Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, Vol 11, No 1 (2017)

Mainstreaming Morality: An Examination of Moral Ecologies as a Form of Resistance

Lauren Baker, Samara Brock, Luisa Cortesi, Aysen Eren, Chris Hebdon, Francis Ludlow, Jeffrey Stoike, Michael Dove
Issued Date: 4 Jul 2017

Abstract


In this article, we ask how considerations about moral (and immoral) ecologies have motivated and shaped ecological resistance movements. The concept of ‘moral ecologies’ involves expectations of reciprocal, just, and sustainable relations between society and environment, which we consider a central concern of environmental movements. We analyze the cultural, material, and political importance of moral ecologies as a form of resistance by examining social movements in Alaska and Turkey, as well as ideas about sumak kawsay (‘good living’) in Ecuador and historical precursors in the form of the ‘righteous ruler’ in early medieval Ireland. Our analysis demonstrates that a focus on moral ecologies has often resonated widely, facilitated new and cross-cutting coalitions, and in some cases garnered elite support and signilcantly inmuenced national politics and landscapes.

Download Media

PDF (Price: £17.50 )

DOI: 10.1558/jsrnc.27506

References


Acosta, Alberto. 2003. ‘En La Encrucijada de la Glocalización’ [Spanish], Polis. Revista Latinoamericana 4: 1-17. Online: http://polis.revues.org/7039.

Adelman, Juliana, and Francis Ludlow. 2014. ‘The Past, Present and Future of Irish Environmental History’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 114C: 1-33.

Adeola, Francis. 2000. ‘Cross-National Environmental Injustice and Human Rights Issues: A Review of Evidence in the Developing World’, American Behavioral Scientist 43.4: 686-706.

Akula, Vikram K. 1995. ‘Grassroots Environmental Resistance in India’, in B. Taylor (ed.), Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism (Albany: State University of New York Press): 127-45.

Alica, Suheyla Suzan. 2005. ‘İdari̇ Yargi Kararlari Çerçevesinde 2872 Sayili Çevre Kanunu Ve İlgi̇li̇ Yönetmeli̇kleri̇n Uygulanmasindan Doğan Uyuşmazliklar’ (PhD diss. [Turkish], The Institute of Social Sciences, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey).

Altmann, Philipp. 2013a. ‘El Sumak Kawsay en el Discurso del Movimiento Indígena Ecuatoriano’ [Spanish], Indiana 30: 283-99.

Altmann, Philipp. 2013b. ‘Good Life as a Social Movement Proposal for Natural Resource Use: The Indigenous Movement in Ecuador’, Consilience 10.1: 59-71.

Altmann, Philipp. 2014. ‘El Sumak Kawsay y el Patrimonio Ecuatoriano’ [Spanish], Histoire(s) de l'Amérique Latine 10: 1-16. Online: http://www.hisal.org/revue/article/Altmann2014.

Baskan, Argun. 2011. ‘Liberalization of Turkey’s Hydroelectricity Sector’, in A. Kibaroğlu, W. Scheumann, and A. Kramer (eds.), Turkey’s Water Policy: National Frameworks and International Cooperation (Berlin: Springer): 83-92. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19636-2_5.

Bloch, Maurice. 1974. ‘Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority?’, European Journal of Sociology 15: 55-81. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003975600002824.

Bohrer, Becky. 2012. ‘Pebble Mine Opponents See Environmental Study as Slanted’, Anchorage Daily News, February 26. Online: https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/pebble-mine-opponents-see-environmental-study-slanted/2012/02/26/.

Bray, Dorothy Ann. 2003. ‘Miracles and Wonders in the Composition of the Lives of the Early Irish Saints’, in Jane Cartwright (ed.), Celtic Hagiography and Saints’ Cults (Cardiff: University of Wales Press): 136-47.

Brosius, J. Peter. 1999. ‘Green Dots, Pink Hearts: Displacing Politics from the Malaysian Rain Forest’, American Anthropologist 101.1: 36-57. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1999.101.1.36.

Bryner, Gary C. 2002. ‘Assessing Claims of Environmental Justice: Conceptual Frameworks’, in K. Mutz, G. Bryner, and D. Kenney (eds.), Justice and Natural Resources: Concepts, Strategies, and Applications (Washington: Island Press): 31-55.

