“The great ecological issues of our time have to do in
one way or another with our failure to see things in their entirety.
That failure occurs when minds are taught to think in boxes and not
taught to transcend those boxes or to question overly much how they fit
into other boxes.”
Over the past decade, interdisciplinary programs such as gender studies,
global studies, and environmental studies have proliferated quickly across
the American academy. One study showed that the number of environmental
studies programs at four-year colleges and universities doubled between
1990 and 1995, and more are still being added.2
Maniates and Whissel 2000.
Political science departments frequently find themselves at the center of
these new programs, and courses in environmental politics are often in high
demand among students. The complexity and persistence of environmental
problems is finally forcing the academy to recognize the importance of
interdisciplinary research and teaching. Consider the case of global warming.
It is impossible to discuss this issue intelligently from the perspective of
any single discipline. Political scientists might illuminate certain facets
of the debate, such as how national and international political structures
create few incentives for policymakers to aggressively address the
issue.
3 See, for example, Hempel 2000.
But however important such insights might
be, they are far too narrow to even begin to encompass the complexity of the
climate change issue, which requires literacy in the discourses of other
disciplines, including environmental economics, atmospheric research, and
environmental ethics. After decades of suspicion in the academy about the
intellectual rigor of interdisciplinary approaches, the persistence of
complex environmental problems, and simply the rapidly growing cohort of
scholars engaged in environmental research and teaching, is driving
increasing acceptance of such approaches.
From climate change to species loss to hazardous waste and risk
assessment, the scientific, social, and moral complexity of
environmental issues is a virtual invitation to engage in
interdisciplinary research and teaching. How well have political
scientists responded to this invitation? How swiftly and how deeply has
the “greening of the academy” occurred in our field? Does
the explosion of courses on environmental topics in political science
departments across the nation suggest that a new subfield of our
discipline has emerged, or is environmental politics merely an
extension of existing subfields of the discipline? More substantively,
how have courses in environmental politics changed as environmentalism
has moved from a protest movement into the everyday fabric of
contemporary life?
Although there is no way to definitively answer such questions, a
useful window into how scholars conceptualize environmental politics is
the syllabi for courses they develop in the field. Syllabi are primary
texts: they are brief, distilled documents that illuminate what
professors think is essential knowledge in the field, and why that
knowledge is important. They are also a useful window into how scholars
see themselves as educators, which raises still more questions. What do
professors hope to accomplish by teaching in the environmental field?
Do environmental educators see themselves as part of a larger social
movement, or do they prefer to fashion themselves as detached analysts
of it? Finally, it is reasonable to ask how well courses in
environmental politics are likely to prepare students for their future
lives as environmental professionals, activists, and citizens.
For this essay, I reviewed over 40 environmental politics syllabi,
collected by research assistants and editors at Perspectives on
Politics from professors at universities and smaller colleges
nationwide. (Syllabi are listed at the end of this essay). The sample
is made up almost entirely of courses at the undergraduate level, but
it includes syllabi from both lower and upper division courses.
Although the sample was not gathered scientifically, I believe it is
broadly representative of similar courses nationwide. Whether or not
syllabi are representative of the field as a whole, however, is another
matter. Professors don't always teach what they research and
write, but rather, what they think students should know. So the
observations I make below are only intended to reflect the state of our
field as we communicate it to our students.
On the whole, the state of the field is mixed. On the one hand, the
syllabi exemplify the exponential growth and diversity of environmental
politics as a teaching field. Although it is perhaps too early to
suggest that environmental politics has emerged as a coherent subfield
in the discipline, scholars of environmental politics are united in the
belief that environmental issues raise questions that expand our
notions of what is political to include the interests of all living
things on the planet. On the other hand, however, the syllabi also
demonstrate that instructors with a relatively narrow understanding of
politics continue to dominate the field. This understanding sees
politics primarily as a matter of institutional actors, processes, and
outcomes. Such a perspective, as important as it is, may limit our
ability to delve deeper and more critically into the complex array of
cultural, social, scientific, and political ideas that make up
contemporary networks of environmental power, and resistance to that
power. To access these networks and their points of resistance, we need
to help our students learn to approach environmental problems more
critically. Hopefully, a broader approach will inspire both instructors
and students to explore the complexities and ironies inherent in most
environmental problems, thereby opening pathways for more creative
teaching, learning, activism, and citizenship.
The Emerging Field of Environmental
Politics
Society has been so altered by environmentalism it is easy to
overlook the distance of thirty years backwards in time to the nascent
social movement that it was, and forward again to the mature evolution
of science and law that it has become.
Environmental politics is a young and eclectic field: there are few
standard or classic texts, nor is there any specific set of grand
theories or seminal historical debates that are de rigueur for
any course in the field. As Michael Maniates warns his students on the
first page of his syllabus, “We're in for a
‘sloppy’ time of it, largely because the struggles
we'll be studying do not line up into neat categories. Instead,
they run across several spectrums, each with their own ideological and
epistemological orientation.” Yet however eclectic the field may
be, there is little doubt that the greening of political science has
happened apace with the well-publicized greening of the sciences and
the humanities.5
Collett and Karakashian
1996.
