 387 Earth Rising: Ecological Belief in an Age of Science. By David Oates. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1989. Pp. 255; notes, index. $24.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). David Oates provides a sensible survey of the new worldview he calls “ecologism” (to distinguish it from the technical science of population dynamics among species, with which it is not always in tune). For people interested in technology and its future, his analysis is important because he concludes that “the instinctive individualism of the Western mind is undergoing a deep change” (p. 54) and this will have profound effects on our social organization—as well as on our technologies, which are presently wreaking havoc on ecosystems everywhere on the planet. Tracing the roots of certain basic generative “myths” characteristic of ecologistic thought, such as those of the superorganism and symbiosis, Oates extends basic ecologism into the philosophical area (primarily via the thought of Gregory Bateson) and also the moral area. Ecologism, he writes, heals an ancient and destructive breach in Western thought between humans and the universe; it rests on the notion that the human and the natural do fully coincide: they share the basic value of survival (p. 150), so long as that is interpreted—and here is the fundamental divergence from outdated neo-Darwinian “nature red in fang and claw” ideas—to include future generations and “all those other organisms on whose lives ours depend” (p. 151). Such principles, applied to individu­ als, populations, communities, and ecosystems, past and future, lead to a vision of a human steady state in which rival myths (such as that of potentially unlimited “growth” with technology magically triumphant over all the biological messes it has created) are left behind. Oates writes carefully, and, while he is sympathetic to the values that are emerging in the new view he charts, he is not a vulgar propagan­ dist for them. He is quite sophisticated scientifically (he is an amateur naturalist as well as poet), and he is well read in the relevant literature. The set of ideas he is discussing are increasing in influence and intellectual power and elegance, and nobody thinking about the future of our technological society can afford to be ignorant of them. Oates’s book will serve as a reliable introduction to these ideas, and it is written to be accessible, though not overwhelmingly exciting, to students. Also, for those in the field who may be uneasy with the “Deep Ecology” position, Oates offers an interesting and more systematically worked out alternative approach, although his conclu­ sions are similar. He is also aware that fiction writers such as myself have attempted to apply ecologistic assumptions and methods of analysis to the portrayal of future societies, lending some degree of concreteness to what is otherwise a fairly abstract level of discourse. Ernest Callenbach Mr. Callenbach is the author of Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging, portraits of a future ecologically sustainable society. He is also an editor at the University of California Press. ...

Earth rising: ecological belief in an age of science

Earth rising: ecological belief in an age of science

Ecological Beliefs and Behaviors: Assessment and Change.

This volume fills the void created by the lack of a book-length, critical, and systematic treatment of ecological attitudes and behaviors. It emphasizes psychometrics and experimentation within a broad behavioral-cognitive framework focused on the natural world. Gray summarizes and integrates existing research and reviews major alternative approaches to measuring ecological attitudes, while presenting his own ecological attitude domain model. Russell Weigel and Richard Borden provide state-of-the-art reviews of the research on the relationship between ecological attitudes and actions and on the linkage between personality and ecological concern. Gray himself integrates the theoretical perspectives of social psychologists Milton Rokeach and Martin Fishbein in his construction of a paradigm for ecological change. Using this as background, he reviews existing behavioral studies, differentiating between those that rely on information and those that use reinforcement to produce a desired change in behavior. Finally, he suggests that the key to large-scale change is the creation of a true environmental ethic in our society.