Environmental Ideologies
How they define us and how we defy their definitions.
Hi there! My name is Kaitlyn and I’m pursuing a degree in environmental studies and photojournalism with hopes to become an environmental photojournalist.
In my studies I recently came across the concept of environmental ideologies. Although I had a cursory understanding of what that phrase might mean I really didn’t understand the full scope of the concept.
I was introduced to the idea by the book Communicating Nature: How We Create and Understand Environmental Messages by Julia B. Corbett, a professor of environmental humanities and communication at the University of Utah.
Corbett defines an environmental ideology as “a fully formed environmental belief system… or a way of thinking about the natural world that a person uses to justify actions toward it” (13). From our individual life experiences to our sense of connection to a place and our history and culture, Corbett argues that these factors all contribute to the way we relate and respond to the natural world around us, forming our individual ideologies.
Our life experiences— especially those that occurred in childhood — powerfully shape how we view the natural world, perhaps as a refuge, or maybe a dangerous wilderness, or as something to be used, or somewhere in between, or all of these at different moments in our lives. Corbett also emphasizes place, suggesting that “attachment to place can mean fierce emotional struggles over the most appropriate use of that place, and at times, an inability to see one’s own place as degraded” (17). Our sense of place can endear us to a landscape, alienate us from it, or create other responses that impact our larger ideologies.
Furthermore, history, culture, and religion strongly affect our ideologies. Many Eastern religions believe that the earth itself is god and god’s spirit dwells within all living things, thus nature is to be revered because it is sacred. Often, such religious beliefs are deeply imbedded into an entire country’s cultural traditions.
An example closer to home is the European influence on American culture, religion, and attitudes towards nature. A widely-held mindset among the Europeans who settled in America was one of colonial conquest of the “new” land and “manifest destiny” — the God-given right and destiny of the largely white, European culture to conquer this new land and spread their values to native peoples.
Now that I’ve touched briefly on some of the influencing factors of our individual and cultural beliefs surrounding nature, I’ll summarize the different categories of ideologies in Corbett’s book.
Corbett asserts that there are two sides to the environmental ideology spectrum: one being anthropocentric and the other ecocentric (27). Anthropocentric, she writes, is anything human-centered, believing that humans are superior to nature. Ecocentric or biocentric on the other hand is any view where all nature, including humans, is equal and there is no hierarchy.
Corbett presents five different main categories of environmental ideologies, starting with the most anthropocentric and moving to the most ecocentric.
The first is Unrestrained Instrumentalism. She explains that in this view, humans are superior to nature and that nature is for our use; it is an instrument or resource. Corbett associates fundamentalist Christians with this ideology, as well as the “Wise Use Movement”, and the general desire to loosen environmental restrictions to support industry and free enterprise (31).
The second is Conservationism. It is defined as the belief that there should be some restraint in environmental resource use but only to preserve those resources for future human use. Historical figures like Gifford Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt as well as the idea of “Christian Stewardship” are associated with this ideology.
Third is Preservationism. This ideology also believes in the protection of nature for future human use but maintains that nature has value outside of our use, including ecological, aesthetic, religious, and scientific value. Preservationism is associated with the Sierra Club and John Muir, and ideas like preserving and protecting large areas of wilderness from human activity. Corbett places this ideology on the anthropocentric side of the spectrum because nature’s value is still decided based on human concepts including the belief in sacred land and obligation to a deity to protect it (36).
The fourth is a large category called Ethics and Values-Driven Ideologies because Corbett describes this group of subcategories as granting non-human beings value, and these now begin to fall on the ecocentric side of the spectrum. In this category we find animal rights and land-based ethics.
Animals rights believes that non-human beings should be given equal opportunity not to suffer (that is their inherent right as living things). Land-based ethics — coined by Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac in 1948 (39) — believes that not just individual creatures but entire ecosystems have value outside of human use and we have a responsibility to not degrade them.
Fifth is Transformative Ideologies (40), an even larger group of subcategories. Corbett calls them transformative because she sees them as challenging the dominant environmental paradigm.
First in this group is ecological sensibility which respects the interconnectedness of nature and believes in noninterference (41).
Next, we find deep ecology which maintains that all life has “intrinsic value” which means value regardless of human decisions or ideas (43).
Social ecology, a third subcategory, has two forms, one that views capitalism as the root of environmental problems and one that suggests the hierarchy in economics and society is to blame (45).
Ecofeminism is next and at its core believes that the inequality of women, races, genders, classes, and non-human beings are the intertwined roots of environmental problems (46).
Native American Ideologies are also seen as Transformative. At the core of these diverse ideas is the concept that the earth — and every particle of it, minerals, plants, animals, water — is alive. This creates a sense that everything is sacred and to be treated with the utmost care and respect (49).
