Beyond Environmentalism: Culture, Justice, and Global Ecologies

In the global context, right action on the part of humans toward each other and the biotic community, what Aldo Leopold called the land ethic, is difficult to represent in political speech, in policy, and even in the imaginative realm of the arts. Like the troubled concept of the global, the concept of justice, as Elaine Scarry has argued, founders in the problem of imagining other people, distant people, strangers. As our species faces anthropogenic climate change, world water shortages and world famine, the twin projects of giving expression to a truly global ecology and to global environmental justice have never been more urgent. This conference aimed to bring together individuals whose life’s work has been the study or practice of writing—literary historians and theorists, journalists and cultural critics, social scientists and environmental policy makers who have made the written word central to their understanding of how social changes are achieved.  The event was organized by Conferences & Seminars grantee Stephanie Lemenager, English, UC Santa Barbara. Event Website