Western Epistemology Kritik

Three quick notes:

- I think it would be a good idea to always read the general link as well as another
specific link in the 1nc.
- You can articulate this argument in many different ways based on what
concepts (indigenous studies, anthropocentrism, capitalism, etc.) you want to
emphasize or deemphasize.
- This file could easily supplement other kritiks or be supplemented by other
kritiks. Id encourage anyone to borrow evidence from other files when
answering or going for this argument. (International Law K)

First Negative Constructive

1NC General Link

The 1ACs orientation toward the ocean is tainted by a Western
worldview that shuts out alternate epistemologies and reduces the
ocean to an object to be exploited
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

conceptions of oceans developed and perpetuated

in the Western discourses of law, aesthetics and science, are highly influential in
structuring contemporary human-relations. These conceptions are unnecessarily constraining upon
The thesis for this discussion has been that particular

possibilities for imagining and understanding human-ocean relations in Western societies. Consequently, just ocean existences are being

just ocean existences can be achieved

through the use of politically generated knowledges about oceans to shift policy towards a
set of social-environmental goals that are not widely imagined by the Western
mind.
In developing my thesis, I have taken on board and travelled with a number of philosophical, social and political theories. These
theories have assisted me in the task of developing a critique targeted
toward the social and cultural dimensions of human exploitation and degradation of
oceans as well as exploring ways to include non-human agency in addressing
hindered for identifiable reasons. Improving the prospects for

the abuse.
In going beyond critique I have advocated for the structuring of policy debates and outcomes with a form of political epistemology that decentres the experts. I have highlighted, in particular, the problem of defining oceans scientifically ahead of inclusive debate and constitutive
discussion about what comprises oceans and marine environmental concerns. I have argued for a form of political epistemology that is
inclusive of a diversity of perspectiveshuman and non-humanand takes seriously the possibilities of a democratic process as a basis for
greater knowledge and imagining of human-ocean relations.
The discussion of the thesis is developed from a social construction perspective that is attuned to the problems of realist accounts of ocean

conceptions of the oceans that are largely

taken for granted in Western societiesthat is, oceans as the property of all (public access
rights), oceans as the sublime archetype (or oceans as the trigger for the sublime in the case of Kant), oceans as resources
and commodities and more recently, oceans as a great store of biodiversityare not
objective accounts of oceans but mediated by historical, material, socio-economic
and cultural factors. I have demonstrated that different conceptions of oceans have
dominated Western consciousness in different historical periods and suggested as part of my argument that this is
testimony to the understanding that ideas about oceans are always mediated.
dwelling life and forces. In Chapters 2 to 5 I demonstrated that

My major concern in Chapters 2 to 5 of this dissertation was with providing some of the social context for the development of particular and
influential meanings ascribed to oceans in the Western discourses of law, sublime aesthetics and science. These chapters were, furthermore,
concerned with how these particular meanings structure and delimit human-ocean relations. What I have demonstrated about the

discourses of law, science and aesthetics is that they often

narrowly define human-ocean relations. Chapters 2 to 5 focused primarily on supporting that part of my thesis
which states: particular conceptions of oceans developed and perpetuated in the Western discourses of law,
aesthetics and science, are first, highly influential in structuring contemporary human-ocean relations and
second, unnecessarily constraining of the possibilities for imagining and
understanding human-ocean relations in Western societies.
meanings attributed to oceans in the

1NC Impact
This Western relationship with nature guarantees extinction.
Avelar 14 (Idelber Avelar is a Full Professor specialized in contemporary Latin American fiction, literary theory, and Cultural
Studies. He received his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1996, March 2014, Contemporary Intersections of Ecology and Culture: On
Amerindian Perspectivism and the Critique of Anthropocentrism,
http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/revista_de_estudios_hispanicos/v048/48.1.avelar.pdf.) //ky
To think the contemporary according to this logic is to identify and think through the presents locus of non-coincidence with itself, its blind
spot, so to speak. The contemporary thus fundamentally names a relationship with the present, but the relationship takes place with that
which remains hidden and repressed in the present as its condition of possibility. An epoch in which the contemporary can be thought is,
then, necessarily one in which the present lodges within itself some seeds of discord with itself. Agamben rephrases that energylet us
understand the untimely as an energy, an intensity, in Deleuzes sense of the wordas the ability to stare at the present in the face so as to
see its darkness, not its light.1 In order to think through the contemporary, therefore, the question to be posed is not so much what is the
difference between our age and previous ages, but what is our ages difference with itself, what is, so to speak, its point of non-coincidence

a blind spot, unique to our

times relationship with itself, must be understood in the context of what geologists have
called the Anthro- pocene Era. This is a period marked by our ability to do such severe
damage to the environment that humans have now become geological agents,
equipped with the concrete possibility of extinguishing our own species and
most others, no longer as a result of one single catastrophic event , as it
was commonly feared when a possible nuclear explosion loomed behind the Cold War,
but as an unintended, long-term conse- quence of an unsustainable model of development.
In a piece entitled The Climate of History: Four Theses, in my estimation one of the great papers of our time, Indian historian
Dipesh Chakrabarty offers the historical background for the concept of the Anthropocene:
The period of human history usually associated with what we today think of as the institutions of
civilizationthe beginnings of agriculture, the founding of cities, the rise of the religions we know, the invention of
writingbegan about ten thousand years ago, as the planet moved from one geological period, the last ice age or the Pleis- tocene, to
with itself, what is its untimely ground. I will develop in this essay the hypothesis that such

the more recent and warmer Holocene. The Holocene is the period we are supposed to be in; but the possibility of anthropogenic climate

Now that humansthanks to our numbers, the

burning of fossil fuel, and other related activitieshave become a geological agent on
the planet, some scientists have proposed that we recognize the beginning of a new
geological era, one in which humans act as a main determinant of the environment of the planet. The name they have coined for
change has raised the question of its termination.

this new geological age is Anthropocene. (20809)

Chakrabarty has drawn a brilliant set of conclusions from the premises underlying the concept of the Anthropocene. In short, Chakrabarty
argues that it is no longer possible to write the histories of globalization, of capital, of culture without taking into account, at the same time,
the history of the species. There are so many of us cutting down so many trees and burning so many fossils that the history of our culture
can no longer be separated from the history of nature such as it once was. Whereas [f]or centuries scientists thought that earth processes
were so large and powerful that nothing we could do could change them. . . . that human chronologies were insignificant compared with the

we have now become agents of devastation

vastness of geological time (Oreskes qtd. in Chakrabarty 206),

to
the environment who are capable of changing the most basic physical processes of the earth, of which global warming and the acidification
of the oceans are but two of the most terrifying components. Our time is then characterized by an unprecedented convergence between
ecology and culture, whereby it is no longer possible to separate human history and natural history. As Chakrabarty states, it is only recently
that humans have become geo- logical agents to the extent that the dynamic of human history has be- gun to impact natural history. We
must, therefore, put global histories of capital in conversation with the species history of humans (212).
The concept of the Anthropocene, coined by ecologist Eugene Stoermer and later widely used by Nobel Prize winner atmospheric chemist
Paul Crutzen, inaugurates for Chakrabarty a period that puts in crisis the separation between human history and natural history, a relatively
stable one at least since Hobbes and Vico. Given their trajec- tory in recent decades, this places the humanities in a particular bind: if we
could single out the major feature that traverses these disciplines in the twentieth century, it would be the culturalization that has accompanied the so-called linguistic turn. The culturalist critique of natural- ization has been one of the distinctive features of the humanities
(and to a certain degree, the social sciences) over the past century, if not the structuring one. The unveiling as cultural of traits assumed or
mistaken as natural has been the bread and butter of humanistic disciplines. In that operation, nature occupies the position of a receding
horizon, a limit that keeps being pushed back toward a realm that is never really present, never embodying a positive existence. In that

we never really know what nature is, only what it is not and what the mistaken other has
throughout the twentieth century, nature has been a
constant presence, but only negatively, i.e. as the object of an operation of
model,

taken it to be. In the humanities,

denaturalization. The renewed insepa- rability of natural history and human history pointed out above and experienced today challenges
the humanities to understand nature in ways other than simply through the lens of a culturalist critique of naturalization. It is no longer
enough to unveil the cultural ground of concepts, notions, and habits hitherto taken to be natural.

In the ur- gency of the

ecological crisis we live today, we can no longer afford not to face the question of
a nature as positivity.
To be sure, there are recent examples of how the relationship between nature and culture has been recast on a new basis. Cultural
studies, anthropology, Legal Studies, and other disciplines have all been led to rethink
paradigms that implicitly assumed nature and human history to be separate
spheres. Michel Foucaults concept of biopolitics as well as Giorgio Agambens notion of thanatopolitics crossed that divide by
inaugurating an understanding of governmentality as a tech- nology for the administration and disciplining of life. In the concept of
biopolitics, nature is no longer a receding horizon or an illusion to be unmasked. Foucaults use of the term biopolitics has very little in
common, of course, with earlier usages, either in German thinking of the 1920s, characterized by the understanding of the state as a living
organism, or in French thinkers of the 1960s such as Starobinski and Jean Morin, who attempted to explain human history from life. Biopolitics for Foucault is not only a method for population control, but also a technology for the production and reproduction of life. The era
of biopolitics is, then, the era of the biological regulation of popula- tion. Especially suggestive to me among the heirs of Foucault has been
Argentinean philosopher Fabian Luduena, who in a book entitled La comunidad de los espectros argued against Agambens conception of
politics as a supplement to bios simply added a posteriori on to a realm of raw zoe. As Brazilian essayist Alexandre Nodari noted in his
review, Luduenas questioning of the opposition between bios and zoe grounds his choice for the term zoopolitics, rather than
biopolitics, to des- ignate the primary substance of human politics (Nodari, Fabricar 2). What is stake in the production of humanity for
Luduena is not simply an exclusion of zoos, of the animal. Politics has set itself, from the be- ginning, el arte de la domesticacion del animal
humano, in a process where politics is always coextensive with eugenics (Luduena Romandini 21).2 It is not by chance, then, that Nodari
sees a link between census and censorship, insofar as the counting of properties and of popula- tion, its redistribution according to
governmental calculations in classes, the registry of births and deaths etc. allowed for a better organization of the republic, facilitating the
detection and correction of unproductive elements (the vagabonds) by the censor (Nodari, Fabricar 3).3

attempts at
producing an anthropotechnique that demands life to be separated away from its intensity, its force, its animality, which must then be measured, confined,
calculated, and framed. Christianity would later, of course, think of immortality as the essential attribute that separates the
Both in the Aristotelian response to Platonic eugenics as well as in Christianity, Luduena reads different

human from the animal. For Thomas Aquinas, for example, the non-human animals had no place in the Kingdom of God (Nodari,
Fabricar 4). The Christian invention of man, then, draws upon a methodical elimina- tion of the primordial animal. Socratic Greece and

Luduena traces a
continuity between the anthropo- techniques of Christianity and of modern
humanism: from Descartes to Heidegger, animals tend to appear in the philosophical text precisely when the essence of humanity is
Christianity shared an attempt to purge animality out of man, to abolish the animalitas proper to man.

being defined. Luduena is rightfully skeptical of some of the alternatives to this anthropotechnique that have been proposed, from the
project of an affirmative biopolitics to the illusory attempt to void Christian patriarchalism by returning to its Pauline foundations, such as
exemplified by Alain Badiou or Slavoj Zizek (Luduena Romandini 224). Luduenas book does not quite get there, but the conclusion seems
ineluctable that a line of flight away from Christian-Western anthropocentrism imposes itself.
According to what has been presented so far, what is, then, the contemporary in Agambens sense, i.e. what is the zone of untimeliness that

our times find their limit and their blind

spot in the very project of the primacy of the human, the special and unique
nature conferred on the homo sapiens. This is certainly not a fresh and unthought-of idea: from Montaigne to
would allow us to see the darkness of the present? In this sense,

Nietzsche, there is a distinct critique of anthropo- centrism running parallel to the main tradition of Western philosophy. But learning what

it is dif- ficult
to refrain from the conclusion that the expansion and domination of man,
the full realization of his power (and I use the gender-specific form deliberately here), can only
mean the complete extinction of all biodiversity in the planet , much like
we have learned from Chakrabartys analysis of the cultural and political consequences of the Anthropocene Era,

Thomas Aquinas had imagined the Kingdom of God without any animals. What is contemporary to us and therefore most invisible, in a very

the human project to its fullest extent can only lead to

the destruction of his natural surroundings and, along with them, of course, the destruction
of the very conditions of possibility in which man can exist as such . Here is the crux of the
literal sense, is precisely that the realization of

contemporary, or to use Walter Benjamins famous phrase, the index to a memory that flashes up in a moment of danger (255). It seems

we must think outside the anthropocentric paradigm, or pretty soon we will

not be thinking anymore. An internal deconstruction of this paradigm will not suffice.
Amerindian societies have, in fact, a wealth of knowledge accumulated in what we might call a non-anthropocentric understanding of the world. My firm belief is that one of the inalienable ethical tasks for Latin American intellectuals
today is to come to terms with that knowledge to the fullest extent possible . Its most
clear that

sophisticated ac- count in contemporary anthropology has coalesced around the theory of Amerindian perspectivism, developed by
Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro over the past two decades. It should be pointed out at the outset that perspectivism
here is not reducible to relativism, subjectivism, or any of the other correlate terms within the Western philosophical tradition. In fact,
Amerindian perspectivism, Viveiros de Castro has argued, should be understood as orthogonal to the opposition between universalism and
relativism (Os pronomes 115), such as it will become clear with an anecdote told by Levi-Strauss in Race et histoire and Tristes tropiques.

1NC Political Epistemology Alternative

The alternative to reject the 1ACs totalizing western worldview and
open up to a new political epistemology that de-centers experts and
allows alternative relationships to the ocean
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

meanings attributed to oceans in modern Western societies

are highly influential in shaping human-ocean relations

In this dissertation I chart several

that
and highlight ethical and political
issues to which we should respond. In so doing, the examination of conceptions of oceans I carry out throughout this dissertation does not
provide a complete narrative of the historical development of meanings attributed to oceans in Western societies. Rather, this dissertation
plots a particular course through the great, though insufficiently explored, expanses of Western conceptions of oceans. My approach
examines meanings attributed to oceans that are anchored in the Western discourses of law, science and aesthetics.5 I seek out these three

discourses of law, aesthetics and science because they are productive dimensions for illuminating human-

ocean relations in Western societies. Moreover, as these three discourses are complex, I deal with only a fraction of their possible scope. But
to limit is sometimes to reveal and thus I hope the limited scope of my engagement has resulted in a purposive analysis of the way certain

have produced particular norms that influence the way the Western
subject relates to the oceans.
I suggest that the contemporary discourses of oceanic lives I am concerned with have been
totalising, leaving little room for diversity. They have also been colonising,
leaving little room for non-human flourishing. I argue that totalising and colonising
practices in relation to oceans need to be resisted in order to facilitate just
existences for oceans. My focus on the facilitation of just existences for oceans will beelaborated upon further in this
dissertation. But to briefly indicate here how just existences for oceans may be facilitated, I argue for inclusive
knowledge production and decision-making processes in which there is a capacity for a diversity of
Western discourses

views to influence outcomes.

Part of my task in valuing and vouching for just ocean existences in this wayfor humans and non-humansleads me to argue in this
dissertation that some conceptions of oceans are better than others. I concur with Haraway when she writes:
We exist in a sea of powerful stories: They are the condition of finite rationality and personal and collective life histories. There is no way

there are many possible structures, not to mention

Changing the stories, in both material and semiotic senses, is a modest intervention
worth making. (1997, 45)
out of stories; but no matter what the One-Eyed Father says,
contents, of narration.

Accordingly, my thesis is that particular conceptions of oceans developed and perpetuated in the Western discourses of law, aesthetics and
science are highly influential in structuring contemporary human-ocean relations. Moreover, the conceptions that I discuss unnecessarily
constrain possibilities for imagining and understanding human-ocean relations in Western societies. Consequently, just ocean existences

Improving the prospects of just ocean existences can be

achieved through the use of politically generated knowledges about oceans to
shift policy towards a set of social-environmental goals that are not widely
imagined by the Western mind.
As will become clear in the course of my discussion, the scope of my thesis does not provide for sustained
engagement with specific marine environmental disputes or policy initiatives. My concern is with
the discourses that frame debates and policymaking more generally, and then with a model
in which specific disputes and policymaking activities can take place .
are being hindered for identifiable reasons.

In arguing my thesis, I take on board and travel with a number of philosophical, social and political theories. Principally, the insights of
feminist and ecological feminist thinkers into forms of oppression and social and environmental justice have stirred the analysis I carry out.
The conceptual analysis and theoretical insights of avariety of thinkers across a range of disciplines assist me to develop a critique targeted
toward the social and cultural dimensions of human exploitation and degradation of oceans. I also go beyond critique to explore ways of
acknowledging non-human agency that work toward addressing the abuse.

I advocate for a view in which policy debates and

outcomes are driven, at least in part, with forms of political epistemology that de-centres
the expertsscientists in particular. Political epistemology is a term I use to
conceptualise democratic reciprocal knowledge making (Fawcett 2000, 136). I
also advocate for ocean policy that centres both the non-human realm (which is often
It is important to add that in going beyond critique

and our active construction of reality

backgrounded)
(which is often overlooked). A theme in my interventions in
this dissertation is to advocate for understandings of oceans that acknowledge both our active construction of reality and natures role in

Political epistemology that is inclusive of a diversity of

perspectives and roles human and non-humanand takes seriously the possibilities of a
democratic process is, for me, the basis of ethical politics.
these negotiations (Cheney 1994, 175).

My concern with democratic political epistemology is discussed in detail in my final Chapter. However, the central themes in my
dissertation of democratic process and ethical politics bear further elaboration prior to introducing the contents of each chapter. The
following preamble establishes the background against which much of my discussion of the Western discourses of law, aesthetics and

much of what is considered the reality of oceans through

these discourses is a social construction wherein rarely, if ever, do these
discourses take seriously the possibility that oceans have agency.
science can be read. That is to say,

1NC Stop Internal Dialogue Alternative

The alternative is to stop internal dialogue. Opening up space for
alternative epistemologies is the best strategy for resisting a Western
worldview that turns nature into a standing reserve and ensures
extinction
Tony Ward says: (Indigenous Cosmologies vs. Western Rationality
http://www.tonywardedu.com/images/critical_theory/indigenous-cosmologies-vs-technical-rationality.pdf) *More
information on Tony Ward can be found on http://nz.linkedin.com/pub/tony-ward-barch-phd/5/bbb/644
The Tupuna of Matata: A true, but unlikely story.