Buğra, Ayşe, and Osman Savaşkan. 2014. New Capitalism in Turkey: The Relationship between Politics, Religion and Business (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing). Doi: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781783473137.

Bullard, Robert D. 2005. ‘Environmental Justice in the Twenty-First Century’, in R. Bullard (ed.), The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books): 19-42.

Byrne, Francis John. 2001. Irish Kings and High-Kings (Dublin: Four Courts Press, rev. edn).

Byrne, John, Leigh Glover, and Cecilia Martinez (eds.). 2002. Environmental Justice: Discourses in International Political Economy (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers).

Carey, John. 1998. King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings (Dublin: Four Courts Press, rev. edn).

Cartwright, Jane. 2003. ‘Introduction’, in Jane Cartwright (ed.), Celtic Hagiography and Saints’ Cults (Cardiff: University of Wales Press): 1-9.

Cederlöf, Gunnel, and K. Sivaramakrishnan (eds.). 2014. Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in South Asia (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press).

Cepek, Michael. 2012. A Future for Amazonia: Randy Borman and Cofán Environmental Politics (Austin: University of Texas Press).

Charles-Edwards, Thomas. 2012. St Patrick and the Landscape of Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic).

Coil, David, Elizabeth Lester, and Bretwood Higman. 2013. ‘Keystone Center Dialogue on Pebble Mine’, Ground Truth Trekking, 12 May. Online: http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/MetalsMining/KeystonePebble. html#ixzz2md bJ8Aly.

Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay. 2014. Online: http://www.youtube.com/user/Fishermen4BristolBay.

Conklin, Beth, and Laura Graham. 1995. ‘The Shifting Middle Ground: Amazonian Indians and Eco-Politics’, American Anthropologist 97.4: 695-710. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1995.97.4.02a00120.

Conklin, Harold. 1957. Hanuno’o Agriculture (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations).

Cubillo-Guevara, Ana Patricia, and Antonio Luis Hidalgo-Capitán. 2015. ‘El Sumak Kawsay Genuino Como Fenómeno Social Amazónico Ecuatoriano’ [Spanish], OBETS: Revista de Ciencias Sociales 10.2: 301-33. Doi: https://doi.org/10.14198/OBETS2015.10.2.02.

Dove, Michael R., and Daniel M. Kammen. 1997. ‘The Epistemology of Sustainable Resource Use: Managing Forest Products, Swiddens, and High-Yielding Variety Crops’, Human Organization 56.1: 91-101. Doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.56.1.l784408q35174516.

Dove, Michael R., and Daniel M. Kammen. 2015. Science, Society, and Environment: Applying Physics and Anthropology to Sustainability (Abingdon, UK: Routledge).

Dunphy, Graeme. 2010. ‘Annals’, in Graeme Dunphy (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill): 45-52.

Elvin, Mark. 1998. ‘Who Was Responsible for the Weather? Moral Meteorology in Late Imperial China’, Osiris 13 (2nd Series, Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, Technology, and Medicine in East and Southeast Asia): 213-37.

Erensu, Sinan. 2011. ‘Problematizing Green Energy: Small Hydro Plant Developments in Turkey’. Paper presented at European Society for Ecological Economics Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, 14–18 June 2011.

Erensu, Sinan. 2013. ‘Abundance and Scarcity Amidst the Crisis of “Modern Water”: The Changing Water-Energy Nexus in Turkey’, in Leila M. Harris, Jacqueline A. Goldin and Christopher Sneddon (eds.), Contemporary Water Governance in the Global South: Scarcity, Marketization and Participation (New York: Routledge): 61-78.

Eryılmaz, Çağrı. 2012. ‘Social Ecology Challenges Environmental Participation: HES Opposition Cases in Turkey’ (PhD diss., Department of Sociology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey).

Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth. 1993. ‘Raiding and Warring in Monastic Ireland’, History Ireland 1.3: 13-18.

Fomin, Maxim. 1999. ‘The Early Medieval Irish and Indic Polities and the Concepts of Righteous Ruler’, Cosmos 15: 163-97.

