Moral Ecology Research Articles

Pets and Pests? Framing Human–Cat Moral Ecologies in the Canary Islands, Spain

Pets and Pests? Framing Human–Cat Moral Ecologies in the Canary Islands, Spain

Blame: What is it good for?

ABSTRACT An emerging strand of research claims that blame is justified on the basis of its instrumental role in serving to ‘cultivate’ or ‘scaffold’ moral agency in those to whom it is directed. On these instrumentalist accounts, our actual collective responsiveness to moral considerations is largely explained by the scaffolding or cultivating force of blame as directed at us. We believe that there is some reason to be sceptical of the instrumental role assigned to blame on these accounts. This is because there is evidence from the psychology literature on prosocial behaviour and moral development that blame may be directly ineffective; it may be ineffective in inculcating moral norms in the children and young adults to whom it is directed. We concede that blame may have this proximate instrumental role in scaffolding moral behaviour in adults, however we believe that such accounts overlook what we think is likely the more central instrumental role of blame. This is the role blame plays in the moral ecology: the models, narratives, scripts, and cultural frameworks that we internalize. The most central instrumental role of blame, we claim, is to indirectly foster moral considerations responsive agency in third parties through modelling behaviour observed in the moral ecology.

Dominion and improvement: The moral ecologies of colonial encounters

Environmental relationships were critical to most early colonial encounters, especially for those involving permanent settlements. The ability to successfully establish a colony required developing relationships with plants, animals, and the land because they were central to providing for the colonists’ basic subsistence needs. The ways European colonizers developed these new relationships rested on their moral ecologies, a mix of beliefs and practices which give a sense of right and wrong to actions that are informed by ontologies. In this paper we use the concept of moral ecologies to explore the relationships that two empires—the British in New England and the Spanish in New Mexico—created as they established colonies that also entangled Indigenous peoples. The differences in moral ecologies between these empires and the peoples they invaded help explain tensions in the past that remain powerful today.

Find the Gap: AI, Responsible Agency and Vulnerability

The responsibility gap, commonly described as a core challenge for the effective governance of, and trust in, AI and autonomous systems (AI/AS), is traditionally associated with a failure of the epistemic and/or the control condition of moral responsibility: the ability to know what we are doing and exercise competent control over this doing. Yet these two conditions are a red herring when it comes to understanding the responsibility challenges presented by AI/AS, since evidence from the cognitive sciences shows that individual humans face very similar responsibility challenges with regard to these two conditions. While the problems of epistemic opacity and attenuated behaviour control are not unique to AI/AS technologies (though they can be exacerbated by them), we show that we can learn important lessons for AI/AS development and governance from how philosophers have recently revised the traditional concept of moral responsibility in response to these challenges to responsible human agency from the cognitive sciences. The resulting instrumentalist views of responsibility, which emphasize the forward-looking and flexible role of agency cultivation, hold considerable promise for integrating AI/AS into a healthy moral ecology. We note that there nevertheless is a gap in AI/AS responsibility that has yet to be extensively studied and addressed, one grounded in a relational asymmetry of vulnerability between human agents and sociotechnical systems like AI/AS. In the conclusion of this paper we note that attention to this vulnerability gap must inform and enable future attempts to construct trustworthy AI/AS systems and preserve the conditions for responsible human agency.

A crisis of moral ecology: Magar agro-pastoralism in Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve, Nepal

Prior political ecology studies have explored the vulnerability of pastoralism and conflicts between protected areas and pastoralist livelihoods. Some conservation regimes regard Indigenous pastoralists’ institutions, knowledge, self-governance and self-determination as incompatible with contemporary conservation on the grounds that the associated practices are unsustainable. Based on critical ethnography, this paper examines the moral ecology of Indigenous Magar agro-pastoralism in the Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve of mid-western Nepal. Traditional Magar management is in crisis due to reserve policies and practices. From a political ecology perspective, I show that the traditional moral ecology of agro-pastoralism sustains complex relationships with the rangelands. Traditional institutions uphold a moral ecology that is deeply rooted in spiritual practices and fosters a sense of responsibility for the preservation of biodiversity and nature. Current conservation policies inadequately recognise these Indigenous moral principles and weaken harmonious socio-ecological relations. In order to manage protected areas sustainably in high-altitude regions, it is crucial to manage agro-pastoralism within the framework of traditional moral ecology through Indigenous peoples’ self-governance and self-determination.