There has always existed an uneasy tension between Western academic

rationality and indigenous knowledge systems. The latter has invariably been
subjugated by the former, but have somehow survived, albeit in colonised
forms, through to the present. The Grand Narratives of Progress and Individual Emancipation and
Anthropomorphism, worked through the matrix of scientific technical rationality
have displaced and colonised indigenous cosmologies associated with cyclic
temporalities, relatedness and species interdependency. Critics of the Western systems of
knowledge critical pedagogues with their roots in Marxist analysis have tended until recently to focus on the
social, political and economic shortcomings of western knowledge systems and education ignoring, for the most part
ecological and environmental concerns, save as a peripheral outcome of capitalist excess.1 As critical
education theorist Ilan Gur- Zeev has noted:
Until today, Critical

Pedagogy almost completely disregarded not just the cosmopolitic

aspects of ecological ethics in terms of threats to present and future life conditions of all
humanity. It disregarded the fundamental philosophical and existential challenges of
subject-object relations, in which nature is not conceived as a standing reserve
either for mere human consumption or as a potential source of dangers, threats, and
risks.2
More recently, critical pedagogues have begun to recognize and to insist on the need to
include subjugated epistemologies of those previously excluded, oppressed and silenced communities
particularly indigenous communities - as an important requirement for building a broad
consensus of popular resistance through education , to the overarching free-marketdriven imperative of Late Capitalism.3 For the most part, these critical pedagogues have
tended to imagine a kind of melding of western and indigenous rationalities and
epistemologies in pursuit of political, cultural and economic transformation. They link their project
to the search for new forms of understanding of key concepts such as Education, Democracy,
Multiculturalism, Identity etc. concepts that are still grounded in a western rationality. In this attempt to embrace
epistemological difference, the one key concept that is rarely, if ever, discussed - and the one that ultimately distinguished
the indigenous (pre-colonial) cosmology - is The Spiritual. Western

attempts to include indigenous

knowledge systems are willing to grant them a greater degree of sensitivity to environmental
systems, a more refined understanding of ecological interrelatedness drawn from local
experience, a deeper awareness of cultural and social relations and a more comprehensive conception of both
self-sufficiency and sustainability. But when it comes to the spiritual framework upon which
all such knowledge systems rest, western (and westernised) scholars seem at a loss. Talk of
spirit-beings, katchinas, guardians, spirit-helpers, fairies, and ancestor-helpers seem perhaps too freaky, too alien to take
on board. Indeed, it

is hard to imagine how they might be taken on board without the

complete fragmentation and disintegration of a western perspective.4 The epic
recounting of Carlos Castanedas experiences with the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan Matus offer ample evidence of this
dichotomy.5 Don Juan told Carlos that in order to become a "man of knowledge" he must practice "stopping the world"

through a process of 'stopping the internal dialogue". He placed great emphasis upon the fact that being a "man of
knowledge" involves a cessation of the normative meanings which language carries, and that it is the role of the teacher to
facilitate this process:
"The first act of a teacher is to introduce the idea that the

world we think we see is only a view, a

description of the world. Every effort of a teacher is geared to prove this point to an apprentice. But
accepting it seems to be one of the hardest things one can do; we are
complacently caught in our particular view of the world, which compels us to
think and act as if we knew everything about the world. A teacher, from the very first act he
performs, aims at stopping that view. Sorcerers call it "stopping the internal dialogue" and they are convinced
that it is the single most important technique that an apprentice can learn."6
Language, which forms the basis of our internal conversations about the world is therefore fundamental not just
to the process of describing reality, but in constructing and maintaining it. And since
language is a social phenomenon, it follows that our conception of reality is mediated by the
social forms which structure everyday life. Social groups who use the same
language (be it everyday language or specialised technical language) implicitly reproduce and convey
through their conversations a model of the world imbued with particular meanings and
associations of which they themselves may not be fully aware, but which bind together the concrete reality, the world in
question.7 In addition, we should keep in mind that, as Wittgenstein reminds us, the meanings inherent in language itself
do not come ready-made:
...a word hasnt got a meaning given to it, as it were, by a power independent of us, so that there could be a kind of
scientific investigation into what the word really means. A word has the meaning someone has given to it.8

academics have tended to interpret

indigenous realities and meanings through their own western lens provided by
their own culturally/linguistically-determined understanding. The Spiritual in this sense, has defied
easy interpretation and stands still, in stark aloofness from our ability to incorporate,
assimilate or otherwise digest it. What follows is one simple, local example of this problematic.
What all of this boils down to is the suggestion that western

Top-Level

2NC Framework
Challenging modern representations of the ocean is the best starting
point for social change. Opening up alternative relationships with the
ocean can combat the violent cartographies of statism
Steinberg 98 (Phillip E, Department of Geography, Florida State University, 10/28, The maritime mystique: sustainable
development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean, file://vmware-host/Shared%20Folders/Downloads/Sustainable
%20Development.pdf
In this paper I have tried to demonstrate how three popular and dominant images of ocean space actually emerge from long-standing
tensions in the capitalist appropria- tion of the ocean and how these images mask underlying contradictions in the spatial and ecological

current struggles over the disposition of

ocean space are simultaneously about the direction of social change. There is a long history
of the ocean as an arena of social transformation. It is generally acknowledged that the early seventeenth
century 'Battle of the Books' gave birth to the modern structures of international law (Colombos, 1967, page 8), and ocean law
remains an important arena for shaping the system of international relations that
structures states as well as governing relations among them (Robles, 1996; Ruggie, 1993; Taylor,
organization of capital. I want to conclude by emphasizing that

1993; 1995). Along with contributing to some of the social categories that have prevailed in land space, including modern notions of

struggles over ocean access have

also inspired oppositional movements. They have provided an arena
for challenging what Shapiro (1997) calls the "violent cartographies" of statism. Thus
masculinity (Creighton, 1995) and class solidarity (Rediker, 1987),

Foucault points to the ship at sea as the "heterotopia par excellence": "In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the

Historical examples of the role

of the sea in forging alter- native identities and social structures range from
pirate bands (Kuhn, 1997) and anarchist collectives (Sekula, 1995) to environmental
movements (Brown and May, 4 1991) and diaspora nations (Gilroy, 1993)/ ) Building upon this history and
reflecting on the recent Law of the Sea negotiations, a number of scholars have suggested that the collective governance
of the sea be used as a model for radical notions of global citizenship and
entitlements (Borgese, 1998; Pacem in Maribus, 1992; Van Dyke et al, 1993). Keith (1977), in a discussion that has parallels to the
place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates" (Foucault, 1986, page 27).

actual case of the proposed manganese nodule mining regime, speculates that the emergence of 'floating cities' would likely challenge the

. In literature too, the

sea is increasingly depicted as a space of social liberation from the oppressions of
militarism, capitalism, and patriarchy (Bcrthold, 1995), as in the novels of Oetavia Butler, Ursula LcGuin, and
Joan Slonezcwskl Whether these visions of the sea as a site of social change
come to fruition is not the point. As we have seen from the recent example of manganese nodule mining,
the crisis in the regulation of ocean space has intensified to the point where, for a
considerable duration, the world's powers found themselves supporting a regime
that seemed to challenge the principles of capitalist enterprise . The broad support that this
regime received suggests the depth of the regulatory crisis, and in this context one should not underestimate
the transformative potential of struggles over oceanic space,
resources, and access. This contextthe structural contradiction of capitalist
spatialttyalso demon- strates the superficiality (and indeed the danger) of the three images
that increasingly characterize ocean space. For the images not only tell partial stories, They
obscure material relations of exploitation experienced by those who
derive their living from the seaseafarers, dockworkcrs, artisanal fishing communities, and others who may
entire system of territorial states that provides the foundational political divisions for capitalist competition

be 'managed' out of existence by the regulatory strategics with which each image is aligned. Despite their erasure from the popular

ocean is a locus of intense capitalist contradiction and

a potential source of social change. To interpret this contradiction and to
contribute to the authoring of that social change, it is imperative that we look
imagination, these individuals experience on a daily basis the fact that the

beyond the prevailing ocean imagery and pierce the maritime

mystique.
Alternative epistemologies taught within the Western academic
framework have radical potentialconstant rejection and critique is
key
Brantley Nicholson 2008, Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Richmond in Latin American & Iberian Studies,
Spiritual Organization and Epistemic Rupture: Questing for Zion in Roberto Bolanos The Savage Detectives, published in Cefiro Journal,
volume 8.1

Epistemic rupture is realized through the questioning and challenging of the

totalizing narratives and epistemic organization of knowledge. If epistemology is carried out
temporally through the reproduction of bodies and minds, challenges and epistemic shifts in modern intellectual community cause a
resistance of biopower that creates a space of exteriority to the framework of totalized knowledge, highlighting the fallbacks and
reductionisms of totality. In other words, epistemic shifts that are realized through the reproduction of biopower that constitute
counternarratives should constantly question the validity of the counternarrative itself, or while remaining conscious of the inherent flaws
of knowledge. Borrowing from Castro-Gomezs vocabulary, the doxa would not flee from the episteme but would travel to its borders. Plural
locution can work its way into the totalized episteme by becoming active subjects instead of docile objects. Viewed then within the four-

alternative knowledges and ontologies can be

created by agents consciously breaking with the codified norm within the border of
all of the delineated fields. Alternative knowledges and epistemes can be taught within the
Western academic framework. Cross-dressing and the exercise of sexuality and gender that escapes from the
institutionalized status-quo has occurred and will continue to occur despite what traditional epistemology will argue. Authority is
challenged through constant critique and by realizing the imperfection of all
governmental systems. In terms of the economy, the black market does wonders to manipulate the official economy on a
global scale. Ontologies and knowledges that escape from the colonial matrix of power
exist. The challenge is to make these practices visible, or to create alternative
epistemologies without committing the same reductionisms and violent codifications of the colonial matrix of power. This is
domain framework of the colonial matrix of power,

where avant-garde movements and splinter groups of knowledge are good examples of challenges that can result in positive ends. Avantgarde movements wage constant attack on the status-quo from the position of the periphery. Splinter groups of knowledge work from the
border of the totalized episteme to highlight its flaws, thus causing the questioning of all facets of the colonial matrix of power. Both signal

They do not passively accept institutionalized

ontology but recognize its frailty and actively, through the reproduction of
alternative ontologies and knowledges, begin to pick at the glue that holds
coloniality together.
possible ways of existing and learning otherwise.

2NC Framework: Decolonial Knowledge

Interrogating the colonial underpinnings of academics requires an
alternate framework for debate that moves past current demarcations
and opens itself to noncolonial epistemologies

Lander 2k (Edgardo, Sociologist, Venezuelan, professor at the Central University of

Venezuela and a Fellow of the Transnational Institute, 2000, Nepantla: Views from
South, Volume 1, Issue 3, Eurocentrism and Colonialism in Latin American Social
Thought, jstor, accessed 7/13/14, sbl, p. 528-29, arh)

It is not the same to assume that the historical patrimony of the social sciences is
merely parochial as to conclude that it is also colonial. The implications arc
drastically different. If our social-science heritage were just parochial, knowledge
related to Western societies would not need any questioning. It would be enough to expand the
reach of the experiences and realities to be studied in other parts of the world. We could complete theories and methods of knowledge which

The problem is a
different one when we conclude that our knowledge has a colonial character and
is based upon assumptions that imply and "naturalize" a systematic process of
exclusion and subordination of people based on criteria of class, gender, race,
ethnicity, and culture. This perspective introduces crude distortions not only in
knowing others, but also in the self-understanding of European and northern
societies. To recognize the colonial character of the hegemonic forms of knowledge in the contemporary world would imply more
difficult and complex challenges than those identified in The Gulbenkian Report. This knowledge is intertwined in
complex and inseparable manners in the articulations of power of contemporary
societies. Only a timid and partial dialogue with other subjects and cultures
would be achieved by incorporating into the social sciences representatives of
those subjects and cultures that were once excluded. As is acknowledged in the report, this
requires long learning and socializing processes in certain truth-systems, at the
end of which one could well expect that only internal criticisms of the discipline
would be likely. Given, for example, the current demarcations of economics, there are
limited possibilities for the formulation, from within that discipline, of radically
different alternatives to mainstream liberal economics. Liberal cosmology (a conception of human nature, of wealth,
thus far have been adequate for some determined places and times, but less adequate for others.

of the relationship of man to nature, of progress) is incorporated as a fundamental metatheoretical premise in the disciplinary constitution

The achievement of effective intercultural, horizontal

democratic communications, noncolonial and thus free of
domination, subordination, and exclusion, requires a debate beyond
the limits of the official disciplines of modern sciences , open to
dialogues with other cultures and other forms of knowledge. Apart from epistemological
rigidities and the overwhelming burden of institutional and academic inertia, the main obstacles are political . The possibilities for
of that field of knowledge.

democratic communications are severely limited by the profound differences of power that exist today between different cultures and
between different peoples.

Exts Framework: Decolonial Knowledge

Framework is Eurocentric and excludes other forms of knowledge.
Ucelli 92 (Juliet and Dennis, , founder, New York Marxist School and ONeil, regular contributor to Forward Motion, Challenging
Eurocentrism http://www.wengewang.org/read.php?tid=19345 , acc. 7/13/14, arh)
Ongoing battles over the content of social studies classes in public schools and
the canon in liberal arts education are thrusting the term eurocentrism toward
the mainstream of political discourse in the United States. It is a concept which
has been fairly easy for those of us on the left to become comfortable with, but
that sense of ease could actually pose a problem of complacency for revolutionary
socialists. The fact is that the critique of eurocentrism is still in its early stages, and
that the extraordinarily pervasive hold this framework has on the thinking of
everyone raised in Western societies is not fully appreciated . And the problem of what kind of
worldview it is to be replaced with has barely been considered. The point, then, is that eurocentrism will not be understood, neutralized or
superseded without considerable effort and, as shown by the current counterattack waged by the bourgeoisie against political correctness,
without fierce struggle. A good starting point in thinking about eurocentrism is the recent spate of books produced by African, North
American and European academics. They have thrown down the gauntlet inside classics, comparative linguistics, economic history,
sociology and other academic disciplines. This recent scholarship builds on the pioneering work of African American scholars like C.L.R.
James and W.E.B. Dubois, whose work was marginalized by white supremacist academia, yet studied continuously over the past fifty years
by organic intellectuals of color and some white leftists. Another foundation is the insistence on the centrality of culture, psychology and the
internalization of oppression coming from African thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral and Cheikh Anta Diop. To some extent,

critique of eurocentrism is implicit in the opposition to imperialism which

(however flawed) has characterized the revolutionary wing of the socialist
movement since the time of Lenin. However, at least until Maos writings became an influence, European socialists
generally grasped more easily the concepts of the super-exploitation and victimization of non-European peoples and had more difficulty

The concept of eurocentrism as currently

used pays more attention to precisely this aspect: the distortion of the
consciousness and self- knowledge of humanity by the insistence of people of
European descent that all valid, universal scientific knowledge, economic
progress, political structures and works of art flow only from their ancestors. Or,
in its more subtle form, eurocentrism acknowledges contributions from nonEuropean cultures but says that if theyre important enough, theyll be subsumed
within the Western legacy; that the current global cultural marketplace will
automatically absorb and disseminate any new cultural products of universal
validity.
recognizing their scientific achievements and cultural contributions.

Their framework arguments are part of colonialitys epistemological

structure reject and question their framing of how debate should
function
Mignolo 9 (Walter, Professor of literature-Duke University, Ph.D. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, academic director of
Duke in the Andes, an interdisciplinary program in Latin American and Andean Studies in Quito, Ecuador at Pontificia
Universidad Catolica del Ecuador and the Universidad Politecnica Salesiana, Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and DeColonial Freedom ,Theory, Culture & Society 2009)

The introduction of geo-historical and bio-graphical configurations in processes

of knowing and understanding allows for a radical re-framing (e.g. de-colonization) of the
original formal apparatus of enunciation.2 I have been supporting in the past those who maintain that it is
not enough to change the content of the conversation, that it is of the essence to change the terms of the conversation. Changing
the terms of the conversation implies going beyond disciplinary or
interdisciplinary controversies and the conflict of interpretations. As far as controversies and
interpretations remain within the same rules of the game (terms of the conversation), the control of knowledge is

not called into question. And in order to call into question the
modern/colonial foundation of the control of knowledge, it is
necessary to focus on the knower rather than on the known. It means
to go to the very assumptions that sustain locus enunciations. In what follows I revisit the
formal apparatus of enunciation from the perspective of geo- and bio-graphic politics of knowledge. My revisiting is
epistemic rather than linguistic, although focusing on the enunciation is
unavoidable if we aim at changing the terms and not only the content of the
conversation. The basic assumption is that the knower is always implicated, geoand body-politically, in the known, although modern epistemology (e.g. the
hubris of the zero point) managed to conceal both and created the figure of the
detached observer, a neutral seeker of truth and objectivity who at the same time
controls the disciplinary rules and puts himself or herself in a privileged position
to evaluate and dictate.