Consider the long (and surely
incomplete) list of topics addressed in the reviewed syllabi in
Table 1.
Topics and Approaches in Courses in Environmental Politics
It is possible that nearly every aspect of human political behavior
has at least some environmental dimension, and scholars have begun to
explore these dimensions with ever greater vigor in the last decade. We
can expect the field to expand still further as new scholars seek to
find their own niche. The rapid expansion of the field is an
astonishing development, especially when one considers that as late as
1996, political scientist Michael Kraft, a well-known environmental
educator, could lament that environmental issues were “peripheral
at best” in the comparative, international, and theory
subfields.6
Although the rapid growth and acknowledged eclecticism of academic
inquiry into environmental politics might set off alarm bells in more
traditional corners of the discipline, I believe these are encouraging
developments. The eclecticism of the field reflects the highly
interdisciplinary character of environmental problems themselves, as
well as the need for a wide variety of approaches to encompass and
understand them. It also reflects one of the key strategic successes of
the environmental movement: to inject environmental awareness into
almost every aspect of everyday life. As William Chaloupka writes,
“Green politics has succeeded as well as it has, in part, because
it covers a very diverse field … it is a breathtaking list. It
covers “how was work today,” “what are we having for
dinner,” and “what are we doing this
weekend”—all at personal, community, national, and global
scale.”7
Indeed, environmental
inquiry has attracted the interest of scholars from nearly every
subfield of our discipline.
The array of topics covered in these courses demonstrates how
environmental issues provide excellent opportunities for teaching and
learning about politics. From my experience, today's students have
an interest in environmental issues that is so deeply ingrained that,
at times, it almost seems genetic. This makes it easier to get students
interested in learning the mechanics of political processes, from
interest group dynamics to bureaucratic, legislative, and legal
practices. For theorists, environmental issues add new dimensions to
longstanding debates about relations betweens humans and nature, the
meanings we ascribe to nature, and the lessons we take from it.
Political theorists are also keenly interested in the challenges
environmental degradation poses to democratic life, and the possibility
that green politics could be a harbinger of democratic renewal. For
scholars of international relations, the seriousness of environmental
problems demonstrates the limits of state sovereignty and the growing
importance of international norms, regimes, and organizations.
Comparativists use environmental issues to highlight challenges of
sustainable development, North-South inequalities, and the growing
hegemony of neo-liberal economic and political ideologies.
Given the ubiquity of environmental courses in political science
departments nationwide, it is tempting to jump to the conclusion that a
new subfield of political science has emerged, even if it is not yet
institutionally recognized in graduate program requirements or as a
category for academic jobs advertised in the field. But what
constitutes a subfield? Why has our discipline chosen to segregate
certain questions and modes of inquiry from others? Consider the field
of comparative politics. Isn't “comparative” little
more than a convenient label for an eclectic array of courses that
focus largely on political development and political institutions
across political cultures? Environmental politics is similarly
eclectic, and it is certainly as broad a field as comparative politics;
if current trends continue, greater general acceptance may only be a
matter of time. New sub-disciplines emerge when scholars recognize that
they have more in common with those working in a yet-to-be recognized
area than they share with colleagues in their traditional
sub-discipline. At professional conferences, for example, there are not
only more and more environmental papers and panels, but they are also
beginning to be organized not as a subset of traditional subfields, but
as their own sections in standing equal with political theory,
international politics, comparative politics, et cetera. For example,
the Western Political Science Association just added a new section,
“Environmental Political Theory,” because its regular
section on “Environmental Politics” was becoming too large
and unwieldy. The annual meeting of the American Political Science
Association regularly hosts dozens of papers on environmental topics in
the “Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics”
section.
Another indicator of where the study and teaching of environmental
politics stands is the degree to which scholars agree on what makes
environmental politics distinctive. What, specifically, does
environmental politics contribute to the study of politics more
generally? To a striking degree, scholars and teachers of environmental
politics share a sense that environmental issues are different from
other political issues, both in scope and in importance. Many believe
that environmental issues reach well beyond classic political debates
about the distribution of benefits and burdens among competing human
interests. In this view, environmental issues take us a step beyond
mere anthropocentric conceptions of politics: they call into question
the very compatibility of our political and economic systems with the
natural systems that sustain all life. As Carol Hager writes in her
syllabus, “debates over pollution, for example, tend to raise
far-reaching questions about the relationship between economic growth
and quality of life, the distribution of political power, and
humankind's relationship to nature.” Many instructors are
convinced that environmental problems present scholars with unique
challenges, requiring distinctively integrative and interdisciplinary
approaches.
