Anderson+Long+Annotations

Goralnik, L., & Nelson, M. P. (2011). Framing a Philosophy of Environmental Action: Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and the Importance of Community. Journal of Environmental Education, 42(3), 181–192. doi:10.1080/00958964.2010.526152 “When educating for environmental ethics we cannot evaluate people’s actions as empirical data. Rather, we need to understand their valuation process, the shifts in their relationships and how they care about the world.” (183) “This philosophy of environmental action drives the implicit goals of many environmental organizations and outdoor education programs. For example, The Sierra Club continues Muir’s tradition of taking people into the natural world in order to inspire them to act on behalf of the places they visit, and links these experiences to environmental action.” (184) “While we will not argue that such exposure is not a necessary condition for environmental action, we question whether it is true that such exposure is a sufficient condition for environmental action. We question the assumption that all people, in spending time and learning about a place, will develop similar feelings of respect for that place. We can readily imagine a canoe trip around Isle Royale National Park, which after a week’s exposure to the area, including the seasonal black flies and mosquitoes, half of a six-person party joins groups like the Nature Conservancy, while the other half feels that resort development would improve the island, or that pesticide spraying is necessary for all wilderness areas. All six people had the same exposure to and were equally knowledgeable about the area, but their sentiments were not equally sparked by this knowledge. One might argue that donating to an environmental organization demonstrates responsible environmental behavior, while the resort and pesticide ideas do not demonstrate REB. Or one might argue that all three actions are environmental actions, for a resort or bug-free terrain would encourage wilderness access for more people. But it is clear that the shift between knowledge and action that occurred for the different members of the party was very differently realized.” (186) “In short, since our sentiments prompt us to action, and since we feel sentimental attachment for those that share our social community, we are prompted to act on behalf of those who share our social community. Since the evolutionary/ecological view of the world shows us that we are a part of a biotic community, this worldview is not only a necessary, but also a sufficient condition for environmental action.” (189) John Muir and Aldo Leopold had very different ideas about environmental education. Muir thought that the best way to turn people into environmentalists was to take them into beautiful natural places, while Leopold felt that community was more likely to motivate people to become environmentalists. The authors conclude that both approaches are necessary to make people into environmentalists. The article draws from John Muir’s writings about nature and environmental education to support what is being said about his views. It also makes the point that much of environmentalism draws on Muir’s views, though not all people might become environmentalists after going out in nature. Leopold’s views are described, along with supporting evidence from other authors (mostly in the fields of ethics and psychology) to explain more of his rationale and views. The article uses and contributes to environmental education literature. I want to find out how people become environmentalists, particularly environmental activists. This article explains some theories behind how people become environmentalists in the first place.
 * Annotation 1**
 * 1. **** What three quotes capture the critical import of the text? **
 * 2. **** What is the main argument of the text? **
 * 3. **** Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported. **
 * 4. **** Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to. **
 * 5. **** Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing. **
 * 6. **** List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing. **
 * Environmental education has to involve more than just trips to national parks.
 * Creating community is a necessary step towards creating environmental activism.
 * However, turning people into environmentalists is more tricky than one would think.

