CHAPTER 6

The ldeology ofEnvironmental Domination

No one seerns to know how useful it isto be useless.

-Chuang Tzu, third century B.c.E.

he view from Glacier Point in YosemiteNational Park is one of the world's mostfamous. From this overlook you can see a

sweeping panorama of Yosemite, which manyhave called the most beautiful valley in America.A number of years ago, mybrother and sister-in-law, Jon and Steph, were visiting her relativesin California, and they decided to take Stephsgrandmother to see Yosemite, where she hadnever been. An elderly woman, she did not walkwell, so they took her only to sites you can get toby car. You can drive right up to Glacier Point,and they did. As Jon later recounted the story tome, they helped Stephs grandmother up to theedge and stood there for a few minutes taking itall in. Then Jon turned and asked her, somewhathopefull¡ "Well, what do you think?"

She considered the question carefull¡ andreplied, "AIl that forest. What a waste. Thereshould be people and houses down there."

When two people look out on a scene, a scene

of any kind, they are unlikely to appreciate it injust the same way. Faced with the same materialcircumstances, we each see something different.Where my brother Jon saw the beauty of wildnature in that view from Glacier Point, Stephsgrandmother saw wasted resources. Such differ-ences are a part of our individuality. They alsoreflect social differences in the apparatus ofunderstanding that we use to organize our expe-rience. There are larger social and historical pat-terns in the distinctive mental apparatuses weeach bring to bear on the world around us. In aword, there is ideology at work.

In this second part of the book, we take idealfactors as the point of entry into the ecologicaldialogue. As we saw in Part I, the other side of thedialogue is always close at hand, and we willfindthat here too. Investigation of ideal factorsinevitably leads back to material questions. Butthe emphasis in Chapters 6 through 9 will be onthe form the environment takes in our minds.

The independent power of ideas in our lives iswell illustrated by the history of environmentalideas. The material conditions we now regard as

127

128 THE IDEAL

Figure 6.1

environmental problems have long historicalprecedents, yet few people in the fust half of thetwentieth century questioned the increasing per

capita appetite for resources, the spread of theautomobile and its sprawling land use, the inven-tion of yet another chemical or mechanicalweapon for every instance of the environment'sresistance to our desires. Earþ article s in NationalGeographic, for example, extolled the industrialmight that spawned marvel after marvel, as theirtitles implied: "Synthetic Products: Chemists

Make a New World," "Coal: Prodigious Workerfor Man," "The Fire of Heaven: Electricity Revolu-

tionizes the Modern World," "The Automobile

Nightfalls on New Haven harbor in Connecticut. The human domination of the environmentis particularly characteristic of the waterfronts of industrial port cities.

Industry: An American Art That Has Revolu-tionized Methods in Manufacturing and Tians-formed Transportation." (See Figure 6.1.)

In the decades from 1960 on, though, theideological situation changed dramatically incountry after countr¡ as Chapter 7 discusses.r

National Geogrøphic, to continue with thatbarometer of Western cultural values, beganrunning articles with titles like these: "OurEcological Crisis;" "African Witdlife: Man'sThreatened I-egacyi' "Nature's Dwindling Tiea-sures," "Pollution: Threat to Man's Only Home,""The Tallgrass Prairie: Can It Be Saved?" 4 differ-ent ideology had taken more general hold, at least

among the writers and editors (and, we can

presume) many of the readers) of this perennially

popular magazine.

Scholars have studied the role of ideology

in the ecological dialogue in wo broad ways,

largely drawing on historical evidence. First, they

have considered the ideological circumstances that

make domination of the environment thinkable

and tolerable, focusing on understanding Western

cultural attitudes that support such a relationship

to the environment. Second, scholars have consid-

ered the ideological circumstances that make such

conditions and such domination increasingly

unthinkable and intolerable, focusing on the

social origins of the environmental movement'

This chapter considers that first role of ideol-

ogy; Chapter 7 the second. In this chapter, then, Iexamine the ideological origins of the view that

human beings can and should transform the

environment for their own purposes. Scholars

argue that three Western intellectual traditions-Christianity, individualism, and patriarchy-havein large part provided the ideological rationale forenvironmental domination. These ideologies ofenvironmental domination are by no means

exclusively Western, but they are certainly heavily

present in the West, which may help account forthe central role of Western institutions in the

industrial transformation of the Earth. As well, all

three of these ideologies of environmental domi-

nation have close links with ideas about hierarchy

and inequality, suggesting an ideological connec-

tion between environmental domination and

social domination, as we shall see.

Christianity andEnvironmental Domination

A common explanation for the modern urge to

transform the Earth is the rise of the industrial

economy. But the next question to ask is, Where

did the industrial economy come from? As I sug-

gested at various points in Part I of this book, the

development of economics should not be seen in

The ldeology of Environmental Domination 129

purely materialist terms. Ideas of consumption'

work, leisure, social status, and communityinfuse the economy as much as the economy

infuses those ideas.

A major source of those ideas in the West is

Christianity. As Max Weber argued in a famous

1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit

of Cøpitalism, Christian ideas-and, more specif-

icall¡ Protestant ideas-form one of the great

wellsprings of capitalist thought. It is more than

accidental, said Weber, that the Protestant

Reformation of the late sixteenth century imme-

diatelypreceded the development of modern cap-

italism and the expansion of European economies

all over the globe in the seventeenth, eighteenth,

and ninetêenth centuries. Capitalism is, in a wa¡a secular version of Protestantism'

The Moral Parallels ofProtestantism and CaPitalism

'A man does not'by nature'wish to earn more

and more money," Weber wtote, ìn the gendered

phrasing of an earlier time, "but simply to live as he

is accustomed to live and to earn as much as is nec-

essary for that purpose."2 So why do we work so

hard to make more money than we need? A desire

to maintain a place on the treadmills of consump-

tion and production is part of it. But to leave the

matter there does not answer the question of why

we are on these treadmills to begin with.

The answer, suggested Weber, lies in the moral

anxiety that early Protestantism inculcated in itsfollowers. Medieval Catholicism was more forgiv-

ing, encouraging repentance and allowing last-

minute, deathbed declarations of faith. If you

were rich enough, you could literaþ buy your

way into heaven by funding priests to say prayers

for you and by purchasing "indulgences" from the

church. But early Protestantism emphasized a

kind of final weighing up of all the good and bad

that a person had done in 1ife, which made itharder to overcome one's misdeeds and made

entrance into heaven less ideologically certain.