Arguably, there are many political problems that are equally urgent
and multidimensional. What is interesting is that many environmental
scholars simultaneously see their field as both integral to most social
problems and prior to them. For example, we can agree that the
persistence of poverty in both rich and poor countries is a complex and
urgent issue; environmental scholars will point out that any political
approach to poverty must include an analysis of its environmental
causes and consequences. They will also note that the problem of
poverty becomes irrelevant if we ruin the natural life-support systems
upon which all life depends. In short, classic problems of
human political life (freedom, equality, justice, et cetera) are moot
if we are all dead. From this perspective, environmental politics
radically expands the boundaries of the political, from questions of
the here and now to questions of the future of all life on planet
Earth. Although I believe this perspective to be problematic, it is a
shared understanding of politics that captures the imagination of many
environmental scholars and links them together in an expansive vision
of political life and purpose.
At the same time, the field remains young, and it may be too early to
claim that those who study environmental politics have carved out a
distinctive subfield. Most courses in environmental politics were
introduced fewer than ten years ago, and this first wave remains tied
to traditional subfields. Judging just from the topics and readings
assigned by instructors, it was relatively easy to put most syllabi
into existing subfield categories. Clearly, most instructors now
teaching courses in environmental politics were not trained
specifically in the environmental field. Instead, they bring their
original fields of training to environmental issues. Only a handful of
professors are teaching courses that defy easy linkage to traditional
subfields. These courses, perhaps, hint at the kinds of questions that
scholars of environmental politics will address in future years. I
consider this possibility later in the essay.
One reason why environmental politics remains unrecognized as a
subfield is more complicated, touching upon how instructors understand
themselves as scholars and teachers. Environmental politics, correctly
or incorrectly (mostly incorrectly), continues to be seen as an
“advocacy field” in the academy, and perhaps not worthy of
subfield status. Many instructors are indeed drawn to the field because
they sympathize with environmental causes, and they make this clear in
the text or subtext of their syllabi. How should we think about the
“advocacy” charge as the field progresses? In the next
section, I argue that this concern is over-inflated, and not new. But
it should not be dismissed either. Instead, it is an opportunity for
teachers and scholars to look at their own motivations for research and
teaching in the field, and consider how these fit with their
environmental convictions, whatever they might be.
Teaching for Understanding or for
Transformation?
The most important institutional effect of policy analysis is
its surprising tendency to inhibit political initiatives, thereby reinforcing
the status quo.
When articulating the reasons for their courses, professors continue
to grapple with age-old questions about motivation and objectivity. Is
the purpose of inquiry to understand the world as it is, or to change
the world? This tension is not unique to environmental politics.
International relations scholars, for example, have wrestled with this
tension since Thucydides. Scholarly interest in international politics
has coalesced sometimes around a desire to understand international
phenomena, but sometimes also around a sense of urgency to address the
threat of increasingly destructive wars, especially in the late
twentieth century. Similarly, many scholars enter the environmental
field because they share an analogous sense of urgency in the context
of widespread environmental degradation. In the syllabi, statements
that follow “the purpose of this course is …” are
particularly interesting windows into how scholars wrestle with these
intellectual commitments.
Most statements promise simple knowledge: “The purpose of this
course is to provide you with knowledge of environmental politics and
the formulation and implementation of environmental policy in the
United States,” or “the objective of this seminar is to
acquaint students with the major issues, theoretical frameworks,
political institutions, and strategic arguments involved in
international environmental policymaking.” These statements dodge
the question of why knowledge of environmental politics is important or
even interesting, though presumably instructors hope to convince
students that it is both. Other instructors have more programmatic
goals. The introduction to a course in “Green Politics” at
Macalester College states, “the principal question to be
addressed is how environmental advocacy groups can organize themselves
to most effectively address and solve the significant environmental
problems facing this country.” Another instructor explains an
upper level seminar in Global Environmental Politics in this way:
“I offer this seminar because I believe that struggle (now
occurring and yet to come) to decide who bears the brunt of
environmental threats to human well-being and who pays to do away with
them offers novel, expanding, hopeful opportunities for
individuals—working alone and in groups—to make a
difference.”
This activist orientation, although its acknowledgment is rare, opens
the field to criticism from several directions. First, it draws the
attention of scholars who are suspicious of applied scholarship, which
to them is evidence of inappropriate bias. As Michael Soulé and
Daniel Press (somewhat indignantly) write, “The perception of
subjectivity in environmental studies is pervasive, notwithstanding the
existence of many other kinds of applied work in the academy, from
schools of engineering, agriculture, and medicine to the contract
military research performed in ‘pure’ disciplinary
departments.”9
Soulé and
Press 1998, 402.
