debitage: part of the core tool and scraper tradition

debitage

5.11.05

People Vs. Conservation

One of the unfortunate things about political ecology is how pessimistic it often seems. Even after the poststructuralists' attempts to reinvigorate ideas of agency and resistance, the usual impression you're left with is that marginalized people are only getting more squashed between the twin forces of capitalism and the state. So it's nice to occasionally see a small bit of good news, such as this (via Savage Minds):

Court vVictory For One Bushman Family

The Botswana High Court ruled on Friday 28 October that the government must allow Bushman Amogolang Segootsane and his family to return to their land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. It must also return his goats to him and allow him to bring water into the reserve.

The conflict between human rights and nature conservation -- specifically the type of nature conservation based on keeping people away -- is a long-standing topic in political ecology. I've written before about the fact that often such a conservation strategy is ineffective. And in many cases -- of which Segootsane's appears to be one -- the moral dilemma is even smaller, because conservation is a mere pretext. Environmentalists need to be careful that they don't praise things done in the name of conservation that actually have no such effect.

This isn't just a Third World problem. As James McCarthy (2002, Environment and Planning A) has pointed out, the parallels between people like Segootsane and the American ranchers in the Wise Use movement -- a comparison that complicates both the animus directed at Wise Use as well as the praise of people like Segootsane. I would add as well the off-road vehicle enthusiasts who will now have more say in the rules regarding the practice of their hobby on nearby federal lands.

Stentor Danielson, 10:37, ,

3.11.05

Climate Icons

Garry Peterson points out a recent effort to develop an "iconic image" for the battle against climate change. The product -- a map of the earth highlighting a dozen locations where the earth system is nearing a tipping point due to climate change -- is rather disappointing.

From a graphic design perspective, the problem is obvious from Peterson's post, where the proposed icon is presented shrunk down to the size of a business card. There's a continuum of visual representations, running from a "data map" on one end to a symbol on the other. A "data map," such as a standard topographic map, is a compilation of information. It is meant to be interpreted and queried with reference to particular problems, to have its details inspected and pulled out. A pure symbol, on the other hand, is meant to be taken in at a glance -- think, for example, of the way you instantly recognize a letter of the alphabet by its overall shape. A symbol, however, has no inherent information content. It simply exists to efficiently trigger an already-known association.

What the climate icon group is looking for is not quite a pure symbol, as it needs to communicate content as well as being a trigger for a known idea. Nevertheless, an effective icon will stand closer to the pure symbol end of the spectrum. It will be something that can be grasped at a holistic level. Here the proposed icon falls flat. The proposed icon is basically a stylized locator map. When you can't read the writing, it communicates very little information -- no indication is given of what exactly is happening at the marked locations. And there's no obvious pattern to where the hotspots are occurring. If it had turned out, for example, that the hotspots were all in the tropics, then the map would have had some visual impact by communicating a simple message about what part of the world is the most at risk. As it stands, however, the icon needs explanation. To be an effective icon, it needs to represent a single clear generalization about the effects of climate, rather than pointing to a bunch of seemingly randomly distributed locations each with their own story.

The hotspots approach does, however, suggest that perhaps the global is not the proper level for creating climate icons. Each of the hotspots has the potential to be turned into a compelling icon around one type of climate change impact. The fight against climate change may be best fought by focusing in on one or two of the impacts in order to capture the public imagination with a specific and easy-to-understand story.

Stentor Danielson, 23:19, ,

2.11.05

Totemism, Animism, and Marriage

Ampersand links to a long anti-marriage post by Noah Millman. I won't go through and rebut his particular responses (but there are some criticisms in the comments to his post, including ones by Ampersand and myself). What I'm interested in is what Millman's post reveals about the deeper philosophical contrast between the conservative and liberal views on marriage. Ampersand pointed out the post as an illustration of the underlying sexism of anti-marriage arguments, and he's right on that count. But I also think we can see something perhaps more basic -- and it comes though clearly in the most sexist passage of Millman's argument:

My friend was intrigued. How, he asked the rabbi, do you - how do I - know after one meeting like this that I've found my destined bride. The rabbi looked at him. Listen, he said, when a man is *really* ready to get married, any uterus will do.

To prepare the ground, I want to introduce the anthropological distinction between "totemism" and "animism." The terms refer to different forms of relationships with nature rooted in different types of hunter-gatherer religion. In a totemistic system (such as the Australian Aborigines), social life (including the wider community of nature) is run according to a pattern set down by the ancestors. It's both morally right as well as a source of fulfilment to re-trace the steps of the ancestors. The harmony of the world is maintained by enacting a defined role within the master-plan. In animism (such as many of Canada's First Nations), however, there is no master plan. Nature and society are full of beings who must be negotiated with over and over, and the harmony of the world is founded on the consent of those involved and a sort of invisible hand process. So, for example, take the case of a totemist and an animist going out to hunt deer. The totemist will reason that the ancestors established deer-hunting. Therefore it's the human role to hunt, and the deer's duty to be killed. The animist, on the other hand, will reason that no amount of past deer-hunting can justify presumptively shooting the deer. Rather, the kill must be agreed upon between the hunter and the prey, with the individual prey having a say in whether it's for the best that it be killed.

