A Sense of Place [2]:
Eco-Social Theory & Practice in Ireland & Switzerland
by Robert Allen
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When the Geneva-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau
wrote that
"the sweet voice of nature is no longer an
infallible guide for us" he was referring to a time when
the civilised world was about to embrace a new alchemical
age. It was the beginning of an era that would bring us to
where we are today - living in a civilised, human-built
environment that is based on our ability to play the role
of Gods using the natural resources of the planet - iron,
salt, water, oil, plants and trees - combining them with
natural elements to make electricity and petrol, engines
and tools, medicines and plastics, computers and
televisions, microchips and transistors, furniture and
paper, and many other items we now take for granted.
Rousseau, who added that the independence we have received
from nature is not
"a desirable state", would not, in his
wildest dreams, be able to imagine the world we live in
today or the precarious relationship we now share with the
planet's species and its dwindling resources. By the time
of his death, at Ermenonville in July 1778, his native
Swiss were destroying their natural environment by
stripping the mountains of their tree cover, so much that
today avalanches, floods, landslides and rock falls are a
serious threat, despite an equally serious attempt to erect
defences.
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The Valais canton, in south-west Switzerland, was
devastated by floods in 1987, 1993, 1999 and 2000. The
storms of October 2000 brought an earthflow of immense
proportions into the Rhone valley, laying waste the
carefully constructed human-built infrastructure. In Gondo
13 people were killed when the earthflow burst through a
barrier that was insufficient to withstand the pressure.
Flooding is now costing between one and two billion Swiss
francs a year.
Despite this threat from nature in its fury the human-built
environment continues to expand with 40 billion Swiss francs
(€25.7 billion/$30.9 billion) spent each year by the
federal government on the country's infrastructure. In 1998 the
Swiss people voted to spend 31.6 billion Swiss francs (€20.3
billion/$24.3 billion) on two base tunnels through the
Alps. One of these, the 34.6 kilometre Lötschberg base tunnel between
Raron in the Valais and Frutigen in the Berner Oberland,
started construction amidst the chaos of 1999 and 2000,
workers beginning to blast and drill out 16 million tonnes
of rock.
Nowhere on this planet is the social relationship between
the civilised, human-built environment and the natural,
ecological world better defined than in Switzerland, where
nature in its fury frequently destroys what humanity has
built, with blood, sweat and tears, and where the
ecological balance is a constant concern to every Swiss
person. Suddenly the sense of place that has always existed
among the Swiss has become an emotional issue among its
people. Heimat, the German word that describes identity,
place and belonging, has taken on a social and ecological
significance among the Swiss that is slowly becoming
apparent - and which Rousseau might have approved of. When
Rousseau was advocating a social contract between the
individual and society, Europe was attempting to drag
itself out from an era of barbarity that the philosopher
despised and that left him a pathetic paranoid figure whose
philosophical thought was centuries ahead of his time. In
his 1755 essay, A Discourse on Inequality, he wrote:
"All
the inequality which now prevails owes its strength and
growth to the development of our faculties and the advance
of the human mind, and becomes at last permanent and
legitimate by the establishment of property and laws".
Rousseau argued that humanity could never return to a state
of nature, no matter how hard it tried. Civilisation, as
Rousseau perceived it, had ruined humanity and there was no
turning back. The late 20th century would see a movement
develop that Rousseau might have approved of and then
referred its philosophers to his argument:
"The
philosophers, who have inquired into the foundations of
society, have all felt the necessity of going back to a
state of nature; but not one of them has got there...
Peace and innocence escaped us for ever, even before we
tasted their delights. Beyond the range of thought and
feeling of the brutish men of the earliest times, and no
longer within the grasp of the 'enlightened' men of later
periods, the happy life of the Golden Age could never
really have existed for the human race. When men could have
enjoyed it they were unaware of it; and when they could
have understood it they had already lost it".
Those who call themselves social ecologists and many others
now argue that Rousseau got it wrong, that humanity cannot
return to a state of nature because it never left it; all
humanity did was evolve using its imagination and its
ability to interact and adapt; it was the process of using
tools and exploiting the planet's resources that changed
humanity into a social animal that Rousseau believed had
left nature behind. Rousseau, looking around him at a world
that was being swiftly changed by science and technology,
was viewing the world through a glass as dark as his moods.