To be sure, there
are many areas of political science where research and teaching is
oriented toward applied settings, such as education policy, voting
behavior, or international security. In these cases, it is unwarranted
to assume that scholars in these fields are necessarily pro-education,
pro-voting, or pro-security. Yet, there is something about the study of
environmental politics that inspires such assumptions. Perhaps this
reflects the meteoric rise of new ideas about the environment, which
only a generation ago were associated not with mainstream thinking, but
with social movement groups intensely critical of existing arrangements
of social and economic power. Or perhaps environmentalism remains a
place where radical and utopian ideas, from bioregionalism to voluntary
simplicity, stir controversy and political imagination. This stands in
marked contrast to the “end of history” malaise that seems
to infect what remains of the traditional Left after the collapse of
socialism in the late 1980s and the rise of global neo-liberalism in
the 1990s.
It is perhaps not surprising then that research and teaching in
environmental politics has attracted the attention of conservative
critics who worry that environmental courses in the academy are nothing
more than activist training camps. Indeed, a few of the courses I
reviewed had this general flavor. One instructor even produced a
special “Oilmen in Charge” edition of his syllabus, which
included explicit criticism of the Bush Administration's
environmental record in its preface. But usually, conservative worries
are not well grounded. Most instructors really try to walk the
tightrope between scholarly inquiry and activism with a third formula
that recognizes the activist impulse, but puts critical inquiry first.
One instructor introduces his course this way: “This course
focuses more on the political than the technical aspects of
environmental problems. You will not learn to evaluate the technical
merits of various solutions. You will, however, develop an appreciation
for the complexity and interconnectedness of environmental problems,
which in itself is a prerequisite for proposing workable
solutions.”
Moreover, it is a serious mistake to think of environmental ideas as
the province of either side of the partisan aisle. Environmental values
have been embraced across the political spectrum, a fact that
Republican pollsters are in the habit of reminding their sometimes
wayward candidates. Many syllabi include analysis of ideas typically
associated with conservative causes, such as private property rights,
devolution, market-based conservation incentives, deregulation, and so
on. One course was organized with an explicitly conservative
orientation, embracing regulatory reform to prevent “unnecessary
rigidities and costs, creating incentives for delays, obstruction, and
litigation,” most of which are presumably caused by what the
instructor sees as “unwarranted political intervention” by
environmental groups. The course goes on to promote alternatives to
“command and control” regulation, including the
“government supervised self-regulation” favored by the
current Bush administration.
Whatever one's political persuasion, the tension between
understanding and activism in courses on environmental politics is not
as serious as it initially appears, nevertheless it still affects how
others perceive the field. This may change, however, as scholars new to
the field come to understand that the most interesting dimensions of
environmental politics go well beyond the narrow confines of partisan
politics. Already, many professors encourage their students see a
course in environmental politics as an opportunity to critically
examine, perhaps for the first time, how they think about environmental
problems. As John Freemuth warns his students: “One final but
very important point: since many of you have strong opinions about the
environment, I expect a few passionate harangues at the beginning of
the course. As the course progresses, these harangues should give way
to critical analysis, both of the books we are reading, as
well as the premises behind your own positions.” Similarly,
another instructor writes, “I'm struggling with what I
perceive to be a need to help the students … temper their
enthusiasm, sometimes anger and frustration, with development projects
and ideology, with a more critical, analytical understanding of the
issues. I'm looking for ways to help them see how more informed
and critical analysis of issues helps improve the quality of the
engagement.” Certainly, a more critical understanding of existing
power structures, including those produced by the environmental
movement itself, will serve our students well, whether they eventually
choose to walk the hallways of powerful institutions, or if they join
groups whose mission is to change those institutions. Either way, one
must know power to wield or resist it effectively. And if one is to
know power, a certain measure of critical distance is absolutely
essential.
Following (and Challenging) the
Environmental Script
It's a contingent world out there, and we'd better be
light on our feet.
However, achieving that critical distance has been quite contentious.
For example, in a seminal volume of environmental criticism,
Uncommon Ground, environmental historian William Cronon
assembled an array of scholars from many disciplines to tease out
fundamental questions raised by the growing awareness that nature is
not static, but rather dynamic, both ecologically and politically.11
In any other field, suggesting that
changes in cultural norms and dominant social values can be traced to
changes in power relations and shifts in modes of production would, by
the mid-1990s, likely have provoked more yawns than yowls. The response
from the environmental community to the Cronon volume, however, was
immediate and vehement; accusations that academics were providing aid
and comfort to environmental enemies were common.
12 These are collected in Soulé and Lease 1995.
Even though this debate was arguably
the most important event in environmental political theory in the last
decade, it barely registers in the syllabi. Instead, most courses in
environmental politics follow a more time-honored script, which
proceeds almost as if environmental categories were written in stone;
as if the growing body of critical literature about environmentalism
(represented most conspicuously by the Cronon volume) did not
exist.
13 Other important volumes in this
literature include Luke 1997 and Merchant
2003.
This script can be summarized
as follows: Human activities have created environmental problems of
crisis proportions, the dimensions of which can be known either on the
basis of scientific evidence or through authoritative interpretations
of nature. Hope, however, is not lost: an array of institutional and
technical solutions is available to address environmental problems, if
we would only commit the necessary resources to them. The script is a
melodrama (usually a tragedy) in three acts: crisis, knowledge, and
solution (or lack thereof). Let us consider each.