2NC Objectivity Impossible

The meaning of nature changes -- the emphasis by social
constructionists on the historical, material, socio-economic and
cultural factors challenges any claims of pure objectivity in accounts
of oceans and thats why investigation of all the interactions is best
Kennedy 7 Doctor of philosophy (Debrah, Murdoch University , Ocean Views
An investigation into human-ocean relations , 2007,
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=+humanocean+relations+relating+to+feminism+&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C23&as_v
is=1 //SRSL)
Social construction perspectives can be thought of as a reaction against, and
critique of, those naturalistic explanations that sought to explain societal
evolution and reproduction as a continuation of natural processes (Smith 2001,
117). Feminist and ecological feminists have been instrumental in providing
constructionist critiques of the categories woman and nature, demonstrating
that there is considerable diversity within these categories and that the categories
themselves are perpetually unstable (Sandilands 1999). Social construction
perspectives of the non- human natural world offer a way of seeing that
functions as a guide to understanding the natural world that does not make exact
predictions (Scarce 2000, 10) but rather demonstrate how the meaning of
nature changes in different periods and cultures. The emphasis by social
constructionists on the historical, material, socio-economic and cultural factors
challenges any claims of pure objectivity in accounts of oceans. Social
constructionists observe, for example, that scientific investigations cannot be
separated from the social and cultural biases and political interests of the
scientists and scientific discourses (Bleier 1984; Bocking 2004). Social
constructionist critiques of conventional claims about the non-human natural
world (such as the notion of ocean-as-resource, which is ubiquitous in a range of
Western discourses) point out that the natural world is often defined to serve
specific social interests (Soper 1995). While social construction perspectives
differ, some being stricter or more vociferous than others, few take the view that
oceans are simply artefacts of culture. That is, few social constructionists would
take the view that oceans are things we bring into being like a commodity made
in an industrial process or nothing more than a sign with shifting patterns of
meaning determined only by its position in its systematic relations to other signs
(Smith 2001, 126).6 As I emphasised with Rortys quote above, to say there is a
cultural context is not the same as stating that this is all there is to oceans.
Oceans are living entities, constituted by complexes and systems that are
independent of humans. We will experience oceans in a form that is not wholly,
partially or at all caused by humans; nor do oceans rely on human witness for
their being. Oceans could exist without humans but humans could not exist
without them. The indifference of oceans to, and freedom from, humanity is
given to us in clues and hints, such as the interplay between our bodies and the
sea: for example, people commonly drown in it. While many writers ascribe

conscious agency to oceans, I would simply highlight that oceans do place real
limits on us that no amount of talking or any other making of cultural
representations will change: a person whostays under the water too long dies.
This, in my view, is an example of a real constraint, as opposed to social
constructionist ones. Acknowledging that oceans do exist apart from human
constructions of them is crucial to the possibility of ocean politics. If nothing
exists outside of language, ocean politics becomes merely a process of deciding
what kind of oceans should be formed to satisfy human policies of safeguarding
or exploiting oceans: oceans can only ever be spoken for by humans in
accordance with their passive identity. I argue that in working towards just ocean
existences, oceans must be considered active participants in marine
environmental disputes and policy-making that shape selves, culture and the
values of humans. This needs to occur through pluralistic, democratic processes.
Their attempt to know oceans plays within the logic of western
rationalism that naively attempts to objectively represent the ocean.
Our understanding of oceans are always historically and socially
contingent
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

Meanings ascribed to oceans in Western traditions are diverse and multi-layered.

Ancient images coexist with more recent ones to form a complex picture drawn from, among other things,
ambivalences and contradictions. Oceans are thought of as both formless matter
and alive, complex, living entities. They are represented as a demonic, chaotic, female force that
must be quelled and conversely as an archetype for the sublime, the ultimate other that
cannot be quelled. Herman Melville in the passages quoted from Moby Dick, above, envisions oceans as
enigmatic, benign, treacherous, unyielding and merciless. From other perspectives, oceans are or have
been regarded as common property, private property, highly regulated, a locale of unlimited resources for
exploitation, a barren waste, an uncivilised domain and an inherently valuable, independent sphere in
their own right. Oceans are used as a metaphor for death or the great void to come, but also for rebirth and regeneration.

They are the primal mother, the last frontier and ultimate wilderness. Oceans are the
provinces of male work, adventure, sentiment, stoicism and chauvinism, physical and spiritual
liberation. Oceans are also a symbol for the unconscious, which our conscious selves ignore at our own peril.

All of our understandings about oceansall our scientific facts, religious beliefs, myths, laws, and
feelingsare the composition of a highly complex interaction between human
minds, bodies and oceans. Yet the ideas we form about the oceans are
different from the ocean itself and in this language plays a pivotal
role. Rorty, for example, writes:
We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say
that the world is out there that is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are
the effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To say that truth

is not out there is simply

there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements
of human languages, and that human languages are human creations . (1989, 4-5)
That is to say, there is certainly a nature that exists independently of humans, yet any
accounts we make of nature cannot be separated from their human origins (Proctor
2001). When we speak of nature we rely on human modes of perception , invoking human cultural
to say that where

apparatus, involving human needs and desiresin short, when we speak of nature we speak of culture as well (Proctor
2001, 229). We

never speak of the ocean itself.

The understanding that necessarily flows from our inability to distinguish between the reality of nature and its
representation is that human capacity to know things about oceans is limited. Haraway lends support to Rortys view
when she says about the human condition: there

is no Gods eye view, only partial

perspectives (1991a).

Or again, in Castrees words, [w]hat

counts as the truth about nature varies depending on the

perspective of the analyst (2001, 9). My point is that all perspectives of oceans are only ever partial truths
about oceans: the ocean in itself is always more than we can say.
Humans form oceans in at least two ways: first, they are shaped and transformed materially by certain practices, such as
over-fishing and climate change leading to rising sea levels. Second, they are experienced through discourses and
representations. I suggest that interactions between these two modes are usually both present in any instance where
humans are involved in forming oceans. Moreover, to the

extent that humans form oceans,

the result of historically specific economic, political, social, and
sexual relations of production. The way in which these relations play out
will inevitably give rise to a diversity of outcomes and therefore oceans are
subject to a multitude of contested meanings.
they are

In this dissertation, my main vehicle for discussing the social construction of oceans is through a focus on discourses and

it is
important not to assume that what is perceived as natural is self-evident , and exists
representations of oceans, more so than the material construction of oceans. I argue that in theorising about oceans
external to the domain of power and politics (Braun & Wainwright 2001, 42, emphasis in original). Rather,

meanings attributed to oceans should be understood within the historical,

material, socio-economic and culturally specific contexts in which they are
created.
Social construction perspectives can be thought of as a reaction against, and critique of, those naturalistic explanations
that sought to explain societal evolution and reproduction as a continuation of natural processes (Smith 2001, 117).
Feminist and ecological feminists have been instrumental in providing constructionist critiques of the categories woman
and nature, demonstrating that there is considerable diversity within these categories and that the categories themselves
are perpetually unstable (Sandilands 1999). Social

construction perspectives of the non- human natural

world offer a way of seeing that functions as a guide to understanding the natural
world that does not make exact predictions (Scarce 2000, 10) but rather demonstrate how the
meaning of nature changes in different periods and cultures.

The emphasis by social constructionists on the historical, material, socio-economic and cultural factors
challenges any claims of pure objectivity in accounts of oceans. Social constructionists
observe, for example, that scientific investigations cannot be separated from the social and
cultural biases and political interests of the scientists and scientific discourses
(Bleier 1984; Bocking 2004). Social constructionist critiques of conventional claims about the non-human natural world
(such as the notion of ocean-as-resource, which is ubiquitous in a range of Western discourses) point out that the

natural world is often defined to serve specific social interests (Soper 1995).

2NC Violence Impact

Western epistemologies are totalizing and violent
Nicholson 8 B.A., The College of Charleston M.A., Indiana University Ph.D., Duke University (Brantley, Spiritual
Organization and Epistemic Rupture: Questing for Zion in Roberto Bolanos The Savage Detectives , volume 8.1 & 8.2, spring & fall 2008,
https://www.academia.edu/738981/Spiritual_Organization_and_Epistemic_Rupture_Questing_for_Zion_in_Roberto_Bolanos_The_Sa
vage_Detectives//SRSL)

Reflection upon the modernist project of the categorization of knowledge and the
secularization of culture has caused an existential crisis for contemporary intellectuals. The modern
approach to knowledge demonstrates a polemical existence in attempting to
critically approach culture while at the same time maintaining a conscientiousness of the shortcomings of epistemic
organization, signaling a light nostalgia for an approach to culture that precedes the
totalizing epistemology that Modernity implies. As intellectuals reflect upon the violent advent of their
respective fields, they show a latent desire to return to a mythological pre-modern idyllic space through the intellectual critique of
Modernity. At the same time however, intellectuals tend to recognize the benefits of Modernity and the impossibility of returning to a pre-

The resulting existential crisis causes intellectuals to look for

new options outside of the violent epistemic totalization waged by secular projects.
Like Benjamins Angel of History being blindly projected through linear time, current intellectuals know that they
are moving, they just do not yet know where they are going. Motion is the key
however. Motion opens up the altern space necessary to project the
fantasy of hope, a hope that flirts with pre-bourgeois spirituality while
remaining a product of secular Capitalist society, a search that becomes
somewhat spiritual in itself. We observe this existential search down the alleyways of knowledge, teetering on the brink
Modern social organization.

of the transcendental through the Visceral Realists, an avant-garde group that appears in Roberto Bolanos groundbreaking novel, The
Savage Detectives, offering us a cross-section of the contradictory and problematic ontology of contemporary intellectual life, and in doing

.
To approach knowledge, in the Western/Modern sense of the word, is to
approach a complex colonial systematization of plural existence. When I say
plural existence, I do not mean that the totalizing epistemology of the West is plural in
itself but that it singularizes the plural. It is to say that Western/Modern knowledge
codifies plurality singularly, or through the singularity of locution and does not necessarily
give agency to the cultures/knowledges totalized within its systematic
organization. Let us take the Spanish conquest as an example of the subjugation of autochthonous agency in the name of a
so, showing hints of cathartic rejoinders

totalizing episteme. A common trend in the disregard of local knowledge in the name of a grander metanarrative within the New World can
be traced from Columbuss arrival through the present day. With the arrival of Columbus, the Spanish justified the subjugation of the
autochthonous populations through the metanarrative of the salvation of souls. This narrative was, of course, superficial as Columbus
merely used religiosity as a means of marketing the continuation of his exploration of the New World, which in turn paid dividends in
resources such as gold and silver that were exotic to Europeans and as a result were valued commodities. This fact, accompanied by the
initial impetus of Columbuss voyage, the exploration of new trade routes to the Indies, signals that even the pre-Capitalist voyages funded

the subjugation of
autochthonous knowledges and religions as a means of justifying the further
exploitation of the New World resources shows that in this novel historical
moment of the conquest of mind, body, and soul, the inextricable link between
economic, epistemic, and spiritual dominance arises.
by Ferdinand and Isabelle showed signs of foundational Atlantic mercantile dominance. Additionally,

But the Spanish conquest of the New World precedes the secularization of knowledge that occurs through the rise of a European middle
class, democratic revolutions, and the rationalization of society. In other words, the example of Spanish colonialism does not adequately
describe the Modern coloniality of knowledge because, in effect, it precedes Modernity. It is during the 18th century that the metanarrative
of reason and the creation of the nation-state displaces the metanarrative of the salvation of souls. Homocentric and democratic

American society purports the rationalization of knowledge based on

the inheritance of Modern European philosophy as their founding narrative , thus
painting the spiritual or the non-eurorational as ontologically inferior in all
aspects. Nonetheless, enlightened society continues to be economically dependent on trade with the colonies showing the
continuation of the pre-modern Spanish colonial project on at least one level . Even in Adam Smiths Leyenda Negra ridden account of
European/North

Spains imperial failure, Smith describes Englands dependency on the colonies as a means of maintaining an economic advantage over
other European nations. As Northern Europe, namely France and England, displaces the Spanish religious-based conquest with their own

reason-centered culturally-based conquest, they essentially do little more than displace

the discourse of the salvation of souls with the discourse of civilization, while at the
same time maintaining the same colonial dynamic under the guise of a new name . The
Northern European approach then falls victim to its own critique due to the fact that the rationality that Moderns use as a measuring stick
to classify and organize society and existence in the process of turning ontology into a commodity of knowledge within the universal
academic system repeats the centrality of religion in the Spanish conquest. Christ is simply replaced by Kant and Descartes, and salvation is

eurorationality that pretends to be an objective ahistorical entity that

grants itself the right to codify and organize the world.
replaced by the

A western epistemology is intrinsically violent; it is based on power,

control and shutting down other forms of knowledge.
Grimsrud 03 (The Social Ethics of John Howard Yoder, Peace Theology, 2003)//AS
http://peacetheology.net/pacifism/16-pacifism-and-knowing-john-howard-yoders-epistemology/

epistemology as that branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of

knowledge, its possibility, scope, and general basis.[6] In line with this understanding, we may say
Let us define

that when Yoder speaks of pacifism as an epistemology, he asserts that a pacifist commitment actually shapes how a person knows. A
pacifist sees the world in a certain way, understands in a certain way. The commitment to nonviolence is a life-shaping, mind-shaping kind
of convictiona conviction that shapes all other convictions. Yoder refers to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., in asserting that pacifism

The renunciation of violenceisan epistemology

is more than simply a position in political ethics.

.
That is, pacifism is a way of knowing that has at its center the decisive commitment to offer good news for the other.[7] Gandhi and King
both shaped their pragmatic strategies in line with their underlying core philosophical commitment to nonviolence. In aligning himself with

a process of knowing and understanding that is

unwilling to rely on power over others. This is a major move away from the
epistemology of western philosophy that is essentially at its core coercive;
one knows on the basis of logically compelling justifications irresistibly
following from certain absolutes or foundations. One has no choice; one must
assent to such knowledge. Yoder rejects seeking a truth system that is based on a sense of possession. Instead of seeking
Gandhi and King in this way, Yoder commits himself to

a truth system with which to defend ourselves as those who possess it, he argues for an approach that accepts relative powerlessness over
against others.[8] In this way, as with the rest of his ethics, he draws his cues from his understanding of Jesus. One of the most relevant
elements of Jesus way for Yoders pacifist epistemology is Jesus vulnerability, even to the point of his crucifixion. In his vulnerability, Jesus
modeled a willingness to respect others freedom either to accept or reject his message. Yoder contrasts this vulnerability with the quest for
invulnerability he sees in foundationalist appeals to truths that must be accepted. The foundational appeal remains a mental power play

big
problem with the way people in the West have approached knowledge is that it is
based upon a desire to be on top, to be in power. If we ourselves do not happen to be in power we still tend to
to avoid my being dependent on your voluntary assent, to bypass my becoming vulnerable to your world in your otherness.[9] A

imagine being in power. How would I think if I were the one in charge? However, being in such a position, or wanting to be in such a
position is, in Yoders view, the opposite of being in a position to know accurately. He wrote, being on top of the heap consistently keeps

there is a direct connection

between the fact that thinkers within the Western epistemological tradition are
open to the use of violence and that they have difficulty accurately perceiving the
nature of reality. To say that pacifism is an epistemology is to say that there are elements of a pacifism commitment that
actually serve to foster better, more accurate knowing. One of the ways that pacifism can foster knowing is that
does not understand the quest for truth to be a zero-sum, scarcity-oriented,
competitive process. Rather, our understanding of truth depends upon our listening to others, even our adversaries. For
one from seeing things as they are. Even wanting to be there has that effect.[10] For Yoder,

Yoder, as for Gandhi, knowing requires nonviolent ways of relating to others, all others. He wrote the reason one renounces violence in
social conflict is that the adversary is part of my truth-finding process. I need to act nonviolently in order to get the adversary to hear me,
but I need as well to hear the adversary.[11]

2NC Whiteness Impact

A purely western approach to knowledge normalizes the invisible yet
oppressive regime of whiteness.
Moreton-Robinson 04 Dr Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a Geonpul woman from Quandamooka (Moreton Bay,
Queensland). She is Convenor in Indigenous Studies at the School of Humanities, Griffith University. She has been involved in the struggle
for Indigenous rights at local, state and national levels, and has worked for a number of Indigenous organisations. Her writing has been
published in Australian and international anthologies and journals. (Aileen, Whitening race: Essays in social and cultural criticism,
Aboriginal Studies Press, pg. 75-76)//Roetlin

the limits of knowing and the epistemology of those

who profess to know. Aborigines have often been represented as subjects, as knowers. As Watson acknowledges, it is
academics who represent themselves as knowers whose work and training is to
know. They have produced knowledge about Indigenous people but their way of
knowing is never thought of by white people as being radicalized despite
whiteness being exercised epistemologically. Whiteness establishes the limits of
what can be known about the other through itself, disappearing beyond or behind
the limits of this knowledge it creates in the others name . As Said (1978) has argued, the
West interpreted and made sense of the Orient, producing knowledge and
constructing representations as signifiers of its reality. This is because in the West,
whiteness defines itself as the norm and is always glimpsed only negatively: it is
what allows us to see the deficient and the abnormal without itself being seen
(Montag 1997:291). In this way whiteness is constitutive of the epistemology of the
West; it is an invisible regime of power that secures hegemony
through discourse and has material effects in everyday life . In this essay I
examine the relationship between knowledge, representation and whiteness. By
analyzing this relationship we can come to understand the silence, normativity
and invisibility of whiteness and its power within the production of knowledge
and representation. I begin by considering how whiteness assumed the status of an epistemological a priori in the
development of knowledge in modernity by universalizing humanness. Whiteness as an epistemological a
priori provides for a way of knowing and being that is predicated on
superiority, which becomes normalized and forms part of ones
taken-for-granted knowledge. The existence of others who are considered less than human. The
development of a white persons identity requires that they be defined against
other less than human beings whose presence enables and reinforces their
superiority. Making a direct connection between the a priori of whiteness and colonisation in Australia, I examine the work of
Irene Watsons questions invite us to think about

white and Indigenous scholars in Aboriginal postcolonial studies

2NC Exclusion Impact

Western epistemologies frame social norms the normative function
of race, gender, sex and other identities are enforced by eurocentrism. The impact is inevitable exclusion.
Baker, 8 (Michael, University of Rochester, Graduate Student School of Education and Human Development, Teaching and
Learning About and Beyond Eurocentrism: A Proposal for the Creation of an Other School, March 16, 2008,
http://academia.edu/1516858/Teaching_and_Learning_About_and_Beyond_Eurocentrism_A_Proposal_for_the_Creation_of_an_Othe
r_School, accessed 7/13/14)
The Other School would be oriented around an alternative framework for knowledge and understanding that we might call the decolonial
paradigm, since its central aim is to decolonize thinking and being, in part, through dialogue (not just the study of cultures as objects of
knowledge) with the diversity of ways of knowing and being that have been devalued and eclipsed in Eurocentric education. The decolonial
paradigm of education would focus on concepts of culture and power. Culture is not separate from politics and economics, contrary to the

political and economic structures are not entities in

themselves, but are imagined, framed and enacted by individuals formed in a
certain type of subjectivity; a subjectivity that is also framed in the dominant
structure of knowledge (Mignolo, 2005, p. 112). The cultural group (in the U.S. -- Anglo-American) with
the most money and the most political power is also the dominant culture
reproduced in the school curriculum. Most of us (particularly if we not white) recognize that a
racial hierarchy exists and is maintained by the dominant cultural group (for example,
see Huntington, 2004). Cultural diversity in multicultural education is often more a way
to manage or contain difference while maintaining the racial hierarchy. Multiculturalism
taken-for-granted disciplinary divisions. .

