The crisis of reason, the rationalist market, and global ecology

Millenium

Volumn 27, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 903-925

  Plumwood, Val ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 11544264166     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298980270041501     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. The term has been in common usage in the antipodes from Pusey's Economic Rationalism in Canberra onwards. See Michael Pusey, Economic Rationalism in Canberra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
2. Mary Mellor, Feminism and Ecology (Cambridge: Polity, 1997).
3. Paul R Gross and Norman Levitt, The Higher Superstition: the Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Susan Haack, Deviant Logic Fuzzy Logic (Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press, 1996); Susan Haack, 'Preposlerism and its Consequences', Social Philosophy and Policy (Vol. 13, No. 2, 1996), pp. 296-315; Susan Haack, 'Science, Scientism and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism', The Skeptical Inquirer (Nov/Dec 1997), pp 37-43; James Stilber, 'Opening Address', World Conference of Philosophy, 1998.
4. Paul R Gross and Norman Levitt, The Higher Superstition: the Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Susan Haack, Deviant Logic Fuzzy Logic (Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press, 1996); Susan Haack, 'Preposlerism and its Consequences', Social Philosophy and Policy (Vol. 13, No. 2, 1996), pp. 296-315; Susan Haack, 'Science, Scientism and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism', The Skeptical Inquirer (Nov/Dec 1997), pp 37-43; James Stilber, 'Opening Address', World Conference of Philosophy, 1998.
5. Paul R Gross and Norman Levitt, The Higher Superstition: the Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Susan Haack, Deviant Logic Fuzzy Logic (Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press, 1996); Susan Haack, 'Preposlerism and its Consequences', Social Philosophy and Policy (Vol. 13, No. 2, 1996), pp. 296-315; Susan Haack, 'Science, Scientism and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism', The Skeptical Inquirer (Nov/Dec 1997), pp 37-43; James Stilber, 'Opening Address', World Conference of Philosophy, 1998.
6. Paul R Gross and Norman Levitt, The Higher Superstition: the Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Susan Haack, Deviant Logic Fuzzy Logic (Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press, 1996); Susan Haack, 'Preposlerism and its Consequences', Social Philosophy and Policy (Vol. 13, No. 2, 1996), pp. 296-315; Susan Haack, 'Science, Scientism and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism', The Skeptical Inquirer (Nov/Dec 1997), pp 37-43; James Stilber, 'Opening Address', World Conference of Philosophy, 1998.
7. Paul R Gross and Norman Levitt, The Higher Superstition: the Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Susan Haack, Deviant Logic Fuzzy Logic (Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press, 1996); Susan Haack, 'Preposlerism and its Consequences', Social Philosophy and Policy (Vol. 13, No. 2, 1996), pp. 296-315; Susan Haack, 'Science, Scientism and Anti-Science in the Age of Preposterism', The Skeptical Inquirer (Nov/Dec 1997), pp 37-43; James Stilber, 'Opening Address', World Conference of Philosophy, 1998.
8. Susan Haack, 'Preposterism and its Consequences', in Haack, op. cit., in note 3; Jean Curthoys, Feminist Amnesia (London: Roulledge, 1997).
9. Susan Haack, 'Preposterism and its Consequences', in Haack, op. cit., in note 3; Jean Curthoys, Feminist Amnesia (London: Roulledge, 1997).
10. Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991); Sandra Harding, 'Rethinking Standpoint Episteniology: "What is Strong Objectivity?"' in Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (eds.), Feminist Epistemologies (London: Koutledge, 1993), pp. 49-82.
11. Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991); Sandra Harding, 'Rethinking Standpoint Episteniology: "What is Strong Objectivity?"' in Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (eds.), Feminist Epistemologies (London: Koutledge, 1993), pp. 49-82.
12. Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993).
13. Paula England, 'The Separative Self: Androcentric Bias and Neo-Classical Assumptions' in Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson (eds.), Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 37-53. Also see Plumwood, op. cit., in note 6.
14. Paula England, 'The Separative Self: Androcentric Bias and Neo-Classical Assumptions' in Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson (eds.), Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 37-53. Also see Plumwood, op. cit., in note 6.
15. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994).
