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People, Land, and Community: Collected E. F. Schumacher Society Lectures (review)
- Rhetoric & Public Affairs
- Michigan State University Press
- Volume 1, Number 3, Fall 1998
- pp. 453-456
- 10.1353/rap.2010.0092
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Book Reviews 453 ecology as a "real" science; 2) the need for autonomy in ecology to determine and maintain its own research agenda; 3) the problems of funding research and how they threaten autonomy; 4) the need for establishing relevance as a purely scientific field of research; 5) the costs and benefits of ecologists collaborating with government agencies; and 6) the imperative of advancing the "ecosystem concept" in academic and government research. These implicit themes recur in ways that make the history of the institutions analogous, but they do not speak directly to the role of public dialogue or debate in environmental politics. There are times when Bocking does offer a perspective on ecology and environmental politics that resonates with a rhetorical one, however. For example, after identifying a central role for ecology in shifting attitudes toward nature, he states that "the environmental concerns reflect the dissemination of certain values into society, those who first understood these values teaching the rest of society" (181). He also implies a rhetorical nature of ecological research by noting that "To understand the ecologist's place in society it is also necessary to consider not only the values expressed in their work but also those implied by the context in which they work" (183). Finally, he suggests that "Ecology, like science generally [and rhetoric], does not exist in isolation but is embedded in and shaped by its context" (189). But overall, Bocking is most concerned with the way institutions of ecology embody social priorities, such as support for science, environmental protection, technological development, and resource management. In other words, he does not include the recent critique of science in this political context for ecology. Instead, he focuses on how scientific advice "is shaped by its own history and by its institutional and political contexts" (xi). As such, Ecologists and Environmental Politics (with its thirty page bibliography) will be most accessible to historians of science, but it can offer scholars of public discourse insight to the question of why ecologists, with their many noted accomplishments since World War II, have not played a more significant role in environmental politics. Mark P. Moore Oregon State University People, Land, and Community: Collected E. F. Schumacher Society Lectures. Edited by Hildegarde Hannum. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997; pp. xii + 328. $35.00; $17.00 paper. The publicity information accompanying People, Land, and Community calls this book a "greatest hits collection culled from the E. F. Schumacher lecture series." The image of a so-called greatest hits collection obviously comes from popular music recordings. And perhaps the greatest advantage of listening to greatest hits recordings is that one can listen to the most popular songs produced by a musical group. Despite this advantage, however, there are some disadvantages: the most popular 454 Rhetoric & Public Affairs songs are not always the best songs, and it is difficult to relate to a musical group's evolution and artistry, let alone actually like the group, from the point of view of a few isolated musical flashbacks. Likewise, People, Land, and Community is a collection of greatest hits. And while it benefits from the same advantages of a collection of greatest hits music, it also suffers from the same problems. People, Land, and Community is a collection of twenty-one essays originally presented as lectures before the E. F. Schumacher Society between 1981 and 1995. The Schumacher Society in North America, named after the British economist who popularized the idea that "small is beautiful," aims to promote sustainability, balance , and small-scale economies and government. Reflecting the goals of the society , Kirkpatrick Sale articulates the agenda for this collection in the first essay. The goal of lasting and meaningful environmental and community change, Sale argues, can "occur only through organizing structures outside those of the state and political apparatus" in social groups "designed not to reform the system but to redefine and reconstitute civil society itself" (18). With this statement, Sale establishes an ambitious apolitical agenda. The essays of this book attempt, with varying degrees of success, to articulate the means and ends of Sale's objective, using Schumacher as a philosophical touchstone. With this goal in mind, the collection of essays...