Ecological Democracy Research Articles

Subaltern Environmentalism in the United States: A Historiographic Review

Abstract When a group of people is faced with both social and environmental subordination, they are the victims of environmental injustice. This subordination is manifest in the disproportionate siting of environmental hazards in poor or minority communities and also in the inequitable distribution of ecological resources, both of which perpetuate the marginalisation of subaltern groups. At the heart of the environmental justice movement is a fight for the empowerment of subaltern groups, heretofore excluded from environmental decision-making. In recognising that the environmental health of their living spaces and families is critical to exacting any kind of improvement of their socioeconomic conditions, subaltern groups have added a dynamic new dimension to their social struggles. This counter-hegemonic struggle for ecological democracy is one of the fastest growing social movements in contemporary society, and requires the attention of environmental historians to situate it within the broader context of the history of environmentalism.

Transitional Strategies and the Inclusive Democracy Project

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to critically assess the various transitional strategies for radical social change which have been proposed in the past, as well as some recently developed strategies, like the civil societarian approach, the Libertarian Municipalism strategy and the ‘lifestyle’ strategies. Second, to propose a new transitional strategy which aims at the transition to a confederal Inclusive Democracy. In this context, the emancipatory subject in present society is discussed, a new type of politics and political organisation is suggested, and a series of steps for the transition to a political, economic, ecological democracy, as well as a ‘democracy in the social realm’ is proposed.

Women, Water, Energy

How can an ecofeminist perspective help us understand and respond to the problems of water pollution and energy production that we face today? Using contemporary examples ranging from the Arrowhead-Weston Project to Manitoba Hydro, Sumas Energy 2, and the Columbia River dams, this article exposes the corporate appropriations of water power from the people and from the land. Ecofeminism illuminates the way in which gendered, cultural assumptions about water, power, and human relations have led to creating a water-power infrastructure that perpetuates environmental sexism, environmental racism, and environmental classism. As an alternative, an ecofeminist approach to water justice advocates strategies for bringing about an ecological democracy, an ecological economics, and a partnership culture in which water and energy flow freely.

Association and deliberation in risk society: Two faces of ecological democracy

(2001). Association and deliberation in risk society: Two faces of ecological democracy. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 4, Associative Democracy: The Real Third Way, pp. 85-104.

Book Review: The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United States

Book Review: The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United States

The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United States

Illuminating manifold connections between the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of vulnerable communities, a new wave of grassroots environmentalism is building in the United States. Groups that have traditionally been at the periphery of mainstream environmentalism - poor people, working people, and people of colour - are fusing the fight for a healthy environment with historical struggles for civil rights and social justice. This timely book brings together leading scholars and activists to provide an ecosocialist perspective on the goals, strategies, and accomplishments of the environmental justice movement, and to explore the emerging principles of ecological democracy that undergird it.

Sustainability and the rationalisation of the environment1

Sustainability is the way to overcome the ecological crisis, but as it is presently conceived it will be merely an extension of the general process of rationalisation. Green thought has identified rationalisation as the expression of an orientation to everyday life which has led to the ecological crisis. This is principally the domination by experts and technocrats and through scientism the exclusion of normative debate from social and political life. Therefore, sustainability will fail to overcome the very problem it is supposed to solve. Beck on reflexive modernity and Giddens on de‐traditionalisation analyse the conditions for transcending the constraints of rationalisation. De‐traditionalisation requires the active consideration of ‘how to live’, which necessitates the asking of normative questions. To Beck the ecological crisis produces the conditions for a critique of the existing social order. This critique provides the possibility of an ‘ecological democracy’ in which through ‘practical reason’ no...

Political and ecological communication

Democracy is a matter of effective communication, not just preference aggregation. Normally it is only communication among humans about human interests that is at issue. But democracy can also exist or be denied in human dealings with the natural world. Ecological democratisation is therefore a matter of better integration of political and ecological communication. Principles of ecological democracy can be used both to criticise existing institutional arrangements, and to inspire a search for alternative institutions that would better integrate politics and ecology.