First, most courses begin by assuming that environmental problems are
at the point of crisis, requiring urgent attention. Although many
courses do question the veracity and urgency of environmental claims,
this seems like a half-hearted effort to provide balance in the
classroom by giving equal time to the constant trickle of iconoclasts
who suggest that environmental problems don't exist or are
dramatically overstated.14
The two most
sophisticated texts in this genre are Easterbrook 1995 and Lomborg 2001.
These make for good classroom
debates, but it is clear where most in our field stand: human systems
of production, consumption, and meaning are degrading the quality of
our land, water, and air, and are perhaps endangering the very systems
upon which all life depends.
Second, most courses are either explicitly or implicitly grounded in
environmental epistemologies. In matters of pollution and toxic waste,
scientific evidence is given the leading role in environmental
policymaking. Hazards, in other words, can be defined on the basis of
scientific data and evidence. In this context, “politics”
happens largely after hazards are defined, and is reduced to Laswellian
questions such as “who pays?” and “who
benefits?” In questions of natural resource conservation, nature
itself is assumed to offer a clear set of policy imperatives, from
preserving biodiversity to preventing global warming. Put simply, if
the environmental movement has succeeded at anything in the past few
decades, it has been its ability to normalize appeals to the
environmental sciences and to environmental interpretations of nature
as the foundations of environmental policy, and this is well reflected
in the way we present environmental problems to students.
Third, most courses outline the array of actors, institutions,
policies, and procedures that embody largely technocratic solutions to
environmental problems. They focus, in other words, on formal
institutions of environmental governance at the national and the
international level. Armed with an understanding of these institutional
arrangements, students are expected to debate the feasibility and
merits of proposed policy alternatives. They are often asked to write
position papers, engage in in-class debates, and so on. Instructors
seem content to assume that these kinds of debates are sufficient to
probe the depths of environmental political questions.
Although their numbers remain small, a few instructors are beginning
to depart from this script. It is too early to suggest that an
alternative is emerging, but a few of its themes are becoming clearer.
Environmental problems will continue to be understood in urgent terms.
But at the same time, scholars will probably shift more of their
attention toward understanding how environmental problems are
constructed as social and political phenomena. Why do some problems
receive priority over others? What strategic moves and countermeasures
explain these priorities? How does social power, particularly in the
context of race, class, and gender, frame and shape the environmental
agenda? Why should environmental problems take precedence over other
matters of grave concern to humankind? This is not to suggest that
environmental problems (global warming, species loss, et cetera) are
not serious, and that they do not demand our attention—they are
and they do. My point is that climate change, for example, is not a
“problem” until it is so defined politically.
Climate change by itself is only the possibility of changes in
temperatures around the globe. This possibility only becomes a problem
when combined with political ideas and social values, which deserve
much more critical examination than they typically receive. Only a few
instructors, it seems, recognize and teach the politics of global
warming from this perspective.
In addition, a growing chorus of scholars is beginning to question
the scientific and normative foundations of environmental claims. There
is more and more skepticism that political disputes can be solved by
calls for better scientific information or by appeals to the moral
authority of nature. Perhaps not coincidentally, it is the instructors
of courses specifically designed to address the interplay of science
and politics who understand this best. As Stephen Meyer of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in his syllabus,
“politics often dictates acceptance of tradeoffs and compromise
among divergent values and interests, where purely science-based and
engineering-based analyses would suggest more ‘elegant’
solutions. In essence we try to explain how and why solving real-world
environmental problems differs from solving engineering problem
sets.” Steve Breyman at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute takes
this a step further by suggesting that scientific knowledge is itself
political: “The technical and scientific manifestations of
problems like soil erosion or acid rain are but symptoms of problems
rooted in human and institutional behavior governed by economic
systems, ideology, social norms, values, laws, politics, and
policies.”
Finally, although there is merit in discussing technocratic
“solutions” currently available, the new script places
little faith in them. Instead, environmental problems are increasingly
understood as locations of ambiguity, uncertainty, and irony. More and
more, paradox will be the hallmark of environmental politics. Several
examples illustrate this point. The gasoline additive MTBE, for
instance, has been shown to dramatically improve air quality, but it is
also now proving to be a persistent pollutant in local water supplies.
Now what? In natural resource politics, great value is placed on
biodiversity, perhaps best summarized by Aldo Leopold's first rule
of intelligent tinkering with nature: save all the parts. But what
happens when saving one species puts others in peril? In the Pacific
Northwest, for example, there is growing concern that flourishing
populations of protected bald eagles are putting great blue herons at
risk.15
Or what happens when environmental
values collide, such as the tension between aesthetic concerns and
renewable energy in the massive wind power project proposed off the
coast of Cape Cod? What happens when concerns about species loss
conflict with parallel commitments to social justice in disadvantaged
human communities? We will be seeing more and more of these paradoxes
and conflicts in coming years. Picking our way through these
uncertainties and ironies is an invitation to look at environmental
politics in a new way, recognizing that most environmental issues are
not problems awaiting technocratic solutions, but rather windows into
the complex state of the contemporary human condition.
