Theoretically grounded in queer death studies and environmental humanities, this article has a twofold aim. Firstly, it explores the somatechnics of environmental violence in the context of Northern and Eastern Europe, while paying attention to ongoing ecocide inflicted by Russia on Ukraine, and to the post-WW2 chemical weapon dumps in the Baltic Sea. Secondly, the article examines the concept of eco-grief in its close relation to artistic narratives on ecocide. By bridging the discussion on environmental (...) class='Hi'>violence and artistic renderings of eco-grief, the article hopes to contribute to a better understanding of the socio-cultural responses to more-than-human death and loss, and their accompanying ethical imaginaries and affordances. (shrink)

Environmental activism is expected to improve society’s well-being and environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, some inappropriate ways of activism, like road blockage, art vandalism, assaults, etc., have been recently conducted and risked causing adverse repercussions, including violence escalation. The current study aims to explore which types of environmental activism are more likely to escalate violence between activists, affected citizens, and police. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed to analyze a dataset of 89 blockage, vandalism, and harassment (...) cases in 13 countries in this exploratory study. We discovered that rallies and demonstrations, marches, event disruption, and art vandalism were less likely to escalate violence between protestors, other citizens, and the police. In contrast, road blockades and assaults are more likely to lead to violence escalation. Apart from those, sabotage was found to have an ambiguous relationship with the violence escalation. Based on these results, we suggest that climate activists should be more selective in adopting activism approaches to raise public awareness and support and avoid using tactics that might be counterproductive and reduce public backing, such as road blockage and assaults. Despite the negative impact of art vandalism on violence escalation, we also discussed why art vandalism should not be used since it can curb the effectiveness of artivism, showing misuse of artworks (e.g., paintings, music, films) for environmental activism. (shrink)

Social movements often impose nontrivial costs on others against their wills. Civil disobedience is no exception. How can social movements in general, and civil disobedience in particular, be justifiable despite this apparent wrong-making feature? We examine an intuitively plausible account—it is fair that everyone should bear the burdens of tackling injustice. We extend this fairness-based argument for civil disobedience to defend some acts of uncivil disobedience. Focusing on uncivil environmental activism—such as ecotage (sabotage with the aim of protecting the (...) environment)—we argue that some acts of uncivil disobedience can be morally superior to their civil counterparts, when and because such acts target people who are responsible for environmental threats. Indeed, insofar as some acts of uncivil disobedience can more accurately target responsible people, they can better satisfy the demands of fairness compared to their civil counterparts. In some circumstances, our argument may require activists to engage in uncivil disobedienceeven whencivil disobedience is available. (shrink)

In the view of the Marxist philosopher Domenico Losurdo, liberalism is ‘the most dogged enemy of freedom’. This surprising statement runs contrary to the received wisdom among liberal thinkers. Losurdo and other ‘counter-historians’ of liberalism are very effective at exposing the historical atrocities that liberal states have committed, and which have been supported by liberal philosophers – including slavery, racism, genocide, and the subjugation of the working class. But what implications, if any, does this have for contemporary theory? I will (...) argue that there is an important contemporary variation of this ‘counter-history’. Liberalism-in-practice is currently implicated in various forms of environmental degradation and resulting structural violence against disempowered groups. Moreover, divorcing these failings of liberalism-in-practice from liberalism-in-theory is a challenging philosophical endeavour, because even the philosophy of liberalism has difficulties adjusting to environmental issues. The contemporary version of the counter-history thus presents a powerful although not decisive challenge, one worthy of greater discussion. (shrink)

As the planet’s largest ecosystem, oceans stabilise climate, produce oxygen, store CO2 and host unfathomable biodiversity at a deep time-scale. In recent decades, scientific assessments have indicated that the oceans are seriously degraded to the detriment of most near-future societies. Human-induced impacts range from climate change, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, eutrophication and marine pollution to local degradation of marine and coastal environments. Such environmental violence takes form of both ‘spectacular’ events, like oil spills and ‘slow violence’, (...) occurring gradually and out of sight. The purpose of this paper is to show four cases of coastal and marine forms of slow violence and to provide counter-accounts of how to reinvent our consumer imaginary at such locations, as well as to develop what is here referred to as ‘low-trophic theory,’ a situated ethical stance that attends to entanglements of consumption, food, violence, environmental adaptability and more-than-human care from the co-existential perspective of multispecies ethics. We combine field-philosophical case studies with insights from marine science, environmental art and cultural practices in the Baltic and North Sea region and feminist posthumanities. The paper shows that the oceanic imaginary is not a unified place, but rather, a set of forces, which requires renewed ethical approaches, conceptual inventiveness and practical creativity. Based on the case studies and examples presented, the authors conclude that the consideration of more-than-human ethical perspectives, provided by environmental arts and humanities is crucial for both research on nature and space, and for the flourishing of local multispecies communities. This paper thus inaugurates thinking and practice along the proposed here ethical stance of low-trophic theory, developed it along the methodological lines of feminist environmental posthumanities. (shrink)