What he really wanted to see was a society that was not
based on the exploitation of nature and of labour, a
society that did not define itself by unequal competition
and a flawed belief in a red-in-tooth-and-claw nature.
Rousseau's obsession with nostalgia meant he believed
humanity had abandoned its natural state, and it wasn't
until the Russian geographer and anarchist Peter Kropotkin
came along with the evidence that the planet's species
actually cooperated with each other using mutual aid that
human society began to understand its true relationship
with nature. Kropotkin would argue that it was not a return
to a state of nature that was required but a move forward
towards a time when humanity could live in a world defined
by cooperation, mutual aid and respect.
It was no co-incidence that the first no global protests
took place in the multi-cultural, international city of
Geneva, in 1998 and that some protesters, with their mouths
gagged, carried a coffin to bury the 'social contract' in
front of Rousseau's memorial. Switzerland has been the
scene of two of the most brutal police responses to the no
global protests, in Geneva in 1998 and in Lausanne in 2003,
while the continent of Europe has become a violent
battleground, the forces of globalisation killing one
protester and hospitalising many others during peaceful
protests since 1998. This is not what Arne Naess, the
Norwegian philosopher, expected when he advocated
non-violent direct action and the ideal of a biocentric,
eco-defence movement (Earth First!). It was, however,
exactly what Murray Bookchin, the American radical and one
of the principle authors of social ecology, expected when
he advocated a left-libertarian eco-social movement that
would challenge and set out to radically change the
hierarchical structure of society (Peoples Global Action,
Social Forums).
It was George Marsh, in his seminal 1864 work Man and
Nature, or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action,
who remarked that man (sic) is everywhere a disturbing
agent.
"Everywhere he plants his foot, the harmonies of
nature are turned to discords". Lewis Mumford, who
challenged the role of technology in the destruction of
both humanity and nature, called Marsh's book
"the
fountainhead of the conservation movement". Sadly, this is
where the challenges, against those who would destroy so
that they could gain personal wealth and power, went
astray. The conservationist movement, especially in north
America, attracted people with bourgeoisie sensibilities.
It became a liberal movement that naively believed it could
prevent the destruction of nature using polite protest. By
the 1980s it was no longer called a conservationist
movement, it was called environmentalism and its
philosophical core was known as deep ecology - and it was
flawed.
The emergence of Bookchin's social ecology differed
significantly from Naess's deep ecology, yet both could be
seen to influence each other, especially in modern Europe,
where anarchism and socialism would become the defining
forces in an eco-defence movement that was evolving into an
eco-social movement. Rousseau's eco-social ideals and
nostalgia had been clarified and modified by Kropotkin,
with his argument for mutual aid in society. This brought
the debate back into the realm of the individual, where
sense of belonging, identity and place are paramount in the
relationship between humanity and nature.
In modern Ireland sense of place is often confused with
nostalgia though its more recent association with culture
and with ecology would gave the impression that we too,
like the Swiss, have an understanding of the relationship
between the human-built and natural worlds and are aware of
the philosophies of deep and social ecology - and what
needs to be done. The evidence however is sparse. Attempts
to save waterways, woodlands and bogs, prevent the denuding
of mountains, the planting of ecologically-destructive
commercial pines and quarrying at ancient sites, and
generally improve the quality of Ireland's ecology have
been met with failure, with few exceptions. The greater
failure, however, has been our inability to marry the
philosophical thought or theory with the ecological and
social practice. Deep ecology has never had a hearing in
Ireland while social ecology has been misunderstood, in
much the same manner that Bookchin has been maligned. The
history in Ireland of eco-social theory and practice is, so
far, a short one. It consists of an attempt to form an
Earth First! style direct action collective to protect
Ireland's wild places and ecologically sensitive areas and
ecosystems; an attempt to form an alliance between
eco-social non-violent direct action groups in other
countries and use their knowledge and experience to develop
both an ideology and a campaign structure in Ireland; and
an attempt to introduce a debate about the differences
between environmentalism, sustainable development,
self-sufficiency and social ecology.