130 THE IDEAL

Figure 6,2

A lot of the anxiety stemmed from the idea ofpredestination-the idea that one is preordainedeither to go to hell or to be one of the "elect" whogoes on to heaven. Predestination was a commondoctrine of early Protestants, particularly earþCalvinists, and it ratcheted up moral anxiety byseveral notches. On the face of it, predestinationseems a lousy way to motivate people, for it sug-gests that how you act in life doesn't matter. youare still going to go where it has been preor-dained that you will go. So why not lead a care-free life of sin, laziness, and gluttony? But thetrick about predestination was that no oneknew for sure who had grace-who was one ofthe elect and who was not-except through a

person's worldly deeds. Those who were good,

John Calvin, 1509-1 564. Some scholars argue that Calvin's ascetic vision of protestantism wasone of the principal wellsprings of the capitalist spirit and its tendencies toward environmentaldomination.

moral, upright, and successful in this life must bethe elect of the next life, early Protestant creedssuch as Calvinism taught.

Thus, in order to convince themselves and thecommunity that they were among the elect, earþCalvinists became ascetics, denying themselves

bodily pleasures like laziness and working incred-ibly hard to achieve the signs of success in this life.Artd they began to rationalize the work process,

making work more orderþ and efficient, in orderto maximize their worldly signs of moral worth.Basicall¡ said Weber, earþ Calvinism was a com-petitive cult of work, denial, and rationalization.

These same ideas still infuse capitalist eco-nomic life toda¡ albeit without the religiousframework (at least not explicitly). What has

happened, Weber argued, is that we have

secularized the idea that hard work and denial,

rationally applied, are outward signs of how

good and deserving one is, It remains one of the

most basic assumptions of modern life that those

who work hard are the most deserving, the most

morally worthy of our admiration and of high

salaries. Hard workers are the elect of the heaven

of social esteem. It is they who have çrace.And now we have little choice but to be hard-

working rational ascetics ourselves, even if (as is

likely the case) we do not follow the religious

tenets of early Calvinism. The anxiety of early

Protestants produced huge accumulations ofwealth. (If you work reallyhard and denyyourself,

you are indeed more likely to be able to fillyourwallet fuller. More likeþ: There is no fum correla-

tion between hard work and wealth, as any coal

miner or factory worker knows.) They reinvested

this wealth, which led to even more wealth' And as

each dedicated Protestant sought to increase his or

her comparative success, the trend toward work,

r ationalizatíon, and pro duction accelerated. The

treadmills of capitalism began turning ever faster.

Soon one had to work hard, deny oneself, and

rationalize one's life in order to attain any kind ofeconomic foothold, for that was what everyone

else was doing. Increasingl¡ people came to accept

the idea that those who worked hard deserved to

get more and to gain everyone's respect' Likewise

they came to accept its corollary: that those who

had less must not have worked so hard, and there-

fore deserved their fate. The Protestant ethic had

become the spirit of capitalism.

The history of capitalist development pro-

vides some support for Weber's thesis' Modern

capitalism arose first in the dominantly Protestant

countries: England, Scotland, the United States,

and Germany. Within Europe even toda¡ the

least wealtþ and least industrialized countries

remain the least Protestant: the dominantþCatholic countries of Portugal and Spain, and the

dominantly Christian Orthodox countries ofGreece and much of Eastern Europe. France

and Italy fit less well into this pattern; both are

The ldeology of Environmental Domination 131

dominantly Catholic but are heavily industrialized

and infused with an ascetic work ethic. However,

they both industrialized comparatively recentl¡

and are still not among Western Europe's

wealthiest countries.3 Ireland, another domi-

nantly Catholic country, is now one of the

wealthiest in the world, but again this is a recent

change.

Now modern capitalism is spreading well

beyond the confines of dominantþ Protestant

countries, and even beyond the dominantly

Christian countries. Religion is no longer the dri-

ving force. The capitalist spirit steadily enfolds

country after country into its secularized ethic ofascetic rationalism. Economic structures have

taken over from Martin Luther and John Calvin

in spreading this spirit, even as this spirit dialog-

ically propels the structures, as in the way hard

work speeds the treadmill faster and faster.

Ascetic rationalism has become what Weber

termed "an iron cagei'a As Weber put it,

This order is nowbound to the technical and

economic conditions of machine produc-

tion which today determine the lives of all

the individuals who are born into this mech-

anism, not only those directly concerned

with economic acquisition, with irresistible

force. Perhaps it will so determine them

until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.s

In a wa¡ we're all Calvinists now.

The Moral Parallels ofChristianity, Science, and Technology

Weber is not the only scholar who has traced a

connection between Western religion and social

developments that greatly impact the environment.

In 1967 ,the historian Lynn \Nhite published a short

essay that remains one of the most influential and

widely read analyses of the environmental predica-

ment: "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisisl'

White's basic argument was that environmental

132 THE IDEAL

problems cannot be understood apart fromthe Western origins of modern science and tech_nology, which in turn derive from,distinctive atti_tudes toward nature that are deeply grounded inChristian dogma."6 Not oniy does the economy ofthe West have religious origins, then, but Westernscience and technology do as well.

Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, and other medievalscientists were accompanied by rapid advancesin Western technology. White placed particularemphasis on the development of poweredmachines: the weight-driven clock, windmills,water-powered sawmills, and blast furnaces.

Eyen more significant, though, was the devel_opment of the moldboard plow in northernEurope during the latter part of the seventh cen_tury (see Figure 6.3). The moldboard plow dra_maticaily changed human attitudes toward the

on the other hand, required a stronger plow Themoldboard was invented to cut more deeply intothe ground,loosening up the heavynorth.in soilr.The difûcult work of the moldboard plow nor_mally took the pull of eight oxen) as opposed tothe one or two used by earlier plows.

Thus the moldboard plow was essentially apowered machine. In White,s words,,,Mant relation

standing above it, at least potentially.Why this change? This exploitative and domi_

neering attitude toward the environment,

encompassing both unlettered farmers andscientific intellectuals, was so specific to oneregion that its origins must lie in a broad intel_lectual trend, White argued. The likely trend wasone of the great intellectual revolutions of theWestern tradition: the Christian ethic. For atroughly the same time that northern farmerswere developing the moldboard plow to handletheir heavy soils, White noted, they were alsogiving up paganism for Christianity.

and we are part of it. Eaïly Christianity, on theother hand, building on Judaic philosoph¡ sawtime as linear and nonrepeating, and it saw theenvironment as dead and inanimate, as separatefrom people. For earþ Christianity, the spirit wrld of God and the saints was not immanent innature-that is, suffused throughout nature, mak_ing nature a direct embodiment of spirits_butrather transcendentabove nature.

Moreover, early Christian doctrine taught thatGod gave the worid to human beings to exploit,to change and recreate, much as God himselfcould do (which is why only human beings aremade in God's image, many Christians believe).Changing nature was no longer a sacrilege. Indeed,all the Mosaic religions-Judaism, Islam, andChristianity-counseled that it was God,s willthat we do so. In the words of Genesis,

And God said: Let us make man in ourimage, after our likeness; and let them havedominion over the fish of the sea, and overthe fowl of the air, and over the cattle, andover all the earth, over every creeping thingthat creepeth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:26)

Mosaic teachings thus gave us moral license tochange the world as we see fit,'vVhite argued, alicense gladly accepted and spread fa, urrã *idein Europe by Christianity. As White put it,"Christianity is the most anthropocentric religionthe world has ever seen.,,e

The ldeology of Environmental Domination 133

Figure 6.3

The Greener S¡de of Christianity

The coincidence of the development ofmedieval technology and science alongside thespread of Christianity is intriguing and sugges-tive. The biblical license to dominate the Earthlikely at least facilitated the development oftechnology and science. The association of theProtestant Reformation with the subsequent riseof modern capitalism and the striking parallelsbetween contemporary secular morals and theascetic rationalism of early Protestantism alsosuggest an important influence of religious ideason our material conditions.

