Ecocentricity
A book review by David Orton
Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward
an Ecocentric Approach
by Robyn Eckersley, State University of
New York Press, 1992,
274 pages, softcover, ISBN 0-7914-1014-5.
This book is based
on the PhD thesis of Robyn Eckersley, an Australian academic, and someone
who has
contributed to the ecophilosophy
debate in various academic and movement publications. The book addresses
the fusion of deep ecology and left
green or socialist thinking, and has been written by a person supporting
these
two general perspectives. With Eckersley’s
book we look for a radical theoretical fusion of ecocentric and
social justice, rooted in social
practice.
Such a book has
been widely anticipated among those who strive for a deep ecology theoretical
perspective
and who consider themselves part
of a left tendency in the environmental and green movements. From my
viewpoint, deep ecological theorists
like the Australian Richard Sylvan, or Americans such as Andrew
McLaughlin and David Johns, or Andrew
Dobson from England, would be examples of this left tendency.
That left-deep
ecologists exist, has often been overlooked in the polarized mud-slinging
that has occurred
between ecology and deep ecology,
since Murray Bookchin launched his trigger broadside, “Social Ecology
Versus ‘Deep Ecology’”, back
in 1987.
Eckersley correctly
states: “In terms of fundamental priorities, an ecocentric approach regards
the
question of our proper place in the
rest of nature as logically prior to the question of what are the
most appropriate social and political
arrangements for human communities.”
There is a certain
academic authoritativeness (arrogance?) in this book. Classificatory distinctions
and
interpretations are presented as
the view. Theory is, however, discussed as an end in itself. There is little
evaluation of the various streams
of thought, e.g. animal liberation, social ecology and ecoanarchism, Marxism,
ecosocialism, and bioregionalism,
from a practical perspective, although they are often insightfully analysed.
This author describes
herself as “moderately left-of-center.” It flags a sense of really being
in the mainstream.
Thus for example, we are told there
is a “rule of law”, we live in a “democratic society”, that she is a “democratic
socialist” (a Cold War anti-communist
slogan), etc.
There is no alternative
vision presented, but given the task at hand, quite a shameful mild reshuffling
of existing
institutional arrangements. Green
economic models, as an example, are not open for discussion. The debate has
apparently ended. The ‘green’ economic
model presented is a “scaled-down, green market economy”, keeping
price mechanisms and private profit,
subject to intervention by the State.
What we are presented
with is “market socialism”, and the use of the state in a traditional interventionist,
social
democratic sense. We are told this
is the view of “green economists.” Yet the fundamental, still unresolved
question, is whether capitalist economics
based on unending growth and consumerism, however modified to factor
in ecological costs, is compatible
with preserving the earth. If it is not, then the call for market socialism
is a call to
ecological suicide for the planet.
As well as this
book showing the limitations of a social democratic understanding of capitalism,
from a deep
ecology perspective Eckersley has
been closely associated with the thinking of the Australian academic Warwick
Fox. The transpersonal ecology thing of Fox, plus some
of his analytical categories, e.g.: “autopoetic intrinsic value
theory” as a “variety” of ecocentrism,
are unfortunately reflected in this book. (I also do not agree with
Eckersley’s contention, that ecofeminism,
with its human-centered focus, is another “variety” of ecocentrism).
The contradictions of transpersonal
ecology - an individually-focussed psychology as seen from the left, which
is
also curiously human-centered - are
not acknowledged.
Transpersonal
ecology, concentrates not upon the eight-point “A Platform for Deep Ecology”, drawn up by
Arne Naess and George Sessions, which
has been described as the heart of deep ecology. Instead, transpersonal
ecology, stressing an individual
not a collective approach, concentrates upon the important concept of
Self-realization. In stressing this
particular concept, ethics ends up becoming a state of being, as opposed
to a code
of conduct. Self-realization is defined
by Fox in his book as a sense of self which has extended “beyond one’s
egoic, biographical, or personal
sense of self.”
Self-realization,
the idea perhaps conveyed in Aldo Leopold’s phrase “Thinking like a mountain”,
is not the
primary focus of deep ecology. For
example, it is not mentioned in the eight-point Platform. I believe that
while
Self-realization is important for
any deep ecology supporter, transpersonal ecology leads in a New Age direction
of focusing on inner contemplation,
and away from involvement in changing the world. Eckersley denies the
New Age linkage in a footnote. It
is quite amazing and significant, that she does not state the eight-point
Platform
in her book. Yet it is the Platform
which increasingly becomes a basis for unity among environmental and green
activists, who support a biocentric
or ecocentric perspective.
This is a scholarly
book and there is much to learn from Eckersley’s historical and contemporary
review. But
she is not a radical, the praxis
is minimal, and the ecopolitical task this book sets out for itself, remains
unfulfilled.
(This
review was published in the British journal Green Line, issue No.
107, May 1993.)
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Last updated:
January 16, 2005