Bookchin's definition of social ecology is not even a
subject for debate.
"Social ecology calls upon us," he wrote,
"to see that nature and society are interlinked by
evolution into one nature that consists of two
differentiations: first or biotic nature, and second or
human nature. Human nature and biotic nature share an
evolutionary potential for greater subjectivity and
flexibility. Second nature is the way in which human beings
as flexible, highly intelligent primates inhabit the
natural world. That is to say, people create an environment
that is most suitable for their mode of existence. In this
respect, second nature is no different from the environment
that every animal, depending upon its abilities, creates as
well as adapts to, the biophysical circumstances-or
ecocommunity-in which it must live. On this very simple
level, human beings are, in principle, doing nothing that
differs from the survival activities of nonhuman beings".
In Ireland it is a definition that has no resonance in
society.
In Ireland all we are concerned with is development and
destroying the natural world - for gain. Only the wind and
rain brings the kind of devastation that the Swiss in their
mountain valleys are used to. It is all that reminds us of
our relationship with nature, as we seek to stand apart
from it. We talk about self-sufficiency and sustainability
when we actually mean something else, something Rousseau
identified 250 years ago, when he said we contradicted our
need to return to nature with
"want, avidity, oppression, desires and pride".
Nowhere was this more apparent than during the campaign to
prevent Wicklow County Council widening the road through
the Glen of the Downs and destroying one of the few
remaining natural woodlands left in Ireland. There was no
real debate, among the greens, among the bureaucrats, among
the academics, among the politicians. What should have been
an eco-social reaction to the state's desire to spend EU
funds on road building became a misinterpretation of the
EU's desire to move freight off the roads, for
environmental and ecological reasons. It also made a
mockery, at the same time, of an non-EU country,
Switzerland, putting in place a project that would reduce
vehicle emissions while EU member states prevaricated.
The campaign in the Glen of the Downs said more about the
problems within Irish society than it did about any desire
to protect a threatened eco-system. It did not seem to
matter that various species would be affected by the road
widening and that the slopes of the valley and the tree
roots would be compromised by the destruction. The campaign
was mirrored by other campaigns around the country, against
other threatened woodlands, against the planting of
genetically-modified sugar beet, and against
the erection in rural areas of telecommunication masts. The
real interface between the human environment and the
natural world has occurred among the grassroots within
communities who understand the meaning of heimat. While
they attempt to define what this means to modern Irish
communities they realise they are up against power and
money. These days land and property are seen as essential
elements in our lives and to get them we must do what we
can. For some of us that means exploiting natural resources
without consequence to the eco-balance and exploiting other
humans without consequence to their well-being.
This has been a refrain of politics in Ireland for many years, that
it is impossible to live low-income sustainable lives, that
we must trade our natural resources for the jobs that will
provide us with our basic needs.
"A society based on grow or die as its all-pervasive imperative,"
argued Bookchin,
"must necessarily have a devastating ecological impact".
There is certainly a recognition that Irish society must
change if it is to survive. But that recognition has not
got past the talking stage. When a liberal green like
Richard Douthwaite stated that
"a sustainable world... will be one of small communities that
run their own affairs... meeting or making their own requirements from local
resources" he was lauded by fellow liberals. But when a
Sinn Fein policy document stated that
"community
regeneration is a key process for ensuring that responses
to disadvantage are community led, strategically driven and
correspond directly to the actual specifics of local social
need, the development process itself as well as sustainable
outcomes" the issue was side-tracked by the same liberals.
The publication of county development plans with
sustainability at their core would indicate that the state
is aware of the issues and has encouraged county councils
and their development boards to seek partnerships that will
improve the human environment with minimal harm to the
natural world.
What is missing from this plan is the ideal
of self-sufficiency and the even greater ideal of community
empowerment and participation, and the belief that the 21st
century solution to our needs is a bioregional vision based
on cooperation and mutual aid.