A medieval illustration of an ox-drawn moldboard plow According to historian Lynn White,the invention of the moldboard plow in about the seventh i"ntrry radicaily alterejEuropean sensibilities toward environmental transformation

But we cannot conclude that Christianityunambiguously promotes science, technologicalprogress) and capitalism at the expense of theenvironment. For one thing, Christianity hasoften been at odds with science. Consider theconflict between medieval scientists and theestablished church. The inquisition of Galileo forheresy is only the most well-known example. Farfrom welcoming science as a way of proving that,yes, God is indeed transcendent and that natureis an inanimate machine driven forward throughlinear time, the church found its authoritythreatened by the development of scientificthought. Even though almost all earþ scientists,

134 THE IDEAL

including Galileo, presented their work as

theological efforts to understand the true mean-ing of God, church authorities only grudginglyaccepted the argument that science was aboutfaith. And toda¡ many Christian religious leadersobject to a range of scientific techniques, suchas genetic engineering. "Dolly," the sheep thatScottish scientists announced in 1997 had beensuccessfully cloned, was greeted by manyChristians as a blasphemy.

A¡other sign of Christianity's ambivalentviews about environmental transformation is cer-tain biblical passages. For example, right beforethe famous line in the Bible in which God tellsNoah and his family to leave the ark and says, "Beye fruitful, and multiply,'which sounds ratherdomineering, there is a more ecological passage:

And God spoke unto Noah, saying, Go forthfrom the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thysons, and thy sons'wives with thee. Bringforth with thee every living thing that iswith thee of all flesh, both fowl, and cattle,and every creeping thing that creepeth uponthe earth; that they may swarm in the earth,and be fruitful and multiplyupon the earth.(Genesis B:15-17)

Note that in this passage, the animals too are

given the right to "be fruitful and multiply"-infact, even before people are given that right-andNoah is ordered to help make it happen. There isan even more ecological passage later on whenGod promises to establish a covenant both withNoah and with "every living creature," promisingnot to bring on another flood:

And God said: This is the token of thecovenant which I make between Me and youand every living creature that is with you, forperpetual generations: I have set my bow inthe cloud, and it shall be a token of a covenant

between Me and the earth. (Genesis 9:I2-I3)

This passage could be read as suggesting

that humans are not the only beneficiaries in therainbow covenant. The covenant includes "every

living creature that is with you." And when thecovenant is restated half a sentence later, humanbeings are not even specifically mentioned. Thecovenant is "between Me and the earth." (Andindeed, many contemporary readers of the Bibletake these lines in this more ecologically inclusiveway.)10

Another problem with viewing Christianityas the unambiguous source of our faith inscience, technology, and progress is that Christiansare not the only readers of the Bible, nor thefirst. The connection that White saw betweenChristianity and technology is based on the OldTestament, a work that is revered by Iews andMuslims too. Thus White should have been ableto find a similar connection between techno-logical advance and the spread of the OldTestament among the peoples of those faiths.Yet he made no such argument, and it is notimmediately apparent that he could have.Moreover, Christianity is itself a geographicallyand ideologically diverse tradition. The EasternChristianity of Constantinople, for example,was not linked to the development of scienceand technology to the degree that the LatinChristianity of Western Europe was. Why not?Surely Eastern Christians had environmentalconstraints of their own to contend with andtherefore had equal incentive to develop science,technology, and a domineering attitude towardthe environment.

Thus White's focus on Christianity may havebeen somewhat misplaced. The environmentalideas he discusses-linear time, an inanimateworld, the dichotomy between people andnature, anthropocentrism-are certainly notexplicit aspects of the Bible. They do not appealin the Ten Commandments, nor the Sermon onthe Mount, for example. And the Mosaic faiths,as we have seen, are neither exclusively Westernnor unified in their teachings.

We might more accurately describe theseideas that support the domination and transfor-mation of the environment as an underþingphi_losophy of the West, rather than of Christianityalone. This does not mean that religion has norole here, though. As the principal religious

tradition of the West, Christianity must be

amenable to such ideas if they are to remainwidespread. Indeed, any religious tradition capa-

ble of gathering such a wide range of culturesunder its tent must be amenable to a similarlywide range of interpretations. The origin ofmodern ideas about the relationship betweenhumans and the environment is therefore likelymore than merely religious.

Non-Western Philosophiesand the Environment

Non-Western philosophic and religious tradi-tions, however, do generally give recommenda-tions for how humans ought to act toward theenvironment that are strikingly different frommuch Western thought. These traditions oftenpromote a more egalitarian relationship with theEarth as well as an acceptance of the environ-ment as it is.

Taoism, for example, advises wu-wei, or "non-action," as the route to contentment. Nonactiondoes not mean non-doing. It is working withnature, instead of against it, by attempting to actwithout deliberate effort. (Translating Taoistideas into Western terms is difficult, but "nature"is certainly close to what is meant here.)lr Here isan explanation of wu-wei from one the greatTaoist classics, The Way of Chuøng Tzu, whichdates from the third century B.c.E.:

Fishes are born in waterMan is born in Tao.

If fishes, born in water,

Seek the deep shadow

Of pond and pool,All their needs

Are satisfied.

If man, born in Tao,

Sinks into the deep shadow

Of non-action

To forget aggression and concern,

He lacks nothingHis life is secure.

Moral: "All the fish needs

The ldeology of Environmental Domination 135

Is to get lost in water.All man needs is to get lostIn Tao,"12

Such a moral certainly does not appear to pro-vide much license for transforming the Earth tosuit human concerns. Rather, Taoism counsels us

to forget human concerns so as to avoid theinevitable sorrow of materialism. When one "triesto extend his power over objects, those objectsgain control of him," observes the ChuangTzu.t3

Yet as the geographer Yi-Fu Tiran observed,

China has long been one of the regions of theworld most transformed by human action,despite the influence of Taoism and Buddhism.The ancient Chinese canal system, the extensive

clearing of the land for cultivation, the formalgardening style of Chinese park land-all these

represent considerable alteration of the environ-ment. Such transformations continue today inhuge projects such as the Seven Gorges Dam,accelerating urbanization, the mechanization ofChinese agriculture, and the ready adoption of aconsumer lifesryle by many of China's 1.3 billioninhabitants.