Ecofeminist philosophy is a development of feminist philosophy that addresses the intersection of sexism and environmental issues. Coined by Francoise d’Eaubonne, the term “ecofeminism” refers to a diverse collection of feminist thought that shares the conviction that the present environmental crisis is due not solely to the anthropomorphic nature of dominant conceptualisations of human-nature relations, with their emphasis on notion of mastery and control, but also to their androcentric nature. Technology features frequently in ecofeminist writings, in analyses of (...) technocracy (Birkeland 1993), Nuclear Power (Caputi 1993), reproductive technologies (Diamond 1990), or the production of computer interfaces (Romberger 2011), to give but a few examples. Despite being a recurrent theme, technology itself as a phenomenon is rarely directly considered. For many ecofeminists technology seems to operate as an umbrella term for a collection of artefacts whose positive or negative characteristics are ultimately contingent upon the manner in which they are employed. The individual technologies appear as value neutral. There are of course exceptions to this piecemeal approach to technological artefacts, and in this chapter I shall focus upon two ecofeminist philosophers whose consideration of technology moves from the individual instance towards a more general account of the nature of technology. The first, Karen Warren, gives technology a central place in her philosophical analysis. However, I shall suggest, her commitment to an instrumental understanding of technology renders her approach problematic. I will then consider the work of Vandana Shiva. Standard analyses of Shiva’s work tend to overlook the philosophical dimensions of her thought, in particular the continuous emphasis on science and technology. I argue that Shiva puts forward a sophisticated technological determinist philosophy of that emphasises the role of political and patriarchal interests in technological development and subsequent social and environmental interventions. (shrink)

Controlling the names of places, environments, and species is one way in which settler colonial ontologies delimit the intelligibility of ecological relations, Indigenous peoples, and environmental injustices. To counter this, this article amplifies the voices of Native American scholars and foregrounds a philosophical account of Indigenous naming. First, I explore some central characteristics of Indigenous ontology, epistemic virtue, and ethical responsibility, setting the stage for how Native naming draws these elements together into a complete, robust philosophy. Then I point (...) toward leading but contingent principles of Native naming, foregrounding how Native names emerge from and create communities by situating (rather than individuating) the beings that they name within kinship structures, including human and nonhuman agents. Finally, I outline why and how Indigenous names and the knowledges they contain are crucial for both resisting settler violence and achieving environmental justice, not only for Native Americans, but for their entire animate communities. (shrink)

This is not a perfect book, but it is unique, and if you skim the first 400 or so pages, the last 300 (of some 700) are a pretty good attempt to apply what's known about behavior to social changes in violence and manners over time. The basic topic is: how does our genetics control and limit social change? Surprisingly he fails to describe the nature of kin selection (inclusive fitness) which explains much of animal and human social life. (...) He also (like nearly everyone) lacks a clear framework for describing the logical structure of rationality (LSR—John Searle’s preferred term) which I prefer to call the Descriptive Psychology of Higher Order Thought (DPHOT). He should have said something about the many other ways of abusing and exploiting people and the planet, since these are now so much more severe as to render other forms of violence nearly irrelevant. Extending the concept of violence to include the global long-term consequences of replication of someone’s genes, and having a grasp of the nature of how evolution works (i.e., kin selection) will provide a very different perspective on history, current events, and how things are likely to go in the next few hundred years. One might start by noting that the decrease in physical violence over history has been matched (and made possible) by the constantly increasing merciless rape of the planet (i.e., by people's destruction of their own descendant’s future). Pinker (like most people most of the time) is often distracted by the superficialities of culture when it’s biology that matters. See my recent reviews of Wilson’s ‘The Social Conquest of Earth’ and Nowak and Highfield’s ‘SuperCooperators’ here and on the net for a brief summary of the vacuity of ‘true altruism’ (group selection), and the operation of kin selection and the uselessness and superficiality of describing behavior in cultural terms. -/- This is the classic nature/nurture issue and nature trumps nurture --infinitely. What really matters is the violence done to the earth by the relentless increase in population and resource destruction (due to medicine and technology and conflict suppression by police and military). About 200,000 more people a day (another Las Vegas every 10 days, another Los Angeles every month), the 6 tons or so of topsoil going into the sea/person/year –about 1% of the world’s total disappearing yearly, etc. mean that unless some miracle happens the biosphere and civilization will largely collapse during next two centuries, and there will be starvation, misery and violence of every kind on a staggering scale. People's manners, opinions and tendencies to commit violent acts are of no relevance unless they can do something to avoid this catastrophe, and I don't see how that is going to happen. There is no space for arguments, and no point either (yes I'm a fatalist), so I'll just make a few comments as though they were facts. Don't imagine I have a personal stake in promoting one group at the expense of others. I am 78, have no descendants and no close relatives and do not identify with any political, national or religious group and regard the ones I belong to by default as just as repulsive as all the rest. -/- Parents are the worst Enemies of Life on Earth and, taking the broad view of things, women are as violent as men when one considers the fact that women's violence (like most of that done by men) is largely done in slow motion, at a distance in time and space and mostly carried out by proxy -by their descendants and by men. Increasingly, women bear children regardless of whether they have a mate and the effect of stopping one woman from breeding is on average much greater than stopping one man, since they are the reproductive bottleneck. One can take the view that people and their offspring richly deserve whatever misery comes their way and (with rare exceptions) the rich and famous are the worst offenders. Meryl Streep or Bill Gates or J.K Rowling and each of their kids may destroy 50 tons of topsoil each per year for generations into the future, while an Indian farmer and his may destroy 1 ton. If someone denies it that's fine, and to their descendants I say "Welcome to Hell on Earth"(WTHOE). -/- The emphasis nowadays is always on Human Rights, but it is clear that if civilization is to stand a chance, Human Responsibilities must replace Human Rights. Nobody gets rights without being a responsible citizen and the first thing this means is minimal environmental destruction. The most basic responsibility is no children unless your society asks you to produce them. A society or a world that lets people breed at random will always be exploited by selfish genes until it collapses (or reaches a point where life is so horrific it's not worth living). If society continues to maintain Human Rights as primary, to their descendants one can say with confidence "WTHOE". -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