It was the Swiss people who voted to make long holes in
their mountains, and it was the Swiss people back in 1912
who voted, with the threat of war hanging over Europe, to
turn their county into a self-sufficient haven. They did
this by reclaiming their valleys from nature and by using
the power of nature to build large dams high in the
mountains along with hydro-electric installations and by
encouraging everyone to grow food and participate in a
cooperative system. The result is a public transportation
system, buses, trams and trains, run on electricity; a land
abundant with food, from wheat to vines to fruit to cattle;
and a society that realised that to sustain its
self-sufficiency it would have to work with rather than
against nature. The theory was thought out and it was put
into practice, slowly refined using an ecological model -
everything that was taken out of the system was put back
in. Swiss society is a society with virtually no waste.
Recycling is an everyday habit and a countrywide industry.
However Switzerland is not a perfect society; it has deep
moral and social flaws with historical roots. The people
speak four languages that are distinctive to Switzerland,
they practice several strands of the same Christian
religion; the urban people think that the rural people are
ignorant and insular, while the rural people think the
urban people are arrogant and competitive. Sounds familiar?
Compared to Irish society, however, Switzerland is an
ecological paradigm with deep social roots, that are fed
and watered by a system of government that is ultimately
decided by the people. It is not an anarchist system but it
has anarchist qualities; it is not a capitalist system but
it has advanced capitalist qualities. It has the yin and
the yang, and more significantly it has a balance between
human and nature that is both ecological and social.
Rousseau said that our needs bring us together at the same
time as our passions divide us and the more we become
enemies of our fellow-men (sic), the less we can do without
them. Writing at a time when gender issues were firmly
patriarchal, Rousseau identified the issues that now face
humanity in the early 21st century - how to change society
without personal harm, how, in the words of the
Dublin-born, Mexico-city based academic John Holloway, to
change society without talking control.
Few of us understand why we should challenge this global
culture - the product of civilisation, the consequence of
our greed and our selfishness - and the impact our
consumer-dependent lives are having on the eco-systems we
depend on for our survival. The reason for this, asserted
Sandra Postel in the 1992 edition of the Worldwatch
Institute's State of the World, is because most people are
in a
"psychological state of denial" concerning the
seriousness and magnitude of the global ecological threat
and the consequent effect on our lives. According to
eco-psychologist Chellis Glendinning, "in western culture, we live with chronic anxiety,
anger, and a sense that something essential is missing from
our lives, that we exist without a soul". This is understandable.
"Never
before," the eco-theologian Thomas Berry lamented,
"has the
human community been confronted with a situation that
required such a sudden and total change in life style under
the threat of a comprehensive degradation of the planet".
Yet Naess made the answer seem simple.
"[People] must also
find others who feel the same way and form circles of
friends who give one another confidence and support in
living in a way that the majority finds ridiculous, naive,
stupid and unnecessarily simplistic. But in order to do
that, one must already have enough self-confidence to
follow one's intuitions - a quality very much lacking in
broad sections of the populace. Many people follow the
trends and advertisements and tend to become philosophical
and ethical cripples".
The Grassroots Gathering is certainly not a circle of
friends given the diversity and age range of the people
involved but, if one journalist's reaction to it is a
barometer, it definitely gives those involved
"confidence
and support" in promoting a way of life
"that the majority
finds ridiculous, naive, stupid and unnecessarily
simplistic". The first Grassroots Gathering attracted 80
people in Dublin on November 24, 2001. It is now a feature
in Irish radical society, with GG groups based in most
towns and cities, and a regular gathering shared between
Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Galway and Limerick.
Laurence Cox described the motivation behind GG:
"We're working really hard to reach out to movements, which
are only tangentially involved - particularly community
activism, anti-racist and solidarity groups - as well as
trying to get beyond 'the usual suspects' in terms of
individual participants. That's not for tokenistic reasons,
but because once again the way to achieve real change is to
bring all those different voices and struggles together. So
it's about getting beyond the natural tendency of any group
of people [including us] to define 'politics' [or whatever
they call it] as being the kind of thing they do, define
'activists' [or whatever] as being the kind of people they
know, and so ignore and fail to communicate with other
people and struggles. Basically our strength, as people who
want to change very fundamental aspects of this society,
lies in each other. And so we constantly have to move
beyond our own comfort zones, at the same time as hoping
that other movements and individuals are doing the same
kind of thing themselves. Of course there are also a lot of
gobshites, but the point is that these emotional responses
are not the private property of a small group of activists
surrounded by an uncaring mass. And that translates into
the ability of many activists - not all, but many - to
remain human, not to be traumatised by the pressures of the
situation, to look after themselves emotionally and to
support each other. And those are very important things -
and the sense that things are changing, that we don't
really know where we're going but the sense of possibility
is becoming bigger, and the future is seeming more open.