Lertzman, D. 1999. Introduction. In “Planning between cultural paradigms: traditional knowledge and the transition to ecological sustainability”, pp. 1-27. Doctoral Dissertation, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia. “People are increasingly aware that the current ecological crisis is not merely technical in origin. The issue is fundamentally one of perspective; arises from how we understand and experience our relationship with nature. The modern industrial worldview regards humanity as separate from non-human Nature. Human fulfillment is posited primarily in the material realm where the ecosystems which contain and sustain human life are considered to be an object of the human economy; they are an externality—the environment.” (1) “The transition to ecological sustainability therefore requires conceptual and experimental shift in our discourse with nature—a transformation of the dominant cultural paradigm. Planning for this is a challenge, given that it is the same cultural worldview in which modern planning finds its philosophical origins. If it is to be viable, our model of sustainability must be holistic and address the integration of ecosystems, social systems and the non-material structures for the cultural production of meaning both in theory and practice. New conceptual and methodological tools are required in order to make this transition. While many agree on the paramount nature of the task, relatively few academics or professionals have broached the issue, fewer still from a planning perspective. This challenge is the focus of my endeavor.” (5) “The perspectives of both the forest industry and Greenpeace are altogether different than that elucidated by a Hesquiaht political leader. He said that his people believe it is proper to the forest for their prosperity; indeed, the prosperity of the forest, of the people and the sea, are bound together. He also described the planning model for forestry and economic development his community was trying to achieve based on the life cycle of the local Western red-cedar (about 1200 years) central to the Nuu-Chah-Nulth world-view. This long term perspective is based in a different model of reality than the cultural mainstream. It would require different harvesting and silvicultural methods and planning process than those currently employed. Exposure of different models of reality can reconfigure our cognitive and material interactions with other species and systems in ways we may never come up with on our own. Not only can they structure social interactions, but also the institutions and methods they embody.” (19) This is a dissertation that asks what traditional/First Nations knowledge can bring to sustainability and how that will affect planning. Cultural paradigms can encourage or discourage people’s view towards the environment and protecting it. If the environment is viewed as separate from the human sphere, then people’s attitude will not be the same as if the environment is viewed as something humans belong in. The author describes viewpoints of people in the two different cultures he studies. Some examples are in the quotes above. The author also describes what a paradigm is, and how a paradigm like the Western one about the environment leads to how people think. In addition, the author explores how paradigms are constructed and how they can be changed. When paradigms are changed, planning must change. The text is a dissertation in the field of Community and Regional Planning. It is meant to contribute to that field, but it can be useful for other social science fields related to sustainability (STS, environmental education, sociology, anthropology, etc.). The text draws from a wide assortment of sources, but mostly from planning and from the material the author is studying (cultural paradigms of traditional cultures and Western culture). This text explains environmental paradigms, which could be very interesting and useful as I formulate my own argument.
 * Annotation 2**
 * 1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?**
 * 2. What is the main argument of the text?**
 * 3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported.**
 * 4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to.**
 * 5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing.**
 * 6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing.**
 * Western ecological paradigms and its differences from other people’s ecological paradigms
 * How we can change paradigms
 * What effects the Western ecological paradigm might have on how people view and act towards the environment.

Scoones, I. (1999). New Ecology and the Social Sciences: What Prospects for a Fruitful Engagement? Annual Review of Anthropology, 28, 479–507. doi:10.2307/223403 “In the past, social science debates have often taken a static, equilibrial view of ecological systems, premised on assumptions about a balance of nature. This has led to a framing of issues that has tended to ignore questions of dynamics and variability across time and space, often excluding from the analysis the key themes of uncertainty, dynamics, and history. Such a selective view of ecological issues necessarily results in a partial and limited social analysis. This in turn may result in the exclusion of certain perspectives on ecological-social interactions that might be derived from alternative readings of ecological and social theory. This has both practical and political implications, as certain views of people-environment interactions become dominant in mainstream policy discourse while others remain unheard. A greater attention to the debates surrounding the new ecology, and an exploration of their social implications, leads potentially to a more pluralist stance on environmental issues, one where a diverse range of perspectives may contribute, beyond the limiting balance of nature view.” (480) “Although there were disputes within each of these areas of theory, there was little departure from equilibrium thinking until the 1970s, when an explosion of interest occurred in mathematical ecology and the (in)stability properties of both model and real systems.” (482) “How have the social sciences attempted to articulate with ecological thinking over the past few decades? Too often, such social science analysis-whether in anthropology, sociology, geography, or economics-has remained attached to a static, equilibrial view of ecology, despite the concerted challenges to such a view within ecology over many years.” (483) “Thus, in the "development narratives" (cf Roe 1991) informing policy and practice, a range of concepts central to equilibrium thinking in ecology becomes central to the dominant discourses of intervention. The way the natural world is counted, classified, labeled, and interpreted emerges from particular traditions in the ecological sciences and, in turn, becomes embedded in management and administration regimes of state agencies, non-government organizations( NGOs), and development projects.” (489) The (then) new view of ecology would affect the social sciences; namely, how the social sciences studied ecology would need to change as ecologists realized that ecosystems were not static with a single equilibrium. The new ecology would change social systems and social sciences. The article details the change in ecological thought in science. It then explains the effects on the social sciences, ranging from topics such as the nature-culture debates and economics. It also discusses the effects of the new ecology on environmental groups including those in the development realm. The text draws from literature on ecology as well as social science and is meant to contribute to social science literature. This article is more general than might be useful, but I felt that it was an important article to read closely. It discusses social sciences and the environment. In addition, understanding different thinking about the environment during history may help me decipher what is thought about the environment today. The section on environmental groups and where they draw their ethics and moral values from is also likely to be useful.
