Perception of Options to Improve the World

In “Four Directions for the Environmental Humanities”, Sergio Gomez discusses problems that “frame our relation to the environment” and then goes on to propose shifts in environmental humanities that could address these problems. One interesting problem that Gomez mentions is the “Dominant Technocratic Approach”, which frames environmental issues as something that can simply be solved by science and technological innovations. Science and “careful management” can solve all issues under this approach. The technocratic approach can greatly affect our perceptions of options available for improving the world. Under the technocratic approach it is only the “administrators” or “experts” that are “qualified” to improve the world. This leads to the perception that is not within “our power” to improve the world or that it is not our place. Ideas can’t improve the world unless they come from a qualified expert. And even those ideas aren’t said to make much improvement unless there are “material results”.

Options available to improve the world under the technocratic approach also become “simple” and “efficient”. Any option to improve the world that is deemed “too complex” will either be ignored or reduced to simple terms that will lead to ineffective and damaging solutions. The technocratic approach can also go hand in hand with negative framing. It becomes very easy to frame things in a negative light or deny that there are even options available to improve the world when the only options are deemed as “management” or “scientific innovations”. When only “management” or “scientific innovations” are said to be options, it is easy to say there are not enough narrowly defined “resources” to improve the world. Instead, when innovative thinking is thought of as a way to improve the world, there are of course much more “options” and negative framing is not quite as easy. Scientific innovations can be rare but innovated thinking happens every day.

Developing citizen humanities is just one solution to address the problem of the dominant technocratic approach. Citizen humanities “reengages publics” as producers of knowledge, and in turn “reengages publics” in improving the world. It is more than just the “experts” that have the option to improve the world. When “publics” cultivate new ideas and discussions, they are not only coming up with new options to improve the world, but they allow for others to see just how important “non-experts” are for improving the world. These diverse “environmental imaginaries” that bring in human experience and different worldviews show that there are not always “efficient” solutions. Options to improve the world will not always be a linear progression and they may be messy and difficult. This complexity is not a sign to “give up” or “simplify the option”, but instead is often just a part of diverse collaboration. Improving the world will not always be neat and tidy, and acknowledging this will help prevent options/solutions that are in the end only more damaging.

Why is Social Science needed for tackling Climate Change?

Keri Norgaard says Climate Change is a social issue. She’s right! Climate Change may be an ecologically-premised trend of ominous long-term natural phenomena, but it is a social issue because it affects social stuff - like how we eat, how we breathe, where we build, who/how we fight and what we’re fighting each other for. Norgaard makes another great point - there’s not enough social science going on in climate change action. I think this is true because I see that those not involved in environmental disciplines still regard climate change  as “just another” fad of the noise-machine-media. It’s not their fault either - climate change comes to many Americans most often by media headlines where they are beside celebrities and candidate drama. Contrast the emotional response you receive when asking an average American about their views on U.S. involvement in the Middle East and the response you get when asking someone about their position on climate change.
Its absolutely necessary to have boat-loads of natural scientists in the field of climate change science. This is important because climate change is super duper complex and we would never come to understand the full breadth of its’ impacts without them. However, if there were a greater amount of sociologists and other humanitarian social scientists at the forefront of climate change science, there'd be a lot more reputable material on how climate change affects society, not just how climate change affects mother nature.
If that were the case, I think it’d be a lot easier for people to relate with the pernicious threat Climate Change poses. We talk a lot about risk perception and alienation - how problems that are super long term or exceedingly complex or from an indirect source are difficult for the human psyche to wrap itself around. So it seems like a clear connection to me that a growing body of work detailing the social impact of climate change, and even the social sources of climate change, would contribute to the trend of people taking climate change seriously. If there was this hypothetical body of social science, then people would care more. People might vote more. They’ll surely change their consumer habits and daily behavior if they had some “scientifically proven” connection between an aspect of their lives and this big hairy scary problem of climate change. And that, my friends, is a critical hope we need to foster. While taking shorter showers may not make the military spend consume less oil or emit less fossil fuels, changing the hearts and minds of the american people is the only sure way to establish a substantial paradigm shift. We need a paradigm shift as big as Climate Change itself to tackle Climate Change, and it won't happen without the consilience of every discipline.