Nor are asceticism and rationalism new tonon-Western cultures. Rationalism built ancientChina's canals, agricultural system, formal gar-dens, cities, centralized government, and com-plex philosophical systems. Ascetic denial has

long been a part of the training of ]apanesesamurai warriors as well as an important moralideal in Japanese life.la The asceticism and ratio-nalism of early Protestantism was not unique tothe West.

None of this proves Weber and White funda-mentally wrong. It just reins them in a bit.Medieval Christianity likely did play an impor-tant role in promoting our contemporary accep-

tance of environmental transformation andexploitation, at least in the West. Early Protestan-

tism similarly helped promote the train of rea-

soning that led to the rise of modern capitalismand the secular ideas of hard work and rationalitynow common throughout the West. But religionwas not the only path that led to these increas-

ingly global sensibilities.

136 THE IDEAL

lndividualism andEnvironmental Domination

Another path that has also led to environmentaltransformation js individualism, the emphasis onthe self over the wider community that has longbeen a central dimension of the Western tradi_tion. Individualism does not mentally prepare usto recognize how interconnected we all are withour wider surroundings, both social and envi_ronmental. With an individualistic frame ofmind, we tend to ignore the consequences of ouractions for those wider surroundings and there_fore, because of our interconnections, sometimesfor ourselves as well. Moreover, we in the Westhave understood that emphasis on the self incompetitive and hierarchical ways. Thus we pur_sue our individualistic ambitions not just with"invisible elbows" that jostle others accidentaþbut with elbows deliberately braced for bumpingand shoving aside whomever, and whatever, standsin our way.

lndividualism, the Body, and Ecology

One of the many scholars who has connectedour Western sense of hierarchical individualismwith environmental domination is MikhailBakhtin, a Russian social theorist. Bakhtin pointedout that individualism deeply influences the waywe regard the main medium by which we areconnected to the environment: our bodies.Individualism encourages us to see ouï bodies assealed offfrom others and from the natural world,with a host of consequences for what we regard asdirty, as repulsive, as polite, as scary, and ashumorous. All of these cultural responses to howour bodies interact with the world have importantenvironmental implications, as we shall see.rs

Bakhtin based his argument on an unusualsource: the quality of humor in the writings ofthe earþ French Renaissance writer, FrançoisRabelais.l6 The novels of Rabeiais are infamousfor their scatological satire of French politics ofthe sixteenth century. They recount, in graphicdetail, the outlandish and vulgar careers of

Gargantua and his son pantagruel, bothfabulously obese giants. (The English word gør_gøntuan derives from Rabelaist novels.) The twogiants lead an outrageous life centered on feast_ing, drinking, excreting, copulating, giving birth,and other earthy acts. Woven through the storiesare references to the political figures of the da¡who usually appear in unseemly and ridiculoussituations.

Rabelais's novels, published together nowa_days under the title Gargøntua and pantagruel,caused quite a stir when they first appeared.Rabelais was often in political trouble because ofthem. But he also found widespread favor, evenamong many of the political figures he lam_pooned, because even the king and his courtiersfound the novels downright funny. Still, it wascontroversial stuff.

The political references in Rabelais,s novels nolonger mean much to readers. His writingsremain controversial, though-but for a differentreason than caused Rabelais so much personaltrouble: the style of the books, a sryle that manymodern readers find distasteful.and obscene.lTBakhtin sought to understand why it is the styleof Rabelais's humor, rather than the subject of hishumor, that is now so offensive.

Like Rabelais's novels, Bakhtin,s answeïcaused quite a stir. His book on the subject,Rabelais and His World, could not be publisheduntii 1965, 25 years after it was written.rs Writingduring the height of Stalinist repression, Bakhtintoo was often in trouble with the authorities. Hewas denied employment and eventually forcedinto exile in Kazakhstan during the 1930s. AfterWorld War II, he was able to regain the teachingjob he had briefly held earlier at an obscure

thoughtgraduate

him. Now that starin was gone, nou"to¡rtillÍtåI,Wo rl d w as fi nally published, and Bakhtin,s earlierworks were reread and brought back into print.By the time Bakhtin died in l915,his works werebeing read all over the world.

I tell the story of Bakhtin,s careeï because ithighlights the strong reactions that people often

Y

have to reminders that our own bodies performthe same basic functions as any other animal's

body. \tVhy should it be that references to the

body and all its everyday-and biologicallyessential-activities should be considered dirtyand indecent? \tVhat could be more common-

place than the body and its needs? So why is itusually considered a rude topic? Bakhtin argued

that people did not always react in this way. We

moderns are offended because of a historical

shift in our conceptions of the bod¡ from what

Bakhtin termed the "carnivalesque body" to the

"classical body."

The cørnivalesque body is a body of intercon-

nections and exchanges with the social and nat-

ural environment. It is a body of openings and

protrusions that connect us with other bodies

and with the world around us: the mouth, the

nose, the anus, the genitals, the stomach. Throughthese organs of connection, we exchange sub-

stances, some made by the body and some

brought into the body from other bodies and

from the surrounding world: air, smells, food,saliva, nasal mucus, urine, excrement, the various

genital fluids, sweat, tears, mother's milk. It is also

a body that relishes bodily acts and desires: eating,

drinking, laziness, sleeping, snoring, sneezing,

excreting, copulating, giving birth, nursing, kissing,

hugging. The emphasis of the carnivalesque bodyis on what Bakhtin described as the body's "lower

stratum." The carnivalesque body is also an eco-

logical bod¡ abodythat is forever interacting and

exchanging with naturai systems.

The classicalbody, on the other hand, is a bodyof separation from society and nature. Most of its

orifices are hidden from view. Those that are nothidden are carefirlly controlled through rituals that

de-emphasize their openness. Food is carefullyintroduced into the mouth with a fork, and the

mouth is quickly closed again. The nose is blowninto a Kleenex or handkerchief, and the mucus is

carefully kept out of sight. The classical bodydoes not belch, pass wind, cough or sneeze onothers, eat with an open mouth, sweat, cry) oÍexperience sexual desire. Excretory acts are keptstrictly private. Openly discussing any of these

activities is considered rude and immature,

The ldeology of Environmental Domination 137

unless carried out under the strict linguisticsupervision of 'þolite" language, such as I am using

here. Emphasis is on the bodyt upper stratum.

And the body's means of ecological connection

become shameful.

The Carnivalesque Body. Balr}rtin drew the termcarniv al e s que fr om the annual pre -Lenten festival

of cørnival, once one of the most important dates

on the medieval calendar but which survives

today in only a few places. Carnival traditionallywas the people's holida¡ often lasting for days. Itwas a time of merriment, feasting, parades, danc-

ing, music, and generai indulgence. It was a timefor the outrageous.

But most important, carnival was a time ofconnection. In carnival, the community became

all one flesh. (The carnin cørnivalmeans "flesh.")

