Social development and the ecological tradition (original) (raw)

2000, Social Development Issues

This article explores how thinking about the natural environment has influencedsocial development effirts to improve human well-being. Conceptualizations ofthe human-nature relationship have shifted since industrialization, influenced in part by the international develop ment community's recognition ofafrighteningly high level ofglobal environmental degradation and the intricate connections among social, environmental and economic concerns. As human-nature interactions continue to evolve, social development advocates are challenged to define their role in sustainable development or 'sustainability, "to think diffirentfy about economic models ofdevelopment, and to pursue new levels ofcoordination and collaboration with environmental development advocates. Social constructions, semantics and wildly opposed geoning of science, industrialism and capitalism in the 17 rb cen conceptualizations mark humankind's struggle to define its rela tury. Western religious thinking that perceived God as separate tionship with the natural environment. In the course of our ef from material life helped set the stage for this shift: (Estes, 1993; forts co improve the human condition, nature has been blessed as Hoffand McNutt, 1994; Roughley, 1995). Merchant (1980) elo a bountiful paradise, cursed as a capricious, deadly enemy to be quently describes the dominant mechanistic views that emerged, conquered and objectified as property and fuel for human con during the scientific revolution and industrialization era, of na swnption. Nature has been worshiped as Goddess and God, reified ture as object and resource over which humans held the right for as the living organism Gaia and mourned for its untimely passing use, accumulation and distribution. Nature could be understood, as hwnankind's roadkill. Hwnans have been cast variously, and and therefore manipulated, by discovering the physical laws gov simultaneously, as nature's champions, its beneficent stewards, as erning it. During this time ofrapid technological change, charac brother and sister to all creatures, as top dog in the food chain terized by scientific rationality, positivism and reductionism, the and as irs parasites and rapists. This complicated relationship en dominant view was that virtually any barrier to human progress compasses every aspect of the global human society. could and would be overcome eventually through scientific in This article explores ways in which the natural environment quiry and technological achievement (Rosnak, 1978). Human has influenced social development's rich history of efforts to im kind believed it had discovered the true nature of nature and the prove human well-being (Khinduka, 1987; Midgley, 1995; means by which to harness it. Death Were Greatly Exaggerated ..." 1984). Academics continue the struggle to understand the na Social constructions of the relationship between humankind ture-humankind relationship by reframing the work of various and the natural world have shifted considerably since the burtheorists, including Marx and Friere (Keough, 1997; Sundararajan,