Talking about the Earth: On the Growing Significance of Environmental Communication Studies

Book Reviews Review Essay Talking about the Earth: On the Growing Significance of Environmental Communication Studies Stephen P. Depoe Ecocritique: Contesting the Politics of Nature, Economy, and Culture. By Timothy W Luke. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997; pp. ix + 253. $49.95 cloth; $19.95 paper. Sharing the Earth: The Rhetoric of Sustainable Development. By Tarla Rai Peterson. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997; pp. ix + 238. $29.95. Thinking Ecologically: The Next Generation of Environmental Policy. Edited by Marian R. Chertow and Daniel C. Esty. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997; pp. ix + 271. $35.00 cloth; $16.00 paper. For a number of years now, a significant number of scholars from diverse disciplines within the social sciences and humanities have contributed works of research and criticism to the field of environmental studies. Individuals trained in the traditional fields of economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy and ethics, literature, and cultural studies have brought elements of their academic training to bear on problematic questions concerning how we as humans interact with the biological world around us. Rich, new, interdisciplinary areas of study such as environmental history, environmental sociology, and ecological anthropology have developed to examine issues that cross and transcend traditional academic boundaries.1 This robust research tradition in environmental studies has been enriched in recent years by organized disciplinary activity and published scholarship in environmental communication studies.2 Environmental communication scholars examine relationships between human discourse—our talk—and our experiences of our natural surroundings. These scholars have identified at least two important functions performed by environmental communication. The exploration of those functions has formed the core of the research agenda for environmental communication studies. Stephen P. Depoe is Associate Professor and Head of Communication and Director of the Center for Environmental Communication Studies at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 1, No. 3, 1998, pp. 435-468 ISSN 1094-8392 436 Rhetoric & Public Affairs First, environmental communication serves a constitutive function. In many respects, what we experience as "the environment" is not merely an objective context or site out there beyond the individual, but is also a symbolic construct created and organized through talk. According to Carl Herndl and Stuart Brown, "in a very real sense, there is no objective environment in the phenomenological world, no environment separate from the words we use to represent it." They go on to argue that "we can define the environment and how it is affected by our actions only through the language we have developed to talk about the issues."3 A significant segment of environmental communication research activity thus involves theoretical explorations of the tensions between Nature that is physically experienced as material substance and "Nature" that is symbolically constructed and enacted through discourse.4 Second, environmental communication serves an instrumental function. Human beings make daily decisions, as individuals and in community, about how they intend to manage and care for the physical spaces around them. Those decisions are influenced by the advocacy of various environmental policies, values, and priorities. Star Muir and Thomas Veenendall assert that "discourse about the environmental plays a formidable role in shaping human interaction with nature." Given the growing importance of ecological policy issues, they continue, environmental communication "has become a major political force affecting all of our lives."5 A second significant segment of environmental communication research activity thus involves critical examination of the persuasive efforts of advocates from across the political spectrum, including individuals, grassroots organizations, corporations, and government agencies, who attempt to shape decision-making processes and policy outcomes at the local, state, national, and international levels.6 Of the three books reviewed here, Tarla Rai Peterson's work falls clearly within the emerging tradition of environmental communication studies. The volume coedited by Marian Chertow and Daniel Esty ( Thinking Ecologically) and the book authored by Timothy Luke {Ecocritique) belong in the wider stream of environmental studies scholarship. What follows is an explication of each, followed by a final word on the growing voice of environmental communication within the chorus that is environmental studies. Sharing the Earth: Exploring the Rhetorics of Sustainable Development Tarla Rai Peterson's Sharing the Earth: The Rhetoric of...