The last one under Transformative Ideologies is Eastern Traditions. In the words of Corbett, these ideologies “view humans as an integral, interdependent entity in the cosmos, neither essentially nor morally segregated from nature” (51).
Our ideologies are very deeply-held individual and cultural beliefs. They’re deep convictions about how we ought to behave toward nature and what our proper relationship with the natural world is, so of course they have tremendous impact on our behavior.
But many other factors affect our behavior in addition to our ideologies. As Corbett explains, our behaviors also depend on the resources available to us, our knowledge, experiences, values, political and cultural environment, our social circles, public and legal policy, and much more (68).
For example, a fifty-year-old cattle rancher born and raised in Florida has a complex set of beliefs and values that affect how he views nature, while a nineteen-year-old college student in New York will have other experiences, values, and resources available to them that shape how they view and treat nature.
Other influencing factors are our social, personal, and moral norms (74), the habits we’ve established (80), and our self-efficacy (77). The norms and habits we perpetuate in our lives have strong impacts because they are engrained and often subconscious ways of perceiving and responding to information, and they often only change when they no longer work for us.
Self-efficacy is equally influential, as it’s how we perceive our own ability to affect change. If we don’t think we can make a difference in our communities, social groups, or the world generally, then there is much less chance that we will change our behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs.
I’m sure there are many more intricacies than what was briefly mentioned here than shape our environmental ideologies, but now I’d like to turn to a personal examination. Exploring my own response to Corbett’s roadmap of ideologies will bring a deeper level of nuance to the conversation. Because while I believe she provides a helpful framework to begin to think about our own ideologies and what we see around us, creating categories to put people and groups into never fully satisfies the complexities of individual beliefs and cultural values.
I think it’s critical if we want to make a meaningful difference in the larger environmental conversation that we seek first to understand one another and are hesitant to make sweeping assumptions about one another’s larger attitudes and beliefs without that deeper understanding. Corbett merely introduces us to other beliefs but in order to fully understand them we need to dig deeper.
I grew up in California with my dad taking me on backpacking, camping, and fishing trips all around the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I like to call my dad “a modern John Muir” because he’s a passionate hobbyist naturalist, and he would tell me all about the native plant and animals species, the geologic history of the places we visited, how to build shelters and how to read the land. His fascination with nature fueled my life-long love for the natural world.
That’s just one of the experiences that formed who I am today and steered me toward my passion for nature and communicating its wonder to others.
Another, even more powerful driving force for my passion is my faith. I’m a Christian. I grew up in a Christian home and my faith has continued to inform my relationship with the natural world.
Corbett makes many assertions about environmental ideologies, and one that I noticed most prominently is that the Christian tradition is at the root of the environmental problems we see in the West, because she associates the Christian tradition as unanimous with the dominant European paradigm that has been the driving force behind the environmental and social devastation we’ve seen in the West.
Corbett quotes the environmental thinker Peter Hay when describing what she calls Fundamentalist Christian thought: “Fundamentalism’s theology focuses on the relationship between God and the unique soul, to the exclusion of any relationship between humans and God’s creation…To devote one’s life to reaching a paradise far superior to the world of earthly substance readily leads to apathy concerning the fate and condition of the physical world — especially when it is destined for the destruction of Armageddon in any case” (31).
While I can’t assume entirely what Hay and Corbett mean by fundamentalism because they may be using it differently than my understanding of the phrase, and while I don’t consider myself a fundamentalist Christian (in my interpretation of it) I do know that the Christian Bible never emphasizes the exclusion of a relationship with the natural world. This description of a perceived “Christian narrative” — whether “fundamentalist” or not — is not Biblically founded.
Corbett cites passages from Genesis of God’s command to man to “take dominion over” (Gen. 1:26) the earth, “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28), as evidence for what she sees as permission for unrestrained use of, disregard for, and domination over the earth.
However, as a Christian, and from the perspective of one who has read the Bible, taking into account its entire context and not just parts of Genesis, I have to disagree with one of Corbett’s fundamental arguments: that the Christian tradition has encouraged this ravaging of the environment. She sees Christian teachings as the root of Western society’s “manifest destiny” attitude and disregard for nature and other people groups.
Though she did briefly touch on the fact that countries with Eastern religions have also been some of the most abusive toward nature (69), she suggests that the ideologies behind those cultures are not to blame and in fact should be studied and implemented into our own society, despite the fact that they haven’t stopped their cultures from abusing the land.
Every culture — whether or not they currently have a popular ideology or religion — has ravaged its land and people at one time or another in one way or another. So I believe that Corbett’s assertion that the Christian doctrine is uniquely to blame is inaccurate. I think people — from every culture and religion — are the common denominator, the perpetrators of this abuse.