True and False Hope

Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade wrote a powerful piece on hope;  a powerful feeling that motivates us to pursue things in life and to be optimistic for the future. Duncan-Andrade discusses how hope has been assaulted in urban communities. The assault on hope can be seen in the disinvestments in schools and overinvestment in the prison industrial complex. This claim by Duncan-Andrade is not only true but it stings when i acknowledge the extent of it. As a student I am constantly reminded that education is not only my key to success but it is essential to my future. I do believe this statement is true but I also acknowledge that only a few will actually reap the true benefits of this claim. Education has the potential to break many barriers that prevent us to reach our true potential but many students face trauma that make it nearly impossible to excel in school. Many urban youth are also given false hope on access to education granted that more prisons are build than schools and schools are underfunded. Duncan-Andrade identifies reactionary distortion as a process that promotes false hope and takes away true hope

Duncan-Andrade identifies three forms of false hope, the first is Hokey hope. Hokey hope affirms the american belief of pulling yourself by your bootstraps. This false hope suggests that one can simply pull themselves out of poverty or bad situations if they “work hard, play attention, and play by the rules”, critical analyses of this statement recognizes that there are inequalities and systematic oppression urban youth and people of color face that make it unattainable to reach. As Duncan-Andrade states Hokey hope, “delegitimizes the pain that urban youth experience as a result of a persistently unequal society” (p.3). The second false hope identified by Duncan-Andrade is mythical hope. Mythical hope proposes that everyone has equal opportunity. As we all know we do not have equal opportunity, urban youth are more disadvantaged in regards to opportunity (academic, economic, and socially) than wealthy suburban youth. This false hope also perpetuates the false notion of a color blind society and does not acknowledge political and historical events that cannot validate mythical hope. Mythical hope in my opinion is like a disney film, it’s suggests that life is a fairytale and that all is well and fine but neglects to recognize that processes that casts certain characters a certain way. The third false hope is hope deferred, this false hope, as stated by Duncan-Andrade “hides misinterpretations of research that connect the material conditions of poverty to the constraints placed on schools” (p.4). It's the inability to efficiently create a transformative pedagogical project that focuses on aiding students rather than focusing energy on the errors of the system. This false hope also mandates that students go on a route that teachers are reluctant to take.

Duncan-Andrade gives his readers solutions to false hope; material, socratic and audacious hope. These three true hopes are mutually ingrained and as advocated by Duncan-Andrade they must work holistically. Material hopes helps us acknowledge that the road is not smooth and will have potholes that we encounter. Socratic hope ables us to push through difficult paths that we cannot escape. Audacious hope encourages us to sacrifice pieces of ourselves so that others may rise thus we can collectively aid each other on the pursuit to our definition of success. When I finished reading this article I acknowledged that I have been at both ends of hope. I have been fed lies and at the same time I have been given so many helpful resources that have aided me to achieve my goals and dreams. As a person of color who attends a institutionalized public university I have come to understand that my peers and I face the same struggles, some harsher than others but nevertheless we all face struggles. The extent in which we receive aid greatly differs, I have been very fortunate to have professors who truly care about me and want to see me succeed. Unfortunately this has not been the same experience for some of my peers. This article opened my eyes to value true hope, hope that acknowledges that the road will not be smooth and easy and that everyone will endure different challenges but we should all preserver

Why should Science and Politics take Environmental Humanities Seriously?

This weeks’ articles covered the role of the humanities in addressing environmental issues. It is of common assumption that environmental science - climatologists, natural resource managers, soils technicians, etc - are the social caste with the tools to save us from self-wrought ecological decay. And this is true! But as is always the case with critical studies, the situation is more complex than it appears to be at first glance. Both articles bring up the point that although the “left-brained” disciplines (as we have been calling them in class) are extraordinarily well equipped to measure impacts and qualities of environmental problems, they are often deplorably inept at turning these measurements into effective strategies for change. In many cases, bureaucracy, funding, and a purely scientific outlook ironically combine to turn a solution into yet another problem. Take for example, the Humboldt Bay Wildlife Refuge. At first glance, the refuge is a beautiful example of modern science and management techniques being exercised on compromised land for the betterment of wild species and humans alike. But from a humanitarian perspective, this location represents a suite of curious contradictions that hint at an underlying structural problem. 

