In "Why Political Ecology Has to Let Go of Nature," Latour argues that proponents of "political ecology" are correct in practice and not in theory when they take on sociopolitical and socioeconomic problems related to the environment. He has hope that they will drop their allegiance to a totalizing "nature" and the desire to instrumentalize science in service of political ideology.
Latour states that supporters of "political ecology" should not rationalize their actions according to a holistic idea of nature (and some even thinking of "nature" as something devoid from humans, or separate from humans), and take on a fragmented, more historically materialist perspective. "Nature" - and by nature I take him to mean the biological and physical world, not the "essence" of something, as per a more philosophical definition - is rooted in social relations and actions. He says, "Nature is not in question in ecology: on the contrary, ecology dissolves nature's contours and redistributes its agents." (21) Agents in this case may be non-human (Latour is one of the founders of ANT (Actor-Network Theory) and things like "rules, apparatuses, consumers, institutions, mores, calves, cows, pigs, broods"-- are all part of the problem. And the problems of nature and the political are interrelated and messy. The relationship is unstable, non-linear. He compares how we might now consider objects in nature as "risky matters-of-concern" that coexist with old scientific ideas, or objects that are constructed as "matters-of-fact".
What does this say about the human desire for scientific progress? Are our scientific endeavors still an attempt to take this idea of "nature" and harness it for our own? This seems rather 19th century, yes? What about the current desire to restore some sort of equilibrium? Was there never any kind of equilibrium to begin with? Is Latour speaking to the idea that humans can never agree on anything, including nature, and that my idea of "the environment" might completely different from someone else's, and perhaps both ideas are equally valid and worth investigating?
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Hmm. In response to your question about what Latour would say about our desire for scientific progress, I'm guessing he would first of all say that this desire is socialized into us (as opposed to being "natural"). He might then argue that while we might talk about this desire for scientific progress in big-S terms, the movement toward making it a reality is always small 's'. But I'm not really sure this answers your question about how we articulate that desire inwardly - what do you think?
ReplyDeleteHow is nature (bio/physic -- as you defined it) rooted in social relations and actions? The only way I can see it is if you start calling plants and animals part of the polis/society. Is that what you think he is doing, perforating the human political sphere bubble?
ReplyDeleteOk, and also, what do you mean by the relationship between Nature and politics being non-linear? Did he say something like that (I easily could have missed it in the translated French swamp that we waded through)? I don't even know what it would mean for the relationship to be linear.
Also, I don't know what you mean by asking political ecologists to take on a more historically materialist perspective. I kind of got the impression that Latour thinks that the haphazard way the current environmental movement has been approaching things was sort of a strength, in that they didn't have a rational guiding principle and were therefore unintentionally messing with normal ideas of how to think about politics and nature. Do you think he thinks they should tend towards technological determinism when you say historical materialism? If so, why?
OK Sophie. I asked 4 questions of highly dubious quality. If I don't receive full, thought out, descriptive, cogent, and brilliant analysis in 15 minutes, I will never and I mean never write here again (emoticon deleted).
Hi Dan, a first attempt to answer question 1- how about all of the work that is being done in biotechnology and genetic engineering? if that's not an attempt to try to mess with nature then I don't know what is, and that is inextricably linked to questions of how humans want to control their food, natural resources, their bodies from aging- our attempt to fuse knowledge that we have from prior experimentation with the organic/synthetic.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 2- by nonlinear, I mean networked. A network isn't a single path from one place to the other, it's a bunch of interconnected paths with nodes, and some parts of the path might never interact with another part, but it is still part of the whole.
Think of it another way- the brain! or, then Internet, for lack of a more creative metaphor.
More to come.