Environmental activism is crucial for raising public awareness and support toward addressing the climate crisis. However, using climate change mitigation as the cause for blockage, vandalism, and harassment activities might be counterproductive and risk causing negative repercussions and declining public support. The paper describes a dataset of metadata of 89 blockage, vandalism, and harassment events happening in recent years. The dataset comprises three main categories: 1) Events, 2) Activists, and 3) Consequences. For researchers interested in environmental activism, climate (...) change, and sustainability, the dataset is helpful in studying the effectiveness and appropriateness of strategies to raise public awareness and support. For researchers in the field of security studies and green criminology, the dataset offers resources to study features and impacts of blockage, vandalism, and harassment events. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed to validate the dataset. Consequently, the estimated result aligns with the Mindsponge Theory’s theoretical reasoning. (shrink)

The ongoing global pandemic of Covid-19 has exposed SARS-CoV-2 as a potent non-human actant that resists the joint scientific, public health and socio-political efforts to contain and understand both the virus and the illness. Yet, such a narrative appears to conceal more than it reveals. The seeming agentiality of the novel coronavirus is itself but one manifestation of the continuous destruction of biodiversity, climate change, socio-economic inequalities, neocolonialism, overconsumption and the anthropogenic degradation of nature. Furthermore, focusing on the virus – (...) an entity that holds an ambiguous status between the ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ – brings into question the issue of the agentiality of non/living matter. While the story of viral potency seems to get centre stage, overshadowing the complex and perverse entanglement of processes and phenomena which activated these potentials in the first place, the Covid-19 pandemic also becomes a prism that sheds light on the issues of environmental violence; social and environmental injustices; more-than-human agentiality; and ethico-political responses that the present situation may mobilise. -/- This article serves as a written record of joint conversations between artists and researchers in the working group ‘Non/Living Queerings’ that formed part of the online series of events ‘Braiding Friction’ organised by the research project Biofriction. The article strives to capture the collective effort of braiding and weaving a variety of situated perspectives, theoretical toolboxes, knowledges and experiences against the background of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, the text focuses on the issues of crisis, ‘amplification effect’, viral agency and the changing notions of humanity. (shrink)

The current study is conducted to examine the following research questions: -/- - What are the consequences of blockage, vandalism, and harassment activities for the cause of climate change mitigation? - What kind of environmental activism leads to the escalation of violence? - Which pathways (e.g., survival threats) do the activism lead to violence escalation? -/- The findings from this study are expected to provide insights into the effectiveness and appropriateness of strategies to raise public awareness and (...) support and contribute to the societal transitions to address climate change. (shrink)

We take kelp as material entities immersed in a multitude of relations with other creatures (for whom kelp serves as both nourishment and shelter) and inorganic elements of the milieu it resides in, on the one hand, and as a figuration: a material-semiotic “map of contestable worlds” that encompasses entangled threads of “knowledge, practice and power” (Haraway 1997, 11) in its local and global sense, on the other. While drawing on our field notes from the congress and feminist posthumanities and (...) environmental humanities literatures (e.g. Alaimo 2016; Åsberg & Braidotti 2018; Sandilands & Erickson 2010; Iovino & Opperman 2014) – with a special focus on the so-called blue humanities/oceanic humanities (e.g. DeLoughrey 2019) – that unpack human/nonhuman relations in the context of the current environmental crisis and the accompanying “slow violence” (Nixon 2011), we mobilise a reflection on and make a proposal for “thinking with kelp” as a multi-faceted methodology of transversal and transdisciplinary knowledge production and practices: situated (Haraway 1988), enfleshed, transcorporeal (Alaimo 2010), collaborative, and committed to an ethics of multispecies response-ability (Haraway 2008). (shrink)

In the present condition of planetary environmental crises, violence, and war, entire ecosystems are annihilated, habitats turn into unliveable spaces, and shared “more-than-human” vulnerabilities get amplified. Here and now, death and loss become urgent environmental concerns, while the Anthropocene-induced anxiety, anger, and grief are manifested in popular-scientific narratives, art, culture, and activism. Grounded in the theoretical framework of queer death studies, this article explores present grief imaginaries and engagements with more-than-human death, dying, and extinction, as they are (...) interwoven through contemporary art. It is there where an ecological ontology of death is being exposed and ethical territories of eco-grief unfold. (shrink)

In a world where meat is often a token of comfort, health, hospitality, and abundance, one can be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at the conjunction “meat and evil.” Why pull meat into the orbit of harm, pestilence, ill-will, and privation? From another perspective, the answer is obvious: meat—the flesh of slaughtered animals taken for food—is the remnant of a feeling creature who was recently alive and whose death was premature, violent, and often gratuitous. The truth is that meat has (...) a checkered history in the West. From its origin-story in Abrahamic religion to its industrial production in today’s world, meat is well-marbled with evil and its minions: sin, violence, injustice, destruction, suffering, and death. Beyond keeping company with these obtrusive forms of evil, meat’s success at remaining, nevertheless, in our collective good graces illuminates some of evil’s subtler shades too. We might learn something of insidiousness, self-deception, rationalization, and bad faith by exploring why the ever-strengthening consensus that habitual meat-eating is unhealthful, morally dubious, and environmentally damaging is often still no match for a philosopher’s savor of cheeseburgers. My aim is to consider meat’s fitness for a place in the Western history of evil by reflecting briefly on its outsized roles at the bookends of this narrative: meat’s primeval history in Genesis, and its contribution today to ethical and environmental problems of arguably apocalyptic proportions. (shrink)

Discrimination, slavery, and violence have always been distinctive colors in the painting of human history. There have been men or groups feeling greater than others. There have been unending oppressions among the human species. When confronted with these cases, most immediately think of human rights. On another side of human history, there has also been environmental detriment caused by uncontrolled human expansion. It is oppression among men and ‘vertical suppression’ of inter-species. The main actors are humans. This phenomenon (...) leads to a fundamental question about our actual Being (ὄντος). In the name of human dignity, George Kateb raises it in two fundamental concepts: human status and human stature. A philosopher should be able to examine human dignity as fundamental to human rights. Human dignity is human’s actual Being as [a] Being of human rights. This essay uses qualitative methods through literature research to examine human dignity ontologically, based on the primary sources of George Kateb, namely the palpable distinction between human status and human stature. While providing technological and natural phenomena, this paper gives a contextualization of existential human dignity from George Kateb’s ontological perspective. (shrink)