Why is this wildlife refuge in the particular spot that it is? How come the management is spending the vast majority of its’ budget and time on maintaining the land as an ecosystem that would not naturally occur in that place? Who is in charge of determining how this land gets used? These are the kinds of questions that the humanities bring to the table. They might sound a little belligerent, as if there were trying to stir up trouble and look for problems, and thats’ because they are. The humanities’ contribution to environmental problems is to put the Human back into the equation, because humans are some of the strongest interactors in the environment. If you’re curious about the wildlife refuge, the management is maintaining the refuge as a freshwater wetland despite its’ location smack-dab in the middle of the salty mud-flats of the Humboldt bay because of a nearly century old congressional policy that requires government-run refuges to prioritize populations of waterfowl for hunting. Their secondary efforts to maintain ecosystems amicable to threatened or rare bird species are primarily motivated by another government policy declaring that public space must be put aside for these birds because ranchers don’t like these birds nesting on their properties and want to be able to extirpate them. In summary, the wildlife refuge IS a great example of conservation management implementation, but the sources of its’ authority and funding are poorly organized, out-of-date policies that were put in place to appease economic interests and the recreation of the wealthy. I leave it up to you to decide whether your tax dollars could be put to better use.

Enough with the summarizing. The wildlife refuge is a local, personally relevant example of how environmental efforts have a void which could be filled by humanities-oriented thought & action. But the critical lack of self-insight and systems-level analysis found in the funding and agenda of the refuge reflect a common trend on all scales of the environmental movement. Measuring air quality, water quality, soil composition, disease rates, etc is EASY. That’s why we’re so good at it, and why as a society these techniques are most prevalent. But the humanities are all about asking the hard questions - the ones that can’t be measured in a lab. The fact that the questions humanities are poised to ask are scrutinous of power structures, politically subjective, and often metaphysical in nature is very likely the reason why their implementation is sluggish. But pernicious problems that extend beyond the scope of the individual - climate change, food insecurity, overconsumption, resource conflict, environmental justice (to name but a few) are, by nature, a product of the LACK of humanities’ influence in the world of policy and management. Intangibility, technocratic post-political mindsets, negative framing, and compartmentalization are the four problems listed in ‘What are the Environmental Humanities’ article. They sound to me like consequences of denial. Denial that social justice is inherently linked to environmental quality. Denial that economic solutions can’t always be environmental solutions. Denial that compassion and tolerance are as important to social reproduction as efficiency and efficacy. 

As a species, a community, and a collection of individuals, humans are on the brink of something big. Our world has never felt smaller as technological advancements and shifting cultural paradigms rapidly accelerate the rate of global connectivity. As we hurtle towards this future, I’d like to remind everyone of Stan Lee’s famous words, “With great power, comes great responsibility”. To me, these words aren’t just the epitaph of a comic book character - they’re powerful social commentary. Humanity is becoming increasingly powerful, so much to the point we’re considering naming this era after ourselves. Its about time Humanity focused on accruing a proportional amount of responsibility to match its’ power. And that responsibility can be found through the articulation of Environmental Humanities.

Hope in the Humanities

When I first transferred to Humboldt State University, I was not in the Environmental Studies program. In fact, I transferred in to the Environmental Management and Protection program. Ever since I was young, my family has always pushed me toward the medical field, the sciences, and 'management'. They would say, "you have to get a job - and that is where they all are."  This message was drilled into my head, even as a transfer student. My real passion was activism and animals - but many people tried to warn me that I would never find my place between the two. During my first semester in my first week of EMP classes, I KNEW that this program was not for me. I felt disconnected and lost. I remember going home that day crying to my partner, looking at every program HSU had to offer. I finally discovered the Environmental Studies program. The one thing that stood out to me was the focus on an interdisciplinary education. I emailed the ENST program leader, Sarah Ray, and expressed my interests. She replied - "this program would be perfect for you."