Which is absolutely wonderful, not simply to be playing a
part in a script that's already written, but to be present
in making our own history and feel that that's the case. It
is not an easy task".
In Towards an Ecological Society, Bookchin wrote:
"The
problem they face is the need to discover the sweeping
implications of the issues they raise; the achievement of a
totally new, non-hierarchical society in which the
domination of nature by man, of woman by man, and of
society by the state is completely abolished -
technologically, institutionally, culturally and in the
very rationality and sensibilities of the individual". Yet,
a movement forcing perpetual change is now a reality all
over the world, embracing eco-social issues in a holistic
manner seemingly destined to shape a brand new world. It
could be argued that this change is anarchistic by its
nature because it is happening without structure and form
as more and more people realise they have no choice. They
are empowering themselves to challenge the political and
economic orders because that is all there is left to do.
People are beginning to realise that their lives have a
meaning that is not simply an extension of consumerist
society. More people are empowering themselves to change
this abstract thing called "civilisation". To be a passive
viewer or an intense participant is the choice facing large
sections of society. Let's put this into perspective. Prior
to civilisation, 10,000 years ago, forests covered one
third of the planet or 6.2 billion hectares. By 1975 forest
cover had been reduced to a quarter. By 1980 it was a
fifth. Now forests vanish at a rate of 17 million hectares
per year (about half the size of Finland). Twenty years
ago, the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) estimated that
35% of the earth's land surface was threatened with
desertification. The four principle causes, stated UNEP,
are:
- Overgrazing of rangeland
- Overcultivation of crop lands
- Waterlogging and salinization of irrigated lands, and
- Deforestation
We are also raising the temperature of the planet with our
industrial and domestic activities. In 1998 natural
disasters caused more global damage than during all of the
1980s. Drought devastated 54 countries while 45 countries
suffered from floods. These disasters are not the natural
consequence of planetary cycles, they are, said the
Worldwatch Institute, a consequence of modern society.
"Higher temperatures mean that there is more energy driving
the earth's climatic system. This in turn means more
evaporation, more destructive storms and more flooding".
Civilisation, said William Kotke, is murdering the planet.
"We must create the positive, co-operative culture
dedicated to life restoration and then accompany that in
perpetuity, or we as a species cannot be on earth," he
wrote. At the close of the 20th century Lester Brown summed
it up in the 1999 edition of State of the World.
"The
western economic model - the fossil-fuel-based,
automobile-centered, throwaway economy that so dramatically
raised living standards for part of humanity during this
[20th] century is in trouble. Indeed, the global economy
cannot expand indefinitely if the ecosystem on which it
depends continues to deteriorate".
These are gloomy predictions which those with eco-social
sensibilities have been listening to for a long time.
Around the world people are coming together to create
cooperatives that combine capitalist economics, worker
participation and fiscal realities. So far they are
centered primarily on food; such as the fair trading by
native workers of indigenous crops (dried organically-grown
bananas, mangoes, pineapples, tea, coffee and sugar); such
as the wholesale supply of organically-produced vegan and
vegetarian produce; such as the retail supply of organic
seeds; such as organic farms, organic retail stores and
organic box suppliers. Housing co-ops supported by lending
agencies that do not demand a high return of interest are
helping people with bioregional visions to create small,
autonomous, interactive communities determined to live
self-sufficiently. Eco-villages, despite a tendency towards
elitism and isolation, are lighting up like tiny beacons
all over the western world. Barter schemes, local
currencies and mutual aid clubs are working alongside
capitalist economic methods of exchange in many
communities.
What all these activities have in common is a gradual drift
towards a bioregional paradigm. Kirkpatrick Sale, in his
impelling book on bioregionalism, does not underestimate
the personal and social obstacles.