Everyone, high status and low, joined together incelebration. It was a time of social "uncrowning,"

as Bakhtin termed it, a time when the high and

mighty were brought back down to earth, the

people's earth. By dancing together, by celebrat-

ing the Earth s abundance with feasting and

indulgence, and by joking together, oftenthrough references to the lower stratum of the

body and to the substances that pass from and

move through that lower stratum, people cele-

brated their connections with each other and the

world. Through these constant references to the

bodily connections we all share-the joy of food,

the pleasures of leisure, the desires of the flesh,

the necessity of excretion-even the famous and

highly esteemed were brought down to a common

level. (See Figure 6.4.)

These carnivalesque pleasures are what we

find described in Rabelais's novels, said Bakhtin.

Bakhtin makes a crucial distinction between the

carnivalesque and bodily references that are merely

gross and degrading, however. In carnivalesque

humor, the subject of the joke is not brought

beneath the tellers of the joke. Rather, it is egalitar-

ian humor that seeks to unite everyone on the same

earth¡ bodil¡ social plane. We laugh not just at the

subject of the joke but at ourselves too. Carnival-

esque humor is not mere mocking. It is, as BalJrtin

put it, "also directed at those who laugh."1e It is

138 THE IDEAL

'-tÍl FÈj--¿' bEË4

.- ¿---: n- -+^ r';_.:

Figure 6.4

laughter that joins us all together in the joke, renew-ing community. Degrading jokes, on the otherhand, create hierarchy and separation. They seek tolower others without bringing them into the same

common earthy communþ of bodily life.Balùtin wrote in defense of the carnivalesque.

But he worried that bodily humor had become"nothing but senseless abuse. . . . Laughter [hasbeen] cut do'urn to cold humor, iron¡ sarcasm. It[has] ceased to be a joyfirl and triumphant hilarityi'20

He also wrote to make a historical point.Why do we moderns have such trouble distin-guishing between the carnivalesque and themerely gross? Why do we so often find any refer-ences to the body to be offensive and shameful?Because, Bakhtin argues, social mores havechanged from medieval and early Renaissance

times, in tandem with the modern rise of hierar-chical individualism.

The Classical Body. Thus, a work like Gørgantuøand Pantagruel is generally offensive today not

This painting from 1498-Piero di Cosimo's The Discovery of Honey-celebrates the festiveand open-mouthed character of what theorist Mikhail Bakhtin called the "carnivalesquebody." As in di Cosimo's painting, such a body relishes exchanges and interactions w¡thsociety and the natural world, rather then presenting itself as a sealed-off monad.

because of its politics (what offended some earlyRenaissance readers) but because of its affrontto bodily individualism (what virtually all earlyRenaissance readers found deliciously funny).Todaywe find individualism a lot harder to laughat. We are ashamed at references to our bodilyconnections with the world. Nature itself hasbecome offensive.

This change is evident not only in humor butin modern codes of politeness, cleanliness, andprivacy. Today we eat with cutlery, particularly informal situations. Medieval people ate with theirfingers. Today we find it impolite to eat with anopen mouth or with slurping noises. Medievalpeople were not so troubled. We have historicallyastonishing standards of cleanliness for ourhomes and bodies. We confine most bodily actsto the privacy of the bedroom and bathroom. Infact, the bathroom has become a kind of modernshrine to the individual, and expensive modernhomes often include one for every member ofthe famil¡ plus one for any guests-four- and

l-

't'

five-bathroom homes have become standard inexclusive housing developments. Ald we med-

icalize birth, death, and all the stages in between

of the body's growth and interactions with life.

We keep the environment as much at a distance

from our bodies as we can. Again, medieval

people were not so troubled.

Why do we do all these things? Because,

Bakhtin argues, they are symbols of social hierar-

chy. In order to be elite, you need to separate

yourself from the common people. Separation

from nature and bodily functioning is a particu-

larly convincing way to make that distinction.

As Thorstein Veblen noted, elites try to remove

themselves from environmental concerns in part

because doing so indicates social power. Bakhtin

would add that such environmental separation

also entails showing oneself to be above bodilyconcerns. It requires what Weber would recog-

nize as a kind of asceticism, a denial of bodilyexistence.

Having servants and machines to handle dirt,trash, and bodily excretions; being able to get

through the day wearing the most impractical ofclothes; traveling by means other than one's own

bodily locomotion; maintaining impeccable

standards of cleanliness for one's home and body;

having a house and workplace big enough forseparate rooms for private acts, and separate

kinds of rooms for each kind of act-to acquire

these forms of ecological and social separation

requires power. It requires money and status.

Such separation is far harder for those withoutmoney and power, thus clearly establishing whois on top and who is on the bottom.

Our desires for social distinction are thus inti-mately connected with our desire to distance

ourselves from the bod¡ from the Earth, and

from ecological reality. We cannot admit that we

are connected to the Earth, for doing so wouldundermine the very feeling of separation and dis-

tinction that modern life seeks. Seeking to live

the life of the high-status individual, we model

ourselves after the classical image of the body and

find references to carnivalesque connection dirtyand threatening. We pretend that we have no

need to heed nature's call.

The ldeology of Environmental Domination 139

Balancing the EcologicalSelf and the Ecological Commun¡ty

As often happens when someone hits upon a

new idea, Bakhtin probably overstated his case.

His portrayal of medieval and early Renaissance

life seems filtered through a romantic mist.2t This

period was not a golden age of unending feast-

ing, merrymaking, and communalism. There was

much hierarcþ then too, as well as grinding

poverty, poor sanitation, and disease. Bodily con-

nections with society and with the environmentcan be fata7, a point that surely was significant to

medieval people. (But so too can be attempts to

deny such connections.) Thus we cannot pass offthe modern interest in sanitation and medical

intervention as merely the product of raging

individualism. (But overcleanliness can also be

hazardous, and indeed is suspected by some

researchers as being a factor in the dramatic rise

in the incidence of allergies and asthma in the

wealthy countries.)We also need to be cautious about seeing the

rise of a classical conception of the body and its

implication of ecological separation as a purely

Western phenomenon. Rather, it is characteristic

of elites the world over, Nearly all elites adopt

refined lifesryles that insulate them from the

dirty, sweat¡ smelly consequences of being a

human animal. Bakhtin would have readily

accepted this point, in fact. And he would have

added that common people have long responded

to the pretensions of the world's elites with car-

nivalesque humor. In Bakhtin s words, "Every act

of world history was accompanied by a laughing

chorus."22

Finall¡ we need to keep a sense of baiance

with respect to the carnivalesque and the classi-

cal. I for one am not prepared to lead a life ofthe purely carnivalesque. Besides, even during

medieval times carnival was not an everyday

occurrence, although the spirit of carnival was no

doubt a more regular presence in the lives ofmedieval people. Probably it ought to be in ours.

But neither should we give up all forms of bodilyindividuality. A sense of our own difference is,

after all, essential to a feeling of connection, for

140 THE IDEAL

there must be something to connect. It's anotherdialogue.