Fomin, Maxim. 2013. Instructions for Kings: Secular and Clerical Images of Kingship in Early Ireland and Ancient India (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter).

Garcia, Maria Elena. 2005. Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Education, and Multicultural Development in Peru (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).

Gedicks, Al. 1993. The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles against Multinational Corporations (Boston, MA: South End Press).

Gibbons, Fiachra, and Lucas Moore. 2011. ‘Turkey’s Great Leap Forward Risks Cultural and Environmental Bankruptcy’, The Guardian, May 30: 19. Online: http://www. guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/29/turkey-nuclear-hydro-power-development? INTCMP=SRCH.

Greenberg, Paul. 2010. Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food (New York: Penguin Press).

Grim, John A. (ed.). 2001. Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Gualinga, José. 2005. ‘Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku Tayja Saruta’ [Spanish], Ecología Política: Cuadernos de Debate Internacional 29: 168-74.

Guha, Ramachandra. 2000. The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, exp. edn).

Hamsici, Mahmut. 2012. Dereler ve Isyanlar [Turkish] (Istanbul: NOTABENE, 3rd edn).

Harris, Leila, and Mine Islar. 2013. ‘Neoliberalism, Nature and Changing Modalities of Environmental Governance in Contemporary Turkey’, in Yildiz Atasoy (ed.), Global Economic Crisis and the Politics of Diversity (London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan): 53-78.

Hazar, Nedim (dir.). 2012. VADİ [The Valley]. [Turkish] (NTV).

Hébert, Karen. 2010. ‘In Pursuit of Singular Salmon: Paradoxes of Sustainability and the Quality Commodity’, Science as Culture 19.4: 553–81. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2010.519620.

Henken, Elissa R. 2003. ‘Welsh Hagiography and the Nationalist Impulse’, in Jane Cartwright (ed.), Celtic Hagiography and Saints’ Cults (Cardiff: University of Wales Press): 26-44.

Henneman, Rutger, and Alastair McIntosh. 2009. ‘The Political Theology of Modern Scottish Land Reform’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 3.3: 340-75.

Hill, Brendan, Rachael Freeman, Steve Blamires, and Alastair McIntosh. 1995. ‘Popular Resistance and the Emergence of Radical Environmentalism in Scotland’, in Bron Taylor (ed.), Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press): 241-56.

Hornborg, Alf. 2007. ‘Footprints in the Cotton Fields: The Industrial Revolution as Time–Space Appropriation and Environmental Load Displacement’, in Alf Hornborg, J.R. McNeil, and Joan Martinez-Alier (eds.), Rethinking Environmental History: World-System History and Global Environmental Change (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press): 259-72.

Islar, M. 2012. ‘Privatised Hydropower Development in Turkey: A Case of Water Grabbing?’, Water Alternatives 5.2: 376-91.

Jaski, Bart. 2000. Early Irish Kingship and Succession (Dublin: Four Courts Press).

Jenkins, David. 2010. ‘Holy, Holier, Holiest’: The Sacred Topography of the Early Medieval Irish Church (Turnhout: Brepols). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1484/M.STT-EB.5.106376.

Kent, Eliza F. 2010. ‘Guest Editor's Introduction: Forests of Belonging: The Contested Meaning of Trees and Forests in Indian Hinduism’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 4.2: 129-38. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v4i2.129.

Kirsch, Stuart. 2007. ‘Indigenous Movements and the Risks of Counterglobalization: Tracking the Campaign against Papua New Guinea's OK Tedi Mine’, American Ethnologist 34: 303-21. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.2007.34.2.303.

Knapp, Gunnar, Mouhcine Guettabi, and Scott Goldsmith. 2013. ‘The Economic Importance of the Bristol Bay Salmon Industry’ (Anchorage, AK: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska). Online: http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/people/knapp/personal/2013_04-TheEconomicImportanceOfTheBristolBaySalmonIndustry.pdf.

Kohn, Eduardo O. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (Berkeley: University of California Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520276109.001.0001.

Li, Tania Murray. 2000. ‘Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 42.1: 149-79. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417500002632.

Ludlow, Francis. 2010. ‘The Utility of the Irish Annals as a Source for the Reconstruction of Climate’ (PhD diss., Department of Geography, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland).