PDF with introduction and front and back materials. Abstract: A provocative examination of the consequences of Levinas’s and Adorno’s thought for contemporary ethics and political philosophy. This book unfolds a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, using their thought to address contemporary environmental and social-political situations. Eric S. Nelson explores the “non-identity thinking” of Adorno and the “ethics of the Other” of Levinas with regard to three areas of concern: the ethical position of nature and “inhuman” material (...) others such as environments and animals; the bonds and tensions between ethics and religion and the formation of the self through the dynamic of violence and liberation expressed in religious discourses; and the problematic uses and limitations of liberal and republican discourses of equality, liberty, tolerance, and their presupposition of the private individual self and autonomous subject. Thinking with and beyond Levinas and Adorno, this work examines the possibility of an anarchic hospitality and solidarity between material others and sensuous embodied life. -/- “This is an extremely impressive, original, and thorough treatment of two key twentieth-century thinkers and their applicability to the most pressing social and political issues of our time.” — Jeffrey A. Bernstein, author of Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History -/- “This book is an excellent and timely contribution to political and environmental philosophy, located around a nuanced historical and philosophical approach to Levinas and Adorno. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with these figures or with the current moment.” — Martin Shuster, author of Autonomy after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity. (shrink)

Atomically precise manufacturing (APM) is the assembly of materials with atomic precision. APM does not currently exist, and may not be feasible, but if it is feasible, then the societal impacts could be dramatic. This paper assesses the net societal impacts of APM across the full range of important APM sectors: general material wealth, environmental issues, military affairs, surveillance, artificial intelligence, and space travel. Positive effects were found for material wealth, the environment, military affairs (specifically nuclear disarmament), and space (...) travel. Negative effects were found for military affairs (specifically rogue actor violence and AI. The net effect for surveillance was ambiguous. The effects for the environment, military affairs, and AI appear to be the largest, with the environment perhaps being the largest of these, suggesting that APM would be net beneficial to society. However, these factors are not well quantified and no definitive conclusion can be made. One conclusion that can be reached is that if APM R&D is pursued, it should go hand-in-hand with effective governance strategies to increase the benefits and reduce the harms. (shrink)

In the distant future, a thousand years after "The Seven Days of Fire"—the holocaust that rapacious industrialization spawned—the earth is a wasteland of sterile deserts and toxic jungles that threaten the survival of the few remaining human beings. This is the world of Hayao Miyazaki's film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. In this film, Miyazaki offers a vision of an alternative to the violent quest for dominion that has brought about this environmental degradation, through the struggle of (...) the young princess of the Valley of the Wind, Nausicaä. As a messianic figure, I contend the shōjo Nausicaä offers a beneficial estrangement from common conceptions of the gospel and opens up the ecological significance of Christ's message of non-violence. Exploring the ecological and pacific aspects of the gospel through this figure, I argue, may provide a helpful lens for examining our own distorting visions in this age of war and environmental crisis. (shrink)

A text, written in 2005 and first published in 2008, exploring the prevalence of non-dualist philosophical and spiritual praxes, inserted from Buddhist and Hindu contexts into a Western postmodern one, in the post-9/11 era of intersecting existential crises: global terrorism/s, environmental urgency, and the geopolitical uncertainty ensuing from maladaptive responses to these security crises, among others. What ethical or philosophical role does the range of neo-nondualistic or neo-idealist metaphysics, East and West, broadly construed, have in engaging the social evolution (...) that might begin to do justice to the nature of such widespread crises? (shrink)

Shame is most frequently defined as the emotion we feel when we fail to live up to standards, norms, or ideals. I argue that this definition is flawed because it cannot explain some of the most paradigmatic features of shame. Agents often respond to shame with violence, but if shame is the painful feeling of failing to live up to an ideal, this response is unintelligible. I offer a new account of shame that can explain the link between shame (...) and violence. On my view, shame arises out of a tension between our identity and our self-conception: those things about which we feel shame are part of our identities, but they are not part of our self-conception. I conclude by arguing that this account of shame is a valuable moral emotion. (shrink)

This paper discusses two thinkers who locate the possibility of revolutionary historical change in political projects oriented toward the formation of subjects and cultivation of sensibility. I begin by considering the relationship between historical violence and education in the works of Walter Benjamin. After introducing the provocative association of education with divine violence found in “Toward the Critique of Violence,” I expand on Benjamin’s conception of pedagogical force. Highlighting the centrality of education in Benjamin’s early work, I (...) argue that his account of learning does not depend on the mastery of students by teachers, nor more generally on the mastery of objective reality by a sovereign subject, but on the mastery of the educational relationship by tradition. Drawing on W.E.B. Du Bois’ discussion of the abolition of slavery, I close by describing the revolutionary cultivation of sensibility as a dynamic and collectively achieved mode of historical learning. (shrink)

The issue of political violence is mostly absent from current debates about power. Many conceptions of power treat violence as wholly distinct from or even antithetical to power, or see it as a mere instrument whose effects are obvious and not in need of political analysis. In this paper, I explore what kind of ontology of power is necessary to properly take account of the various roles that violence can play in creating and maintaining power structures. I (...) pursue this question by contrasting the views of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. For Arendt, power is generated and maintained by communicative practices. She argues that power and violence are ‘opposites’ because violence can only destroy but not create these practices. In contrast, Foucault’s conception explicitly allows violence to play a constitutive role in generating power. I argue that while Arendt is right to insist that power and violence are not identical, it does not follow that violence cannot play any role in constituting power. Guided by Foucault’s approach, I formulate a non-dualist account of the relationship between power and violence that takes seriously the role that bodies, material things, and built infrastructures play in making social relations ‘more durable’ and constituting power. (shrink)