Yet we also need to balance a classical concep-tion of our selves and our bodies with a carnival-esque understanding that we are part of nature.Evidence suggests that we maybe coming aroundto this point of view. The West has substantiallychanged its attitudes about the body in the50 years since Bakhtin wrote Rabeløis and HisWorld. Thanks in large measure to the socialchanges and social movements of the 1960s, weare no longer so ashamed to speak of the body(although there are signs that such shame maybe on the rise again). Hippie culture and thewomen's movement both emphasized the impor-tance of being open about the bod¡ its needs, itsfunctions, and its realities. Hippies emphasized a

more natural body sryle, breaking the taboos oflong hair for men and leg hair and underarm hairfor women, for example. Feminists helped breakdown the misconceptions and sense of shamelong associated with women's bodies, perhapsmost notably through the publication of therevolutionary book Our Bodies Ourselyes.

These social changes suggest a connectionbetween environmental awareness and bodilyawareness. It may be no accident that the 1960ssaw both an environmental movement and abody awareness moyement. In other words,accepting the importance of environmentalinteractions may depend in part upon acceptinga more ecological-and thus less hierarchical andmore democratic-conception of the body.

Gender andEnvironmental Domination

A¡other source of our domineering attitudestoward the environment is gender relations.Consider, for example, the common metaphorswe in the West use to describe the environmentand our interactions with it, metaphors that arestrikingly sexual and militaristic. The pioneers inNorth America "broke virgin land" and cleared"virgin forest." Farmers have long spoken of the"fertility" of the soil, and suïveyors and military

commanders assess the "lay of the land." Marinerssaii on the "bosom of the deep." The environ-ment in general is "Mother Nature." We speak ofabuse of the environment as "raping the land,"and we speak of civilization as the "conquest ofnature." The sex of the environment in theseexamples, sometimes implied, sometimes overtlystated, is female.

In light of the violence of some of theimagery-the "breaking," "clearing," "rape," and"conquest" of female nature-these are disturb-ing metaphors. They suggest, along with a rangeof other evidence, that there is an ideological linkbetween the domination of nature and the dom-ination of women. If patriarchal ideas pervadeour thinking about society, then they iikely influ-ence our thinking about the environment as well,for we use the same mind, the same culture, tounderstand both.

The Ecology of Patriarchy

Note the common Western tendenry to con-sider women as being closer to nature than men.Not only is nature female, but females are moïenatural, our traditions often suggest. We tend toassociate women with reproduction, broadlyunderstood-with the natural necessities ofgiving birth, raising children, preparing food,healing the sick, cleaning, attending to emotional¡ssd5-¿s well as with the domestic sphere, therealm of the reproductive and the private. In con-trast, we have conventionally associated menwith production-with transforming nature sothat it does what we want it to-and with thepublic sphere, the realm of rationality, civrliza-tion, government, and business.

These gendered associations imply a clearhierarch¡ with men on top. Western thinkershave often considered women inferior because oftheir alleged animalistic closeness to nature andmen as superior because of their allegedly greaterskills in the allegedly higher aspects of humanlife. Edmund Burke, the late eighteenth-centuryEnglish philosopher, wrote that "a woman is butan animal and an animal not of the highest

I

r

order." Hegel felt that "women are certainlycapable of learning, but they are not made for the

higher forms of science, such as philosophy and

certain types of creative activities." Sigmund

Freud mused that "women represent the interests

of the famiþ and sexual life; the work of civliza-tion has become more and more men's business."23

And here is Henry James, Sr.-father of the

philosopher William fames and novelist Henry

]ames, and himself a prolific author-writing in1853 on the subject of "Woman and the'WomantMovement"': Woman is "by nature inferior toman. She is inferior in passion, his inferior in intel-

lect, and his inferior in physical strengthJ'As he putit another essay, discussing "The Marriage

Question," a wife is her husband's "patient and

unrepining drudge, his beast of burden, his toil-some ox) his dejected ass, his cook, his tailor, his

own cheerfirl nurse and the sleepless guardian ofhis children."2a These characteristics of women and

their lives were not social inventions open to inter-rogation and change. For these men, and many

others of their time, these were the writ of nature.

The social implications of such patriarchal

presumptions are quite troubling, most wouldtoday agree. Many writers also argue so too are

the environmental implications. By demeaning

women for their stereotypical association withreproduction and with nature, we encourage

both the domination of women and the domina-tion of the environment.

Ecofeminism. The work of these writers comes outof a relativelynewtradition of scholarþ and philo-sophical inquiry ecofeminism, which oiplores the

links between the domination of women and the

domination of the environment and argues that

the domination of the environment originates

together with social domination of all kinds-across not oniy gender but also race, ethnicit¡,

class, age, and other forms of social difFerence

treated as hierarchies.2s It is common for socially

dominated groups to be linked with nature,

ecofeminists observe. People of color have often

been associated with savagery. Lower classes

have often been seen as primitive and as having

inadequate control over their emotions,leading to a

The ldeology of Environmental Domination 141

greater tendency toward violence and sexual

Iicentiousness. And women have often been rele-

gated to the realm of nature and its reproductive

requirements, as opposed to reason and civilization.

It seems that when we think social hierarch¡we think natural hierarchy-and probably vice

versa, too. As the prominent ecofeminist Val

Plumwood has written, the "human dominationof nature wears a garment cut from the same

cloth as intra-human domination, but one

which, like each of the others, has a specific formand shape of its own."26

Environmental activists themselves have

sometimes promoted the association of women

with nature, for example by using the image of"Mother Earth." An ever-popular environmental

slogan is "Love your mother," referring to the

Earth. In this case, nature is positively valued,

and the activists who use the expression probably

feel that it therefore positively values women as

well, reversing the traditionaþ negative conno-

tation of being associated with nature.

This is an ideologically dangerous strateg¡ say

some ecofeminists. Listen to this statement fromCharles Sitter, senior vice president of E>oron,

who used the image of Mother Earth to minimizethe significance of the infamous 1989 Exxon

Valdez oil spill in Aiaska's Prince William Sound:

"I want to point out that water in the Sound

replaces itself every twenty days. The Sound flushes

itself out every twenty days. Mother Nature

cleans up and does quite a cleaning job!'27

This "Mom will pick up after us" vision of the

environment, as |oni Seager and Linda Weltner

have termed it, is both ecologicaþ problematic

and sexist. As Weltner writes,

Men are the ones who imagine that clean

laundry gets into their drawers as if by magic,

that muddy footprints evaporate into thinair, that toilet bowls are self-cleaning. It's these

overindulged and over-aged boys whooperate on the assumptions that disorder-spilled oil, radioactive wastes, plastic debris-is someone else's worr¡ whether thatsomeone else is their mothet their wife, orMother Earth herself.2s

142 THE IDEAL

The point of ecofeminism is not to blame menfor environmental problems. Nor are all ecofem-inists women.2e Ecofeminists, like other feministscholars, aÍe concerned about our patriarchalsystem of social organization, which is enacted byboth men and women but results in the domina-tion of women. What domination of women, youmight say? Aren't we past all that, at ieast in therich countries? Not yet, agree virtually all sociol-ogists. Even in the rich countries, women are stillpaid some 25 percent less than men, bothbecause they are more likely to be consigned tolower-wage jobs and to receive less even whenthey hold the same job as men. Many jobs andacademic fìelds remain highly gender segregated.Women are far less likely to hold political office,especially at the highest levels. Women still do thebulk of reproductive labor. Women still do themajority of all labor, paid and unpaid. But thesepersistent patterns of inequality are not men,sfault alone. They are everyone's fault. We all enactthem.

