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.A clear example of this is how animals are consid-ered in alternative agriculture.While the sustainable agriculture movement 140 Together at the Tablehas sometimes raised issues about the humane treatment of livestock, it hasnot questioned the ethics of eating animals in the first place (Regan 1993).A distinction is made between wild animals, which are to be preserved, and domestic animals, which are raised precisely to be destroyed and sold ascommodities.The latter is somehow not regarded as a rationalist degrada-tion of nature.Interestingly, while first (pristine) nature is to be preserved, second (mediated) nature is afforded no such protection.Critics of ecological essentialism argue that biology can neither explainrelations between people nor be used to derive principles for politics.According to Haila and Levins (1992), ecology tends toward naturalism andobjectivism and to remain outside any historical framework.Using food asa heuristic, Martinez-Alier (1995) illustrates the need to historicize ecol-ogy. He points out that while biology determines the number of caloriesrequired for human survival, what and how much a person actually con-sumes is determined not by nature but by politics, economics, and cul-ture, all of which contribute to the large differences between rich and poor.General attributions of ecological problems to humans as a species inviteus to overlook oppressions and divisions within the human community andare ethically irresponsible if they imply that the cause of nature should bepromoted at the cost of a concern with social justice and equity in the dis-tribution of resources (Soper 1995: 13).Deterministic ecological modelsnot only fail to historicize the distribution of resources, they can alsoobscure the possibility of changing distribution in the future.These kindsof ideological orientations have tended to produce often vague environ-mentalist sympathy that is inadequate to political questions about powerand justice (Darnovsky 1992: 50).None of this is to deny that nature and environment are central tohuman existence and the agrifood system.All food production requires thatnature be utilized by humans, and no one in alternative agrifood move-ments opposes the use of nature for human ends.While agriculture obvi-ously depends upon nature and natural processes, it is an inescapable factthat laws, watersheds, political parties, and bioregions are all decidedlyhuman constructs.Of course the material world does exist.Watts and Peet(1996) caution against going too far down the path of the social construc-tionist notion of nature because it tends to overestimate the power humanshave to transform or manipulate nature.The relevant distinction in the agrifood system is not so much betweenwhat is natural and what is social, but rather between what can and whatcannot be reconfigured and improved upon.Which priorities we choose topursue in food security and sustainable agriculture can only be posed as Reflections on Ideologies in Alternative Agrifood Movements 141social questions.They cannot be decided through appeals to nature butonly though the political process.Bryant (1991: 164), in referring to envi-ronmental managerialism, points out that the central issue is who formu-lates and implements environmental strategies, and in whose interest arethese strategies? If environmental problems are seen as humanly consti-tuted and historical and we deny that there is a natural basis for the cur-rent social order such problems can only be seen as a the result of ahistorical process that is the accretion of human decisions, politicalprocesses, and chosen distributions of material and cultural goods.Thus,different decisions, different political processes, and different distributionsof resources are not only possible, but necessary, for solving them.Political ecology may work as a new epistemological approach for alter-native agrifood movements and institutions.The aim of political ecologyis to uncover the root causes of environmental and human resource degra-dation by studying the interaction between human society and nature
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Tematy
IndexJoel Fleishman The Foundation, A Great American Secret; How Private Wealth is Changing the World (2009)
Mark A. Noll, Luke E. Harlow Religion and American Politics, From the Colonial Period to the Present (2007)
Jesse Fox Mayshark Post pop cinema; The search for meaning in new America (2007)(1)
William Inboden Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945 1960, The Soul of Containment (2008)
R. Murray Thomas Manitou and God, North American Indian Religions and Christian Culture (2007
Jane Elliott Popular Feminist Fiction as American Allegory, Representing National Time (2008)
Cathy J. Cohen Democracy Remixed, Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (2010)
kebranegast
Paterson Hamilton James Dyskretny urok Fernet Branca
Buxbaum Julie Przeciwieństwo miłoÂści