only became an issue and concept in education during the unsettling 60s, when ethnic groups labeled racial minorities raised their voices
demanding that the promises of modernity be made available to them as well as to whites. Racism is not simply the result of individual

The power
side of culture can be conveniently neutralized in the classroom as teachers and
students learn about diversity without examining how these differences have
been constructed, how they are reproduced in the curriculum, and how these
constructions continue to serve the white power elite . In English classes for example, students read
prejudice and hateful expressions, but the consequence of the relations of power that are historical and structural.

works that movingly depict personal struggles against discrimination, without gaining any sense of how English literature was used to teach
people their distance from the center of civilization (Willinsky, 1989, p. ). Multicultural education needs to include the study of how five
centuries of studying, classifying, and ordering humanity within an imperial context gave rise to peculiar and powerful ideas of race, culture,
and nation that were, in effect, conceptual instruments that the West used both to divide up and to educate the world (Willinsky, 1989, pp.
2-3). Race, in other words, is a mental category of modernity (Quijano, 2000, p. 536), created along with European colonization of the

Modernity/coloniality
came together in the sixteenth century during the emergence of the Atlantic
commercial circuit that propelled an incipient European capitalism and charted
the racial geopolitical map of the world. Racial classification and the divisions and
control of labor are historically intertwined the two parts of colonial matrix of
power (Quijano, 1999; Quijano & Wallerstein, 1992). Types of work, incomes earned, and geographical location
among the worlds population today profoundly reflect this racial capitalist
hierarchy and domination the coloniality of power. Coloniality of power has been since the sixteenth
Americas and the emergence of capitalism in the Atlantic commercial circuit in the sixteenth century.

century and is still today an epistemic principle for classifying the non-European world in relation to Europe on the principle of skin color

Ethnicities (local community identities based on shared knowledge, faith, language,

memories, tastes etc.) have been racialized within this modern matrix of power (Sardar, Nandy &
Wyn Davies1993). Multicultural education therefore should be understood and
consequently taught within the colonial horizon of modernity, since the sixteenth
century. Racism is a symptom of the persistence of coloniality of power and the
colonial difference. One of the achievements of imperial reason was to affirm
European or white, Christian, male, heterosexual, American, as a superior
identity by constructing inferior identities and expelling them to the outside of
and brain capacity (i.e., race and rationality).

the normative sphere of the real (Mignolo, 2006). Cultural differences then would be recognized as part of the
colonial difference in the 500-year history of control and domination by the white, European, heterosexual, Christian, male through the

The coloniality of power is a European

imposed racial classification system that emerged 500 years ago and expanded
along with (is constitutive of) the modern/colonial world capitalist-system . Race,
class, gender, and sexuality and religion intersect as hierarchical elements within
the modern/colonial capitalist system of classification and power relations.
intersection of race, religion, gender, class, nationality and sexuality.

2NC Interdependence Impact

The inability to recognize our interdependence with the world around
us is grounded in a flawed anthropocentric lens that guarantees
extinction
Ahkin 10 (Melanie Ahkin, Monash University, 2010, Human Centrism, Animist Materialism, and the Critique of
Rationalism in Val Plumwoods Critical Ecological Feminism, Emergent Australian Philosophers, a peer reviewed journal
of philosophy, http://www.eap.philosophy-australia.com/archives.html)

centrism insofar as they promote certain

conceptual and perceptual distortions of reality which universalise and naturalise
the standpoint of the superior relata as primary or centre, and deny and
subordinate the standpoints of inferiorised others as secondary or derivative. Using standpoint theory
These five features provide the basis for hegemonic

analysis, Plumwood's reconceptualisation of human chauvinist frameworks locates and dissects these logical characteristics of dualism, and
the conceptual and perceptual distortions of reality common to centric structures, as follows.

Radical exclusion is found in the rationalist emphasis on differences between humans

and non-human nature, its valourisation of a human rationality conceived as exclusionary of nature, and its minimisation of similarities between the two realms.

Homogenisation and stereotyping occur especially in the rationalist denial of consciousness to nature, and its denial of the diversity of mental characteristics found within its many different

facilitating a perception of nature as homogeneous and of its members as

interchangeable and replaceable resources. This definition of nature in terms of its lack of human rationality and consciousness means that its identity
constituents,

remains relative to that of the dominant human group, and its difference is marked as deficiency, permitting its inferiorisation. Backgrounding and denial may be observed in the conception of

human denial of dependency on the natural environment,

and denial of the ethical and political constraints which the unrecognised ends and needs of nonhuman nature might otherwise place on human behaviour. These features together create an ethical
discontinuity between humans and non-human nature which denies nature's
value and agency, and thereby promote its instrumentalisation and exploitation
for the benefit of humans.11 .
nature as extraneous and inessential background to the foreground of human culture, in the

This dualistic logic helps to universalise the human centric standpoint, making invisible and seemingly inevitable the conceptual and
perceptual distortions of reality and oppression of non-human nature it enjoins. The alternative standpoints and perspectives of members
of the inferiorised class of nature are denied legitimacy and subordinated to that of the class of humans, ultimately becoming invisible once
this master standpoint becomes part of the very structure of thought.12
Such an anthropocentric framework creates a variety of serious injustices and prudential risks, making it highly ecologically irrational.13
The hierarchical value prescriptions and epistemic distortions responsible for its biased, reductive conceptualisation of nature strips the
non-human natural realm of non-instrumental value, and impedes the fair and impartial treatment of its members. Similarly,
anthropocentrism creates distributive injustices by restricting ethical concern to humans, admitting partisan distributive relationships with
non-human nature in the forms of commodification and instrumentalisation.

blindspots created by anthropocentrism are problematic for nature

and humans alike and are of especial concern within our current context of radical human
dependence on an irreplaceable and increasingly degraded natural environment. These prudential
The prudential risks and

risks are in large part consequences of the centric structure's promotion of illusory human disembeddedness, self-enclosure and insensitivity to the significance
and survival needs of non-human nature:

The logic of centrism naturalises an illusory order in which the centre appears to itself to be disembedded, and this is especially dangerous
in contexts where there is real and radical dependency on an Other who is simultaneously weakened by the application of that logic.14

Within the context of human-nature relationships, such

a logic must inevitably lead to

failure, either through the catastrophic extinction of our natural

environment and the consequent collapse of our species , or more hopefully by the
abandonment and transformation of the human centric framework.15

Links

Development Link
The affirmatives vision of neoliberal development only serves to
maintain global structural inequality and exploit the ocean as a
resource to consume.
Jacques 06 Professor of political science at Central Florida (Peter, Globalization and the World Ocean, p. 3-6)
Respected ecological philosopher Andrew Dobson provides a helpful discussion of the accompanying asymmetry to this expansion when he
considers how globalization has changed citizenship. Dobson uses Castells for context: In a global approach, there has been, over the past

The poorest 20 percent of the

world's people have seen their share of global income decline from 2.3 percent to
1.4 percent .... Meanwhile, the share of the richest 20 percent has risen from 70 percent
to 85 percent." (Castells in Dobson 2003, I 9)
three decades, increasing inequality and polarization in the di stribution of wealth ....

Thus, globalization is not an even process of economic expansion and opportunity where everyone is connected and everyone becon1es an
equal part of a wondrous network of global invisible hands. Instead, while there are some opportunities for poor countries and their civic
groups, globalization moves mostly in one direction. Global activist Vandana Shiva elaborates that "Through its global reach, the North
exists in the South, but the South exists only within itself, since it has no global reach" (Shiva in Dobson I 7). T his does not mean that
globalization is inherently "bad" and localization "good"; it means that historically, globalization has occurred to the privilege of some and

Nonsustainable trends are embedded in inequitable power

relationships; thus, global material equity is necessary for curbing
maldistribution and exploitation of resources.
at the expense of others.

Dobson rejects the more cosmopolitan belief that there is a reciprocal obligation of everyone to one another in favor of a distributional
responsibility such as from North to South based on the materials produced and reproduced through asymmetrical globalization. This is a
more sophisticated iteration of the material equity included in the Borgese Test described below. I take Dobson's (and Shiva' s) point that
globalization enables this connectivity through and within ecological spaces and budgets, and that sustainability requires benefits to be
redistributed throughout transnational communities (Dobson 2003). It is worthwhile to reflect on the question "How much has changed for
the majority of poor countries in the last fifty years, and in particular the last twenty years, in the face of Western 'help'?" and then to

What is the direction of ecology in this same last 50 years?" Minus a few
exceptions, the promise and dream of "development" 2 for the global South has actually
"produced its opposite: massive underdevelopment and
impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppression" (Escobar I994, 4) at the same
time ecology has seen "structural" declin e-that is, a decline of the frame
and foundation of ocean ecology. Structure is important economically and socially as well and implies the
simultaneously ask, "

same meaning of the larger frame and construction of a system where constituent agents and decisions are made, but which do not
fundamentally alter the larger design. As a political scientist, I cannot count this situation as an accident, but instead a purposeful result
that can come about only through disproportionate and asymmetrical structural arrangements of power-but from where?
While localities cannot escape some responsibility, poor localities have unquestionably been marginalized, and their ability to change their

power has cone from

development discourses and projects which embody the ideals of what
progress should be (through modernity), and this has then framed the reality that poor countries
situation has been fraught with obstructions that originate from the colonial period. Much of this

find themselves in when needing stabilization loans or making trading arrangements (Escobar I 995). This follows the various ghosts of
modernity, now supported, re-created, and defended most by the ideology of " neoliberalism."

Liberalism is the central Western political theory , ideology, and political economy preferring a least

restricted market, pluralistic competing political groups such as NGOs, various strong civil freedoms for individual citizens ( e.g., of speech,
religion, etc.), and a neutral State which affords procedural equity (procedures of the state treat everyone the same, e.g., in a courtroom) to
all citizens and most agendas.

Neoliberalism is a reformed liberalism that places much more focus on the market aspect of liberalism and
much less focus on civil liberties. Neoliberal policies focus on privatizing formerly public enterprises and
industry; lowering social expenditures of the state (particularly those which tend to redistribute wealth);
reducing or eliminating tariffs toward other countries; and creating a tax and physical infrastructure that favors
industrial production and trickles down to lower classes to create economic growth and employment and reduce poverty (Fri
edman I 962). Neoliberal policies are not concerned with creating a social safety net, leaving
this up to a robust economic growth, nor do they like regulatory environmental policies, which they prefer to leave up to the pricing of
goods. This ideology is exported through trade and loan arrangements to other countries from the Western power elite, such as World Bank,
the OECD, or individually through the United States, Britain, and some other European countries that have majority voting power in the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Neoliberalism changed its focus from simple capital accumulation models to include the development of institutions. Evans (2004) sees
these institutions imposed, such as through international finance institutions, which are AngloAmerican generated models. These

institutional designs are all the same; he calls them "institutional monocropping," where the "best response to bad governance is less

This arrangement is a fundamental problem with neo liberalism because it

creates fewer limits on exploitation of people and natural resources , and places
the profit motive of firms in a privileged position without any sense of citizenship mentioned above. In
governance" ( 35).

contrast, Evans proposes, along with scholars Dani Roderick and Amartya Sen, that the building of institutions should center around more
direct and participatory deliberative democratic institutions where minority voices have more influence to stem exploitation.
Ironically, the Anglo-American set of institutions and countries never strictly employed neoliberalism themselves. It is well known that state
involvement and guarantees (to differing degrees) of some civil rights and social welfare have been key elements in the building of stable
industrialized affluent countries (H ettne, Inotai, and Sunkel 2001). The United States and the European Union (EU) consistently use state
subsidies and protections, such as for agriculture-the primary area in which industrializing countries have a competitive advantage (Kutting

For ocean politics, the Northern subsidies of fishing fleets are a source of
overfishing and a prime example of a non-neoliberal policy, which is now being negotiated in the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Nonetheless, Anglo-American countries demand lightning-fast change toward
free markets and liberal democracy, without some level of democratic guarantees and social welfare. Evidence
indicates that this can and has led to instability , violence, and ethnic genocide because these rapid
2004).

changes create unequal market and political controls among factious rival groups (Chua 2003). This is not occurring only at the national
level.
The Third World cannot compete against Northern subsidies. This problem was symbolized by a South Korean farmer, Lee Kyoung Hae,
who committed suicide outside the 2003 WTO meeting in Cancun, Mex ico, as a protest to WTO rules that allow agricultural protections
from the free market (Vidal 2003). Protesters at this n1eeting numbered over ten thousand and hailed from more than thirty countries; they
presented some recurrent demands, which " included protection from big business, abandonment of genetically modified crops in
developing states, and no privatization of water, forests and land" (Vidal 2003).
Now, the world economy is growing at about 5 percent per year-the fastest in almost thirry years (International Monetary Fund 2004). This
global economy is based on flows of energy, material, and capital. This flow is called throughput, and is used to sustain (and impoverish)
groups within the population greater than six billion people. These energy flows start and end within natural systems. More throughput

, the basis for connecting

economic globalization to ecological decline is that current globalization expands
the scale and intensity of throughput; this kind of growth is viewed as essential to
progress and development within neoliberalism.
The inherent disconnect between resource decline and global economic
expansion is hidden structurally by distancing, or "distanciation" (Kutting 2004). Capitalism in general,
but in particular petroleum-based capitalism, creates expedited pathways for export and trade that become separated, or
distanced, from their local meaning so that "Time-space separation disconnects social activity from its particular social
context" (Kutting 2004, 33). This is related to what ecological economists have described in terms of ecological
burdens remaining outside the pricing system as externalities which ecology and
third parties eventually pay. Current globalization allows affluent populations to
shift environmental costs through a global economy, and these populations are
structurally permitted to live off of the carrying capacity of others (Kutting 2004; Muradian
and MartinezAlier 200Ia, 200Ib; Martinez-Alier 1995; Bunker 1985). When one fishery is depleted, the world
economy can move on to the next fishery, structurally obscuring the problem
because consumers are not dependent on local ecological budgets . Changes do
not affect affluent consumers because these customers are not forced to care
about the first depleted fishery, and in this way human-ocean relations have
fundamentally changed with economic globalization.
means more withdrawals and additions from and into natural systems. Therefore

2NC Development Link

Their development discourse frames the ocean as an empty space
waiting to be managed by scientific rationality, rejecting this
discourse is critical.
Steinberg 1 Geography @ Durham (Philip, The Social Construction of the Ocean p. 32-35)
representation,
the process by which social meaning (including the social meaning of spaces) is transmitted
among individuals through literary creations, visual images, and other media. The history that
follows makes frequent reference to representations in art, law, cartography, literature, public policy, and
advertising. Each of these media is generated in a social context and serves as a means by which ideas are
communicated and diffused throughout the general public, inscribed into the images and assumptions
that guide the everyday thoughts and behaviors of individuals. The significance of representation
lies in its role in the perpetuation and contestation of discourses, "frameworks ... [that]
constitute the limits within which ideas and practices are considered to be
natural; that is, [that] set the bounds on what questions are considered
relevant or even intelligent" (Barnes and Duncan 1992: 8). Mobilized by policy makers, discourses are used to
establish "common-sense" parameters for problems and solutions (Roe 1994). ;: While
Representations of ocean-space: discourse The third pillar of the territorial political economy perspective is

discourses are utilized by policy makers, their reach is deeper than policy-making elites, and their truth-claims are more resilient than that
of elite-generated ideologies. Unlike an ideology, a discourse does not misrepresent the power relations underlying material reality. Rather,

By reproducing
the hegemonic discourse - something that individuals do unwittingly
as they act, speak, and think within existing social conventions,
definitions, and categories - individuals reproduce their own
domination. Conversely, the conscious creation of alternative discourses can play a
central role in the imagination, promotion, and implementation of strategies for
social change (Foucault 1977; Marcuse 1969). > Because the sea so often is referred to in literary and artistic creations, there
is a substantial literature on marine representation and its meaning within broader social discourse
discourses enable, reproduce, and, perhaps most importantly, diffuse these relations throughout society.

