Hybrid Encounters in Reconciliation Ecology

2016143 [WO-2016-20.3] 003-Kidwell-proof-01 [version 20160722 date 20160801 15:02] page 238 Worldviews 20 (2016) 238–250 WORLDVIEWS brill.com/wo Hybrid Encounters in Reconciliation Ecology Jeremy Kidwell University of Edinburgh, uk [email protected] Abstract Over the past century, environmental scientists have developed a range of conservation approaches. Each of these, from management to restoration has embedded within it certain dualisms which create exclusive spaces or agencies for “human” and “nature.” I begin with a critique of these binaries as they occur in philosopher, Florence R. Kluck- hohn’s influential model and in more recent narratives about the “Anthropocene,” and then turn to examine some of the novel features of “reconciliation ecology” as it has recently been deployed in the environmental sciences. Though this model is beginning to see wider use by scientists, it has not yet been explored within a religious framework. Taking up Miroslav Volf’s suggestion that reconciliation involves a “double strategy” I highlight ways that reconciliation can (1) provide a viable model for promoting an “embrace” of the other and (2) better integrate the past history of negative human biotic impacts. Keywords reconciliation ecology – restoration – postdualism – hybrid geographies 1 Introduction Given the relatively recent development of conservation biology and ecology as scientific disciplines it should not come as a surprise that the concept of “conservation” and the mode of action implied in conservation science has developed in significantly novel ways in the last century. Dualist accounts of humans as masters of nature undergirded a series of crass technocratic visions of nature “management,” first developed by late-Enlightenment Ger- man forestry pioneers that have subsequently left earth’s current inhabitants © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/15685357-02003003 2016143 [WO-2016-20.3] 003-Kidwell-proof-01 [version 20160722 date 20160801 15:02] page 239 hybrid encounters in reconciliation ecology 239 with a wide range of mono-crop plantations.1 The conservation of “wilderness” marked an attempt to move away from such optimism about “mastery,” and accommodate a form of preservation through the forced absence of human persons. More recently, conservationists have turned towards a contrasting notion of “restoration” which emphasises the careful, but active involvement of persons in restoring natural places that have been severely impacted by human impact. In this paper, I highlight a new turn which is underway, and has been especially highlighted by urban ecologists and human geographers encompass- ing “reconciliation ecology,” What is particularly interesting about this new third turn towards reconciliation (in contrast to “conservation” and “restoration”) is that it mobilises post-dualist ontologies in order to reconfigure the human disposition towards the place of conservation and habitat. “Reconcil- iation” is still a minority view and the use of the term has not been examined within a religious frame. I begin this essay with an examination of ways that binary configurations have undermined attempts to situate care for nature over the course of the twentieth century in order to highlight some of the possible advantages that a reconciliation account might offer. I will particularly examine benefits of “reconciliation ecology” in light of the resonant conversations within political philosophy and religious studies. 2 Conceptualising Nature and 20th Century Dualisms Critical reflection on the environment in the twentieth-century was charac- terised by a persistent juxtaposition surrounding the relationship between “humans” and “nature.” Among social scientists, this was put paradigmatically by Florence R. Kluckhohn who argued (from the early 1950s) that the “man- period added, ok? nature” value orientation could be categorised along a continuum in one of three ways: as “subjugation-to-nature,” “harmony-with-nature,” or “mastery- over-nature” (1961, 13). These categories have been tremendously influential (though usually credited to Lynn White within the discourse in religious studies as I shall discuss below) and thereby, testing for a “mastery-over-nature” orientation has dominated social scientific research into environmental attitudes (ea), particularly ea studies of religious persons and communities (Wolkomir, Futreal, Woodrum, & Hoban, 1997, Hand & Van Liere, 1984). Following Kluck- hohn’s lead, in the latter half the twentieth-century cultural theorists went on to assign categories to a variety of cultural groups and nations, with America 1 For an excellent environmental history of early German forestry, see (Lowood, 1990). Worldviews 20 (2016) 238–250 2016143 [WO-2016-20.3] 