Empowering Environmental Teaching and
Scholarship
[There is] a slow motion collision between the recent
greening of the curriculum, with its naïve hope that more
knowledge about global ills will make students feel powerful, and a
deepening “browning” of college students' sense of the
politically possible.
How well does the current script serve our students, and will the new
script, if it emerges, prove any better? Almost certainly, a student
taking any course I reviewed would emerge with a better factual
understanding of the basic actors, institutions, and policy processes
of environmental governance, both at home and on the global stage. But
I have the nagging sense that something is missing. In studying formal
political systems, students are encouraged to seek analytical
distance—to set themselves outside these systems and analyze them
as if they were well-oiled (or squeaky) machines. What's missing,
in my view, is that students are not really challenged to seek
critical distance, where the subject of critical inquiry is
both the political system and the self. Consider the following
questions, which typically appear in courses on American environmental
politics and public policy:
How has the American political system responded to
environmental challenges such as air pollution, water pollution,
species loss, et cetera? If action has been insufficient, why is that?
What might be done to improve governmental capabilities to respond to
such problems? What role do interest groups (environmental
organizations, business groups, et cetera) play in the policymaking
process? What is the proper role for government on environmental
issues? Should regulation take a back seat to free market
approaches?17
Kraft 1996, 240. The questions listed are intended as a
composite of questions typically asked in the reviewed
syllabi.
Forgive me for saying so, but I can't imagine a duller set of
questions to put to my students, and this is not because these
questions are uninteresting, uninspired, or unimportant. Rather, the
problem is that these questions do little to move students beyond where
they already are intellectually. Environmental educator Nancy Quirk
summarizes this well: “most undergraduates come to college with a
full faith in scientific management, simple truth, and the ability of
experts and interest groups operating in conventional theaters of power
to chart a course for society.”18
Cited in Maniates 2003,
136.
In other words, our courses tend to conceptualize
politics as happening on a stage, with students in the audience who are
supposed to watch the show and then offer reviews in a paper the next
morning. Approaching environmental politics in this way is like trying
to explain a Grateful Dead show by describing only what happens on
stage. In fact, what's arguably most interesting about Grateful
Dead shows (alas, now only a memory) is how the events encompass both
stage and participating audience. Yes, the political stage is
important, but politics is also about value acquisition and value
conflicts that are not necessarily expressed or performed on that
stage. Much of what we understand as “environmentalism”
involves explicit ethical commitments to nature and a certain role of
humans in that nature. Understood this way, environmental politics is
less about regulatory policies or trans-boundary problem-solving than
about moral commitments and the shifting boundaries of the public
dimensions of those commitments. As John Freemuth writes in his
syllabus, “Most of the conflicts over the environment are value
conflicts at their heart.” Why don't we spend more time in
our courses deconstructing and re-assembling these value conflicts? If
politics is, at least in part, about the authoritative allocation of
values, it makes sense to focus on political processes involved in this
allocation. But at the same time, we should also look into the myriad
(and largely invisible) ways in which these values are acquired and
practiced in the first place.
To do so, scholars of environmental politics might pay more attention
to mechanisms of power, normally a key concept in the study of
political science, but absent in many courses about environmental
politics. Most scholars, however unwittingly, fashion environmental
politics as a politics of resistance to power, not as a politics of
power itself. But over the last generation, environmental ideas have
moved from the periphery to the mainstream and have become infused with
remarkable cultural power and resonance. Thus a lively and critical
examination of environmental ideas and practices, in the
context of an examination of power, is an opportunity to engage
students in re-examining values and practices they previously held as
beyond reproach. From my experience, this makes for exciting teaching
and learning. So a course might begin with an extensive investigation
of the concept of power from a variety of perspectives, from pluralist
to radical to postmodern. Then key environmental ideas such as
biodiversity, wilderness, limits to growth, sustainable development,
biocentrism, and others might be explored, keeping in mind questions
such as: How are these issues framed and packaged for public struggle,
and who is privileged in these struggles? Well accepted environmental
practices such as recycling, green consumerism, boycotts, and other
political activity might be examined. Or a course could be organized
explicitly around an analysis of environmental political discourses. As
theorist David Schlosberg puts it, “The purpose of this course is
to map, examine, and analyze various discourses that have emerged in
the realm of environmental political theory. Each of these discourses
has a particular view of the crisis at hand, and in response each may
encompass positions on nature itself, human-nature relations, political
institutions, economics, political culture, and citizenship.”