(see, for instance, Connery 1996). Interpretations of modernity's obsession with the sea have ranged from its being the embodiment of the
desire of "Modern Man" to return to the womb, to His desire to deny His corporeality, to His search for new material conquests. To look at
these (and other) marine representations within their social contexts, this book focuses on the emergence of marine representations within

The discourse of development is built

around an absolute definition of progress, an assumption that the more developed can lead the
less developed along this path to progress, and the belief that this progress can be achieved by
applying scientific rationality to development "problems" (Sachs 1992; Watts 1993). The
development discourse is rooted in Enlightenment concepts of
science and reason: The world is knowable and individuals can shape it to
serve themselves if only they utilize science to find the proper formula . It follows that both
society and space are amenable to development. Space is perceived as an abstract field in which
individuals can embed and redistribute social relations and structures in an
attempt to better their lives. By establishing a grid (graphically expressed in the system of latitude and longitude lines),
three discourses: development, geopolitics, and law.

the location of every space in relation to every other space is made generalizable, a key prerequisite for scientific inquiry and the formation

space is
represented as a canvas on which planners and engineers may test and apply
their insights and work toward human progress (Harvey 1989; Lefebvre 1991; Smith 1990). < The modern
of scientific laws. An abstract element susceptible to manipulation (or, to use Sack's terminology, "emptying" and "filling"),

construction of ocean-space is in some senses the antithesis of this land-space territorial construction. The sea largely has been constructed
as a "non-territory," an untamable space that resists "filling" or "development." And yet, this construction of oceanspace as a "non-territory"
or "other" in which rational planning cannot prevail also lies within the development discourse of scientific rationality and space-oriented
planning. This discursive construction is possible only as a counterpoint to the paradigmatic modern construction of land-space as

amenable to rational planning, and, as Said (1993) notes, antithetical counterpoints play a crucial role in producing discourses. A second
discourse frequently informing (and being reproduced by) the construction of ocean-space is the discourse of geopolitics, by which
"intellectuals of statecraft 'spatialize' international politics in such a way as to present it as a 'world' characterized by particular places,
peoples, and dramas" (6 Tuathail and Agnew 1992: 192; see also 6 Tuathail 1996~n the modern era's geopolitical discourse, as in the era's
development discourse, ocean-space typically is represented as a "special" space that lacks the paradigmatic attributes of "regular" space.
For the development discourse, the key spatial unit is the manageable block of land that can be "filled" and "developed," and the ocean
therefore is unique and an "other" because it is "undevelopable.( For the geopolitical discourse, the key unit is the territorially defined state

the ocean is constructed within the

geopolitical discourse as an empty "force-field" within which and across which
states exercise their relative power over their competitors. This geopolitical counterpoint,
like that of the development discourse, lies firmly within dominant ways of thinking:
It reproduces the representation of space as a landscape of (developable and
governable) terrestrial nation-states separated by an (undevelopable and
anarchic) marine void. A third discourse referred to here is that of law. Legal discourse theorists challenge the accepted
that interacts with the world's other states. As space outside state territory,

perception of law as an autonomous set of rules and reasoning systems lying outside the structures and power relations of social life: Legal
critics ... insist that law ... is not only deeply embedded in the messy and politicized contingencies of social life but [is] actually constitutive
of social and political relations. (Blomley 1994: 7- 8) Like the other discourses discussed here, the legal discourse does more than

When one appeals to the legal discourse, one

represents relations in a particular manner that serves to "naturalize" material
reality as well as the autonomy of a seemingly distinct sphere of legal reasoning.
operationalize and legitimize social relations.

Critical legal geographers demonstrate how this scripting of social relations within a legal discourse serves to define places, their
hierarchical order, and the scale and boundaries of social organization. The legal discourse historically has served both to reflect and
construct social conceptions of space. Ideas about property and the relative mobility of privately held goods within the realm of one
sovereign and among the realms of multiple sovereigns are at the foundation of legal thinking.qhe legal discourse plays a crucial role in
reproducing the ideal of mutually exclusive sovereign nation-state territories that, taken as a whole and mapped next to each other serially
across the surface of the earth, represent the rule of law and the space of society. As with the other discourses, the legal discourse implies
that the sea is a "lawless," antithetical "other" lying outside the rational organization of the world, an external space to be feared, used,
crossed, or conquered, but not a space of society.

Exploration Link
The exploration, and subsequent destruction, of the ocean is founded
on a mind/body dualism that seeks masculinist knowledge and
control over nature
Alamio 11 (Stacy, Department of English, UT Arlington, Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 10/31, New
Materialisms, Old Humanisms, or, Following the Submersible, http://www.uta.edu/english/alaimo/pdfs/NORA%20Follow%20the
%20Submersible-1.pdf)

The early twenty-first century has ushered in a new era of deep-sea

exploration, marine science, industrial fishing, mining, drilling, and,
consequently, ecological devastation. Feminists, environmentalists and new
materialists of all sorts must follow these ventures in order to witness not only the dazzling newly
discovered creatures of the abyssal zone1 but also the outdated yet obdurate narratives projected into
the depths. Robert D. Ballard, former Director of the Center for Marine Exploration at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
(Massachusetts, USA), concludes his personal history of ocean exploration with a section entitled Leaving the Body Behind, describing the

machines and submersibles. Tethers, he writes, remain a problem: They

snap, they tangle, they restrict (Ballard 2000: 310). Ballard muses that robotics and telecommunications
technologies will allow us to . . .
cut the ultimate tetherthe one that binds our questioning intellect to vulnerable
human flesh. Through telepresence, a mind detaches itself from the bodys restrictions and
enters the abyss with ease . . . As Jacques Cousteau used to say, the ideal means of deep-sea transport would allow us to
move like an angel. Our minds can now go it alone, leaving the body behind. What could be more angelic
drawbacks of human-occupied diving

than that? (Ballard 2000: 311)

the
wish to be free of the vulnerable (mothers) body betrays an epistemology that
distances and supposedly protects the masculine, transcendent knower from the realities, complications, and
risks of the material world. The fantasy of masculinist knowledge, of control over
the depths of the ocean, relies upon the projection of corporeality onto the womb-like
submersibles with their umbilical-cord tethers. Conversely, the more advanced robotics and telecommunications
technologies are cast as pure intellect, a masculine melding of mind and machine
that weirdly erases the eyes and handsnot to mention the hearts, lungs, and other bodily organsthat these
A material feminist critique would point out the gender dichotomies lurking in Ballards mind/body dualism and examine how

technologies will still require. (A feminist cyborg submersiblea heretical mix of body, mind, technology, and prosthesisis unimaginable
within Ballards conceptual universe.) This small but symptomatic example suggests why the reconceptualization of materiality remains
crucial for feminist theory, since female bodies continue to be cast as the dumb matter that male intellect seeks to escape. Moreover, the
intersecting categories of race and class have also been constituted by their pernicious associations with brute matter.

Ballards desire to sever himself from the very world he would seek to know also
suggests why new materialist theories should not divide human corporeality from
a wider material world, but should instead submerse the human within
the material flows, exchanges, and interactions of substances,
habitats, places, and environments. As new materialisms proliferate, some bear an uncanny
resemblance to (old) Humanisms, in that they ignore the lively, agential, vast, material world, and the multitude of other-than-human
creatures who inhabit it. Some of the essays within Diana Coole and Samantha Frosts fascinating collection, New Materialisms: Ontology,

focus on the materiality of human life- worlds,

ignoring non-human animals and ecosystems. Meanwhile, Cary Wolfes momentous and
Agency, and Politics, for example,

provocative book What is Posthumanism? pays scant attention to gender theory, feminist corporeal theory, or feminist science studies, even
though all three are relevant to the questions he poses. There is certainly not enough space here to detail the intersections, alliances, and
productive interrelations between new materialisms, feminisms, post-humanisms, and science studies,2 but I would like to propose that
materialisms transgress the outline of the human and consider the forces, substances, agencies, and lively beings that populate the world.

Post-humanist new materialisms, I contend, are poised to topple the assumptions

that confine ethical and political considerations to the domain of the Human,
while feminist theories, of many sorts, offer decades of scholarly contestations of

the very ethics, epistemolo- gies, and ontologies that have underwritten Human
exceptionalism.

2NC Exploration Link

Exploration of the ocean is intimately tied to a destructive
relationship to ocean creatures that has already rendered a myriad of
ocean creatures extinct. Visibility renders ocean creatures as objects
under our control.
Alaimo 13 professor at the University of Texas, Master's in English from University of Wisconsin-Madison and my PhD in
English, along with a graduate certificate in interdisciplinary critical theory, from University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (Stacy,
Composing Blue Ecologies: Deep Sea Creatures and the Call of the Aesthetic)

all
cannot be welcomed, nor all at once. The necessity to choose which life forms we
will embrace will mean, that in the future we will have been wrong (103). The
ethical, biopolitical imperatives here in this compressed elegy for all those we will, undoubtedly, have neglected to
welcome, bears a strange relation to the fate of myriad ocean creatures who
are being rendered extinct before they have even been recognized as having
existed. As the human plunder of the seas far outpaces knowledge about the creatures who
inhabit(ed) them, we will never even know in how many ways we will have been wrong.
In the wrenching conclusion to Cary Wolfes Before the Law: Humans and Animals in a Biopolitical Frame, he admits that

The impossible Buddhist vow to save all sentient beings despite how innumerable they may be, also suggests an ethics in which the
principled stance is not quashed by a recognition of unattainability. The staggering magnitude of the number of creatures within a
biopolitical or Buddhist frame gestures toward the possibility that pondering sheer numerical scale may provoke ethical considerations
rather than predictable fantasies or mechanisms of control. At least since the work of Michel Foucault, the concept of a census, the practice
of counting and categorizing people, which would of course, be related to other mechanisms of surveillance, evokes systems of domination

as the cameras of science and industry descend to

heretofore unthinkable depths, digitally capturing images of never before seen
creatures, it is useful to remember that visibility is a trap (Foucault). And yet, it is not
possible for anthropocene humans to imagine that we can just leave
even the deepest of the seas well enough alone. Even if we were to create
more marine protected areas in the global seas the political will to do so would
actually depend upon the sort of data and images that highly public big science
can provide.
and control. At the turn of the 21st century,

Advantage Links

Aquaculture Link
Aquaculture severs human-ocean relations and exacerbates the
problem-it is subject to the western profit-driven world
Clark and Clausen 8 (Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen, the oceanic crisis: Capitalism and
the degradation of marine ecosystem, Monthly Review,
http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-ofmarine-ecosystem)//JL
The immense problems associated with the overharvest of industrial capture fisheries has led some optimistically to offer aquaculture as an

, capitalist aquaculture fails to reverse the process of ecological

degradation. Rather, it continues to sever the social and ecological relations
between humans and the ocean. The massive decline in fish stocks has led
capitalist development to turn to a new way of increasing profitsintensified
production of fishes. Capitalist aquaculture represents not only a quantitative change in the intensification
and concentration of production; it also places organisms life cycles under the complete control of
private for-profit ownership.31 This new industry, it is claimed, is the fastest-growing form of agriculture in the world.
It boasts of having ownership from egg to plate and substantially alters the ecological and human
dimensions of a fishery.32 Aquaculture (sometimes also referred to as aquabusiness) involves
subjecting nature to the logic of capital. Capital attempts to overcome natural and social barriers through its
ecological solution. However

constant innovations. In this, enterprises attempt to commodify, invest in, and develop new elements of nature that previously existed
outside the political-economic competitive sphere: As Edward Carr wrote in the Economist, the sea is a resource that must be preserved
and harvested.To enhance its uses, the water must become ever more like the land, with owners, laws and limits. Fishermen must behave
more like ranchers than hunters.33 As worldwide commercial fish stocks decline due to overharvest and other anthropogenic causes,
aquaculture is witnessing a rapid expansion in the global economy. Aquacultures contribution to global supplies of fish increased from 3.9
percent of total worldwide production by weight in 1970 to 27.3 percent in 2000. In 2004, aquaculture and capture fisheries produced 106
million tons of fish and aquaculture accounted for 43 percent.34 According to Food and Agriculture Organization statistics, aquaculture is

Hailed as the Blue Revolution,

aquaculture is frequently compared to agricultures Green Revolution as a way to
achieve food security and economic growth among the poor and in the third world. The cultivation of farmed
growing more rapidly than all other animal food producing sectors.

salmon as a high-value, carnivorous species destined for market in core nations has emerged as one of the more lucrative (and

Blue Revolution may

produce temporary increases in yields, but it does not usher in a solution to food
security (or environmental problems). Food security is tied to issues of distribution. Given that the
Blue Revolution is driven by the pursuit of profit, the desire for monetary gain
trumps the distribution of food to those in need.36 Industrial aquaculture intensifies fish production by
controversial) endeavors in aquaculture production.35 Much like the Green Revolution, the

transforming the natural life histories of wild fish stocks into a combined animal feedlot. Like monoculture agriculture, aquaculture furthers
the capitalistic division of nature, only its realm of operation is the marine world. In order to maximize return on investment, aquaculture
must raise thousands of fish in a confined net-pen. Fish are separated from the natural environment and the various relations of exchange
found in a food web and ecosystem. The fishs reproductive life cycle is altered so that it can be propagated and raised until the optimum

Aquaculture interrupts the most fundamental metabolic process

the ability of an organism to obtain its required nutrient uptake. Because the most
time for mechanical harvest.

profitable farmed fish are carnivorous, such as Atlantic salmon, they depend on a diet that is high in fishmeal and fish oil. For example,
raising Atlantic salmon requires four pounds of fishmeal to produce every one pound of salmon. Consequently, aquaculture production

The inherent
contradiction in extracting fishmeal is that industries must increase their
exploitation of marine fish in order to feed the farm-raised fishthereby
increasing the pressure on wild stocks to an even larger extent. Such operations also increase
depends heavily on fishmeal imported from South America to feed the farmed carnivorous species.37

the amount of bycatch. Three of the worlds five largest fisheries are now exclusively harvesting pelagic fish for fishmeal, and these fisheries

Rather than diminishing the demands placed on

marine ecosystems, capitalist aquaculture actually increases them, accelerating
the fishing down the food chain process. The environmental degradation of
populations of marine species, ecosystems, and tropic levels continues.38 Capitalist
account for a quarter of the total global catch.

aquaculturewhich is really aquabusinessrepresents a parallel example of capital following the patterns of agribusiness. Similar to

farmed fish are penned up in high-density cages making them

susceptible to disease. Thus, like in the production of beef, pork, and chicken, farmed fish are fed
fishmeal that contains antibiotics, increasing concerns about antibiotic exposure in society. In Silent Spring of the
combined animal feedlots,

Sea, Don Staniford explains, The use of antibiotics in salmon farming has been prevalent right from the beginning, and their use in
aquaculture globally has grown to such an extent that resistance is now threatening human health as well as other marine species.

The
dangers and toxicities of these pesticides in the marine environment are magnified
because of the long food chain.39 Once subsumed into the capitalist process, life
cycles of animals are increasingly geared to economic cycles of exchange by
decreasing the amount of time required for growth. Aquabusiness conforms to these pressures, as
Aquaculturists use a variety of chemicals to kill parasites, such as sea lice, and diseases that spread quickly throughout the pens.

researchers are attempting to shorten the growth time required for fish to reach market size. Recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH)
has been added to some fish feeds to stimulate growth in fishes in aquaculture farms in Hawaii. Experiments with fish transgenicsthe
transfer of DNA from one species to anotherare being done to increase the rate of weight gain, causing altered fish to grow from 60

These growth mechanisms illustrate capitalist

aquacultures drive to transform nature to facilitate the generation of profit. In
percent to 600 percent larger than wild stocks.40

addition, aquaculture alters waste assimilation. The introduction of net-pens leads to a break in the natural assimilation of waste in the
marine environment. The pens convert coastal ecosystems, such as bays, inlets, and fjords, into aquaculture ponds, destroying nursery areas
that support ocean fisheries. For instance, salmon net-pens allow fish feces and uneaten feed to flow directly into coastal waters, resulting in
substantial discharges of nutrients. The excess nutrients are toxic to the marine communities that occupy the ocean floor beneath the netpens, causing massive die offs of entire benthic populations.41 Other waste products are concentrated around net-pens as well, such as

The Blue Revolution is not

an environmental solution to declining fish stocks. In fact, it is an intensification
of the social metabolic order that creates ruptures in marine ecosystems . The coastal
diseases and parasites introduced by the caged salmon to the surrounding marine organisms.

and marine support areas needed for resource inputs and waste assimilation [is]50,000 times the cultivation area for intensive salmon

This form of aquaculture places even more demands upon ecosystems,

undermining their resiliency. Although aquabusiness is efficient at turning fish into a commodity for markets given the
cage farming.42

extensive control that is executed over the productive conditions, it is even more energy inefficient than fisheries, demanding more fuel
energy investment than the energy produced.43 Confronted by declines in fish stock, capital is attempting to shift production to
aquaculture. However, this intense form of production for profit continues to exhaust the oceans and produce a concentration of waste that
causes further problems for ecosystems, undermining their ability to regenerate at all levels. Turning the Ocean into a Watery Grave The
world is at a crossroads in regard to the ecological crisis

. Ecological degradation under global capitalism

extends to the entire biosphere. Oceans that were teeming with abundance are being decimated by the continual
intrusion of exploitive economic operations. At the same time that scientists are documenting the
complexity and interdependency of marine species, we are witnessing an oceanic
crisis as natural conditions, ecological processes, and nutrient cycles are being
undermined through overfishing and transformed due to global warming. The
expansion of the accumulation system, along with technological advances in fishing, have intensified the exploitation of the world ocean;
facilitated the enormous capture of fishes (both target and bycatch); extended the spatial reach of fishing operations; broadened the species

The quick-fix solution

of aquaculture enhances capitals control over production without resolving
ecological contradictions.
deemed valuable on the market; and disrupted metabolic and reproductive processes of the ocean.