Ludlow, Francis, Lauren Baker, Samara Brock, Chris Hebdon, and Michael R. Dove. 2016. ‘The Double Binds of Indigeneity and Indigenous Resistance’, Humanities 5: 53-71. Doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030053.

Martínez Alier, Joan. 2002. Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation (Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing).

Martínez-Reyes, José. 2016. Moral Ecology of a Forest (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press). 

McCarthy, Daniel. 2008. The Irish Annals: Their Genesis, Evolution and History (Dublin: Four Courts Press).

Meens, Rob. 1998. ‘Politics, Mirrors of Princes and the Bible: Sins, Kings and the Well-being of the Realm’, Early Medieval Europe 7: 345-57.

Miles, Brent. 2011. Heroic Saga and Classical Epic in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer).

Murphy, Denis (ed.) 1896. The Annals of Clonmacnoise: Being Annals of Ireland from the Earliest Period to A.D. 1408: Translated into English A.D. 1627 by Conell Mageoghagan (Dublin: The University Press, for the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland).

Nature Conservation Center. 2009. ‘Hidroelektrik Santral Etkileri Uzman Raporu: Barhal Vadisi’ [Turkish]. Online: http://sertifika.tema.org.tr/_Ki/CevreKutuphanesi/Documents/HES_Etkileri_Raporu.pdf.

Nature Conservation Center. 2011. ‘Report on the Ecological Impacts of Small Hydropower Plants in Turkey and Recommendations to The Gold Standard Foundation’. Online: http://www.dkm.org.tr/Dosyalar/YayinDosya_N5Bi7EyO.pdf.

Neyman, Jenny. 2012. ‘Last of the Salmon People—EPA Assessment Describes Culture of Natives Still Supported by Wild Salmon, Clean Water’, The Mouth of The Kenai, 14 November 2012. Online: http://redoubtreporter.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/last-of-the-salmon-people-epa-assessment-describes-culture-of-natives-still-supported-by-wild-salmon-clean-water/.

Nuckolls, Janis B. 2011. Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman (Tucson: University of Arizona Press).

Ó Cróinín, Dáibhí. 1995. Early Medieval Ireland, 400–1200 (London: Longman).

O’Donovan, John (ed.). 1851. Annala Rioghachta Eireann: Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1616, vol. 2 (Dublin: Hodges & Smith).

O’Neal, Sarah. 2012. ‘Review of EPA Work on Pebble Was Sound’, Anchorage Daily News, August 29. Online: https://www.adn.com/voices/article/review-epa-work-pebble-was-sound/2012/08/30/.

OPIP, Organización de Pueblos Indígenas de Pastaza (ed.). 2001. Pastaza Runakuna Tantanakuy [Quichua] (Puyo: OPIP): 1-12.

PBS Frontline. 2012. ‘Alaska Gold’. Online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/alaska-gold/.

Pebble Partnership. 2015. Online: http://www.pebblepartnership.com/.

Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Michael Watts. 2001. ‘Violent Environments’, in N. Peluso and M. Watts (eds.), Violent Environments (Ithaca: Cornell University Press): 3-38.

Ramírez Gallegos, René. 2012a. La Vida (Buena) Como Riqueza de los Pueblos: Hacia Una Socioecología Política del Tiempo, vol. 1 (Quito: Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales).

Ramírez Gallegos, René. 2012b. Socialismo del Sumak Kawsay, o Biosocialismo Republicano [Spanish] (Quito: Don Bosco).

Ramírez Gallegos, René. 2014. ‘El Socialismo Ya No Es Lo Que Era…Y Su Nuevo Rostro, ¿Se Perfila Más Latino?’ [Spanish]. Blog post. Online: www.Reneramirez.ec.

Rocheleau, Dianne. 2011. ‘Rooted Networks, Webs of Relation and the Power of Situated Science: Bringing the Models Back Down to Earth in Zambrana’, in M.J. Goldman, P. Nadasdy, and M.D. Turner (eds.), Turner Knowing Nature: Conver­sations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press): 209–26.

Sarayaku, Pueblo Originario Kichwa de. 2003. ‘Sarayaku Sumak Kawsayta Ñawpakma Katina Killka’ [Quichua], (Puyo: Sarayaku): 1-31.