Political violence is a broad term that is often identified with acts of violence perpetuated by individuals or the state with the lone purpose of achieving political goals. Political violence may come in two modes, either as political terrorism or counter terrorism. The former is determined as the aggressive manipulation of an individual’s judgments by threats and intimidations to achieve political change. Such intimidations are often perpetuated by non-governmental agents who act on the basis of a certain (...) political ideology. The latter presupposes the preventive measures the government is doing in fighting against all forms of terrorism, which in the process will inevitably lead to war. War, in this regard, is conceived to be the lone and most feasible alternative, taken by the state, in order to resolve arm conflicts and political violence. With the intention that in so doing, the absolute welfare and well-being of the people is safeguarded and proliferated. It is for this reason that the paper intends to examine whether the well-being of the people is upheld if the state, inflicted with arm conflicts and terrorism, will engage with war against non-government agents. Moreover, the paper intends to examine, following Amartya Sen’s capability approach, how both of these forms of political violence affect the development of the individual. This paper, following Sen, adheres to the idea that any attempt of resolving violence by resorting to war is futile. War in all its form is destructive to the claim of individual development. The government that readily engages into war without having to consider first any democratic dialogues in solving arm conflicts is not fulfilling its task of protecting and prioritizing the development of the people. In war there is no individual development. (shrink)

Although the idea that sexual violence is a “structural” problem is not new, the lack of specification as to what that entails blocks effective responses to it. This paper illustrates the concept of sexual violence as structural in the sense of containing a type of moral wrong called “structural wrong” and discusses its practical implications. First, I introduce a distinction between two types of moral wrongs—interactional wrongs and structural wrongs—and I argue that the moral problem of sexual (...) class='Hi'>violence includes both types, each of which calls for a different set of moral responses. Second, drawing on Iris Marion Young’s social connection model of responsibility, I argue that recognizing the structural-wrong element of sexual violence does not reduce individual perpetrators’ responsibility for it. Instead, it implies that a broader group of agents are required to join collective actions to reform the social structure. I conclude by evaluating some preventive programs against sexual violence through the lens of structural wrongs and providing directions to advance them. (shrink)

Tourism education plays a key role in shaping students’ engagement with sustainability by providing them with the knowledge and skills to address environmental challenges and encouraging them to promote sustainable practices in the industry. This study explores how four years of tourism education at Prince of Songkla University in Phuket, Thailand, influence students’ knowledge, attitudes, and intentions toward sustainability. Despite gaining theoretical knowledge of sustainability principles, the findings reveal a decline in students’ willingness to adopt environmental sustainability practices (...) as their years of education increase. This may reflect a disconnect between classroom lessons and practical application, potentially due to limited practical learning experiences and the prevalent “eco-deficit culture” within the tourism industry, which often prioritizes profit over environmental responsibility. As a result, students may filter out information regarding environmental sustainability despite their sustainability education at the university. To support long-term engagement in sustainability, the paper recommends revising curricula to include more experiential learning opportunities, interdisciplinary collaboration, and stronger partnerships with industry stakeholders. (shrink)

Periodical reports are important information sources for investors and society to monitor, contribute to, and allocate resources to listed companies contributing to environmental sustainability. This article provides a preliminary investigation into environment-related information disclosure in annual reports of 61 representative companies in Vietnam, a country that has a rapidly developing stock market and is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. It was found that although most of the companies’ reports disclosed the goals to pursue sustainability and (...) class='Hi'>environmental protection (over 93%), only one-third of them genuinely reported investment in or research on environmental directions. The proportion of companies reporting detailed information on greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, water consumption, and waste production is relatively low; even among leading companies in sustainable development, the reporting rates for these indicators remained below 60%. We suggest that a separate mandatory annual report on environmental issues will increase businesses’ and society’s consciousness of environmental impacts. Transparent disclosure of environmental information will also offer an avenue to empower society to monitor, participate, and steer businesses toward sustainable development, thereby fostering an eco-surplus culture throughout the economic system. (shrink)

Environmental virtue ethics (EVE) can be applied to environmental justice. Environmental justice refers to the concern that many poor and nonwhite communities bear a disproportionate burden of risk of exposure to environmental hazards compared to white and/or economically higher-class communities. The most common applied ethical response to this concern—that is, to environmental injustice—is the call for an expanded application of human rights, such as requirements for clean air and water. The virtue-oriented approach can be made (...) consistent with such calls, but there are broader applications as well that generate unique strategies for moral responsiveness and for expanding the role of moral philosophers in civic affairs. (shrink)

We argue that there is a large class of questions—specifically questions about how to epistemically evaluate environments that currently available epistemic theories are not well-suited for answering, precisely because these questions are not about the epistemic state of particular agents or groups. For example, if we critique Facebook for being conducive to the spread of misinformation, then we are not thereby critiquing Facebook for being irrational, or lacking knowledge, or failing to testify truthfully. Instead, we are saying something about the (...) social media environment. In this paper, we first propose that a new branch of epistemology–Environmental Epistemology–is needed to address these questions. We argue that environments can be proper objects of epistemic evaluation, and that there are genuine epistemic norms that govern environments. We then provide a positive account of these norms and conclude by considering how recognition of these norms may require us to rethink longstanding epistemic debates. (shrink)

