POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The past two insights into water have focused on ways in which we conceptualize of water per se. But by which methodologies do you consider problems related to water and the environment in general?

 

Political economy exists at the confluence of biography and history. C Wright Mill’s believes that it is necessary, when thinking about issues of political economy, to employ the Sociological Imagination. He defines this method of inquiry as “the capacity to shift from one perspective to another--from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry.” (Mills) Mills incites us to analyze widely, and to push our analyses beyond the typical boundaries.

 

In his article “Forget Shorter Showers,” Derrick Jensen uses the Sociological Imagination to challenge how we problematize environmental degradation. While his article focuses broadly on environmental activism, it is easy to expand his analysis to the problem of water shortages. In writing the following summary, I began to consider how large industrial agriculture might be contributing to the California drought.

 

Jensen posits that citizens should not substitute personal change for “organized political resistance” in opposing environmental degradation (specifically, global climate change, water shortage, energy production, and waste). He states that the majority of environmental abuses are not perpetrated by individuals, but by actors in the industrial economy, including corporations and governments sympathetic to their demands. Therefore, change in personal behavior is not likely to make a large impact on the problem of environmental ruin. Jensen thinks that citizens have accepted the substitution of personal enlightenment for political organizing because of the effectiveness of the cultural ideology produced by our capitalist economic system. Individuals accept the woefully inept personal responses to environmental threats because they are afraid of not accruing success via material wealth. Even if they are concerned, living simply within the current paradigm will not challenge the corporatist and capitalist system which is causing environmental problems. Resisting this system is not attractive because it means undermining the source of luxuries we’ve grown accustomed to (like electricity) and risks severe social and corporeal consequences at the hands of those in power. “Forget Shorter Showers” argues that it’s fine to live simply if it makes you happy, but this will not stop the destruction of the environment.

 

Jensen is of the opinion that mistaking simple living for being politically active in the face of capitalist environmental sabotage is not only ineffective, but is harmful. The personalization and internalization of environmental solutions “incorrectly assigns blame to the individual.” Individuals are not creating the problem; power structures are getting away with destroying the environment by blaming often powerless citizens for their indiscretions. It also, according to Jensen, undermines the belief that humans can help the Earth. Humans are not purely destructive animals; we can work to mitigate environmental catastrophe by rehabilitating streams and undermining the politics of an extraction-based economy. Jensen says that the internalization of the problem of environmental damage accepts the perversion of citizens to consumers. Americans are not only materialists. They are also forces for democratic change as per the Constitution. Finally, Jensen critiques the idea of conflating simple living with a political and social act by asserting that this way of thinking leads to a suicidal self-image. If we’re essentially destructive and are so addicted to destructive ways of living, the only logical assumption is that we must nullify ourselves.

 

Derrick Jensen’s critique of the contemporary environmental movement’s ideology is, in my opinion, an apt and refreshing one. I recall squirreling away in my television room to watch An Inconvenient Truth at the behest of my parents and coming away from it galvanized to change my consumption habits, but also questioning why industry was not being held accountable for their transgressions in the movie. Even an eighth-grader could reason that factories spewing visible tons of emissions must have more of an impact on the environment than individuals driving certain types of cars. Even by the former logic, driving on the highway and seeing masses of semi-trucks bearing the logos of corporations was enough to throw into question Al Gore’s argument. Common sense was telling me that there was more to the story.

 

And it seems there is indeed more to this story than the average upper-middle class white American is willing to admit. Arguing for personal changes in lieu of real social change, specifically the way our economy extracts natural resources and its obsession with unsustainable growth, will not make the difference needed in the fight against environmental degradation. The content of Jensen’s critique, especially the statistics regarding how much industry is to blame for our current environmental conundrums, is diligent and effective in its culture-jamming and myth-debunking.

 

I agree with most of Jensen’s assertions in “Forget Shorter Showers.” I have noticed, throughout my examination of American political history, that there has existed in this country a fierce individualism that has pervaded our social interactions from the beginning. This individualism often plays out in a strict adherence to capitalism and limiting the scope of the social imagination to the personal. Since the time of the transcendentalists, American radicals have been propounding the virtues of absolving oneself from the social inequities and oppressions by removing oneself from the system. While radicals from different countries have argued for collective solutions to problems such as the advancement of revolutionary communism, Americans have opted for a less inclusive ideology of individual activism. This has only increased, especially in my generation’s time. For example, Reaganism completely obliterated any sense of collectivism that was incubated by the union movement. We don’t know what unions are. We don’t know as many unions men and women as before. One can see the results of this atomization and personalization today in the permaculture movement, and in the tiny house movement, the Prius movement, and the “back to the land” movement, among others. Where are the student unions? Or the pan-state civil rights grassroots groups of the sixties? Obama’s election campaign is the closest thing I can remember that resembles collective power, but that went to serve the interests of the Democratic Party which wholeheartedly supports the industrial economy creating our environmental problems.  