003-Kidwell-proof-01 [version 20160722 date 20160801 15:02] page 240 240 kidwell serving as a common example of a civilisation wholly oriented around “mastery-over-nature.” Though he was not the first to do so, Lynn White embedded this spectrum of sustainability categories in a historical context. In particular, White argued that a mastery-orientation was not established in a widespread way until 1850 (White, 1967, 1203). Yet, as White went on to argue, seeds for the attitude which eventually gave way to a specific set of technological practices were planted far earlier, in the midst of medieval Christendom. There are two risks that lie in wait for those scholars who make use of a continuum for cultural analysis. The first risk is that, as categories along a continuum are deployed over time for analysis of different peoples and groups they may come to absorb unintended descriptive features. A brief examination of Kluckhohn’s categories reveals how this has been the case. An example of the subjugation-to-nature orientation was identified in her fieldwork with Spanish-American shepherds. As Kluckhohn described it, their attitude towards nature were generally fatalistic, they “believed firmly that there was little or nothing a man could do to save or protect either land or flocks when damaging storms descended upon them” (Kluckhohn, 1961, 13). At the oppo- site end of the spectrum, according to Kluckhohn, is the mastery-over-nature orientation, wherein one assumes that “[n]atural forces of all kinds are to be overcome and put to the use of human beings … The view in general is that it is a part of man’s duty to overcome obstacles; hence there is the great emphasis upon technology” (13). In the middle, lies the harmony-with-nature orientation. Here, in Kluckhohn’s definition, “there is no real separation of man, nature, and supernature. One is simply an extension of the other, and a conception of wholeness derives from their unity” (13). Though these categories can seem, on the face of things to be relatively tidy and bounded (which may perhaps explain some of their subsequent influence), what lies in the gap in-between “harmony” and “mastery” is, for lack of a better term, the possibility of benevolent mastery. I do not mean this in the sense of some technocratic writers who have commended various forms of “dominion,” but rather in the way that Thom van Dooren has recently drawn attention to the forms of violence that can be inevitable in cross-species care. Van Doreen draws upon the example of the captive breeding program which has sought to save the precariously endangered Whooping-Cranes to draw attention to the entan- glement of agencies and motives involved in interventions to save endangered species. As he puts it, “the care that is practiced at the dull edge of extinction is often intimately and inextricably entangled with various forms of violence. In short, it is a violent-care” (van Dooren, 2014, 116). Yet, in Kluckhohn’s account, the very use of the word “harmony” excludes the kind of dissonant practices which may be involved in individual interactions between human and non- Worldviews 20 (2016) 238–250 2016143 [WO-2016-20.3] 003-Kidwell-proof-01 [version 20160722 date 20160801 15:02] page 241 hybrid encounters in reconciliation ecology 241 human. Instead, she focusses upon the absorption of individuals into a single whole. Interaction, conceived of in such ideal terms excludes the possibility of humans acting upon the other in a way that is coercive or violent but nonethe- less caring; and thus, all forms of “interaction” whether seeking mastery or harmony, are absorbed into the far-right category and swept up in the surveys based on this conceptualisation. Given contemporary evidence of the “violent- care” model, we can see how this arrangement of categories is symmetrical with the problematic dichotomisation of “wilderness” and human habitation so famously critiqued by William Cronon (1996). The second risk that is actualised in categorising human values along a continuum is that the horizontal line of one’s categories may be conflated with the horizontal line of historical progression. While White argues strenuously against a conservationist mentality that concerns itself with the preservation of spaces that exclude humans and their activities, his initiation of the mastery- over-nature category as the intellectual child of Western Christianity colludes with a broader skepticism over the ability of modern humans to co-exist with other creatures. It is important to note that this historicisation of Kluckhohn’s continuum of environmental attitudes looks very much like a Western Chris- tian lapsarian anthropology, anchoring at a particular time the point at which human civilisation became

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