[English version also available] The Blood of Others begins at the bedside of a mortally wounded Résistance fighter named Hélène Bertrand. We encounter her from the point of view of Jean Blomart, her friend and lover, who recounts the story of their relationship : their first meeting, unhappy romance, bitter breakup, and eventual reunion as fellow fighters for the liberation of occupied France. The novel invites the reader to interpret Hélène and Jean’s story as one of positive ethical development. On (...) this progressive reading, although both characters are initially mired in bad faith and ethical irresponsibility, they ultimately transform themselves into ethically exemplary figures. Through their participation in violent political resistance against the occupation, they recognize their responsibility to humanity and actualize that responsibility in the form of positive political engagement. I will argue, on the contrary, that Jean and Hélène exhibit a unique form of bad faith that Beauvoir identifies in The Ethics of Ambiguity, a dangerous form of bad faith, distinct from the Sartrean conception, that promotes the indiscriminate use of violence for political ends. (shrink)

Gender-based forms of administrative violence, such as reproductive violence, are the result of systems designed to enact population-level harms through the production and forcible imposition of colonial systems of gender. Settler statecraft has long relied on the strategic promotion of sexual and reproductive violence. Patterns of reproductive violence adapt and change to align with the enduring goals and evolving needs of settler colonial occupation, dispossession, and containment. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to end the constitutional (...) right to abortion in Dobbs v Jackson is but one instance of this larger pattern. We analyze reproductive and obstetric violence and the structural trauma they produce through the lenses of i) historical continuity and ii) the global architectures of neoliberal settler capitalism in order to connect reproductive rights rollbacks in the U.S. with the expansion of reproductive violence across a world connected by colonial globalization. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have been arguing for decades that swift action to protect our natural environment is morally paramount, and that our concern for the environment should go beyond its importance for human welfare. It might be thought that the widespread acceptance of moral anti-realism would undermine the aims of environmental ethicists. One reason is that recent empirical studies purport to show that moral realists are more likely to act on the basis of their ethical convictions than anti-realists. In (...) addition, it is sometimes argued that only moral realists can countenance the claim that nature is intrinsically valuable. Against this, we argue that the acceptance of moral anti-realism is no threat to the environmentalist cause. We argue, further, that the acceptance of moral realism is potentially an obstacle to delivering on a third core environmental ethicist demand: namely, that successful action on climate change and environmental destruction requires us to change some of our commonly-held ethical views and to achieve a workable consensus. (shrink)

I argue that silencing (the act of preventing someone from communicating, broadly construed) can be an act of both interpersonal and institutional violence. My argument has two main steps. First, I follow others in analyzing violence as violation of integrity and show that undermining someone’s capacities as a knower can be such a violation. Second, I argue that silencing someone can violate their epistemic capacities in that way. I conclude by exploring when silencing someone might be morally justifiable, (...) even if doing so is an act of violence. (shrink)

Environmental pollution and climate change have been considered the main environmental challenges affecting the world’s ecosystem, including that of South Africa. They cause poverty, land degradation, and health hazards. One of the leading causes and contributing factors of environmental pollution and climate change is carbon emissions into the atmosphere. As a way to curb these emissions, Carbon tax policy has been introduced in various countries, including South Africa. In 2019, a Carbon tax was introduced to assist South (...) Africa in delivering on the commitments made in the Paris Agreement in 2015. If the policy is effectively applied, it will raise revenues while reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Before and after introducing the Carbon tax policy in South Africa, there has been debate and discussion on its impact on the environment, economy, and society. Based on the debate and discussion, it has been observed that more attention is paid to the economic implications and benefits of the tax on South Africa than the ethical implications. Thus, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing debate and discussion by ethically evaluating the Carbon tax policy in South Africa. (shrink)

The burgeoning literature on the ethical issues raised by climate engineering has explored various normative questions associated with the research and deployment of climate engineering, and has examined a number of responses to them. While researchers have noted the ethical issues from climate engineering are global in nature, much of the discussion proceeds predominately with ethical framework in the Anglo-American and European traditions, which presume particular normative standpoints and understandings of human–nature relationship. The current discussion on the ethical issues, therefore, (...) is far from being a genuine global dialogue. The aim of this article is to address the lack of intercultural exchange by exploring the ethics of climate engineering from a perspective of Confucian environmental ethics. Drawing from the existing discussion on Confucian environmental ethics and Confucian ethics of technology, I discuss what Confucian ethics can contribute to the ethical debate on climate engineering. (shrink)

Environmental activism plays a vital role in raising awareness of environmental degradation and halting environmentally destructive activities, which is expected to contribute to safeguarding the Earth’s system against climate and biodiversity loss crises. Although the passion and commitment of environmental activists should be acknowledged, several groups of environmental activists are embracing the radical environmentalist movement. They support using illegal actions to achieve their primary goal of environmental protection. The actions perpetrated by radical environmentalist groups are (...) not impulsive but rather part of a deliberately planned and organized following a long-term strategy. (shrink)

This work introduces the reader to the central issues and theories in Western environmental ethics, and against this background develops a Buddhist environmental philosophy and ethics. Drawing material from original sources, there is a lucid exposition of Buddhist environmentalism, its ethics, economics and Buddhist perspectives for environmental education. The work is focused on a diagnosis of the contemporary environmental crisis and a Buddhist contribution for positive solutions. Replete with stories and illustrations from original Buddhist sources, it (...) is both informative and engaging. (shrink)

This article makes the case for the necessity of a multi-focal conception of violence in religion and peacebuilding. I first trace the emergence and development of the analytical concepts of structural and cultural violence in peace studies, demonstrating how these lenses both draw central insights from, but also differ from and improve upon, critical theory and reflexive sociology. I argue that addressing structural and cultural forms of violence are concerns as central as addressing direct (explicit, personal) forms (...) of violence for purposes of building just and sustainable peace. Moreover, religiously informed and/or motivated peacebuilders are especially well-appointed and equipped to identify and address violence in its structural and cultural manifestations. I the examine how concepts of structural and cultural violence, in effect, centrally inform the efforts of Martin Luther King and Cornel West to cultivate just and sustainable peace in a context as putatively peaceful and prosperous as the United States. (shrink)