 * Annotation 3**
 * 1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?**
 * 2. What is the main argument of the text?**
 * 3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported.**
 * 4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to.**
 * 5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing.**
 * 6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing.**
 * The environment is very complex, and many challenges await those trying to fix problems
 * History of environmental social sciences/social science thinking about the environment
 * It may be interesting to look at how many groups focus on environmental sustainability using the old view of ecology; there is a section on environmental groups in the article

W. Neil Adger. (2001). Scales of Governance and Environmental Justice for Adaptation and Mitigation of Climate Change. Journal of International Development, 13, 921–931. “Global climate change is a significant challenge to structures of governance at all temporal and spatial scales, particularly in the area of managing natural resources. Advances in understanding of the nature of observed and future climate change has led to a realization that significant future impacts are inevitable and increased efforts towards understanding the process of adaptation to the threatened impacts are required.” (921) “The importance of governance and policy intervention for adaptation in agriculture is clear when the ultimate objectives of agriculture are considered—gainful employment and income for a large section of the world’s population, and the security of food supply for all the world’s consumers. The vulnerability and security of agrarian societies (food producers and households) can be defined in terms of their resilience and their entitlements to resources to cope with climate change. The vulnerability and security of consumers, both rural and urban, local and global, is defined in terms of the availability and effective demand for food and fibre.” (928) “First mitigation, impacts and adaptation are appropriately analysed from a justice perspective at diverse scales. Of these issues adaptation, whether planned investment by governments agencies or spontaneous reactions to changing economic and environmental circumstances, is not a global scale issue. Rather it is primarily made up of individual choices and actions to which collective action at local levels is often the appropriate response.” (929) Different scales of governance are needed to achieve effective climate change related environmental policies. Global governance is definitely needed, especially since climate change is also an environmental justice issue. Impacts of climate change, such as impacts on agriculture, will be global. As a result, global governance is needed in addition to any kind of local governance on environmental issues. The article mostly focuses on the effects of climate change on agriculture, mostly in terms of environmental justice. In addition to the text, the article has tables, including one showing effects of climate change on people of different incomes. This text draws from policy/political science and sociological literature and contributes to environmental policy literature. My thesis will be focused more on smaller-scale, local policy issues. Having an awareness of the benefits and drawbacks of different levels of governance will be very useful to understanding the “big picture”.
 * Annotation 4**
 * 1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?**
 * 2. What is the main argument of the text?**
 * 3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported.**
 * 4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to.**
 * 5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing.**
 * 6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing.**
 * Different governance levels are appropriate for different issues/solutions
 * Environmental problems such as climate change are very complex and will require cooperation from a large number of people and groups
 * Environmental justice is one issue that some college students will be working towards

Bookchin, M. (n.d.). Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement. URL: http://graduateinstitute.ch/files/live/sites/iheid/files/sites/political_science/users/elena.gadjanova/public/Issues%20in%20Env%20Politics%202010/Wapner%201995.pdf “For good reason, more and more people are trying to go beyond the vapid environmentalism of the early 1970s and develop a more fundamental, indeed a more radical, approach to the ecological crises that beleaguer us.” (2) “The greatest differences that are emerging within the so-called ecology movement are between a vague, formless, often self-contradictory, and invertebrate thing called deep ecology and a long-developing, coherent, and socially oriented body of ideas that can best be called social ecology.” (3) “Unless there is a resolute attempt to fully anchor ecological dislocation in social dislocations, to challenge the vested corporate and political interests known as capitalist society—not some vague ‘industrial/technological’ society that even Dwight D. Eisenhower attacked with a more acerbic term—to analyze, explore and attack hierarchy as a reality, not only as a sensibility, to recognize the material needs of the poor and of Third World people, to function politically, not simply as a religious cult, to give the human species and mind their due in natural evolution, not simply to regard them as cancers in the biosphere, to examine economies as well as souls and freedom as well as immerse ourselves in introspective or scholastic arguments about the rights of pathogenic viruses—unless in short North American Greens and the ecology movement shift their focus toward a social ecology and let deep ecology sink into the put it has created, the ecology movement will become another ugly wart on the skin of society.” (22) Environmentalists are beginning to understand a new ecological thought (social ecology) that includes humans as a part of nature. According to Bookchin, deep ecology thought believes that humans are separate from nature. The lengthy essay explains in great detail why deep ecology is the wrong way to think about nature. Humans inherently belong to nature. Bookchin also discusses other environmental-related thinkers, such as Malthus. This is an essay rather than a scientific article, but I would guess that it contributes to environmental social science literature, probably education and philosophy. Do college students see themselves as part of the environment? Or is the environment something ”other” that they wish to protect? Reading this article makes me believe that this might be an interesting question to explore.