We should interact with the ocean using a nature-society

dialectic when exploiting the oceans resources by drawing on
the environmental sociology and the historical materialist
tradition
Clausen and Clark 5 University of St. Francis University of Southwestern LouisianaAND PhD, Sociology,
University of Oregon (Rebecca and Brett, Organization & Environment , THE METABOLIC RIFT AND MARINE
ECOLOGY: An Analysis of the Ocean Crisis Within Capitalist Production ,Dec 2005 , proquest, Vol. 18, Iss. 4; pg. 422,
23 pgs, http://courses.arch.vt.edu/courses/wdunaway/gia5524/clausen.pdf //SRSL)
Abstract (Summary) This article develops a theoretical foundation for understanding the

human influence on the oceans and the resulting oceanic crisis as it relates
to the depletion of fish stock and the expansion of aquaculture. Drawing on
environmental sociology and insights from the historical materialist

tradition, the authors study the nature-society dialectic as it relates to

human interactions with the ocean for the capture of fish . We extend Marx's
concept of the metabolic rift to the marine environment to (a) understand
the human transformations of the ocean ecosystem, (b) examine the
anthropogenic (human-generated) causes offish stock depletion, (c) study
the development of aquaculture in response to the oceanic crisis, and (d)
reveal the ecological consequences of ongoing capitalist production in
relation to the ocean environment. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT] Full Text (11776 words) Copyright
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC. Dec 2005 [Headnote] This article develops a theoretical foundation for
understanding the human influence on the oceans and the resulting oceanic
crisis as it relates to the depletion of fish stock and the expansion of
aquaculture. Drawing on environmental sociology and insights from the
historical materialist tradition, the authors study the nature-society dialectic as it relates to human
interactions with the ocean for the capture of fish. We extend Marx's concept of the metabolic rift to the marine
environment to (a) understand the human transformations of the ocean ecosystem, (b) examine the anthropogenic
(human-generated) causes offish stock depletion, (c) study the development of aquaculture in response to the oceanic
crisis, and (d) reveal the ecological consequences of ongoing capitalist production in relation to the ocean environment.
Keywords: metabolic rift; historical materialism; multinational corporations; commodification; ocean fishing;
aquaculture CRISIS IN THE WORLD'S OCEANS The world's oceans are experiencing a crisis

of rapid biomass depletion. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 2002) report, The State of
the World Fisheries and Aquaculture, states that 75% of major fisheries are fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted (p.
23). It is estimated "that the global ocean has lost more than 90% of large predatory fishes" (Meyers & Worm, 2003). The
depletion of ocean fish stock disrupts metabolic relations within the oceanic ecosystem at multiple trophic and spatial
scales. Current production trends are likely to have profound ecological effects

with uncertain consequences. In light of severe stock depletions,

technological innovation and capital investment in marine aquaculture are
offered as the solution to increased demand for global food supplies. The
Blue Revolution, the moniker under which intensive aquaculture is extolled, has rapidly emerged
on the global market introducing new social and ecological issues for the
ocean environment and marine management policy. Aquaculture, commonly known as
fish fanning, is "the fastest- growing form of agriculture in the world" (Prakash, 2004).' Multinational corporations have
built a global network of salmon farms growing high value fish for year-round markets (Hites et al., 2004). The ecological
impacts offish farming on surrounding marine environments have garnered scientific and public attention due to waste
accumulation and the escape of nonnative, farmed species into wild salmon habitat. Potential human health effects from
consuming fanned salmon have captured an even greater share of public attention as researchers discover high
concentrations of organochlorine contaminants (PCBs) in aquaculture-produced salmon (Hites et al., 2004).
Simultaneous with the rapid transformations in ocean fisheries, marine scientists and oceanographers have made
remarkable discoveries about the intricacies of marine food webs and the richness of oceanic biodiversity (Valiela, 1995).
Unfortunately, the excitement for new gains in marine research is dampened by the growing awareness that the centurieslong record of oceanic exploitation has reached critical thresholds due to marine ecosystem degradation
http://proquest.umi.com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/pqdweb?index=12&sid=1&srchmode=3... 7/22/2008 Document View
Page 2 of 15 (Jackson et al., 2001). We have reached a point where the cumulative and ongoing human effect on the
oceanic environment is threatening the biological integrity of marine ecosystems. In turn, the ability of marine
environments to provide livelihoods for those who depend on the sea is placed at risk. The body of scientific knowledge
about oceanic systems presents a sobering lesson on the coevolution of human society and the marine environment during
the capitalist industrial era. The June 2003 Pew Oceans Commission report to the nation highlights this concern: Marine
life and vital coastal habitats are straining under the increasing pressure of our use. We have reached a crossroads where
the cumulative effect of what we take from, and put into, the ocean substantially reduces the ability of marine ecosystems
to produce the economic and ecological goods and services that we desire and need. What we once considered
inexhaustible and resilient is, in fact, finite and fragile. (p. v) Both land and sea are confronting serious environmental
stresses that threaten their ability to regenerate. The particular problems experienced in each biological realm cannot be
viewed as isolated issues or aberrations, only to be corrected with further technological development. Rather, these
ecological conditions must be understood as they relate to the systematic exploitation of nature for profit. The negative
human health and ecological consequences of capitalist fish production must be analyzed in relation to an economic
system based on the accumulation of capital. The capacity of humans to transform nature in ways detrimental to societies
has long been known. Only recently, however, have social interactions with nature, as well as ecological limits, become
major subjects for sociological inquiry (Buttel, 1987; Dunlap, 1997; Foster. 1994). As the scale of environmental problems
escalates, the ecological sustainability of human societies is being called into question (Buell, 2003; Commoner, 1971 ;
Ehrlich & Holdren, 1971 ; Foster, 2002; Vitousek, Mooney, Lubchenko, & Melilo, 1997). The oceans serve as a critical
realm where society interacts with nature. A historical materialist approach illuminates how

the human relationship with the ocean has changed over time as specific

social and economic conditions evolved. Although social science has been
slow to examine issues related to oceans, the range of social issues
(sustenance, employment, transportation, pollution, etc.) related to the seas
demands more attention.

Exclusive Economic Zones Link

The affirmative is an extension of legal sovereignty that seeks to
control the oceans as an object for human exploitation.
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)
The Northern Land Council points out here that while the Western

legal tradition does not attribute ownership

for a sovereign to make rules over the sea for its
use. This observation refers to historical developments that have occurred. State security is another
objective of regulation (although not mentioned by the Northern Land Council) that was well entrenched by
of the oceans to any one person, it allows

the end of the eighteenth century, wherein:

[t]he new principle of freedom, when it approached the shore, met with another principle,
the principle of protection, not a residuum of the old claim, but a new independent basis and reason
for modification, near the shore, of the principle of freedom. The sovereign of the land
washed by the sea asserted a new right to protect his subjects and citizens against attack,
against invasion, against interference and injury, to protect them against attack threatening their peace, to protect
their revenues, to protect their health, to protect their industries. (Root 1927, cited in Anand 1983, 137)
In short, early expressions of limits on the relationship between sovereignty over territorial waters (expressed as
jurisdiction) and freedom of the seas were made on the basis of arguments about state security. The

most salient
expression of this concern is the so-called cannon shot rule, first introduced into international law
by Dutch jurist, Bynkershoek, in 1703 and adopted by the larger maritime powers (Anand 1983). The cannon shot rule
states: the territorial dominion of a state extended as far as projectiles could be fired
from cannon on the shore (Anand 1983, 138). Thus, areas of up to approximately three nautical miles were considered as
coastal state propertyprecisely the kind of claim Grotius sought to deny in principleat least in his early work (Butler
1990, 216).
While this sovereign right to territorial waters of at least three nautical miles wide for the protection of coastal states was
generally accepted in Europe, the specific extent of the various relevant jurisdictions was not, until very recently,
settled upon. In 1982, the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea ( UNCLOS III) established

the extent of territorial seas to 12 nautical miles in the Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOS) (United
Nations 1983). The rather straightforward codification that is the cannon shot rule became a
complex and comprehensive regime of law and order in the oceans governing all uses.
Herein, sovereign regulation of the oceans involves large tractsexclusive economic zones (EEZs) of up
to 200 nautical miles in breadth, and in some cases further depending on the depth of the continental shelf and certain
other considerations.8 Within the EEZ, sovereign

rights to certain resources and economic

activities coexist with some freedoms of the seas including free transit to all vessels (United Nations 1983).

Inevitably, [t]he state practice and international treaties of the post-1945 era have seriously eroded the original and
uncompromising simplicity of Grotius view of the high seas (Butler 1990, 217).9 In examining what is left of Grotius
original concept of freedom of the seas under UNCLOS III, Butler concludes:
The measure of how far we have departed from Grotius spatial conception of high seas is expressed in Article 86 of the
1982 LOS Convention: the Convention provisions regarding the high seas apply to all parts of the sea that are not included
in the exclusive economic zone, in the territorial sea or in the internal waters of a state, or in the archipelagic waters of an
archipelagic State. (1990, 217)10
There is, then, a discernible move back to practices reminiscent of mare clausum albeit with the introduction of wholly
new principles within a web of reason than was utilised prior to the acceptance of Grotius notion of freedom of the seas.

These new principles continue to recognise the importance of freedom of the high seas but are largely
premised on the desire to control ocean resources. Prior to World War II, the ocean had been

perceived as limited in use with the exception of fishing and whaling and, therefore, of little importance (Anand 1983).
The high seas had primarily been thought of as a means of navigation and transport to exploit and trade land-based
resources with others. While navigation and transportation remain vitally important, in

the post-War period

the perception of the usefulness of the oceans has increased with the discovery of
resources, especially oil, in the sea itself. In recent decades there has also been a push to
secure coastal fisheries brought under pressure through technological innovation in navigation, fishing and

ocean exploration (United Nations 2007). Therefore, part of my concern in this Chapterthat the

way the oceans

are conceptualised in law of the sea has significant material consequences for the
oceansis, in scale and broad interest among nations, a recent phenomenon.
Fishing aside, my concern in this Chapter is tied up with the relatively new recognition of economic wealth in the ocean
itself and the seabed. Negotiations leading to the LOS Convention have been, as in the past, largely marked by selfinterest. But in this new era, European and United States expansion has not been dictated by old views about how the
ocean can be used, which sought to control ocean trade movements. The

access to and control of ocean resources.

primary focus now has become

Fisheries Link
Their scientific approach to fisheries is tainted by a Western
rationalist approach based on the economic exploitation of nature,
allowing its destruction
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

contemporarily fisheries scientists generally work in

government laboratories and see themselves in the service of meeting the
short-term economic objectives of industry. Rogers (1995, 102) also likens the role of fisheries
science to a service for industry, whereby science provides information about the availability of
raw material to industry. Fisheries biologists are trained to emphasise
economic uses of fish and employ rationalist tenets of capitalist
economics, such as productivity and efficiency, as measures of
success (Scarce 2000).10 The focus of fisheries biology has been almost exclusively on
assessing stock levels (rather than individuals or communities) of commercially harvested
species in order to preserve biomass production (Norse & Crowder 2005a; Rogers 1995). Oceans
are conceptualised as a factory which produces an annual surplus
for exploitation which can be skimmed off (Rogers 1995, 18). In short, the agenda in fisheries science is the development
Preikshot and Pauly (2005) note that

and production of fish for consumption; fish are the raw material awaiting conversion into products by scientific and managerial expertise

scientists are vital cogs in a process that relentlessly

commodifies ocean-dwelling life (Scarce 2000).
Humans are, of course, dependent on certain ocean dwellers and their ecosystems and other
physical functions of oceans and thus need to think instrumentally about oceans. Some
amount of human use of oceans must take place. However, as Rogers argues, to
describe ocean dwellers as resources, biomass or fish stocks and to
conceptualise oceans as factories is indicative of an impoverished
perspective (and I would add imagination), based on a production model world view, about the
possibilities for relationship between humans and the rest of nature
(1995, 18, 99). I concur with Rogers view and note that there is a crucial judgement implicit in this relationship that
fish are valuable only to the extent that they satisfy human ends .
and industry. In this manner,

It is worth examining in some depth the apparent legitimacy of the value judgement embedded in fisheries science about fish and the

it justifies human insensitivity to ecological

limits, dependencies and connections to ocean dwellers and
ecosystems. In this regard, Plumwood (1993; 2002) offers a cogent critique of the devaluing of non-human nature in Western
relations between humans and fish because

societies and the narrowly defined and highly instrumental conception of ocean dwellers at work herefish as tools for economic gain, as
Scarce (2000, 86) states.

that dualistic conceptual frameworks provide the structure for

thinking and relations with non-human nature in Western societies and that this
explains many of the life threatening features that underlie discourses such as
conventional fisheries science.11 Plumwood argues that there are deeply ingrained, historically traceable
Plumwood argues

distortions of the concepts of nature, human, mind, reason and culture that have resulted in narrowly defined, highly instrumental relations
with the non-human natural world that are

tied to a deceptive sense of human independence from

non-human nature (1993; 2002). An outline of the distortions in the concepts to which Plumwood refers to is given below as
they are found in the ideas of Plato, Descartes and Locke.
Plumwoods (1993) concern is with the domination and oppression of nature (human and non-human) in Western culture and the inability
to acknowledge human dependency upon non-human nature. Plumwood focuses on the hierarchical dualisms of human/nature,

the sphere of human, mind and reason are all

systematically construed as the dominant superior side of the dualism and nature
mind/nature and reason/nature, where

as the inferior and subjugated side. Dualisms are more than distinctions or dichotomies; dualisms are a way of
constructing difference in terms of the logic of hierarchy that establishes the supremacy of a superior over an inferior (Plumwood 1993,
32). That is to say, one side of the dualism is valued more highly than the other.

Fisheries Link (Not Neutral)

Fisheries science is historically predicated on both controlling and
understanding the oceans in order to posit scientific rationality as the
only method of engaging the ocean
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

Socio-economic imperatives are a key to understanding the close ties between the
establishments of the ocean sciences and declining fish catches . Around the turn of the
century, the governments of Northern European nations were willing to fund scientific research based on
concerns about declining numbers of commercially exploited species of fish in the
North Atlantic Ocean (Cushing 1988; Rozwadowski 2002). At this time, the economies of northern European countries
prospered and suffered in relation to the availability of herring and cod especially and thus counted studies of commercial
fish stocks as their most important marine research (Rozwadowski 200 2). Smith (1994) identifies further the role of
profit in the establishment of the study of fluctuations in the fish catch in Northern Europe. According to Smith, the

profit to be made from fishing was recognised as early as the fourteenth century. By the nineteenth
century, the development of steam power led to greater economic opportunities for both fishermen and fish processors. At
this time, investors became interested in fishing fleets, banks were encouraged to lend money, and profits were expected.

Because of this expectation of profits, the causes of fluctuations in the catches

became of increasing interest, not only to the fishermen but also to the investors and bankers, and hence to
the politicians. (Smith 1994, 10)

In response to growing concern about falling catches of commercially exploited fish species, the
International Council for Exploration of the Sea (ICES) was founded in 1902 by eight
northern European nationsBritain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden
(Rozwadowski 2002). While I focus on the links between politics and the development of fisheries science as it transpired
in ICES because of its great influence in the field, it can be noted that the study of fluctuations in fish catches was already
underway by the late nineteenth century in the United States, Norway, Russia, Denmark, Scotland, England, Germany and
the Netherlands (Smith 1994).

ICES is the worlds first collaborative peak body for the theory and practice of the
marine sciences. It remained in the vanguard of scientific development
throughout the twentieth century, particularly in the fields of fisheries biology and oceanography
(Schwach 2004). At the time of creation, Council collaborators were of the view that science should provide the basis for
the exploitation of fish stocks in line with turn- of-the-century internationalist ideals that science had the potential to
improve society (Rozwadowski 2002).7
In The Sea Knows No Boundaries: A Century of Marine Science Under ICES, Rozwadowski (2002) narrates a

comprehensive history of the development of fisheries science as it transpired under the

direction of the Council. Rozwadowskis research, from archival material and interviews with many of the Councils
present and former participants, depicts

the close association of science, government

institutions and industry. She notes that from its inception the Council was largely funded not
in pursuit of scientific knowledge for itself but on the basis that it would
help obtain larger catches and regulate fish stocks. Rozwadowski writes:
While the original scientific program for the International Council included plenty of work that looked like pure science
delegates also included government officials concerned with equitable management and promotion of national fisheries. ...
Virtually all of the Councils early investigations were animated at some level by an underlying confidence that learning
about the oceanic environment would shed light on fish distribution, migration, and availability for capture.
Governments joined these international collaborations only in part because of the enhanced potential to produce more or
better knowledge by pooling national resources. It was, instead, the uses intended for this knowledge that prompted
nations to commit resources for the proposed International Council. If its founders had not envisioned intervention in
addition to so-called pure science, their international investigations might have remained on the drawing board, a noble
and scientifically interesting but politically untenable idea. (2002, 10-11)
Council scientists embraced the mission of promoting fisheries (Rozwadowski (2002). Details of the close links between
science and politics of ICES member nations can be found throughout Rozwadowskis (2002) text forming a complex
account. It is also important to note here that the links

between science and politics have

historically existed in a tension for many scientists working for the Council. As an indication of

this point, Rozwadowskis (2002) discussion of the Councils expanding advisory role in the northwest Atlantic in the
1970s and 1980s and the workings of the Advisory Committee on Fisheries Management (ACFM) established in 1977
reveal the apprehension with which some scientists viewed the Councils evolving responsibility and practices. The
creation of ACFM, for example, was controversial because European coastal states with significant interests in expanding
fisheries were given a voice in this ICES forum that formulated scientific advice. Some dedicated Council participants
observed about ICES that by the end of the 1980s control was largely in the hands of national fishing commissions and
the European Community (Rozwadowski 2002).

Another important feature of the development of fisheries science indeed,

from its inception at the turn of the twentieth centurywas the conviction that science
and technology would make possible greater understanding and
control of the marine environment. It was expected that science and technology
would find the tools to address declining fish stocks , increase others and
discover new ones (Rozwadowski 2002). This conviction became most intense in the period following World War
II. Rozwadowski describes the prevailing confidence of the era:
Post-World War II Europe held a newly abiding

faith modern science and technology would

solve the western worlds practical problems. Fisheries scientists shared this
optimism for the prospect of effective conservation of fish stocks enlarged by the wartime
fishery closures. The failure to take advantage of the post-World War I opportunity to protect stocks heightened their
resolve. In 1947 one scientist stated with confidence, It is now possible to formulate measures of control which, when
aided by continuous scientific supervision, will permit a rational exploitation of fishing grounds. This conservation ethos
did not by any means imply serious concern about general declines of oceanic resources, as would emerge in the 1970s.
Indeed, post-war scientists thought themselves well placed to promote dramatic expansion of the amount of fish harvested
from the sea. (2002, 146)
The technological innovations of echo sounding, more efficient fishing gear and long-range fleets, together with biological
investigations into new species for commercial exploitation and new theoretical tools

to predict and advise

on yields, supported the deeply held faith in the potential of science and
technology to advance scientific knowledge of fisheries and directly facilitate the
fishing industry to expand and profit to an extent previously unimagined
(Rozwadowski 2002).