ABSTRACTConventional wisdom holds that there is no lucky knowledge: if it is a matter of luck, in some relevant sense, that one's belief that p is true, then one does not know that p. Here I will argue that there is similarly no lucky understanding, at least in the case of one type of luck, namely environmental luck. This argument has three parts. First, we need to determine how we evaluate whether one has understanding, which requires determining what I (...) will call understanding's evaluative object. I argue that as the evaluative object of knowledge is a belief in a proposition, the evaluative object of understanding is a mental representation of a relational structure. Next, I show that arguments that environmental luck is incompatible with understanding miss the mark by considering cases in which one has a belief in a proposition is lucky to be true, instead of ones in which one's mental representation of a relational structure is lucky to obtain. I agree, then, with those who argue that one can have understanding when one's beliefs are environmentally lucky to be true, but that this compatibility is not relevant when considering the question of whether one can have environmentally lucky understanding. I then present what I take to be a properly constructed case which shows the incompatibility of environmental luck with understanding. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 1, pp 57 - 76 The aim of this article is to address the question of the anthropological difference by focusing on the intersubjective relation between the human and the animal in the context of a phenomenological analysis of violence. Following some Levinasian and Derridian insights, my goal is to analyze the structural differences between interspecific and intraspecific violence by asking how the generic phenomenon of violence is modalized across various levels: from (...) human to human, from human to animal, from animal to human, from animal to animal. I will address questions of incarnated vulnerability and altered states of affectivity, and I will relate the various forms of violence emerging in the context of the anthropological difference to the question of territoriality, arguing that violence is structurally modified in relation to particular articulations of our worldly spatiality. (shrink)

The Blood of Others begins at the bedside of a mortally wounded Résistance fighter named Hélène Bertrand. We encounter her from the point of view of Jean Blomart, her friend and lover, who recounts the story of their relationship : their first meeting, unhappy romance, bitter breakup, and eventual reunion as fellow fighters for the liberation of occupied France. The novel invites the reader to interpret Hélène and Jean’s story as one of positive ethical development. On this progressive reading, although (...) both characters are initially mired in bad faith and ethical irresponsibility, they ultimately transform themselves into ethically exemplary figures. Through their participation in violent political resistance against the occupation, they recognize their responsibility to humanity and actualize that responsibility in the form of positive political engagement. I will argue, on the contrary, that Jean and Hélène exhibit a unique form of bad faith that Beauvoir identifies in The Ethics of Ambiguity, a dangerous form of bad faith, distinct from the Sartrean conception, that promotes the indiscriminate use of violence for political ends. (shrink)

Environmental philosophy – broadly conceived as using philosophical tools to develop ideas related to environmental issues – is conducted and practised in highly diverse ways in different contexts and traditions in Asia. ‘Asian environmental philosophy’ can be understood to include Asian traditions of thought as well as grassroots perspectives on environmental issues in Asia. Environmental issues have sensitive political facets tied to who has the legitimacy to decide about how natural resources are used. Because of (...) this, the works, practices, and researchers in Asian environmental philosophy are exposed to being (mis)used by diverse stakeholders and actors to support political ends not related to environmental sustainability. Two processes are at play at the nexus of the construction of identities in relation to conceptualisations of nature: eco-orientalism and ecological nationalisms. This paper analyzes and exemplifies these dynamics through a conceptual framework that distinguishes ideological and socio-technical explanations of environmental degradation. Finally, to minimise the risks of political misuse, five pathways are presented to carefully help curate environmental, philosophical statements: contextualise, quantify uncertainty and ‘uniqueness’, downscale, confront claims with local realities and literature, and collaborate with researchers from other disciplines. Conjointly, these pathways aim at favouring intercultural collaboration while valuing diversity, thus supporting the development and exchanges in environmental philosophy in Asia and beyond. (shrink)

Violence is one of the most pervasive problems in the world today. Despite all efforts to apply the powers of reason in order to contain, if not completely eliminate violence, violence proves to be capable of escaping capture and re-emerging in new and unexpected forms. Reason and rationality appear to be powerless against violence. The paper explores some philosophical issues that shed new light on the persistence of violence in the modern world. It argues that (...) the failure of modernity to recognize and come to grips with the process of construction that constitutes the basis of our relationship with reality plays a critical role in the continued survival of violence. (shrink)

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy explores ethics and the philosophy of nature in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and related texts to elucidate their potential significance in our contemporary environmental crisis. This book traces early Daoist depictions of practices of embodied emptying and forgetting and communicative strategies of undoing the fixations of words, things, and the embodied self. These are aspects of an ethics of embracing plainness and simplicity, nourishing the asymmetrically differentiated yet shared elemental body of life of the (...) myriad things, and being responsively attuned in encountering and responding to things. These critical and transformative dimensions of early Daoism provide exemplary models and insights for cultivating a more expansive ecological ethos, environmental culture of nature, and progressive political ecology. This work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history. (shrink)

Deep Ecology, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), and Anti-Civilization Primitivism have frequently been labeled as radical environmental ideologies, owing to their relationship with activities conducted by environmental extremists. Nonetheless, given the serious concerns faced by climate change and biodiversity loss, it is critical to engage with a broad range of perspectives and techniques. Such participation allows us to have access to a greater range of perspectives and a more diverse pool of knowledge, boosting our capacity for creative (...) problem-solving. The purpose of this essay is to reconsider the underlying concepts and principles that drive these theories, as well as to assess their relevance in tackling modern environmental issues. We think that Deep Ecology, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), and Anti-Civilization Primitivism should be called "unconventional" or "distinctive" rather than "radical," because they primarily focus on the ontological perspective but do not urge extreme acts. Meanwhile, their distinctiveness helps increase public awareness about environmental issues and promote reflection on and rethinking of the ontological link between mankind and the natural world. (shrink)