Ecofeminists add to feminist scholarship thenotion that the domination of nature is linked topatriarchy and other forms of social domination,and vice versa. But ecofeminists observe thatwomen too have been active agents in the domi-nation of nature. Plumwood points out that

Western women may not have been in theforefront of the attack on nature, driving thebulldozers and operating the chainsaws, butmany of them have been the support troops,or have been participants, often unwittingbut still enthusiastic, in a modern consumerculture of which they are the main symbols,and which assaults nature in myriad directand indirect ways daily.3o

Patriarchal Duølisms.A key tenet of ecofeminismis that our cultural climate of domination hasbeen built on dualisms-morally charged, oppo-sitional categories with little gray area inbetween-that deny the dependency of eachupon the other. Thus, man is man and woman iswoman. Nature is nature and culture is culture.Our dualisms interlock into a larger cultural

system of domination, ecofeminists such as

Plumwood argue: culture versus nature, reasonversus nature, male versus female, mind versusbod¡ machine versus bod¡ master versus slave,reason versus emotion, public versus private, selfversus other.3r In each dichotom¡ the firstmember of each pair dominates over the second.The core dichotom¡ Plumwood writes, "is theideology of the control of reason over nature."32The dominating side in each pair is culturallylinked to reason, and the dominated side isculturally linked to nature.

This tendency to separate the world intoantagonistic pairs, Plumwood suggests, is alegacy of a Western us-versus-them togic ofdomination. Ecofeminists like Plumwood advo-cate a different form oflogic, one that recognizesgray areas and interdependence, and one thatrecognizes difference without making hierar-chies. They want us to be able to make categori-cal distinctions that respect the diversity andinteractiveness of the world and that do not relyon absolutist, mechanical, and hierarchicalboundaries.

TheWestern logic of domination is not just anintellectual problem, argue ecofeminists. It hasall-too-real material outcomes. Under Westernrationalit¡ the dominated and naturalized"other" does not receive fair environmental treat-ment. Women, people of color, people in lowersocioeconomic groups, nonhuman animals, theland itself-all these groups tend to experience a

lack of environmental justice because our cul-tural orientation is to regard them as generallyless important and less deserving. Women, forexample, are less likely than men to receivean even share of environmental goods. World-wide, poverty rates are significantly higher forwomen-making women more susceptible toenvironmental bads as well.

But patriarchy also leads to the environmentaloppression of men, even those from favoredsocial groups. The patriarchal vision of mas-culinity leads men to take foolish risks withmachines, chemicals, weather, and the land. Menoften die as a result, or become maimed and dis-eased, which is some of the reason why men on

the whole do not live as long as women. Thus, allof us have an interest in changing the currentsocial order.

Gender Differences inthe Experience of Nature

The dualisms of patriarchal reasoning alsoaffect the way women and men experience theenvironment. Although, on the whole Westernwomen and men experience the environmentquite similarl¡ some significant differences sug_gest that we have indeed internalized some of thepatriarchal stereot¡res. In the late 19g0s I con_ducted an ethnographic study of the experienceof nature in an English exurban village. Althoughsimilarities far outweighed differences, villagemen described their natural experiences to meusing significantþ moïe aggressive, militaristic,and violent imagery. Village women emphasizeda more domestic environmental vision based ontheir experience of nurturing in nature.33 Forexample, men spoke of the pleasures of releasingtheir pent-up aggressive feelings through clear_ing brush and engaging in visceral rural sportssuch as "skirmish," a mock war game played inthe woods with guns that shoot paint balls. Asone village man described the game,

I think when we were made, we were madewith instincts to defend our tribe. . . . Theseinstincts never get an airing. We sit in ouroffice desks [isolated] from that danger,save-the-family type situation....Butwhen you go out there playing this game . . .

it's like a dog that's been cooped up foreverand then one day itt taken for a walk in thewoods and it sees a rabbit. it sniffs it and allits primitive instincts come alive. . . . It'squite exciting when a ton of people arecoming at you with a gun.r4

No village woman described such pleasures.Nor did any vtTlage man relate stories of nurtur_ing in nature such as those told to me by severalvillage women. One village woman) for example,

The ldeology of Environmental Domination 143

told a story about a family cat that helped raisetwo ducklings, extending nurturing feelings evenacross the divide of predator and prey. She tellsthe story best, so here it is in her words:

We had a cat [Suzy]. We always had lots ofcats. And this particular time I went toHarchester, and there were two little duck_lings in a pet shop window. A¡rd like a foolI thought, well, the kids will like them. AndI brought them home, didn t I? And Suzybecame a mother and she got kittens, at thisparticular time. And of course she took thetwo little ducklings over, didn,t she? Sowherever she went with the kittens, theducklings followed. And they used to sleeptogether in this cardboard box. The cat andthe ducklings! . . . It's completely true. Shewould wash and cuddle the ducklings, justlike they were her own. It's the motheringinstinct, I suppose. . . . 3s

This is an incredible story, one that even gotthe family's picture in the paper, along with thecat and the ducklings. But significantl¡ this was astory that a woman told me. Her husband, whomI knew well, never mentioned it. This was herstory, not his. Rather, he told me stories aboutrough weather and other hard environmentalconditions and his feats of physical prowess and.mental toughness in the face of these conditions.Perhaps village men and women told these dif_ferent types ofstories to conform to their expec_tations of what a male researcher should be toid,and not to express their true feelings. Even so, itis significant that their expectations ran alongsuch gendered lines.

I must emphasize once again, however, thatthe similarities between mens and women,s sto_ries far outweighed the differences. I must alsoemphasize that it is not helpful to blame men forexperiencing nature in ways that I suspect mostreaders-both male and female-would regardas less laudable. The point of an ecofeministperspective, as Ioni Seager explains, ,,is not [to]reduc[e] environmental understanding to sim_plistic categories of 'wonderful women, and ,evil

144 THE IDEAL

men."'36 Rather, the point is to highlight theenvironmental consequences for both womenand men of patriarchal social structures and pat-terns of thinking, which both women and menbring into being.