It was at that moment I knew I belonged - I found my niche. To be honest, I had anxiety switching majors - not because I was changing paths (again...) but because I was going from a B.S degree to a B.A degree! The past two years in community college, all I took was math and science courses, and now I am in the humanities, and let me tell you, this was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.  Now that I am about to graduate, I can't imagine life without the humanities, (specifically, environmental humanities.) I am in love with everything about this program. I see the value of this program, especially the skills and tools I have obtained over these past two years. I am lucky to graduate with the knowledge I have and what positive social change I will create in the future.

 Without Environmental Humanities, our future looks bleak. We cannot continue to follow the path we are on. We cannot rely only on the 'hard' sciences to solve our environmental and social issues. Environmental Humanities offers us hope. If people valued Environmental Humanities as much as the 'hard sciences' we would have more critical thinkers, intersectional activists, and more positive social change. All disciplines must work together in order to address our present and future issues. We must demolish the 'discipline hierarchy' within the ivory tower and promote interdisciplinary programs - and make them more transdisiplinary. Let's start creating new collaborations, methods, workshops, and hope.

Hope In My Studies

“Taking into account intersecting trends in political, academic, and popular engagements with environmental issues, we delimit four problems that currently frame our relations to the environment. These include: the problem of alienation and intangibility; the post-political situation; the negative framing of environmental change; and compartmentalization of “the environment” from other spheres of concern- both in practical and ontological terms. Addressing these problems, we argue, is not possible without environmental humanities.” (Gomez’s Four directions for the environmental humanities) 

Growing up and going through school in a time that focuses on the doom and gloom narrative of environmental issues, a world where “more Americans can imagine the end of the world than can envision a switch from fossil fuels or an economic order other than capitalism” (Norgaard 2) puts a great deal of stress and sense of responsibility on my colleges and I. These are times that seem to say that I cannot make a difference, that there is no hope for the future. Before I can find hope for the entire planet and all its daunting issues, I first have to find hope in myself as member in creating positive change. As a student at Humboldt state studying environmental studies I am part of environmental humanities that Sergio Gomez describes. I take comfort and great pride purely in the fact that environmental humanities are dedicated to the uphill struggle of real positive change. Change that does not look at the human world as something that is intrinsically bad for the environment, change that is “starting to invite experts on the human values, ideas, history, thinking, religion, and communication to bring their knowledge to bear on critical global issues.”(Gomez’s Why should biologists interested in the environment take the humanities seriously?)

While it often feels like environmental humanities are creating more problems when we critique and evaluate mainstream environmental narrative. In reality environmental humanities are filling a vital and neglected role in the environmental movement “We cannot dream of sustainability unless we start to pay more attention to the human agents of the planetary pressure that environmental experts are masters at measuring but that they seem unable to prevent.” (Gomez’s Why should biologists interested in the environment take the humanities seriously?). Just the growing presence of environmental humanities in the environmental movement gives me hope for a real positive change.     

  

The Four Directions for Environmental Humanities

Environmental Humanities take into account intersecting trends in politics, academic, and popular engagement with environmental issues as states by Sergio Gomez. It is frustrating that a society advanced as ours still do not acknowledge the importance interdisciplinary jobs and how it significantly contributes to its the well-being of its society. These majors are trying to midgate oppression through different lenses of creativity to creates hope, and advances in equality for all ethnicities. Even though this major is not in the science fields it should not be looked down upon. In the article called, Yale Environmental Humanities Initiative written by Sergio Gomez stated “ We cannot dream of sustainability unless we start to pay more attention to the human agents of the planetary pressure that environmental experts are masters at measuring but that they seem unable to prevent”(3). This would be a perfect example of measuring change, people who want to resolve Climate Change should be encouraged towards the interdisciplinary careers and not just the sciences. awareness and understanding are vital for social change if we are trying to spark a better social movement.

It was neat how Gomez also wrote, The Four Directions for Environmental Humanities. It demonstrated the wide range of options we can do within this major. This article reinforces my stance on  how I want to contribute in this field. I would like to mitigate Alienation and Intangibility, and change Negative Framing through awareness.