Such an approach requires students to critically disassemble ideas
that they have probably never found reason to question, as most grew up
with Dr. Suess's The Lorax and probably several
“recycle or die” indoctrination sessions in their earlier
education. One might worry that situating environmental ideas and
ethics relative to power might make students more jaded and apolitical
than they already are.19
This is a
legitimate concern, especially in the context of how Paul Loeb
describes the widespread reticence that today's students approach
politics and political activism. See Loeb 1994, 101–14.
But I have not found
this to be the case. Good students are thrilled to learn that what they
thought was firm is, in fact, contingent. For many, it can be a real
epiphany. I have found that where students see everything as slippery
and contingent, they also recognize that anything is possible as well.
Examining one's own ideas about the environment encourages
students to become participants, not onlookers, in environmental
political discussions, a goal that many instructors say they share, but
their approach tends to discourage.
There are exceptions, of course, to these general criticisms and
suggestions. Many instructors do design exercises to get students
directly involved in environmental politics. A course at Northern
Arizona University, for example, asks students to analyze the Flagstaff
community's land use planning vision document. This experience
connects students to the local community, and helps them learn how to
become active in local politics. Another instructor took advantage of
his school's location in the Pacific Northwest to organize his
course around a single issue, salmon recovery, which included a field
trip to a dam on the Snake River and meetings with various activists.
This approach allows students to reach deeply into the complexity of an
environmental issue in its many dimensions. Focusing on a single issue
is not as narrow as it might first appear; the salmon issue has causes
and consequences that are both national and global. Many environmental
issues are similarly expansive, so instructors from any region of the
country should have no trouble identifying appropriate issues close to
home.
Finally, I encourage instructors to take advantage of resources in
their nearby communities. Every community has environmental problems,
and where there are problems, there are citizen activists, government
officials, and business leaders working on them. These people make
wonderful guests in the classroom, and they are delighted to share
their experiences and expertise with students. If possible, take a day
with students in the field to visit a local sewage treatment plant,
tree farm, landfill, stream restoration project, or the local planning
office. The experience will not only help bring environmental issues to
life for students, it will also show them the wide variety of ways to
become involved with environmental work. Environmentalism isn't
just for activists any more.
This simply reinforces the message that more and more professors will
try to convey to their students: environmental politics is an exciting
field that is more than just a detached analysis of the institutions
and processes of government. Environmental issues demand that we ask
fundamental questions about how we live our lives, how we think about
the world beyond ourselves, and how we imagine our obligations to
future generations as well. It is difficult to think of a better
context in which to share our passion for politics with our
students.
Syllabi
Allin, Craig W. Cornell College: Spring 2002. Environmental Politics:
Special ‘Oilmen in Charge’ Edition. Available at
cornellcollege.edu/politics/courses/allin/368/20025/syllabus_368-20025.htm.
Accessed 23 July 2002.
Bingen, R. James. Michigan State University: Undated. Comparative
Resource and Environmental Policy. Available at
webpub.alleg.edu/employee/m/mmaniate/GepEd/pages13.html.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
Birkland, Thomas A. SUNY Albany: Spring 2002. Environmental Politics
and Policy. Available at
www.albany.edu/∼birkland/PAD666_02/pad666_2002syl.html.
Accessed 23 July 2003.
Breyman, Steve. Rensselaer Polytechnic University: Fall 1996.
Environmental Politics and Policy. Available at
www.rpi.edu/∼breyms/f96eppsy.html. Accessed 23 July
2002.
Byrne, John. University of Delaware: Fall 1996. Political Economy of
the Environment. Available at
webpub.alleg.edu/employee/m/mmaniate/GepEd/byrnePE_E.html.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
Cahn, Matthew. University of California, Santa Barbara: Fall 2002.
Environmental Politics and Policy. Available at
www.csun.edu/∼cahn/esm241.htm. Accessed 15 December
2003.
Cass, Loren R. College of the Holy Cross: Fall 2002. Comparative
Environmental Policy.
Chaloupka, William. University of Montana: Fall 2001. Nature,
Language, and Politics.
Conca, Ken. University of Maryland: Fall 2002. Advanced Topics in
Environmental Policy Analysis.
Culhane, Paul. Northern Illinois University: Spring 2001. Environmental
Politics.
DeSombre, Beth. Colby College: Fall 1997. Sustainable Development.
Available at
webpub.alleg.edu/employee/m/mmaniate/GepEd/desombreFall1997.html.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
DiZerega, Gus. Whitman College: Fall 2003. Introduction to
Environmental Politics.
Eisner, Marc. Wesleyan University: Spring 2002. Environmental
Politics and Policy.
Freemuth, John. Boise State University: Spring 2002. Environmental
Politics.
Gorges, Michael J. University of Maryland Baltimore County: Fall
1998. International Environmental Politics and Policy. Available at
www.research.umbc.edu/∼gorges/INTENVT.htm. Accessed on 27
June 2003.
Gormley, William T. Georgetown University: Spring 2002. Environmental
Politics and Policy.