 * Annotation 5**
 * 1. **** What three quotes capture the critical import of the text? **
 * 2. **** What is the main argument of the text? **
 * 3. **** Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported. **
 * 4. **** Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to. **
 * 5. **** Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing. **
 * 6. **** List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing. **
 * Deep ecology vs. social ecology
 * This is a fairly famous text within the environmental movement and has likely promoted a specific discourse
 * Understanding of the environmental movement and thinkers about the environmental

Wapner, P. (1995). Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics. World Politics, 47(3), 311–340. “Interest in transnational activist groups such as Greenpeace, European Nuclear Disarmament (E ND), and Amnesty International has been surging. Much of this new attention on the part of students of international relations is directed at showing that transnational activists make a difference in world affairs, that they shape conditions which influence how their particular cause is addressed.” (311) “Recent studies neglect the societal dimension of activists' efforts in part because they subscribe to a narrow understanding of politics. They see politics as a practice associated solely with government and thus understand activist efforts exclusively in terms of their influence upon government. Seen from this perspective, transnational activists are solely global pressure groups seeking to change states' policies or create conditions in the international system that enhance or diminish interstate cooperation. Other efforts directed toward societies at large are ignored or devalued because they are not considered to be genuinely political in character.” (312) “The predominant way to think about NGOs in world affairs is as transnational interest groups. They are politically relevant insofar as they affect state policies and interstate behavior. In this article I have argued that TEAGs, a particular type of NGO, have political relevance beyond this. They work to shape the way vast numbers of people throughout the world act toward the environment using modes of governance that are part of global civil society.” (336) Environmental activists are not often studied in the political science world, yet they are accomplishing a great deal. They use a variety of techniques to raise awareness about an issue, not necessarily to persuade governments to enact laws, but to convince the public. Market pressure sometimes helps in achieving the environmentalists’ desired outcome. This article provides examples of goals that the NGOs the author studied have accomplished (recycling, regulations on whales). The author also discusses political science discourse and explains where the activist success stories fit in. For example, people might start recycling more even without government regulation. Consumer demand may rise or fall for a specific product that environmental NGOs have said is a good product or a bad product, to the extent that the company changes its ways without government regulation. The article does also discuss failures of environmental NGOs. This text likely draws heavily on political science and policy literature, and contributes to political science literature. This text discusses activists at colleges and their collective accomplishments. Activists, according to this article, are making a difference.
 * Annotation 6**
 * 1. What three quotes capture the critical import of the text?**
 * 2. What is the main argument of the text?**
 * 3. Describe at least three ways that the main argument is supported.**
 * 4. Describe the main literatures that the text draws on and contributes to.**
 * 5. Explain how the argument and evidence in the text supports, challenges or otherwise relates to the argument or narrative that you imagine developing.**
 * 6. List of at least three details or examples from the text that you can use to support the argument or narrative that you are developing.**
 * Some college activists belong to large international organizations such as Greenpeace
 * Activists are able to accomplish more than many people realize
 * This article discusses some of the political science discourse which may be tangentially useful to my project