16. Particular markets may be based on local knowledges and contexts (which by no means guarantees their innocence), but what I am concerned with here is not the existence of markets as such but the development and justification of the rationalist form of the market that is able to control distribution, recognition and decision processes.
17. Polanyi provides many examples of this ideology in the period of the industrial revolution, and it is a commonplace of economic pronouncements in contemporary political life, see Polalyi, op. cit., in note 8.
18. Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty (London: Zed Books, 1997).
19. Stephen A. Marglin, 'Losing Touch: the Cultural Conditions of Worker Accommodation and Resistance' in Frederique Apfell Marglin and Stephen A. Marglin, Dominating Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 232.
20. Ferber and Nelson (eds.), op. cit., in note 7.
21. Sydney Morning Herald, 21 January 1999.
22. Neferti Xina M. Tadiar, 'Prostituted Filipinas and the Crisis of Philippine Culture', in Millennium: Journal of International Studies (Vol. 27, No. 4, 1998), pp. 927-954.
23. See Ferber and Nelson (eds.), op. cit., in note 7.
24. Ibid.
25. Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing (Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1988): Susan Moller Okin, Gender, Justice and the Family (New York, NY: Dasic Books, 1989).
26. Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing (Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1988): Susan Moller Okin, Gender, Justice and the Family (New York, NY: Dasic Books, 1989).
27. Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (London: Zed Books 1986); Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive (London: Zed Books 1988).
28. Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (London: Zed Books 1986); Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive (London: Zed Books 1988).
29. On a more detailed argument that Locke's formula subsumes the agency of nature, see Val Plumwood, 'Deep Ecology, Deep Pockets, and Deep Problems: a Feminist Eco-Socialist Analysis' in Andrew Light, Eric Katz, and David Rothenburg (eds.), Beneath the Surface: Critical Essays on Deep Ecology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming 1999).
30. bell hooks, Outlaw Culture (London: Rontledge, 1994).
31. It follows that 'white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy' remains an incomplete specification, but the idea of identifying such a system by giving a list is in any case severely problematic. See Val Plumwood, 'Does Ecofeminism Need the Master Subject? A Response to Janis Birkeland', The Trumpeter (Vol. 13, No. 4, 1996), pp. 193-97.
32. Elizabeth Gross, 'Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism and the Crisis of Reason' in Alcoff and Potter (eds.), op. cit., in note 5.
33. As Raymond Rogers notes of the Atlantic fishery, maximisation of present values took virtually no account of the biological properties of the stock. See Raymond A. Rogers, The Oceans Are Emplying: Fish Wars and Sustainability (Montreal,Canada: Black Rose Books, 1995), p. 10.
34. 'backgrounding', as it is termed in Plumwood, op. cit., in note 6.
35. On these points see Sandra Harding,'Feininism, Science and the anti-Enlightenment Critiques'in Linda Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1990).
36. On this misunderstanding of its enabling social conditions see Alan Wolfe, Whose Keeper? (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989).
37. On the concept of ecological rationality see Val Plumwood, 'Ecojustice, Inequality and Ecological Rationality' in John Dryzek and David Schlosberg (eds.), Debating the Earth: the Environmental Politics Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 1999).
38. As David Orr has pointed out most ecological damage is planned and carried out by the highly educated products of western universities and education systems, often well-intentioned but schooled precisely in these forms of rationality. See David Orr, Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992) and David Orr, Earth in Mind (Washington, DC: Island Press 1994).
39. As David Orr has pointed out most ecological damage is planned and carried out by the highly educated products of western universities and education systems, often well-intentioned but schooled precisely in these forms of rationality. See David Orr, Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992) and David Orr, Earth in Mind (Washington, DC: Island Press 1994).
40. It is an added clement of irrationality that the hubris of economic rationalism is permitted to compromise other possibly corrective forms and sources. Thus, the dominance of the economic sphere over all others means that scientific research and warning systems have themselves been compromised by a fear of offending funding sources.
41. The evolutionary and historical importance of oceanic and shoreline ecosystems to the development of human culture suggests that the great decline of these supporting systems through pollution and over-harvesting in our lime, possibly in many cases past the point of recovery, represents a major ecological watershed for our species.