Hager, Carol. Bryn Mawr College: Spring 2002. Introduction to
Environmental Issues: Movements, Controversies, and Policy Making in
International Perspective.
Haider-Markel, Donald P. University of Kansas: Fall 2001.
Environmental Politics and Policy. Available at
lark.cc.ukans.edu/∼prex/Pols624-f01.html. Accessed 27
June2003.
Halfon, Saul. Swarthmore College: Spring 1999. Environmental
Politics. Available at
swarthmore.edu/NatSci/es/EnvirPolitics.html. Accessed 23
July 2002.
Hochstetler, Kathryn. Colorado State University: Fall 1999.
Comparative Environmental Politics.
Jasanoff, Sheila. Harvard University: Undated. Environmental Politics.
Klyza, Christopher McGrory. Middlebury College: Fall 2002.
Conservation and Environmental Policy.
Lipschutz, Ronnie D. University of California, Santa Cruz: Spring
2001. Global Environmental Politics. Available at
ic.ucsc.edu/∼rlipsch/pol173/syllabus.html. Accessed 27
June 2003.
Maniates, Michael. Allegheny College: Fall 1996. Seminar in Global
Environmental Politics. Available at
webpub.alleg.edu/employee/m/mmaniate/GepEd/maniates431.html.
Accessed 23 July 2002.
Mitchell, Ronald. University of Oregon: Winter 2002. International
Environmental Politics. Available at
www.uoregon.edu/∼rmitchel/iep/syllabus.htm. Accessed 27
June 2003.
McCright, Aaron Matthew. University of Chicago: Fall 2002. The
Environment in U.S. Politics.
Meyer, Stephen M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Spring 2002.
Environmental Politics and Policy. Available at
web.mit.edu/17.32/www/syllabus.htm. Accessed 23 July
2002.
Mueller, Melinda. Eastern Illinois University: Spring 2003.
Environmental Politics and Policy. Available at
www.ux1.eiu.edu/∼cfmam/environmental_politics_syllabus.html.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
O'Neill, Kate. The New School: Spring 1996. Perspectiveson
Global Environmental Politics. Available at
webpub.alleg.edu/employee/m/mmaniate/GepEd/pages12.html.
Accessed 23 July 2002.
Peña, Devon G. University of Washington: Spring 2003. Culture,
Ecology, Politics. Available at
courses.washington.edu/devonp/cultecology/syllabus.html.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
Princen, Thomas. University of Michigan: Winter 2002. Environmental
Conflict and Security.
Quirk, Nancy. Indiana University: Spring 1996. European Environmental
Politics. Available at
webpub.alleg.edu/employee/m/mmaniate/GepEd/europe2.html.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
Reiner, David. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Undated.
Seminar in International Environmental Politics.
Rogers, James. Temple University: Fall 1999. Environmental Policy.
Available at astro.temple.edu/∼jrogers/ps152.html. Accessed
23 July 2002.
Rosenbaum, Walter A. University of Florida: Spring 2000.
Politics, Energy, and Ecology. Available at
www.clas.ufl.edu/users/tonyros/PUP3204.htm. Accessed 27
June2003.
Schlosberg, David. Northern Arizona University: Spring 2003. Politics
and Ecology. Available at
jan.ucc.nau.edu/∼dss4/SyllabusSp03.htm. Accessed 27 June
2003.
Schreurs, Miranda. University of Maryland at College Park: Fall 1998.
Environmental Politics in International and Comparative Perspective.
Available at
webpub.alleg.edu/employee/m/mmaniate/GepEd/miranda.htm.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
Shevory, Thomas. Ithaca College: Spring 2002. Environmental Politics.
Available at
www.ithaca.edu/faculty/shevory/courses/env02.syl.htm.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
Smith, Brett. Macalester College: Spring 2003. Green Politics: The
Future of the U.S. Environmental Movement.
Steel, Brent. Oregon State University: 2002. Environmental Politics
and Policy. Available at
www.orst.edu/dept/pol_sci/fac/steel/ps475.htm.
Accessed 23 July 2002.
Van Holde, Steve. Kenyon College: Spring 1998. Global Environmental
Politics. Available at
www2.kenyon.edu/depts/psci/psci65.htm. Accessed 23 July
2002.
Vig, Norm. Carleton College: Spring 2001. Environmental Policy and
Politics. Available at
www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/POS/classes/Posc262/S01/index.html.
Accessed 25 July 2002.
Wapner, Paul. American University: Spring 1997. International
Environmental Politics. Available at
webpub.alleg.edu/employee/m/mmaniate/GepEd/wapner.html.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
White, Greg. Smith College: Fall 1998. The Politics of the Global
Environment. Available at
webpub.alleg.edu/employee/m/mmaniate/GepEd/white.htm.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
Yadav, Vikash. University of Pennsylvania: Spring 2003.Politics
of the Global Environment. Available at
www.sas.upenn.edu/∼vikash1/psci154/syllabus.html.
Accessed 27 June 2003.
