Horizons of Significance: Nature and Culture in the Current Environmental Debate

RAYMOND A. ROGERS is no a pr€!SU1PP()sltion consequence of relations between nOl1.-C':lprtallst , Ideas of nature ... are the ideas of humans. And I think nothing much can be much can even be until we are able to see the causes of thls alienation of nature, this of nature from human (Raymond Throughout the modern period in the West, the word J social' has been used to describe a form of understanding which was in contrast to the increasdominant economic Theorists such as Karl Max and Karl more recently feminist and Third World critics, have engaged in 'social analysis' in order to get at a form of critique that ilieass'WllPti(Jns and ...."q_n.LLll.LJ inform the way issues are is an important contribution that cultural studies can make to how environmental issues are As states, the market cannot be unless there is a 'frame of reference to which the market itself is referable./3 Socialanalysis requires a recognition ofcommunity whichis not identical with of collective and markets. The is in current surrounding word J development' as it relates to relationship between Northern and Southern In the times there is the implicit assumption that all are moving towards the modem industrial rnodel- albeit with some caveat for sustainability added cultures in the South in theoretical and real the ......r.,.......+--. modern of struggle to retain some SeJt-cletlE'lrrmj ::.J.V'U' ....Jl.a..t...\:,U. world eCClnO'IDV relations, or conservation communities, the idea the 'social' is set out as a constellation from which to view the of UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 65, NUMBER 2, SPruNG 1996 HORIZONS OF SIGNIFICANCE 445 and the rest of nature. The and economy within envirorunental QIE.cour:ses ass.unlpt:ioIlS of modem rej:,re~~enjted in the World Commission on and ueveJlOpmE~nt' Common Future; draw too too on overdrawn environmental resource accounts to be affordable far into the future wltnOllt h:UU{',"Hy,\nrIO" accounts. may show children will inherit the losses. We borrow environmental geJler,atl()fls with no of t".::.r,';'u1n"HY ' ...... ,.,." ... n the conservation of world is seen as ,,""""....."",.,.f--:.'n+ in documents as Our Common communities. These not make the forces of late caJ:JltalllS1tn sll1tl1lclentJlyp:roo1 lenl1atlc IJE~caluse rm:agE~s that tend to ...-.i.. ro.1"'''',", of a commission made up nT..'......"... n~1(~cti,on of the unease certain '-"....IJ.Lnr and aejtlll.lmg ,.,r.~"'T"""7'" this alteration of constellation of are in the context attachments ata ch(mj2~e become HORIZONS OF SIGNIFICANCE 447 Down: Now that the prc)te!:ltaJlt ethic itseU ... is at last three or four centuries, we can Ranters, and the many other refused to bow down and 'Aln'r~h'ln it. with a new SVInp,amy thinkers who in the seventeenth I'or.... "..,' the increas- .............,....,,..,.....,.,.., the earth's resources because it fails to ........,...,u......'" is not because the dross of which most times passes for culture reduced In neither modem viable terms within the has led to the aplpe2LraJt\ce of discourses on the 'death the and the "end of 448 RAYMOND A. ROGERS .L ....... U.UL.. commtmities that HORIZONS OF SIGNIFICANCE 449 to the resourcist views nature in most environmental Livm ~;st()in rt~Oriesents a natural in At the level of the 'other' is bereft of whatever abstract or had up to this In commun"" palLnClpants are .... There need be no isa whole unto itself.19 COIlttilbution that cultural studies can make to the environmental Cnalliel:lge the QOIrunatlCm some subtle way its enchantment of itself? As I see it, this qUiestllon For this reason, what I call nt>O'l'It"nTt> demanded at an intellectual leveL20 .....ul....J. ..."uJ.~,.. rl~lanons, in partlc::IDants are 1 EllenMeiksins 10. 2 3 4 5 450 RAYMOND A. ROGERS reasons for this dls,appe,aramce, trlerE~DV nelpllllR can aid in the resistance to the n""';'!1'T11f"rlnn in human and natural communities. NOTES The Pristine Verso I Problems inMaterialism and Culture Econo1rlies, ed ue1 V'el()pnnerLt, Our Common Future SUlperstnLlcture in Marxist Cultural Problems in Materialism and Culture 38. 6 Michael The Devil Hill: 7 8 9...