Though it’s easy to interpret the word “dominion” in the Bible as the root of all Western domination and wrong-doings, I see that as an incomplete assessment of Christianity’s teachings, both on the part of non-Christians looking from the outside in, and Christians who have used it out of context for their own selfish gain and abuse of nature and people groups.
When taken into the entire context of our faith — and any serious criticism of someone’s core beliefs should take the time to investigate the whole story — God’s command was to rule over the earth and its creatures. No better than “take dominion”, right? Well, from the Christian perspective we understand that God commands us to be like him, and we see God as the perfect ruler. He is our divine king, with all dominion, power and authority. Yet, we know him be a good, loving king, one that nature and people alike desire to praise with joy (1 Chr 16:31). He is a good, perfect, loving, just, merciful, caring ruler.
So, with that understanding, we are tasked with being his stewards and representatives on earth, caring for each other and nature with that same godly love and care. Of course, we aren’t God, so we don’t do this perfectly, but nevertheless, a Biblically correct relationship with nature and other people is one of respect and care. That gift of “ruling” over the earth is one with great responsibility: the right treatment of and regard for all life.
The article above has some interesting and well-worded explanations and thoughts on the topic of “dominion” as used in the Bible.
Yes, nature provides the food and shelter we need to live, but there is not a passage in the Bible that gives anyone permission to decimate and degrade God’s sacred creation, for he is the ultimate ruler and we are not to abuse his gifts. Psalm 24:1 says “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it”.
I don’t believe that my faith doctrine is the root problem of our current environmental and social problems. But more important than addressing some of the assumptions made by Corbett, I believe there’s a need, rather than picking one religion as the “bad guy”, to recognize the environmental wisdom found in the host of world religions and other ideologies.
Though I’m Christian, I believe in the collaboration of all the world’s religions and other perspectives in working to solve environmental issues, and the drawing of wisdom from other faiths and practices on these issues. We are all equal beneficiaries and caretakers of nature, with equal stake in its fate.
Below is a brilliant, eloquently articulated video from Yale on the union of world religions and their ideologies in solving current environmental problems. It discusses the way religions see our proper relationship with the natural world and how that can bring a critically important perspective to the discussion and problem-solving table.
My Christian walk is deeply devoted to environmental stewardship — I use the word “stewardship” here to mean taking care of something that belongs to someone else. I have devoted my life to encouraging others to treat nature as sacred and precious, regardless of why they do so.
It is because of the fact that I believe I am divinely called and appointed to my life and its various responsibilities that I desire to love and respect and care for nature. That high calling empowers me to a deeper care for the earth and puts a warning in my heart against its mistreatment and abuse.
I think this example of my personal ideology toward nature illustrates something very important: people are more complex than the labels we assign to them.
Many Christians have indeed taken the word “dominion” out of context, leading to an imbalance in our relationship with nature. The idea of manifest destiny was believed to be God’s will for white Europeans to conquer “new” land and take whatever they wanted. Though even without relying on the excuse of “God’s will” they still succeeded in decimating land and people.
Although it is painfully obvious that not every Christian believes in the sacred relationship between humans, creation, and God, there are people across the globe from all religions and cultures who treat nature with contempt and disrespect, and yet people from all religions and cultures continue to revere and respect nature. And in my Biblical understanding I would say people using the Genesis passages as excuses for mistreatment of the earth and its inhabitants are not in line with true Biblical teaching.
Whatever you believe, I hope that you consider two points. The first is that there are many half-truths and misinterpretations of people and their beliefs out there. In my experience, things are usually not so black and white as they appear and it’s worth investigating further and giving others a chance to explain their personal views before jumping to conclusions and putting entire groups of people into a simply-labeled box.
The second is one of my take-aways from reading Corbett: even though it was uncomfortable to feel like my beliefs were being mislabeled, I found that Corbett’s categories challenged me to look more deeply at my own ideologies and explore where she was accurate and where she was not. Even when we don’t agree with someone entirely, often parts of their message still have value for us if we’re willing to engage despite the disagreement. We don’t all have to come to the table with the same reasons for being there to find common ground.
Overall, I found Corbett’s descriptions of environmental ideologies very enlightening because they drove me to explore my own ideology and why I believe the things I do about the environment. Reading Corbett helped me realize how complex my beliefs are, and though I think there were some hasty assumptions they sparked a deeper examination of myself. This experience also reminded me how important it is in my own life to not form lasting assumptions about people and their beliefs before I’ve truly understood them.
We’re living in a time ripe for new perspectives on solving the environmental issues around us. Deeply examining our own environmental ideologies and earnestly seeking to understand other people’s viewpoints and invite them into the discussion are critically important undertakings if we are to make a positive impact on our environment today.
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Citation:
Corbett, Julia B. Communicating Nature: How We Create and Understand Environmental Messages. Island Press, 2006.