The social and moral ecology of education for flourishing

ABSTRACT Educational institutions exist in reciprocal relations with broader social and moral ecologies. These ecologies involve interactions of networks of individuals and groups with wider aspects of culture, and are therefore broadly social, and they contain explicit or implicit content with regard to right and wrong, and are therefore moral. There is growing recognition that educational institutions could do more to promote full flourishing for students, teachers, staff, society, and planet, but there has been relatively little attention to the role played by such social and moral ecologies in fostering this desired change. This paper argues that ecosystem stewards can inspire and lead educational institutions in this direction by loving more fully into being a cultural climate that promotes morally good forms of ecosystem-wide flourishing. This includes an exploration of a systems perspective in order to encourage a more intentional and skillful integration of healthy social and moral influences.

The Moral Ecology of Unstructured Speaking on Study Abroad: Finding Speaking Opportunities

The Moral Ecology of Unstructured Speaking on Study Abroad: Finding Speaking Opportunities

Beyond Control Towers, Vending Machines, Networks and Platforms towards more dynamic, living metaphors for governance

Metaphors affect how humans perceive and interact with reality, not least in governments, so our metaphors for government and governance matter. In this article, early metaphors such as government as Leviathan, machine, control tower and vending machine are shown to be limited, as are their replacements, like government as network and government as platform. Instead, the article suggests conceptualising government and governance as a ‘moral ecology’, to do justice to the complex and evolving roles of public sectors and public officials amid global turbulence and increasingly challenging domestic circumstances.

How to Make a Wetland: Water and Moral Ecology in Turkey

How to Make a Wetland: Water and Moral Ecology in Turkey

Autonomy in Local Digital News: An Exploration of Organizational and Moral Psychology Factors

ABSTRACT This mixed-methods study examines autonomy and shifts in the evolving digital news industry. Autonomous agency of news workers is an essential indicator of how journalism work is fulfilling its role as the Fourth Estate in American democracy. This work responds to calls in media ethics, media sociology and moral ecology to better understand how organizational structure and individual moral psychology factors influence the levels at which digital news workers exhibit autonomy within their digital news organizations. Using participant observation, a unique survey and respondent interviewing, I worked for one year with a digitally native hyper-local news organization to examine how organizational structure, leadership, socialization, and individual factors influenced autonomy levels in the staff. Results found overall high levels of autonomy in the editorial staff, but with many constraints such as financial pressures, perceived lack of time, a high pressure to perform multiple jobs and duties outside of the scope of typical legacy journalism job descriptions.

Retrofitting the Mekong: Community-based environmental responses to Chinese transnational infrastructure in a Thai border town

For decades, the Mekong River has been a site of ongoing tensions between China-backed infrastructure and communities relying on the mighty Mekong for their lives and livelihoods. In Thailand, tensions have escalated into actions against ecologically damaging hydropower dam development and the blasting of river rapids for Chinese navigation in a Thai border town. This article examines how Chinese transnational infrastructure has been reconfiguring power relationships among actors at multiple scales. Based on my fieldwork, I offer a narrative of the concerted efforts by one small community-based environmental group in northern Thailand, some of whose activism has prodded Chinese planners and project managers into responding to widespread criticism of ecological damage caused by its hydropower and riparian infrastructure and ignoring the needs of downstream local communities. The interactions between Chinese agencies and local NGOs will be discussed through the concept of a moral ecology of infrastructure, which contributes to transcending infrastructure and the environment, enabling a broadened understanding of human and nonhuman relations in more recent retrofitting of the dams and waterway projects. I argue that the reconfigured ‘Green’ Belt and Road Initiative is a contingent process in which multiple transnational actors claim decision-making power over the retrofitting and redevelopment of the Mekong's ecological infrastructure.

