Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Postmodern, and post-industrial environmentalism
Environmentalism, it has been suggested, is a rejection of modernism (Pepper, 1996).
Modernism can be defined roughly as ‘seeking to fulfil human needs through the
development of technology and the creation of wealth’. Unfortunately, this has caused
problems, and led to calls for postmodern alternatives (for a discussion of modernity
see Giddens, 1991; and for postmodernism Harvey, 1989). While ‘postmodern’ is
widely used, the concept is confused (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1992). Many recognize
an ongoing postmodern period, beginning during the early 1960s (Bell, 1975; Frankel,
1987; Cosgrove, 1990:355), characterized by the collapse of ‘normality’ and
increasingly post-industrial or post-material activity and a holistic worldview (Bell,
1975; Roszak, 1972; 1979).
A postmodern and holistic approach might offer better understanding of cultural
and environmental phenomena, especially when circumstances demand
multidisciplinary study of problems (Young, 1990; Kirkpatrick, 1990; Warford and
Partow, 1989; Capra, 1982; Cheney, 1989). There are also signs that maths and
fundamental physics are moving from cartesian order (the systematic, reductionist
approach to understanding chaotic complexity) toward postmodern holism, for
example, by embracing chaos theory and fractals (Peat, 1988:341; Lewin, 1993).
Some have gone beyond postmodernism to advocate what they call post-
environmentalism as the best approach to environmental management
(environmentalism is a reformist philosophy which tends to maintain a distinction
between human affairs and nature; post-environmentalism seeks to reduce that
separation in developing environmental ethics) (Pearce et al., 1989; 1990; 1991;
Barde and Pearce, 1990; Pearce and Turner, 1990; Gare, 1995).
The postmodern concept may prove useful, given that it is increasingly difficult
to maintain a separation between science and politics, etc. The concept of holism
was used long ago by Smuts (1926) (see chapter 7), and implies that the whole is
greater than the sum of the parts, and that modern science tends toward excessive
reductionism, empiricism and compartmentalization (isolation of fields of study from
each other). In short, postmodern researchers seek to understand the totality of
problems, rather than their components. Not everyone is happy with these trends:
Atkinson (1991b:154), for example, warns of the risks involved in adopting a holistic
approach.

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CHAPTER EIGHT
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‘Ecologism’ is a generic term for an ideology that argues for care of the
environment and a radical change in human relationship with nature to get it (put
crudely, ecology is the science and ecologism is a worldview that draws upon it
(Kirkman, 1997; Dobson, 1994). Dobson (1990:36) described ecologism as ‘the
ideology of political ecology’ (see chapter 13). Ecologism, Dobson (1995) argues,
is a political ideology, which holds that a sustainable, fulfilling existence ‘requires
radical changes in the human relationship with the natural world, and in the mode of
social and political life’ (most deep greens would support this).