42. D. Tilman and J. E. Cohen,'Biosphere and Biodiversity: the Lessons So Far', Science (November 1996), pp. 1150-1151.
43. Ricarda A. Steinbrecher and Pat Roy Mooney, 'Terminator Technology: the Threat to World Food Security', The Ecologist (Vol. 28, No. 5, 1998), pp. 276-279.
44. The view of the nonhuman world as rationally replaceable and inferior and the superior status accorded the substitutes produced by reason also helps explain why machines are often now accorded more value and legitimacy as possessors of mind than animals, for whose mindfulness and agency we are assumed to require stringent proof.
45. Ariel Salleh, Ecofeininisin as Politics (London: Zed Books 1998). Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism (London, Zed Books 1993).
46. Ariel Salleh, Ecofeininisin as Politics (London: Zed Books 1998). Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism (London, Zed Books 1993).
47. I am using the term 'hegemonic' here to denote a quite specific logical construction of false universalism deriving from the backgrounding or denial of the contributions or experiences of marginalised Others and the privileging and universalisation of those of the One or centre, and not just as a synonym for the much broader term 'dominant'.
48. Ferber and Nelson, op. cit., in note 7.
49. Mellor, op. cit., in note 2.
50. Plumwood, op. cit., in note 6.
51. Ibid.
52. I have discussed this program in ibid.
53. Mellor, op. cit., in note 2.
54. Ynestra King, 'Healing the Wounds: Feminism, Ecology, and the Nature/Culture Dualism' in Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein (eds.), Reweaving the World: the Emergence of Ecofeminism (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Hooks, 1990), pp 106-121.
55. Mellor, op. cit., in note 2, p. 166.
56. Ibid., p. 115.
57. Discussed in detail in op. cit., in note 22.
58. On administrative rationality and its ecological role see John Dryzek, 'Ecology and Discursive Democracy: Beyond Liberal Capitalism and the Administrative State', Capitalism, Nature, Socialism (Vol. 3, No. 2, 1992), pp. 18-42.
59. Val Phimwood, 'Knowledge in an Ethical Framework of Care', Australian Jourrnal of Environmental Management (Supplement to Vol. 5, 1998), pp. 27-38.
60. Chris Wood,'Our Dying Oceans', Macleans Magazine (5 October 1998), pp. 50-59.
61. Ibid.
62. Michael L. Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1983).
63. Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990).
64. Although it can be argued that liberal-democratic systems dominated by market rationalism fail to deal adequately also with the common good. Plumwood, op. cit., in note 28.
65. Ulrich Beck, Ecological Enlightenment (Atlantic I lighlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995)
66. Ibid., p. 60.
67. Cheri Lucas Jennings and H. Bruce Jennings 'Green Fields/Brown Skin: Posting as a Sign of Recognition' in Jane Bennett and William Chaloupka (eds.), In the Nature of Things (London: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 173-96.
68. Many of these forms also impact on future people, who, in terms of exclusion from decisions which impact on their welfare, have to be considered highly disadvantaged.
69. So although we have the term 'environmental racism' established to cover such issues of redistribution, these points provide reasons for thinking that, contra Deck, we still need concepts of class if we wish to understand them, and that we cannot work exclusively with the racialised 'difference' discourses which arc often used now us surrogates for suppressed concepts of class. Perhaps we can even regard class privilege as partly constituted by access to such forms of remoteness, and as having multiple determinants depending on the form at work.
70. Carole Pateman, The Disorder of Women (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), p. 163.
71. Of course not all environmental issues have this association with marginality. Theorists of ecojustice have noted that those that have associations with more privileged groups, such as wilderness and biodiversity, tend to have a better public profile, see Jennings and Jennings, op. cit., in note 56. I do not intend to suggest that these more prestigious forms are less important or arc negligible, but rather that the consequential remoteness of privileged groups is often reflected in what counts as an ecological issue in the public sphere. The divide coincides roughly with the difference between a concern about damage to 'good' nature versus a concern with repairing or avoiding further damage to 'bad' (already damaged) nature.
72. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernisation (Cambridge: Polity, 1994).
73. Ibid.
74. See Polanyi, op. cit., in note 8.
75. Gayalri Chakravorty Spivak, 'Translator's Preface and Afterword to Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps (1994)' in Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean (eds.), The Spivak Reader (London: Routledge 1996), pp. 267-286.