Fisheries Link (Models Flawed/Destructive)

Fisheries science is based on a flawed anthropocentric understanding
of fish that ignores the interconnectedness of nature, guaranteeing
fish collapse
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

scientists portray themselves as engaged in objective, disinterested enquiry

where the self is conceived as hyperseparated from the subject . That is, where
sharing and connection [are construed] as a hindrance to knowledge, the object
known as alien to the knower, and the knowledge relation as power (Plumwood 1993, 117).
In this construction of subject and object, the scientist is the knowing agent and has the
power to attribute meaning to the object. By construing the object as only having
meaning to the extent that science attributes it, the object appears available for
annexation, moulded to the ends of reason, and treated as if it has no needs or
agency of its own (Plumwood 1993). Plumwoods argument here is also, then, that the subject/object dualism is basic to the
Many

commodification of nature.
Practices of fisheries science and management

separation of the subject from object (or hyperseparation in Plumwoods logic of dualism) is a
structure that underpins the models used in conventional fisheries science.
Historically, scientific models of fisheries biology have taken a data-intensive, single-species
approach that treats each species of fish as if they exist independently of other
communities of fish, invertebrates and an ever-changing physical and chemical environment (Preikshot & Pauly 2005). They
do not take into account the complexity of interactions between species and
predator-prey relationships or other natural or human-induced factors that may
impact upon fish and their habitats such as storms, disease, pollution and climate
change (Earle 1995).
These characteristics of single species modelling are displayed in the concept of maximum
sustainable yield (MSY) that has been at the core of fisheries science and management for
decades. MSY is defined as the greatest tonnage of stock that could be removed from
a population annually while still maintaining a constant average size of the
population (Rozwadowski 2002). MSY provides fisheries managers with a single-species yield curve from which to predict the total
The

allowable catch for a targeted stock (Wilder 1998). In its practical essence, MSY provides a number located at the apex of the curve to which

taken in a general
sense to mean, that there is a greatest catch that can be safely taken for a long
time (Cushing 1988, 214).
managers aspire in calculating and regulating catch quotas and maintaining optimum fish production. It is

Earle, a marine biologist and former chief scientist of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association of the United States,
describes the underlying rationale for the MSY concept as follows:
In theory, a related group of animals ... normally increases in size to a point where the rate of growth slows through natural limits of food,
space, or other factors, eventually reaching a final size that reflects the so-called carrying capacity of the habitat for that particular
population. Supposedly, at this stage, a steady state is reached where births are balanced by death. ... [T]his hypothetical steady state is
referred to as the initial or pre-exploitation stock. When fishing begins, this initial stock is reduced, but if the take is not too great, the
population will continue to reproduce, allowing for repeated takes. (1995, 189)

the key assumptions upon which the MSY concept is built as follows:
That the population of individual species under consideration are of known size and do not mix
with other populations of the same species (i.e., are self- contained), that the carrying capacity of the habitat
Earle outlines

remains stable, that the population when first exploited is, in fact, the peak final size, that natural fluctuations in the population are not

Most important and overlooked is the

that the populations being exploited somehow live in isolation, not linked

large, and that an initial stock has the potential to recover from reduction by fishing.
assumption

in complex systems that are modified when changes are brought about in any
species, not just the target species. (1995, 189-90, emphasis in original)
Earle then outlines the serious flaws that exist in relation to the models assumptions, stating that:
Never has reliable information on which the above assumptions are based been
available prior to exploitation of a population. Nor has adequate knowledge of the life history of any species
ever been worked out beforehand to determine whether or not timing, fishing methodology, or other special finesse might be applied to
ensure continued health of the fishery. (1995, 189-90)

MSY fails to account for:

Mathematically untidy factors such as competition among species for food, disruption of the
target species close interaction with other organisms, variables in times of
maturation, variable social structures that influence reproductive rates, changes
in the habitat because of pollution, climate shifts, shoreline modification, and
natural or human-induced stress. (1995, 193)
Given these limitations, Earle notes that

Earles analysis of MSYthe way ocean dwellers are studied as if separate from food webs, ecosystems and many other factors that

this simplistic concept has been applied to a

complex situation. It is consistent with the shift in fisheries science away from
ocean based research and biology to mathematical models devised in the
laboratory that had few empirical points of contact with the oceans , a trend that intensified
constitute complex ocean systemshighlights how

in the post-World War II period.14

Fisheries scientists celebrated the concept of MSY when it emerged in the post- World War II period because they believed fishing
restrictions would now be based on clear and definite scientific evidence in contrast to the former pattern of regulating in response to
pressure groups (Rozwadowski 2002, 190). MSY quickly became entrenched in most international fisheries agreements on the basis that it
can be reliably and accurately predicted. Significantly, it has been adopted as part of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS) for the management of fisheriesand therefore much of fisheries management worldwide.15

fishing quotas based on MSY are not reliable or

precise assessments for guiding sustainable levels of fishing. MSY provides for educated guesses at best.
But as Earles analysis demonstrates, in practice

The great difficulty associated with predicting maximum sustainable yields due to uncertainty and lack of data has been widely commented
upon (see, for example: Fujita, Foran & Zevos 1998; Pitcher 2001; Safina et al. 2005; and Wilder 1998).

overexploitation of fish is complex

The
a
issue. The precise causal relationship between fisheries science and its
failures to produce reliable knowledge of ocean dwellers does not exist. It must also be stressed that the overexploitation of ocean dwellers
lies with a complex array of factorscertainly not just those within the control of science. The commercial fishing industry and global

fisheries biology is
associated with a very poor track record of many and repeated fishery
collapses (Pitcher 2001). Every year Pitcher further observes, fishery collapses continue to take
fishery scientists by surprise (2001, 602). Most commercially exploited fish species within the ICES area (the
northeast Atlantic and Baltic Sea) are overexploited or exhausted notwithstanding the considerable scientific
demand play major roles. Nevertheless, despite a 50-year history of quantitative predictive theory,

contribution ICES has made to fisheries management (Bocking 2004).

Freedom of the Sea Link

This history of freedom of the seas is intimately tied with colonialist
and capitalist exploitation that seeks to construct the oceans as an
open space to create frictionless exploitation.
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)
Towards the end of the eighteenth century law

of the sea began to turn toward the Grotian model, evolving

in a way that furthered European interests and protected European rights . Grotius
concept of mare liberum was gradually recognised as advantageous to colonial
expansionthe basis for Europes growing wealthinto Africa and Asia in the wake of the Industrial
Revolution (Anand 1983). The powerful European nations came to an understanding that the
eastern world, the Americas and Africa, were big enough to be exploited by
everybody, and better together (Anand 1983, 126). European nations became preoccupied with their vast claims of
land, and estimated that efforts to maintain particular claims on the high seas were far less important. The United States,
from independence in 1776, also played an important role in the acceptance of the freedom of the seas in the Atlantic
Ocean, and its restoration in Asia and the Pacific (Anand 1983). However, the

British, unrivalled in terms

of maritime might for most of the period between 1815 and 1914, became the strongest
champions of the freedom of the seas. The reason for this was that: there was so
much trading and it could be done so much cheaper with a completely free and
open sea, that the very idea of owning the sea vanished (McFee 1950, cited in Anand 1983, 129).
Steinberg links the ascendancy of the Grotian model in the late eighteenth century to the developing
industrial capitalism of European societies observing that while industrial capitalism constructs
the ocean as an empty void outside society, as non-territory and a frictionfree transportation surfacethe oceans required social regulation because they were intensely used (2001,
125). Throughout this period, the regulatory idea of the Grotian model was only implemented in a weak formships could
continue to act with freedom as long as they respected the freedom of other shipsso as to avoid any degree of
territoriality. Social interactions in ocean-space were to be kept to the minimum necessary to preserve access to resources
(Steinberg 2001).
Anand (1983), who contests the hegemony of European representation of the development of international law of the sea
by highlighting the contributions of Asian and African societies to its development, claims that in these changed
circumstances, Grotius was resurrected as a great hero and father of maritime law by states such as Britain that had
earlier practised mare clausum. Grotius arguments became holy mantras and freedom of navigation and trade almost
divine rights Anand (1983, 229). The political and economic reasons that led Grotius to write his famous doctrine of
freedom of the seas, and the fact that he had abandoned it to defend the interests of the United Dutch East India Company
and the United Provinces, were irrelevant to the new dominating interests of the European maritime powers.

What becomes apparent in this history of events is that the meaning of the oceans in
international law has shifted in line with European desires to industrialise,
colonise and accumulate wealth. In Grotius own time, it was judged that controlling the oceans through

military might was the best way to produce this wealth, whether we consider this to be within the framework of Selden or
Freitas. As it transpired, two hundred years later and up to the present day, the generation of wealth

is best
realised by holding the seas in common. In particular, open access to the oceans
continues to facilitate frictionless trade, that is, the uninterrupted movement of
goods as quickly, easily and cheaply as possible (Scorpeccio, cited in Correy 2003, 2).

Hegemony Link
The destruction of the ocean and global inequality and the violent
symptoms of the United States unsustainable drive for hegemony
Jacques 06 Professor of political science at Central Florida (Peter, Globalization and the World Ocean, p. 156-159)
the United States is a leading force in the
cruise ship industry, supplying a bulk of the passengers and a majority of the
consumers for the drug trade that plagues the Caribbean. The United States is also the world's
Regarding the major ecological changes around the world,

leading emitter of carbon, the most important human-related climate change driver. T his is literally killing coral reefs in large percentages,
and is an act which has direct impacts on fish nurseries and coastal storm and sea level rise protections for people who typically do not

the primary
aquarium-fish consumer is also a major factor in the loss of coral reefs. Further, the United States is one of the top two
contribute to global carbon emissions in commensurable ways. The fact that the United States is also

consumers of shrimp. The other is Japan, another important global center, and this is a factor in unsustainable coastal development, social

the United
States is among the more powerful agents in ocean matters- it is, for example, the only
globally forward deployed navy (Jacques and Smith 2003)-and it is mostly driving
ecological conditions toward undesirable and potentially irreversible
changes.
policy, and commons management. All of these factors also have local counterpart agents, but there is no doubt that

Through complex systems theory, the United States can be seen as an attractor of information and structure through its own matrix of

In order to change the global

capitalist system, the relationships with the United States and the rest of
the world will have to change. CST demands that ultimately, if the United States is in part creating a stable
commerce and material power, which then is significant in creating the system itself.

system, the system will become more complex because more and more nodes will be allowed to gain a foothold. Globalization of commerce
is increasing the diversity of members in the global market, though there is a measurable concentration of firms at the top, even if the
quality of these relations is suspect.

if
we define the Earth system as being the sum of the commercial/ economic, social,
and all ecological systems together, the loss of diversity in the latter two indicates
an unstable larger system. In other words, the United States may be stabilizing
the global economic subsystem, but this effort is undermining other parts of the
Earth that will ultimately disrupt these very efforts.
This would also mean that changes are likely on the way for the role of the United States in the larger sociopolitical world. The
United States cannot be expected to continue to maintain its position
of relative hegemony if this very unipolar position destabilizes vast
social and ecological patterns around it; this structure has already begun to unravel in Southeast Asia (Beeson
2004 ). From a hermeneutic perspective, the role of the United States and its hegemonic power is
one that interferes with the messages from other agents and the ecological world .
The United States itself has the power to consume other countries' and regions'
resources while distancing itself from local consequences . Also, given its use of instrumental reason
and ethics in relation to nature, the United States has undoubtedly created numerous
intermediary relations with nature so that the direct signs from nature, and its
limits, are hidden. I assume that this kind of communication block is another way
that limits the viability of U.S. hegemony and its future security. Similarly, from a critical
However, when we connect the commercial system to the ecological one, a more complex biological world is not apparent. Therefore,

theory perspective, such as according to Wallerstein's ( 1989) "world system theory," where the hegemonic powers order a coherent and
single capitalist system, this power historically operates in phases where hegemons overextend themselves so much that they devour their
own power base and create their own disintegration, opening up the way for a new hegemon. Indeed, as much as this perspective is
informed by the concept of historical material dialectic, the creation of a hegemonic order creates and embeds its own antithesis, and the
role of civil society and other nations and forces will be to undermine this material power in the world over time through counterhegemonic
resistance. Thus, through all of these theories, it is possible to see that

singular agents of unsustainable

systems create their own means of insecurity in the same way that they create
insecurity for others.
Pragmatic ramifications of this loss are the changes that are occurring in
fisheries, and therefore in food security for the world . Overfishing has been shown
to affect fisheries in nonlinear ways, indicating that the lessons from complex systems theory may be important.
For example, if the Atlantic cod is any indication, fisheries can sustain themselves in the face of mounting pressures until they approach
some "cliff" of permanent decline and perhaps decimation. Given that about three-quarters of the world's fisheries are facing such
pressures, we should view this potential with the utmost gravity. The language of the ocean continues to tell us through fairly clear signs
that this limit is real-fish are becoming harder and harder to catch, and the kinds of fish caught are increasingly found lower on the food

The world's poor, even when their commons are not being enclosed for
private interests, are going to feel the first human burden because they depend on
this fish for more basic survival than affluent consumers who have other choices.
chain.

That fish is simply becoming more expensive and harder to attain is one example of how our depletion of fisheries will further threaten the
security (overall well-being) of the most vulnerable people.

Ecological and social diversity is becoming simplified at the same time, and
should not be seen as accidental, but rather as a function of structural pressures
creating global patterns, demonstrated by loss of higher trophic levels of fish, the
loss of coral reef around the world through climate changes and unsustainable
coastal development, and the loss of mangroves and coastal forest and grasslands in addition to the losses of indigenous
cultures, languages, and lifestyles that have pers isted for eons (which in itself says something about their sustainability ). Complex systems
theory sees this as unsustainable in relation to the future options systems can take; hermeneutics sees this as unsustainable because it is a

critical theory sees this loss of social and ecological

diversity as an unsustainable concentration of power that enables abuse and
exploitation of nature and nonhuman nature. In all cases, humanity is diminished by
such losses because we are a part of these threatened spheres of the World Ocean .
Between the three perspectives, then, ocean communities are reducing their options for future
pathways, losing depth and meaning in addition to the relative power to resist
such trends.
sign of a sincere loss of meaning in the world; and

Gender inequality pervades each of the regions with only a little variation, apparently found mostly on the local level. Women are
disempowered in each of the regions, and this has important implications for sustainability according to each of the three theories. In CST,
the suppression of nodes in the system will again have a negative effect on available options in future syst ems. In hermeneutics, a reading
of the whole social system sees that welfare is not improving, and key conditions indicate that over 50 percent of the world's population
experience a disproportionate share of violence, poverty, and ecological problems in their labor in the household and in the workforce.
Sustainability is implausible for only one gender, and these conditions indicate that the meaning of sustainability very often overlooks the
condition of women in society. Even as I make this note, I admit that the conditions of women have not been the focus of this study and I
can see that this area requires more research and theorizing.
From what little attention I have paid this issue, it is clear that information and knowledge are organized without a gender component,
leaving the lives of women unaddressed and mostly silent, a state that is a prerequisite for the institutionalization of social hierarchies
(Enloe I 990).
So long as current power relations and governance structures in and out of civil society remain the same and rely on the continued silent
work and suppression of women, none of the improvements in sustainability will matter much, and half of the world's lifestyles will be
relying on the other half's work. In the end, this is representative of the different levels of hierarchy that are experienced in civil society and

So long as society looks more like a

pyramid with the apex resting on the conditions of the base, the World Ocean
communities will not be sustainable.
in the organization of government that Gandhi and Borgese warn against.

Law of the Sea Link

Law of the sea promotes an exclusively western relationship of
domination to oceans
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

Historical research demonstrates that the meaning of the ocean in international

law of the sea has changed over time with regard to Western desire for ocean resources
and use-rights. And further, that contemporary research shows that legal conceptions of the oceans
continue to be dominated by the interests of Western nations. That international
law of the sea has changed in response to shifts in political and economic priorities is hardly
surprising. An orthodox view encapsulated in notions Parliament or the Sovereign, makes
pronouncements of how the law ought to be and the Judiciary applies it.16 Hence, it is part of
Western tradition for the law to respond to the political will of the sovereign . Be that
as it may, the manner in which legal discourses have supported the will of the sovereign historically has, quite often, been
through appeals to reason in relation to the laws of naturea tradition to which legal positivism generally stands in
opposition. Curiously, and to the benefit of creating a synthesis between natural law and positivist traditions, the laws of
nature seem malleable to changes in the will of the sovereign. This

insight into the close relationship

between law and other discourses of power is familiar enough to us today (for
example, in Critical Theory, structuralist and post structuralist writings). Nonetheless, this Chapter highlights the
particular ways in which a disjuncture between the rationalist construction of law and the reality of law exists.

Law, and positivist law in particular, is posited as an objective, disinterested and

universally applicable body of knowledge and practice. Yet, as I have highlighted in the
above discussions of Grotius and the LOS Convention, international law of the sea is in fact a
value-laden enterprise that interprets the ocean to reflect dominant
Western rationalist ideologies. Reason is thereby harnessed to support
prevailing power relations that work to ignore struggle, loss, the pragmatic
response to messiness, the violence of trying to impose one order over many
interests (Bottomley 1996, 123). We could say law of the sea is not a matter of reason
or justice but a matter of domination.
The most developed course of action we have for protecting ocean ecosystems from overexploitation and degradation is
the LOS Convention. Yet the LOS Convention upholds the principle of the freedom of the seas that as we have seen gives
little, if any, capacity to appreciate different conceptions of the oceans that imbue it with meaning other than global public
rights. Accordingly, the

monological character of the LOS Convention provides little scope for

diversifying the legal foundations for Western human-ocean relations that
improve the prospects for just existences of oceans based on a democratic
process.
The capacity to acknowledge living oceans as agents in the democratic process
relies, in my view, on debates that are inclusive of many perspectives about humanocean relations. My key interest at this juncture in my dissertation is to demonstrate the following: the ocean as an
agent in political process can come to the fore when revealed through an inclusive debate; inclusive debate will bring to
the surface many perspectives on human-ocean relations. In so doing, debate will assist in freeing the oceans from
particular constraints, say from a Western law view that only pays attention to the needs of humanswhich ironically has
the misnomer of freedom of the seas.

Liberalism Link
Liberalism is founded on a hyper separation of the self that can never
ethically value or recognize the agency of the other
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

The instrumentalist and reductionist lens through which Locke was interpreting
the social, political and economic order of his time corresponds with the rise of liberalism.
Indeed, Locke is considered the progenitor of the political perspective of liberalism (OBrien 1996). Liberalism springs
from a vision of society as crucially composed of individuals (rather than, for instance, classes),
and of their liberty as the primary social goal (Bullock, Stallybrass & Trombley 1988, 475). Liberal theory
contends that the individual competes with other individuals to satisfy various interests (or may co-operate to satisfy their individual
interests).

