Conservation Culture

Mao

You have hit on a hugely difficult question, but a very important one. Environmental scholars have debated this matter extensively. For example, environmental philosophers have often discussed that our "modern social paradigm" with its underlying assumptions (such as "nature as resources," "technological innovations will solve all problems" or "anthropocentrism") are at the root of environmental abuse. Therefore, cultural change is needed. Environmental anthropologists, however, show that it is not so simple and there is no such thing as the best "environmentally sensitive culture". All cultures have relationships, norms, practices, etc with the land or earth, and it really varies. Also, culture is not static, nor are the conditions that people find themselves in, so culture accommodates.. There's much more to say about this complicated and rather catch-all concept of "culture." However, I suspect you were thinking about culture at a much smaller scale, e.g., to encourage a conservation culture in a local place. Things like social norms, common understandings, and the resulting social practices of conservation, some of which you specifically named. I wonder if some of the reason no one responded (onlist at least) is because your question is about generating change by focusing on the collective (culture is a shared thing, that no matter how it is conceptualized, exists independent of individuals [but not of the group] but also dwells inside the people, e.g., socialisation). Our ways of thinking tend to focus on affecting individuals, and expect that that scales up to the collective. Much education and social marketing (not always, I know) tend to both focus on the individual. But individuals do not live outside their social contexts, and the existing social context puts pressure back on the individual NOT to change. A more sociologically robust approach to education is to work on both individuals and their social contexts simultaneously. This actually fits better with much learning theory (learning is socially situated.) I could go all theoretical here, because that is what my academic work is all about right now. I got into it as an environmental educator because of looking for ways to improve effectiveness of EE - much seemed to not work very well in terms of changing attitudes, behaviours, etc. The point is to work on both the social-structural conditions in which environmental behaviour will take place (including the norms, values, but also the effectiveness of transit, etc) AND on the behaviours and attitudes of the individual. That is why getting people active in changing those conditions is so effective; it begins to transform the existing habitus (the socialised understanding of the world, that generates the behavioural practices of acting in that understood world). Working to change the world also works to change our understanding of that world and then we change how we act in that world. (Was it Ghandi who said Be the change you want to see"? That's a more poetic way of describing this sociological theory. That is also why it works to get people engaged together in study or support for pro-environmental behaviour. Overall, the way I describe it is we can't be very ecological in an unecological society - it doesn't "fit". What doesn't "fit" pinches, and unless you are willing to live with the pinches, you probably change to get rid of the pinch, that is, become more like the dominant ways of society. So society is "conservative" that is, will tend to conserve its existing form. I have to go to class, but if interested, can talk/write further. It has practical implications, and doesn't need to be expressed so academically. I could also point out some research. For example, there is lots of environmental values (which is not the same as "attitudes" and is only a small part of culture). A key thing is that people do not (are not able to) think about everything they do, so act on the basis of their internalisations that generate behaviour. (This is NOT behaviourism!) But cognitive efforts will only go a small direction in changing things in a more positively environmental direction.

Randy HD 

Randolph Haluza-DeLay, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Sociology
The King's University College
Edmonton, AB, T6B 2H3
Canada 1-780-465-3500 ext8063
http://www.kingsu.net/page.aspx?ID=97746

Check out the work being done by Arctos and Bird Enterprises in Banff, Alberta. http://www.arctosbanff.ca/index.html and article at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NTE/is_7_7/ai_107525747 Arctos and Bird probably have some interesting research or information on the subject.

Robin McLeod
[email protected]

Hello Randolph,

I am very interested in your discourse below... might you be able to point me to any resource on the process of social transformation? and what do you think of these steps in social transformation:

1. Consciousness
2. Critical mass
3. Social transformation

my colleague put it in his own words - "...you mean to keep changing individual consciousness until a critical mass of new consciousness accumulates in the collective unconscious, which in turn leads to social transformation .... is this what you have in mind?" History has alot to teach us too.. I feel fostering sustainable behaviour/sustainable development has a great lesson to learn from the process of social transformation.

Stephen Awoyemi

Department of Zoology
University of Ibadan
Ibadan, Nigeria

I found Randy's discussion interesting. I'm teaching a course in the community on habitat gardening - gardening for wildlife using "sustainable" gardening practices. I believe that changing people's relationship to nature right in their own backyard could be a powerful way to change their relationship to the natural world in general. A person's yard is the most readily available piece of nature, and often the most intimate way they relate to the natural world. Once people start changing their landscaping practices to create a healthy habitat rather than simply "decorating" their yard with pretty plants and start observing how even the smallest creatures use their yards, these understandings can translate to the world beyond their back yards. This change happened to me. When I was camping in the Adirondacks one summer sitting next to a lake, I found myself thinking of that larger ecosystem in terms of how my mini-backyard ecosystem was functioning - protecting water resources, native plants and the threat of invasives etc. Have you ever studied how changing people's landscaping practices to create a healthier ecosystem in their own yards might contribute to a shift in how they relate to the natural world in general? (By the way, a great new book on the essential contribution of our yards to protecting biodiversity is Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy, an entomologist at the Univ of Delaware.)

Janet

Janet Allen, Ph.D.
President,
Habitat Gardening in Central New York