"It will take some broad
and persuasive education to get people to realise that it
is not the bioregional task that is irrelevant but
precisely the business-as-usual politics of all the major
parties of all the major industrial nations, not one of
which has made ecological salvation a significant priority,
not one of which is prepared to abandon or even curtail the
industrial economy that is imperilling us. And it will take
patience to lead people past their fear and lingering
hatred of the natural world, which grows as their ignorance
of it grows".
That ignorance is not unusual in people who no longer spend
their lives in commune with nature or struggle to live in
an environment where exploitation is their only means of
survival. But, as Sale and others of his persuasion now
realise, times are changing and people are beginning to
realise that something is wrong with the way we live.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau would approve of their thinking and
particularly of their actions.
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–
Robert Allen
This is based on an essay first published in the Irish
geography magazine Chimera.
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SELECTED FURTHER READING:
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Earthscan, London, 1990
Allen, R. No Global,
Pluto, London/Dublin, 2004
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(forthcoming)
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(forthcoming)
Anon. Switzerland 2003-04,
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Berry, T. The Great Work,
Bell Tower, 1999
Bookchin, M. Post-Scarcity Anarchism,
Black Rose Books, Toronto, 1971
Bookchin, M. Toward an Ecological Society,
Black Rose Books, Toronto, 1980
Bookchin, M. The Ecology of Freedom,
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Black Rose Books, Toronto, 1991
Bookchin, M. The Philosophy of Social Ecology,
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Shambhala, Boston, 1994
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Pluto, London, 2002
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Kotke, W. The Final Empire,
Arrow Point Press, Portland, 1993
Kovel, J. The Enemy of Nature,
Zed, London 2002
Kroptkin, P. The Conquest of Bread,
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Kroptkin, P. Evolution and Environment,
Black Rose Books (1912), 1995
Kroptkin, P. Fields, Factories and Workshops,
Black Rose Books (1913), 1994
Kroptkin, P. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution,
Black Rose Books (1914), 1989
Marsh, G. P. Man and Nature,
The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, Cambridge (1864), 1965
Martell, L. Ecology and Society,
Polity, London, 1994
Mumford, L. The Future of Technics and Civilisation,
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Pepper, D. Eco-Socialism,
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Rowell, A. Green Backlash,
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Robert Allen is the author of Dioxin War: Truth & Lies About A Perfect Poison, Pluto Press, London/Ann Arbor/Dublin and University of Michigan, US, published in July 2004. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.
Book Description
This is a book about Dioxin, one of the most poisonous chemicals known to humanity. It was the toxic component of Agent Orange, used by the US military to defoliate huge tracts of Vietnam during the war in the 60s and 70s.
It can be found in pesticides, plastics, solvents, detergents and cosmetics. Dioxin has been revealed as a human carcinogen, and has been associated with heart disease, liver damage, hormonal disruption, reproductive disorders, developmental destruction and neurological impairment.
The Dioxin War is the story of the people who fought to reveal the truth about dioxin. Huge multinationals Dow and Monsanto both manufactured Agent Orange. Robert Allen reveals the attempts by the chemical industry, in collusion with regulatory and health authorities, to cover up the true impact of dioxin on human health. He tells the remarkable story of how a small, dedicated group of people managed to bring the truth about dioxin into the public domain and into the courts - and win.
Robert Allen is the author of No Global: The People of Ireland versus the Multinationals, Pluto Press, London/Ann Arbor/Dublin, published in April 2004. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.
Book Description
Ireland's economy has seen phenomenal growth since the 1990s, as a result of an earlier decision by the state to chase foreign investment, largely from US corporates. As a result, manufacturers of raw chemicals, pharmaceuticals and highly dangerous substances came to Ireland, where they could make toxic products free from the strict controls imposed by other nations.
Robert Allen's book reveals the consequences to human health and the environment of the Irish state's love affair with the multinational chemical industry. The cost to Irish society was a series of ecological and social outrages, starting in the 1970s and continuing into the 2000s.
No Global is a lesson for countries who seek to encourage multinationals at the expense of the health their population and the delicate nature of their ecosystems. It is also a heart-warming record of the successful campaigns fought by local people to protect themselves and their environment from polluting industry
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