How to make a wetland: Water and moral ecology in Turkey By CaterinaScaramelli. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021. 240 pp.

How to make a wetland: Water and moral ecology in Turkey By CaterinaScaramelli. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021. 240 pp.

The power to promise and forgive: Stabilizers of action and the moral ecology

As human beings, we do not live in a world devoid of value, but rather in what could be called a moral ecology that gives us reasons for action. Theorists of social practice such as Alasdair MacIntyre have analyzed the moral ecology as practices with inherent values and goods, but they have given less attention to the moral agents living in the moral ecology. In this article, I build on Hannah Arendt’s analysis of promising and forgiving and argue that these are “stabilizers of action” that cut across various practices and constitute a moral life of self-constancy. Human beings are moral agents in virtue of these moral powers, and they must be cultivated within the social practices where humans develop. This is made difficult in a liquid modern world that puts emphasis on change and flexibility rather than on integrity and self-constancy.

‘As we exploit the river, we should give something back’: A moral ecology of sand extraction

Sand is one of the most extracted materials in the world and a fundamental input for the construction sector. Currently, extraction rates exceed the natural rates of renewal locally and globally, why much literature on sand extraction focusses on environmental and social impacts. Sand extractors are often portrayed as external actors damaging local environments and communities, and limited attention has been granted to how sand extraction unfolds locally. Based on ethnographic research in western Colombia, this paper explores how manual sand extraction is conducted, organised and governed locally, its role in the local community, and how it relates to wider economic and political relations. Through the concept of moral ecology, I illustrate that manual sand extraction in the case is governed by notions of sustainability, reciprocity and solidarity. This ensures that extraction is done in a way that respects ecological cycles and contributes to the construction of community, proposing an alternative to environmentally and socially damaging ways of extraction. Nevertheless, the moral ecology of the dominant political-economic elites relies on notions of efficiency, legality and macro-economic responsibility. As long as these notions determine the terms of formalisation, the alternative form of extraction falls outside the legal framework.

On islands of truth in the Anthropocene: Kant, Rousseau and the loss of worlds

Here I explore how the island was transformed into the site of the instrumentalization of evil, allowing Kant to expand its conception as a land of truth concerning its default genealogy in the homeland, lending purposiveness to evil to ensure this land of truth is protected from natural illusion. By contrast, Rousseau proposed the opposite course, which surprisingly bears important links to contemporary predicaments, in line with the idea of modern progress premised on a generalizing moral ecology. By the turn of the 20th century, reason usurped a new title claiming this land as a planetary system, touted as the second Copernican revolution. This new revolution overlaps with the geological acknowledgment of the turn to the Anthropocene in the century that follows. The article concludes with an interpretation of the Anthropocene as an anxious competition for misrepresenting the future, borrowing the Deleuzian sense of the desert island and the power of the false, vis-a-vis Derrida’s no-world spatiality, altogether shaped by a new relational ontology in a time of climate change compounded by post-truth challenges to political democracy.

Community Development for Bote in Chitwan National Park, Nepal: A Political Ecology of Development Logic of Erasure

The conflict between development and conservation concerns is a perennial topic in sustainable development, and especially significant for marginalized social groups. In Nepal, fortress conservation in protected areas (PA) gave way to a community-based development and natural resource management (CBNRM) narrative of inclusion and participation in so-called buffer zone (BZ) initiatives around national parks. Studies to date show mixed outcomes of the community-based model for marginalized communities, especially for traditional indigenous river and forest dwellers. Academic and government reports of successes and failures of community-based projects in Nepal assume progress is based on traditional indigenous livelihood practices being abandoned and participation in state modernization initiatives in parks and reserves. Thus, despite promises of participation, evidence to date shows a de facto continuation of fortress conservation thinking and erasure of customary knowledge and livelihoods. Based on an ethnographic inquiry informed by political ecology conducted in two villages of Bote IPs (in the buffer zone area) of the Nawalparasi District of Chitwan National Park (CNP), we describe how state interventions and regulations under the guise of community-based participation actively ignore the moral ecology of traditional riverine livelihoods while pursuing a modernization project. Echoing calls by other scholars and stakeholders, we argue that a new approach to conservation and development that respects the environmental ethics of traditional livelihoods is long overdue in Nepal.