This paper will address Foucault’s analysis of the Hebrew and Christian pastor and argue that Foucault’s analysis of pastoral power in Security, Territory, Population neglects an important characteristic of the shepherd/pastor figure: violence. Despite Foucault’s close analysis of the early development of the Hebrew pastor, he overlooks the role of violence and instead focuses on sacrifice. However the sacrificial pastor does not figure in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew pastor is called to lead, feed and protect the flock, (...) not sacrifice for them. This is not to suggest that the theme of sacrifice is absent in the Hebrew Scriptures but that sacrifice is not a role attributed to the pastor until Jesus’ reinterpretation of the “good shepherd” in Chapter 10 of The Gospel of John.4 In distinguishing the Hebrew and Christian formulations of the pastor, the roles of violence and sacrifice in each can be understood more clearly. Beginning with the Hebrew Scriptures I will demonstrate the importance of violence in the figure of David as the first “shepherd of men”. I will argue that violence and the ability to protect the flock was a significant and determining characteristic of the Hebrew pastor. Contrary to Foucault’s assertion I will demonstrate that sacrifice was not a role attributed to the Hebrew pastor. While the words and life of Jesus provide a new sacrificial paradigm for understanding the “shepherd of men,” it is Paul who provides the foundation on which the practice of the Christian pastor is established in the Church. Therefore I will examine the writing of Paul to demonstrate the way violence operates in the Christian pastorate. I will argue that sacrifice does not replace violence but violence is subsumed in the sacrificial pastor and continues to operate. Finally I will suggest that the introduction of violence into Foucault’s analysis establishes a deeper connection between pastoral power and biopower. Thus, this connection engenders a richer understanding of the tension in Foucault’s work between care and violence in the poles of biopower: to make live and let die. (shrink)

John O’Neill, Alan Holland, and Andrew Light usefully distinguish two ways of thinking about environmental values, namely, end-state and historical views. To value nature in an end-state way is to value it because it instantiates certain properties, such as complexity or diversity. In contrast, a historical view says that nature’s value is (partly) determined by its particular history. Three contemporary defenses of a historical view are explored in order to clarify: (1) the normatively relevant history; (2) how historical considerations (...) are supposed to instruct environmental decision making; and (3) the relative importance of historical and end-state considerations. There are multiple reasons for including historical considerations in an account of environmental values. For example, knowledge of a natural object’s history can add depth and texture to our appreciation of that object. Further, if we were blind to the relevant history, we could not adequately understand and defend environmental policy goals such as preserving the potentials of natural systems or maintaining ecological health, for these goals appear to have irreducibly historical aspects. While historical considerations are important, such considerations are insufficient to guide our normative thinking about nature and how it should be dealt with practically. But they succeed in broadening and deepening our understanding of the nature and sources of environmental value. (shrink)

Climate change and environmental degradation are threatening the existence of humanity. The youth have the potential and capability to play a pivotal role in tackling these challenges. Therefore, the current study aims to examine how school and family environmental education can enhance environmental knowledge, willingness to take action, and pro-environmental behaviors among children and young people. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was utilized on a nationally representative dataset of 2069 Vietnamese primary, secondary, and high school (...) students. The analysis results suggest that school and family environmental education is beneficial for improving students’ environmental knowledge and willingness to take environmental actions. Notably, the effect of school education is more substantial for cultivating environmental knowledge, whereas family education has a stronger impact on raising students’ willingness than school education. Students with higher levels of environmental knowledge are more likely to conduct pro-environmental behaviors only when they are willing to take environmental actions. If students are unwilling to act, higher environmental knowledge is negatively associated with the likelihood of pro-environmental behavior. Following these findings, we call for coordinated education efforts of schools and families to cultivate students’ eco-surplus culture. The education efforts should be implemented along with exposing students to environmental settings and encouraging them to read environmental books. (shrink)

In 1985, German sociologist Niklas Luhmann published a monograph on ecology, which appeared in English translation in 1989 as Ecological Communication. It contained many original insights for ecological thinking and, despite being well-reviewed upon publication, has had a relatively minor impact on Anglophone environmental discourse. This inattention is also present in environmental law, which has recently seen an increase in legal theories that challenge its mainstream. This contribution first investigates why Ecological Communication has received scant attention, pointing to (...) changes in the climatic context in which it first appeared and the reactionary nature of its arguments. Recognising that the work nevertheless contains critical theoretical insights for environmental law scholarship, the second aim of the article is to spotlight what from Ecological Communication remains relevant at the hand of three common claims progressive researchers level against mainstream environmental law: The critique of law's marriage to Cartesian dualism, that law should be better informed by climate science,of and law's anthropocentrism. Finally, environmental lawyers are called upon not to ignore Ecological Communication but to engage with it fruitfully. (shrink)

Political violence is a major impediment to Nigeria's national development. With the restoration to democratic rule in May 1999, high expectations were raised that the new democratic dispensation would resolve the risk of Nigeria's political violence, while speeding the country's economic and social transformation. It's worrying that since democratic rule returned, Nigeria has experienced a degree of unprecedented political violence that has crippled the efforts of national development. The fundamental thrust of this paper is to investigate the (...) incidence of Nigeria's political violence and assess its national development consequences. The paper shows that political violence dissuades domestic and foreign investment in our economy, triggers government loss of revenue and resources, and results in the election of unqualified representatives to the detriment of the country's economic and social progress. This paper proposes reducing wages paid to political office holders, and politicians should strive to achieve national unity instead of growing religious and ethnic tensions. Lastly, National resources should also be equitably distributed by the government. (shrink)