 

I think that Jensen is right in identifying that this will not suffice to solve any social problems (environmental problems included, as they have an effect primarily on those without resources to rely on). Indeed, “dancing naked around a fire” or moving to the woods will not solve environmental degradation, as Jensen has so thoroughly argued. His appeal to activist movements against tyrannies of the past problematizes the environmental question in a way in which it is socialized rather than individualized. Further than not helping the environmental movement, the personalization of solutions to the environmental problems removes individuals’ conceptions of themselves as players in a wider society. We are not individuals; we are all connected to each other by society. If we don’t work together to change the world in meaningful ways, particularly to rid our nation of capitalism, then we stand no chance. Opting to buy a Prius or moving into the woods is removing oneself from the society in that it is a vote to abandon those oppressed peoples who most suffer from industrial degradation of the environment.  Shorter showers will still lead to a “dead planet.” And it will be the poor that die first, if we do not come together to say “no” to capitalist industry, as Jensen urges us to do.

 

Below is a link to the pdf of a paper I wrote, the research for which was inspired by my reading of Jensen's theories.

 

 

 

The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills

Forget Shorter Showers, Derrick Jensen

 

 

NOTES FROM WEEK 3

 

• Patricia Mische

  Psychosocial lens

  Water Planet Stories

  Story as Journey

  Earth be 5 bil yrs old

  “we are the planet in human form”--microcosm

  hippy-dippy stuff #lol

  choices affect reality

  We are ⅔ salt water just as the earth. We are made up of the same element of the earth

  I’m made of 1/3 corn. Chelsea is made up of water

  Abraham Maslow--Heirarchy of needs

  basic ->meta

  meta: when lacking, we feel unwhole

  we all have potential, but we don’t all realize it

 

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• Water plays role in fulfilling our meta needs

• Lack of water may detract from fulfillment

• “We’ve become alienated from the natural world”

  question: How are we not “natural?”

• Peru, MN, Philippines

• Philippines

  e. 1900

  Philippino-American War

  water under

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• Hassan Rahmanian

  problematization

  something to imagination created by environement

  Sociological imagination C Wright Mills

  few Am. sociologists

  problem with social sciences and their role

  all three lack critical thinking

  structural functionalism (Parsons)

  marxism

  misses mark bc abstracts social relations

  no application

  empirical approach

  did not reach the people--young ppl not concerned

  blamed social sciences

  water is related to social justice and sustainability

  scientific lenses come to dificulty

  values shape our understanding

  ideology and inquiry

  how much is our understanding shaped by ideology

  how much by inquiry?

  do you have more answers than questions?

  then you’re influencing shape of ideological beliefs

  constantly evaluate answers/questions

  put values aside in research

  knowledge production

  strong ideology

  blame victim or blame system

  individual/society dichotomy is easy

  do not provide in between--this is real space

  action, cognition, emotion

  what do I want to know about this? (cognition)

  what can I “do” about it? (action)

  what do I feel about situation? (emotion)

  problematizing Detroit’s Water issue (human rights)

  problematization-to critically identify the root of the problem within the unity of a system of problems. Formulate a problematic as a system of interrelated dynamic problems and solutions.

  problematic situation--many sides to problem

  situation filled with interrelated problems

  problem

  categorize, definition of problem

  how we define problem determines how to solve it

  actors/stakeholders hold their views along certain lines

  school shooting

  parents

  children

  community

  school administration

  think political access, money, power dynamics, etc.

  many diff groups concerned

  hard to isolate specific problem

  common answers?

  gun control?

  mental health?

  lost power?

  violent culture?

  structure of family, community?

Sociological Imagination

 

• sociological-relations between two

  bring social structure into analysis

  conservatism-”problems go back to individual”

  this does not address social relationships or structure of society

• imagination-creative approach to problems

  ability to shift perspective, discipline, method of analysis

  enhances understanding

  allows sense of connection between biography and history

  if go too far into structure, ultimately everything capitalist problem, doesn’t trigger change

• how does this model help individuals internalize information and bring about change?

  what is the responsibility of individuals?

  “if you’re not paying, disconnected”

  where does individual lie?

  collect data




• The Paradox of Diamonds and Water

• why are diamonds more expensive than water which is so essential for our survival?

  economic values

  scarcity

  allocation of resources

  supply and demand

  amount of water available at specific price

  supply and demand

  price and market efficiency

  marginal utility

  status symbol, no notion of water as a commodity so scarcity was not a factor, fetish and value, bottled water--as one packages it, utility (perceived value) increases.

  Value of an object is determined by the cost of extraction

  Diamonds-more work than water

  Marginal Utility different

  not about total satisfaction of product

  but the added cost

  additional resources added

  eg pizza--first piece not talking, 2 talk, 3 give away

  value depends on consumption

d. Economics is a house of cards

• ceteris paribus--constant changing circumstances

• rational actors--paradox of tragedy (assume avoid pain, why do we like tragedy?)

• assumption of multiple choices (nonconsumptive vs consumptive)

• multiple players

• positive vs normative economics

  political orientation nullified in positive

  normative economics--takes into account

• market efficiency

  “market allows for allocation of resources”

  studies say market efficiency is 70%

  social justice problems come from this

  price

  can chose efficient production methd

e. tensions

• market vs state (cooperatives, municipal corporations)

  politics and economics

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