The Controversy over Ecofem¡n¡sm

Ecofeminism remains a controversial view_point. Much of the debate has surrounded theattempt by some ecofeminist writers, mainly inecofeminism's early days, to subvert Westernpatriarcþ by reversing its moral polarity. Thesewriters propose that women and their asso_ciations with nature should be celebrated.Reproduction, nurturing, sensitivity to emotions,closeness to nature and the body-all these thingsare inherentþ good, the argument goes. Womenshould embrace these qualities that one ecofemi_nist praised as the "feminine principle,,'not rejectthem.37 lt's the other side of patriarchy,sdualisms-reason, civilization, machines-thathas made such a mess of things.38

Critics both inside and outside of ecofeminismobject that such a position reifies the very socialorder that needs to be changed. It perpetuates thedichotomy between men and women as well asthe negative stereoq4)es of women as irrational,as controlled by their bodies, and as best suitedfor the domestic realm.3e Critics also argue thatthis reification is alienating and fatalistic becauseit implies that biological differences between menand women are at the root of patriarchy. Such aposition, suggests Deborah Slicer, is best termed"ecofeminine" and not "ecofeminist.,,a0

There is also a spiritual and religious dimen-sion to some ecofeminism, associated with,,god-dess spiritualit¡" Wicca, and Neopaganism.Spirituality and religiosity are, of course, impor-tant dimensions of human experience, and arenot in themselves problematic. Nor is their anyreason in pluralistic societies to complain aboutthe beliefs and practices of religions and spiritualperspectives that may differ from one's own.However, spirituality and religiosity are matters

of faith, not social science, and should not beconfused as such. So it is important that the spir_itual strands of some ecofeminism be kept care_fully separate from its social scientific claims.Many observers object that this separation hasnot always been maintained.

Another criticism is that a perspective likePlumwood's implies that the "logic of domina_tion" is mainly a feature of Western thought. AreEastern cultures less patriarchal than Westernones? The evidence suggests not. Also, Eastern cul_tures have shown themselves to be quite capable ofdominating nature. Either the "logic of domina-tion" that infuses both our social and our environ-mental actions must not be exclusivelyWestern, orthe East must have its own logic of domination.

Also, in their effort to make clear the sexismthat underlies some of our outlooks on theenvironment, ecofeminists have sometimesoffered oversimplified arguments. For example,the patriarchal character of dualisms is notalways so clear-cut. Consider the cultural associ-ation of women with nature and men with cul_ture. In fact, the dualism often goes the otherwa¡ aligning women with culture and men withnature. Since Victorian times, one commonstereotype of women has been that they are thebearers of culture and refinement and that theyhave responsibility for inculcating,.civilization,,in the next generation-and in men. One com_mon current stereoty?e of men is that they arewild beasts driven by lust and vioient passion,which women must tame for their own sake andfor the sake of their children. Also, many of thespirits that various Western (and non-Western)traditions have sensed in the physical environ_ment are characterized as male: Father Sþ theGreek sun god Apollo and ocean god poseidon,the notion of a "fatherland."

Indeed, it is an important feature of ecofemi_nist thought that we must recognize the gray areasand the interactiveness and interdependence ofour categories. Unless we continuallyremind our_selves of the dialogics of categories, of the dia_logue of difference and. sameness) we easily slipinto one-sided, deterministic, and hierarchical

arguments. And as ecofeminism also stresses,

when you survey the world with a one-sided,

deterministic, and hierarchical frame of mind tobegin with, you are even more likely to slip in thisway.ar But ecofeminism has not always followed

its own advice here as well as it might have.

In light of these controversial features of the

ecofeminist debate, some social scientists have

sought to find a different term to refer to explo-rations of the role of gender and patriarchy insocial and environmental interrelations. "Environ-

mental feminism" is what Michael Goldman and

Rachel Schurman have suggested.a2 "Ecological

feminism" is a similar phrase one increasingly

encounters in social scientific literature. "Eco-

gender studies" is the term Damayanti Banerjee

has offered.a3 Time will tell if these terms prove

anaþically helpful.In any event, our environmental complaint

with patriarchy should not be that it is wrong tocreate categories and draw distinctions. We need

categories to recognize difference and thereby tobuild our theoretical and moral understanding ofthe world. (After all, ecofeminism itself repre-

sents a category-a category of thought.) But we

also need better categories than the hierarchical,socially unjust, and environmentally destructive

ones ofpatriarchy.

The DifferenceThat ldeology Makes

These various theories of the environmentalsignificance of religion, individualism, and patri-arcþ all have a common theme: the central roles ofinequality and hierarchy in the way we think about

the environment. Whether we are talking about the

competitive desire to achieve grace through worþthe notion that people and their God are above

nature, the achievement of individual distinctionthrough bodily distance from the world, or the

dualistic thinking of patriarch¡ social inequality

influences our environmental relations.

I hope this chapter also makes it clear thatsocial inequality has not only material but also

The ldeology of Environmental Domination "145

ideological roots. This is another dialogue.

Material factors structure our lives in unequal

ways,leading to hierarchical visions of the world,just as ideological factors allow the material

structures of inequality to develop and to persist.

Another common theme of this chapter is

that, thus far, scholars have relied too much on

the Western experience in formulating theories

of the human transformation of the environ-

ment. Some of this neglect of the East has likelybeen due to a romantic view of the environmen-

tal sensitivity of that part of the world. But large-

scale transformation of the environment in the

East goes back thousands ofyears, just as it does

in the West. Although this romantic view isflattering in some ways, it is also a back-handed

insult, for it implies that the scientific and

technological mind was beyond the ideoiogical

capabilities of the East. The view that the East

was ecologically sensitive (until corrupted by the

West) may thus perpetuate negative stereotlpes

of irrationality and bacla¡¡ardness.

Placing more emphasis on economic factors

may help us understand how the ideology of trans-

formation arose (recalling, with Weber, that any

economic pattern is as much an ideological matter

as a material one). The global spread of capitalism

has been propelled by the accelerating treadmills ofproduction and consumption, bringing with itsocial structures and ways of thinking that increase

our orientation toward transforming the Earth.

But still the explanation is not complete.

Environmental transformation was going onbefore capitalism arrived in both the East and

West. Also, and perhaps even more important, we

need to remember that the socialist economies ofthe former Soviet bloc and East Asia showed just

as much tendency as capitalist economies to

transform and dominate the Earth. We cannot

point our anal¡ic finger at capitalism alone.

In short, we do not yet fully understand the

ideological origins of the transformation and

domination of the Earth. And it maybe that even

after we take into account both material and ideal

factors, we still will not fully understand these

origins. One implication of a dialogical view of

1_

146 THE IDEAL

causality is that complete explanations are rarel¡if ever, possible. The spontaneous creativþ thatcomes out of social interaction has effects thatcan never be completely predicted.

Nevertheless, we shoutd still pursue theanalysis of social and environmental change. It

is vitally important that we try to understandthe material and ideal factors that dialogicallyshape, if not completely predict, our actionsregarding the environment-particularly ifwe hope to guide those actions in a differentdirection.