Conservatism takes a generally totemist view of social relations. In Millman's view, marriage is a template, laid down by God, nature, or tradition. Our duty is to act out the roles it lays out, and in doing so we will find fulfilment. This is what underlies his opening argument that everyone ought to get married, and social pressure (though it seems not outright coercion) is justified in achieving this end. And it underlies his agreement with the rabbi that marriage is not about love, but about finding "a uterus" to fill the wife-and-mother slot in the externally-given template.

Love, on the other hand, is profoundly animistic -- and so it makes sense that Millman minimizes its importance. While one may find duty-fulfilment and satisfaction in a role-defined totemistic relationship, love arises from an appreciation of the particular details of the object of your love. It's about fitting yourself not to a partner but to this partner. It would be a mistake, however, to say that love-based marriage cannot spawn obligations and must wither as soon as the passion fades. Nevertheless, the obligations that members of an animistic couple take on are founded on the same individual negotiation as love. It requires the same animistic skills of responsiveness and agreement, rather than the totemistic skills of role divination and fulfilment.

Interestingly, though, there's nothing essentially anti-marriage about totemism. It's quite plausible that a non-sexist template could be established, in which people seek "a spouse" rather than "a husband" or "a wife." This is difficult at present, since most of the resources that can be used to define and justify such a template have sexist content -- both our longstanding traditions as well as all the major religions are anti-marriage. Nevertheless, there are some people trying to construct such a pro-marriage totemism, usually under the banner of "the conservative case for gay marriage."

The possibility of pro-marriage totemism, I think, points up the shortcomings of Cultural Theory, relational models theory, and other perspectives that put a high analytic importance on the form -- the type of logic and structure -- that ideologies and social relations take. Certainly those issues are important, and failing to recognize when your opponents are operating in a different logical system can lead to much banging of heads against walls. But the contingent content of those logics can be crucially important as well.

Stentor Danielson, 09:23, ,

30.10.05

Man-Hating Sexism

Over at Pandagon, they're smacking down a series of articles by Leon Kass (e.g. here) trying to undermine sexual equality. It's been observed many times that Kass and his allies make their arguments for sexism in a way that manages to also insult men -- declaring, for example, that we're irredeemable horndogs. I would speculate that this strategy is due to the success of feminism. The more secure oppression is, the freer the oppressors feel to declare their superiority. But when their position feels threatened, they appeal to their own weakness.

A distorted view of the content of feminism feeds into this in the case of Kass and his allies. They make a conscious attempt to show that, even starting from the premises of their feminist opponents (which they ingratiatingly profess to agree with), their sexist conclusions still follow. Done right, this is an effective debate tactic, as it allows you to reach your goal without engaging in (often unproductive) arguments about first principles. Unfortunately Kass et al. seem to have imbibed the canard that feminism involves hating men. Therefore they offer a man-hating rationale for anti-woman sexism. But arguing from your opponents' premises is ineffective when you misstate their premises.

Stentor Danielson, 11:04, ,

Good Riddance to Manliness

In commenting on what sounds like a typically idiotic book by Maureen Dowd, hilzoy says something that I think demonstrates the problems with moderate attempts to combat machismo. She quotes excerpts in which Dowd argues that men need to validate their manliness by treating women like children, and that therefore any woman who buys into this crazy idea of equality will never get a man. Responding to this attempt at romantic/sexual blackmail, hilzoy says:

I, in my naive little way, thought that manhood was about strength, decency, honor, courage, and the like. The world is full of ways to demonstrate one's manhood: occasions to step up and do the right thing, to take responsibility for your actions, to go out of your way to be decent to someone who needs it, to have the guts to do what's right even when you'll be ridiculed for doing so.

I understand the impulse here (which hilzoy clarifies in the comments) -- to redirect the macho impulse away from "cheap" versions of manliness to better ones. It's a common tactic among moderate and certain forms of conservative activists -- to say, for example, that a "real man" would call his friends out on their sexist comments rather than join in. However, this redefinition of real manliness raises another problem: aren't "strength, decency, honor, courage and the like" traits that are admirable in women as well? Most people (including hilzoy) will admit that they are, (though some will add some hand-waving about how these qualities are expressed in some undefinably different way in the two sexes).

In one sense this is fine -- people of both sexes should work to demonstrate hilzoy's list of qualities. But as soon as you say that, you give up on appealing to the macho instinct as a motivation for doing so. Gender is a relational category -- things are manly in large part because they are not womanly, and vice-versa. The macho impulse is a drive not just to do things that are intrinsically good for men, but to do things that distinguish men from women. This is why so much of machismo is wrapped up in policing border-blurring behavior, such as homosexuality and uppity women. Therefore it's only manly to have strength if women are typically weak. If women can be strong too, men will have to find a different reason to be strong (and plenty of such reasons exist).

Thus, we have two choices for combatting machismo. On the one hand, we can come up with progressive but clearly distinguished male and female roles that the macho instinct can drive men toward fulfilling (call this the Hugo Schwyzer strategy -- though he, like many who take this path, is too invested in anti-essentialist feminism to be willing to put much substance on the gender distinction). Or -- and this is my preference -- we can work to undo the macho instinct, to convince men that "being a man" should not be so central to their identity.

Stentor Danielson, 10:15, ,