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CHAPTER EIGHT In and Of the World Toward a Chastened ConstructionistAnthropology This chapter sketches some qualities of humanness that undergird the ethical vision presented in the next chapter. These qualities include the following: humans are both natural and cultural animals; we are terrestrial ; we are embodied; and we are relational. Moreover, all these characteristics must be viewed in the context of limits, especially our dependence on fragile ecosystems. Although these claims appear simple, they hold tremendous, often radical implications for the way we think about being human. Before proceeding, I offer some caveats. Most important, these characteristics do not encompass all that humans are. Nor are all, or perhaps any, of the features I describe exclusively human. For example , we are also rational, conscious, playful, and willful, among many other things, and other animals are some of these things also. Contrary to the traditional pattern of defining humanness in terms of uniqueness, I contend that qualities need not be exclusive to be important. In fact, some of our most important traits are important precisely because they are shared-with other people or other species or both. (This does not, however, deny that some human characteristics may be quantitatively or even qualitatively distinctive.) In sketching this anthropological framework, I draw on the approaches discussed in earlier chapters-namely, social constructionist, Asian, Native American, feminist, and scientific perspectives-without attempting to synthesize or unify them. I approach the traditions for the light they shed on ethical anthropology generally and for their 186 In and Of the World perspectives on particular issues: for example, the ways Asian traditions help us understand relationality and the ways feminists rethink the body. I also look at several of these issues in relation to Christian theological anthropology, especially the work of contemporary eco-theologians. Despite the negative aspects of traditional Christian thinking about nature and human nature, as discussed in chapter 2, I believe that Christianity can play an important role in the construction of an alternative ethical anthropology. First, Christianity's damaging influence in the past suggests that if even Christianity can change, there is indeed hope for new attitudes toward the natural world. Further, Christianity's global compass means that its changes might have far-reaching effects. However , Christianity's influence stems not just from its scope but also from its character as a lived or embodied ethical system, an issue I explore in more depth in the next chapter. Looking at the ways, often incomplete and tentative, in which contemporary Christian theologians are trying to rethink their tradition in relation to some of the themes I highlight here can illuminate not only Christianity's possibilities but also ethical anthropology more generally.' NATURE AND NURTURE Evolution tells us that humans are animals and, further, that we are animals of a particular and unified kind. If we are to take evolution seriously, these assumptions hardly seem debatable, despite all the controversy they cause. They constitute the minimal, necessary starting point for any discussion of what it means to be human, at least in relation to environmental ethics. A look at our evolutionary history shows, further, that as animals we have many overlapping bonds of kinship with other species: we possess many generally mammalian traits, other distinctively primate characteristics, and still other specifically human qualities. The last category, of course, generates all the debates about what separates humans from other animals. A more realistic and productive question asks what distinguishes us among animals. Humans have physical traits such as bipedalism, opposable thumbs, and color vision, none of which are exclusively human, but which combined help define our nature. Another defining feature is, of course, culture. The interactions between nature (genes, biology) and culture (nurture,learning , socialization) construct us as distinctively human creatures. Few observers, from evolutionary biologists to postmodernist anthropologists , disagree with this general statement. Many also define culture as In and Of the World 187 a distinctive second evolutionary path in which learning and social memory , rather than genes, carry information, and in which humans adapt to their environment, often very quickly, rather than adapting to it slowly and biologically. However, the specifics of the interactions between biology and culture, their respective influences and the paths they take, are far from settled. The debate over these issues provides, in some ways, an overarching framework in which to understand many other aspects of humanness. I will examine here two influential and in some respects characteristic positions on the nature-nurture relationship: social constructionism and sociobiology. These do...

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