The Supreme Sukundimi Declaration – Sacred Water, Moral Ecologies and Ontological Politics in a Mining Encounter in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT I discuss the Supreme Sukundimi Declaration, published as part of a campaign against the Frieda River Copper-Gold Project, in relation to the cosmo-ontological politics of individual and collective actors in a mining encounter in Papua New Guinea. I analyse the mobilisation of the Sepik River as a sacred being and a political actor from a perspective informed by findings from long-term fieldwork with Nyaura communities. In my analysis, I draw on theories from the New Animism that I combine with a political ontology perspective to grasp the political significance of the Sepik River’s connectedness with human and non-human entities in a regional and national context in which spirits are an important part of reality. I suggest that the fight of Sepik people, who align themselves with ancestral forces against the mining project and their national government, can be understood as a fight between different ontologies or ways of being-in-the-world.

Critiquing the Subject of Moral Injury

ABSTRACT Moral injury embodies the claim that war is so transgressive for soldiers that it can create situations that may undermine one’s trust in oneself, others, and the world. Central to leading conceptualizations of moral injury is the assumption that soldiers are perhaps uniquely prone to such moral harm in combat. Other individuals who help form the context of such an injury, and who may also suffer, are overshadowed by the singular light cast on the veteran. This article argues that the nature of one’s moral injury, as well as the ethical landscape of the battlefield, will be misunderstood if definitions of moral injury continue to elide the relationships in which such injury arises. Focusing on one soldier’s reflection, the article critiques such definitions and proposes understanding moral injury as a harm that arises between persons in a wartime’s moral ecology, viewing it as a form of intersubjectivity. It also explores the political and ethical dimensions of such a reformulation.

Impoverishing Moral Ecologies

In this paper I consider the notion of “moral ecology” in relation to the social/cultural construction known as “narco-culture.” My claim is that the moral ecology of narco-culture is one that is both destructive and prohibitive of human flourishing. The general idea of a “moral ecology” is that the moral space of human conviviality is not unlike an ecological, or environmental, space—both are constituted by various interdependent relations which, when working harmoniously and in optimal capacity, maintain the overall well-being of its inhabitants (i.e., human agents or the flora and fauna). Within non-human ecosystems, the quality or health of rivers, trees, earth, air, predator-prey relationships, etc., define what Allen Hertzke calls the system’s “carrying capacity.” The carrying capacity refers to what the system can handle while staying balanced and healthy and also indicates the point beyond which the system, if overburdened or degraded, begins to fall apart. In a social setting, the ecology is constituted by moral rules and behaviors, the degradation of which can cause the degradation of the entire system.

Commentary: the moral limits of service markets – just because we can, should we?

PurposeThis commentary extends our 2020 11th SERVSIG Panel The moral limits of service markets: Just because we can, should we?, inspired by Michael J. Sandel’s book What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. In Sandel’s (2012) book, the pursuit of “the good life” is a common motivation for pushing the moral boundaries of markets and “the good life” is dominated by service consumption.Design/methodology/approachLike Sandel (2012), this commentary begins with a provocation regarding the need for moral development in services marketing. Next, we present three real-life case studies about a modern slavery survivor service, aged care services and health-care services as examples of moral limits, failings and tensions.FindingsThe commentary proposes four guidelines and a research agenda. As service marketers, we must reignite conversations about ethics and morality. Taking charge of our professional moral development, exercising moral reflexivity, promoting an ethics of care and taking a bird’s-eye perspective of moral ecologies are our recommended guidelines. Morality is an essential condition – a sine qua non – for service marketers. Hence, our proposed research agenda focuses first on the service marketer and embeds a moral gaze as a universal professional protocol to engender collective moral elevation.Originality/valueThis commentary highlights the need for a moral refresh in services marketing and proposes ways to achieve this end.