Sarayaku, Pueblo Originario Kichwa de. 2011. ‘Sumak Allpata Purichinga Bobonaza Runakuna Kawsayrayku/Plan de Gestión y Manejo Integral del Territorio Kichwa de la Cuenca del Bobonaza’ [Quichua and Spanish] (Self-published report; Pastaza-Ecuador: Pueblo Kichwa del Bobonaza).

Sarayaku, Pueblo Originario Kichwa de. 2015. ‘Kawsak Sacha’. Online: www.kawsaksacha.com.

Sarayaku, Pueblo Originario Kichwa de (with José Gualinga). 2005. ‘Pueblo Originario Kichwa de Sarayaku Tayja Saruta’ [Spanish], Ecología Política 29: 168.

Sawyer, Suzana. 2004. Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador (Durham: Duke University Press).

Scott, James C. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven: Yale University Press).

Scott, James C. 1987. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press).

Scott, James C. 2009. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press).

Sekercioglu, Cagan H., Sean Anderson, Erol Akcay, Rasit Bilgin, Özgün E. Can,  Gürkan Semiz, Çağatay Tavsanoğlu, Mehmet B. Yokes, Anıl Soyumert, Kahraman Ipekdal, Ismail K. Sağlam, Mustafa Yücel, and H. Nüzhet Dalfes. 2011. ‘Turkey’s Globally Important Biodiversity in Crisis’, Biological Conservation 144: 2752–69.

Sen, Amartya. 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

Senplades, Secretaria Nacional de Planificación y Desarrollo. 2013. ‘Plan Nacional de Buen Vivir’ [Spanish], (Quito: Senplades).

Silva, Erika. 2003. Mushuk Allpa: La Experiencia de los Indígenas de Pastaza en la Conser­vación de la Selva Amazónica [Spanish] (Quito: Comunidec: Instituto Amazanga).

Sirén, Anders.   2004. ‘Changing Interactions Between Humans and Nature in Sarayaku, Ecuadorian Amazon’ (PhD diss., Department of Rural Development and Agroecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden).

Snodgrass, Jeffrey, and Kristina Tiedje. 2008. ‘Indigenous Nature Reverence and Conservation: Seven Ways of Transcending an Unnecessary Dichotomy’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 2.1: 6-29. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v2i1.6.

Spoon, Jeremy, and Richard Arnold. 2012. ‘Collaborative Research and Co-Learning: Integrating Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) Ecological Knowledge and Spirituality to Revitalize a Fragmented Land’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 6.4: 477-500.

Taylor, Bron (ed.). 1995. Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press).

Taylor, Bron. 2007. ‘Exploring Religion, Nature and Culture—Introducing the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1.1: 5-24. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v1i1.5.

Taylor, Bron. 2013. ‘Kenya’s Green Belt Movement: Contributions, Conflict, Contradictions, and Complications in a Prominent ENGO’, in Lars Trägårdh, Nina Witoszek, and Bron Taylor (eds.), Civil Society in the Age of Monitory Democracy (New York: Berghahn): 180-207.

Taylor, Lawrence J. 2010. ‘Moral Entrepreneurs and Moral Geographies on the US/Mexico Border’, Social & Legal Studies 19.3: 299–310. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663910372182.

Thompson, Edward P. 1966. The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books).

Thompson, Edward P. 1975. Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act (New York: Pantheon Books).

Tilly, Charles, and Sidney Tarrow. 2007. Contentious Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers).

TMMOB. 2011. ‘Doğu Karadeniz Bölgesi HES Teknik Gezisi Raporu’ [Turkish], The Chamber of Electrical Engineers. Online: http://www.emo.org.tr/ekler/45a43a1706a8faf_ek.pdf.

Tsing, Anna L. 1999. ‘Becoming a Tribal Elder, and Other Green Development Fantasies’, in T. Li (ed.), Transforming the Indonesian Uplands: Marginality, Power and Production (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Press): 159-202.

University of Alaska Fairbanks. n.d. ‘Bristol Bay Region/Bristol Bay Campus’. Online: http://www.uaf.edu/bbc/campus/region/.

 


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.





Equinox Publishing Ltd - 415 The Workstation 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)114 221-0285 - Email: [email protected]

Privacy Policy