Culture Change in Postwar Taiwan (review)

Reviews 465 Steven Harreil and Huang Chün-chieh, editors. Culture Change in Postwar Taiwan. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994. x, 340 pp. Hardcover $54.95. The book under review is a collection ofpapers originally presented at an interdisciplinary conference, cosponsored by National Taiwan University and the University ofWashington and held in Seattle in the summer of 1990. In general, I find the book full ofsignificant findings and insights but wanting in systematic analysis. In the following review, I shall try to do three things. First, I shall briefly discuss the gist of each chapter. Second, I shall point out the analytical shortcomings ofthe volume as a whole. Third, I shall try to reinterpret the findings and shed different light on the nature ofculture change in postwar Taiwan. In the Introduction, the editors characterize culture change in postwar Taiwan as a "series ofinterlocked and cross-cutting struggles" in a quest for the grounding, authenticity, and identity ofthe island's culture along the "three related axes of tension": traditional versus modern, native versus foreign, and local versus cosmopolitan. In short, Taiwan is in the midst of a cultural "crisis." The first part, "Culture in 'Crisis': Views of the Past and Outlooks for the Future ," attempts to lay bare the factors that brought about this crisis and to show a way out. Edwin Winkler, in "Cultural Policy on Postwar Taiwan," provides an overview ofthe KMT government's cultural policy and argues that the Nationalists initially pursued a conservative policy ofpromoting "traditional" Confucian morality through mass education and ofpreventing liberal criticism and radical dissent through control and censorship, which were relaxed only in the late 1970s and 1980s. Thomas Gold, in "Civil Society and Taiwan's Quest for Identity," gives a concise and comprehensive overview of social change in the 1980s and contends that the economic "miracle" has unleashed a variety ofnew social forces such as political opposition, environmental protection, labor, and women's and student's movements, which together constitute a strong and vocal "civil society" actively and openly in search ofa new identity for itself. Finally, Huang Chün-chieh and Wu Kuang-ming, in "Taiwan and the Confucian Aspiration: Toward the Twenty-first Century," advocate a return to what they see as genuine classical Confucianism, the heart ofwhich is "ecological democracy," as the only way out ofthe current crisis. The second part, "Culture at the Individual Level: Education and Attitudes," is a disaster. "Investment in Education and Human Resource in Postwar Taiwan,"© 1995 by University by Sun Chen, is an uneasy combination ofa statistical overview ofthe postwar ofHawai'i Pressgrowth ofhigher education and the author's condemnation, without any substantial evidence, of the loss ofthe Confucian ethic among the younger generation. "Transformation ofFarmers' Social Consciousness in Postwar Taiwan," by Huang 466 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 Chün-chieh, alleges that the once harmonious and cohesive "moral economy" of the peasantry has been transformed into a conflict-ridden, profit-oriented "political economy" under the heavy penetration ofglobal capitalism. Huang's argument is overly given to stereotyping and lacks empirical support. For example, his only evidence for the "moral" nature ofTaiwan's peasant economy is a piece of "village contract" from the Mainland during the Sung dynasty! Ifthese two chapters reveal anything about individual attitudes at all, it is the authors' anguish over what they see as the erosion of Confucian morality and social order in postwar Taiwan and their nostalgia for the (largely imagined) ideal past. The third part, "culture with a Small c: Everyday Life," contains essays of much greater interest. David Jordan's "Changes in Postwar Taiwan and Their Impact on the Popular Practice ofReligion" delineates the "superficial" changes and "deep" continuities in popular religion. According to Jordan, these changes include more elaborate religious activities as well as bigger temples, thanks to increasing wealth and the de-regionalization ofreligion, combined with the emergence ofisland-wide pilgrimages due to increasing mobility, but the continuity lies in the basic motives and beliefs of the people that underlie folk religions. Steven Harrell's "Playing in the Valley: A Metonym ofModernization in Taiwan" portrays the weekend leisure activity at a scenic resort, which he believes is a genuinely...

Under RAPs: toward grassroots ecological democracy in the Great Lakes Basin

Case studies of the progress being made in cleaning up seriously polluted areas of the fragile Great Lakes system