In liberalism, the individual self is conceived as that which stands apart from an
alien other and denies his own relationship to and dependency on this other
(Plumwood 1993, 142). Prior to Locke, rationality was applied to mind and internal nature (Plato) and mind and external nature

Locke introduced a dualistic structure to mind and the social world

(Descartes).
perhaps
reaching its zenith in British Prime Minister Thatchers famous remark in 1987 that there is no such thing as society (cited in Keays,

the subject is now an alienated

individual as a matter of principle. Plumwood terms this take on the social world as egoism, and she sees it as a
crucial foil in rationalitys instrumentalist intensification.
1987).13 This further expansion of the scope of rationality is important because

In egoism there is no real cause for any individual to demonstrate their separateness from particular objects, such as specified natural or

a connection and relationship must be demonstrated to a sceptical world, and to make

is only readily demonstrated if it is an instrumental one.

social phenomena. It is more the case that

things more difficult, that relationship

Thus if we return to Lockes analogy in Plumwoods analysis, we see that:
If we divide a persons goals into primary, non-interchangeable ones pursued for their own sake, and secondary ones pursued as contingent

in the case of
enlightened self-interest the welfare of others can figure only in the
secondary set, never the first, primary set of ends. The resulting agents are conceived as
hyperseparated and self-contained because no internal relations of
interest or desire bind people to one another, and primary goal sets are exclusive ,
without overlap. The primary interest set of such a rational agent is assumed to concern only himself. The welfare of
and intersubstitutable means to the primary ones, then the thesis of philosophical egoism is that even

others may be considered, but only in ways which treat it as secondary to primary goals. (1993, 144)
Thus, Locke increases the scope of reason beyond that which Descartes imagined. Descartes advocated that the scientist has a professional

with Locke it becomes possible for

individuals to take an alienated attitude to just about any relation they may come
to have with things in the world. Hence, as Plumwood further observes:
In the egoist-instrumentalist model (the master model of self), the self erases the other as part of the ethical
domain. The other appears only as a hindrance to or as a resource for the selfs
own needs, and is defined entirely in relation to its own ends. Thus such a self
does not recognise the other as another self, a distinct centre of agency and
resistance, whose needs, goals and intrinsic value place ethical limits on the self
and must be considered and respected. (1993, 145)
role in standing apart from nature as the object of his study, but

Plumwoods historical analysis of the notion of rationality in Enlightenment thinking demonstrates a crucial shift to the meaning and effects

rationality is reconceived as egoism and nature in

instrumental terms as a resource for the master .
of rationalityto the point where

Rule of Law Link

Their legalistic response to ocean threats is an attempt to extend
sovereignty over the sea to regulate security
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)
The Northern Land Council points out here that while the Western

legal tradition does not attribute ownership

for a sovereign to make rules over the sea for its
use. This observation refers to historical developments that have occurred. State security is another
objective of regulation (although not mentioned by the Northern Land Council) that was well entrenched by
of the oceans to any one person, it allows

the end of the eighteenth century, wherein:

[t]he new principle of freedom, when it approached the shore, met with another principle,
the principle of protection, not a residuum of the old claim, but a new independent basis and reason
for modification, near the shore, of the principle of freedom. The sovereign of the land
washed by the sea asserted a new right to protect his subjects and citizens against attack,
against invasion, against interference and injury, to protect them against attack threatening their
peace, to protect their revenues, to protect their health, to protect their industries. (Root 1927, cited in Anand
1983, 137)

Science Link
The aff situates the ocean as the unknown Other to be conquered
and explained by sciencetrying to categorize and understand
the ocean is impossible and strips it of its agency
Jessica Lehman 2008, Researcher at The University of British Columbia in international fields and data
analysis, Expecting the Sea: Displacement and the Environment on Sri Lankas East Coast
In their introductory article for a special issue of the Journal of Historical Geography dealing with the sea, Lambert and
colleagues (2006) mention that understanding cultural representations of the sea can offer an

important alternative to purely bioeconomic accounts. They provide a helpfully thorough list of
recurrent themes in imaginative geographies of the ocean, albeit from a largely Western
perspective. These include the vastness of the sea; the trope of the sublime; the sea as a source of
fear, madness, conflict, and disorder; the evasive, detached, and sensuous activity of swimming; the
ocean as primeval source of life, and the confrontation with the frailty of both the
individual and of entire societies. Connery elaborates on the sea within a Western context, citing
tropes of the sea as distinctly Other and situated outside of time (2006). Partially in response to a noted
lack of theorization around the ocean, there have been increased theorizations on what occurs at sea, most notably on
boats. This includes the work on 47 ocean-based tourism mentioned above. In another vein, Foucault has written about
the boat as the ultimate heterotopia, a place without a place (1986: 27). Heterotopias are, for Foucault,

sites that exist in reality yet contain the opportunity for rules of governance that differ
from those of everyday life; places where all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are
simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted (1986: 24). It is interesting to note that Foucault describes these
sites as meaningful strictly because of their relational qualities they both relate to yet in some ways contradict other
sites. Likewise, Lambert and colleagues state that what happens at sea is neither a continuation nor

the total opposite of what happens on land (2006). Figuring the sea as different from, yet
intimately related to the land is a recurring theme in imaginative geographies and
cultural interpretations of the sea. The frequent recurrence of the ocean in relation to
uncertainty, conflict, and chaos is remarkable. Westerdhal (2005) cites a widespread sense of

antagonism between the land and the sea, elaborating on examples such as different languages that the same group of
people use when speaking at sea or on land, and the different taboos at work in these different places. He goes so far as to
state that these are common traits in most maritime cultures. A stronger sense of violence is belied in Connerys
discussions of the sea as the genesis of discourses of both human and supernatural conquering of the elements, referring
heavily to biblical imagery (2006). Yet the ocean, he notes, is never fully conquered; it has the

potential to become again an undifferentiated, ungoverned mass, for example in the case of Noah
and the flood. It is not just in legend that the ocean has maintained a sense of mystery and power. The ocean also
challenges scientists with its inhospitable conditions and unknowability. Although there is
widespread agreement that it will be a significant issue, sea level rise remains one of the most poorly
understood and uncertain aspects of climate change predictions (cf. Lowe and Gregory, 2010).

And it is not just sea level rise that is an important effect of climate change it 48 is also extreme high and low tides,
storm surges, changes in ocean acidity, and other effects of a warmer ocean, such as coral bleaching (Bindoff et al., 2007).
Although scientists estimate with very high confidence that these changes will happen, their severity, time frames, and
other variables are subject to greater uncertainty and regional variability (Bindoff et al., 2007). Even without considering
climate change, much remains unknown about the sea. Much of the ocean floor is unexplored , and although
it is likely home to millions of species, currently only about 230,000 have been named (Kunzig, 2007). Despite the
mysteries that the ocean presents, it is important to note that the sea is not always inherently other from the land, nor is
it always powerful and unpredictable. For example, Lambert and colleagues (2006) discuss the significance of the beach as
a liminal space. Westerdahl (2005) also mentions that the worlds of the land and the sea meet in one figure, the
fisher/farmer. This is significant for my work as the participants in my research often embodied this land/sea hybrid in
their daily practices. However, it is important to note that the centrality of the ocean, even as an elemental force,

is not universal. In China, Connery (2006: 504-505) notes, the same word for the sea can also refer to a vast expanse
of land, and despite Chinese history of naval prowess, the ocean does not feature as an elemental power in historical
accounts. The word Sahel means shore in Arabic, but is used in reference to the region at the edge of the Sahara Desert.
Similarly, in Arabic, the same word can be used to describe riding a camel and riding a ship (Steinberg, 2001: 49). The
various elements I discuss above have one thing in common: they are all ways that people have come to understand and

make meaning from the sea, or ways that people have used the sea to make meaning of other parts of life. However,
Lambert and colleagues insert an important caution: overemphasis on human agency [...] makes for a curiously empty
conception of the sea, in which it serves mainly as a framework [...] (2006: 482). When the 49 focus rests on
how humans have created

understandings of the sea, the materiality and the agency of the sea is
often lost we fail to recognize how the sea itself creates human understandings of
reality, and indeed reality itself. Furthermore, even work that more centrally locates the sea as a connector
creates incomplete theorizations; as Connery aptly states, connectivity itself functions to dematerialize the connector
(2006: 497). He goes on to assert that the dematerialization of the ocean is linked to the long process of capitals
concealment of its spatial and social character, (2006: 498) which further disarticulates production and consumption
(Steinberg, 2001). Similarly, Steinberg (2001) notes that while society has seemingly become reoriented

around flows and networks (cf. Castells, 2001), it fails to account for the materiality (and I would insert
agency) of these spaces themselves. While scientific analyses can reinforce the physical
importance of the sea, they often neglect the discursive elements that work in dynamic
association with the material to give full weight to the ocean . Hence, both many social theories
and scientific studies of the sea reinstate a problematic division between the natural and
the social. Therefore, I find it vital to bring this literature into conversation with posthumanist, political ecological,
poststructural, and feminist contributions to socio-natural theory discussed in Chapter 1 in order to realize the sea more
fully as an actor.

Sublime Link
Sublime = western
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)
In this chapter I argue that eighteenth century Western philosophical discourse of the sublime is influential in shaping
contemporary conceptions and representations of the oceans. Eighteenth century aesthetic discourse has been important
in determining Western orientation to the oceans, contributing substantially to the position that Western societies place
humans in relation to oceans. In particular, the aesthetic theories of Edmund Burke (1729-1797) and Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804) have been highly influential in shaping representations of the oceans as sublime in the literature and painting
of the Romantic Movement (1800-1900) that continue to inform our present day conceptions of oceans. In short,

whatever it is the Western subject feels toward the oceans, we can probably thank
the sublime.1
The sublime is a discourse about human subjects attempt to give expression to
experiences of anything that is absolutely great, vast, overwhelming and
incomprehensible. Historically, the ocean has evoked this sense of human
experience. Reference to the ocean reverberates throughout eighteenth century debate on the sublime (Raban 1993).
Indeed, the ocean has been celebrated as the sublime in nature or as giving rise to sublime experience on account of its
capacity to act on a monumental scale that exceeds all human control and comprehension.

When appeals are made to a collective appreciation of oceans for the purpose of
developing marine ethics and politics by promoting a sense of awe and wonder in
relation to oceans and as a place of reverie, we are tapping into eighteenth century and Romantic
traditions of the sublime. That may be quite the appropriate thing to do by virtue of the sublime as a
repository for the collected wisdom in Western traditions of thinking, feeling and acting. Nonetheless, I argue that in
developing ocean ethics and politics we need to examine closely the usefulness of appeals to traditional sublime aesthetics.
Kants concept of the sublime, for example, presents the following difficulties: first, it authorises

a relation
of human superiority to, and transcendence of, oceans; second, in drawing upon oceans as a
trigger for sublime feelings, it makes universal prescriptions that effectively erase
feelings toward oceans that are not expressed in terms of superiority and
transcendence; and third, Kants sublime facilitates a conception of oceans as a vast
source of wilderness. Reflecting upon these three areas of concern, I argue that the traditional
sublime as we find in Kant should be viewed as a unique Western cultural concept and
that the cultural imperialism that it tends towards is a problematical reference
point for the development of ethical, democratic, ocean politics in pursuing just
existences for oceans.
This chapter begins with a review of conceptions of the sublime in the work of influential eighteenth century theorists,
Joseph Addison (1672-1719), Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant. I demonstrate how the oceans have been drawn upon
and associated with sublime aesthetics historically, and the way the sublime conceptualises self in relation to oceans.
Kants concept of the sublime receives particular attention in this Chapter on account of its substantial and enduring
influence. Following on from this review, Kants concept of the sublime is critically examined with
regard to the way the self is conceptualised in relation to oceans and the way the oceans are conceptualised as a
phenomenon.
As with Chapters 2 and 3, Chapter 4 demonstrates, in the first instance, how the sublime

is influential in
providing structure to contemporary human-ocean relations and second, how that structure
unnecessarily constrains possibilities for imagining different forms of humanocean relations in Western societies. The sublime presents problems for an
inclusive political epistemology because it obstinately denies some perspectives,
including an active exclusion of the idea that oceans have agency .
Deborah Kennedy says: (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean relations
http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

To employ Kants sublime aesthetic uncritically is to imperil the development of

ethical, democratic ocean politics in several ways. Kants view that the magnitude and might of the
ocean is the very thing that reveals our command over it (through the application of practical reason)

is certainly at odds with an ocean politics that attempts to be inclusive of the agency
of oceans. The reason/nature dualism that Kant sets up in the sublime categorically excludes the
oceans from the realm of reason and conceives of them instrumentallythe
ocean is merely the trigger for the sublime. Moreover, the oceans are envisaged as unable to
reciprocate. As a passive entity, the oceans can be filled with the subjects purpose
and will and is thereby made available for human exploitation .8
Universal prescription of feelings for the ocean
Kant does not provide his concept of the sublime with positive definitions about what constitutes the foundations for the
subjects separation from nature and its moral superiority over nature. Rather, Kant asserts his particular paradigm to be
the actual case.
We can recall from earlier discussion that practical reason and the supersensible are at the core of the subjects pleasure in
the sublime experience. In order to experience the sublime one must understand and experience human existence as
freedom from bodily senses and external nature. Critically, Kant does not elaborate on what the supersensible is
constituted by or what the supersensible does to exceed the realm of nature in positive forms. He only defines the
supersensible negatively by defining what the supersensible is not; Burnham points out, for instance, that in relation to
the sublime, absolute totality means totality without natural limits; freedom means activity without natural
determination (2000, 99). Thus, in Kants

argument about how the mind transcends nature, he determines

that the mind is separate from, and superior to, nature without stipulating what
the sphere of feeling is in itself that transcends nature. With the exception of the abstract
theoretical requirement of the supersensible, Kants concept of the sublime is unanchored and drifting.

The implication of Kants sublime aesthetic is that the subject asserts superiority over nature
by performing the god-trick (Haraway 1991a, 191). Kant never brings the partialness of
the subject to the surfaceas a particular and privileged perspective of the European,
bourgeois, urban male. Rather, Kant presents his conception of the sublime as the absolute and
universal understanding of the aesthetic experience (conditioned only by the correct moral
culture). However, more contemporary philosophy (indeed since Hegel first made the subject a problem) makes it
unconscionable that subjects could sustain unlocated, value-neutral and universalising theories of knowledge.

The sublime aesthetics of Kant and Burke, and the Romantic Movement they subsequently fed, did not
come out of nowhere but are linked to specific developments of the age, in
particular scientific Enlightenment, the growth of industry and the increasing
domestication of nature and the attitudes to nature engendered by those developments (Soper 1995, 226-7).
Certainly in England the Romantic oceanic sublime thrived in reaction to industrialisation.
As access to English terrestrial spaces decreased, Romantic representations of
oceans in literature and painting swelled.9 Raban touches upon this trend in writing:
As England developed the biggest cities and the most mechanized industries in the world, so its access to the seathat
alternative universebecame more and more precious. For the sea was the realm of man as solitary creature, the

hero

struggling with elemental forces, and to go to sea was to escape from the city and the machine, and from
the regulated and repetitive patterns of life in a complex industrial society. (1993, 15)
In England, the oceanic sublime was developed in the Romantic literature of Byron, Coleridge and Shelley and the
painting of J. M. W. Turner, among others.10 The

Romantics depicted the ocean as wild nature,

a space to be treasured and revered
despite the sea becoming increasingly used and industrialised (Raban 1993; Steinberg
untainted and untamed by the forces of modernity and

2001). Yet it is important to note that Romantic representations of the ocean had its basis in the industrial eras
construction of the sea as the antithesis of civilised and developable terrestrial environments (Steinberg 2001). In the
Classical and neoclassical economic discourses of industrial-capitalism ,

the ocean was conceptualised as

beyond society, as a great void and empty transportation surface between civilized
terrestrial places (Steinberg 2001, 113). The Romantic conception of the ocean as wilderness, which I
discuss below, further complements the rationalist idealization of the ocean as empty
and featureless (Steinberg 2001, 118).11
Soper proposes that we view:

the cultivation of the sublime [as an] expression of anxiety [as well as] the aesthetic luxury, of a culture that has begun to
experience its power over nature as a form of severance from it, while Romanticism only finds expression against the
background of a certain mastery of its forces and a consequent concern for the alienation it entails. The romanticisation of
nature in its sublimer reaches is in this sense a manifestation of those same human powers over nature whose destructive
effects it laments. (1995, 227)

Sustainable Development Link

Sustainable development discourse posit the ocean as an empty space
for capitalist exploitation, allowing its annihilation for the sake of
capital
Steinberg 98 (Phillip E, Department of Geography, Florida State University, 10/28, The maritime mystique: sustainable
development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean, file://vmware-host/Shared
%20Folders/Downloads/Sustainable%20Development.pdf
This application of the sustainable development discourse to the ocean at the
inter- governmental level has been supported by representations of the ocean in the
popular media. In 1995 alone, two major US publications, Time and National Geographic, featured cover stories celebrating the ocean as a

The sea is a frontier

replete with opportunity, at last capable of being 'conquered'. National Geographic tells a more
pessimistic story: The sea is an endangered environment wherein new technologies both
respond to and reproduce scarcity (figure 1). Both stories, however, place the sea
within a discourse of sustainable development similar to that constructed by the promoters of
the IYO: As the sea is a space of "finite economical assets ," the commodification of its
environment should be guided by long-run planning for maximum efficiency and
productivity. Similarly, a 1998 supplement to The Economist celebrates the ocean as a multiple-use space, but one in which certain
uses are likely to crowd out others and destroy the ocean environment unless we "take stewardship of the ocean,
resource-rich but fragile environment (Lemonick, 1995; Parfit, 1995). Time tells an optimistic story:

with all the privileges and responsibilities that implies" (The Economist 1998, page 18). Also asso- ciated with these efforts to promote
investment in the sustained exploitation of the ocean's riches is a general campaign for what Leddy (1996) calls the 'Cousteauization' of the
oceans, a popular movement to cultivate public interest in the ocean's biota with the effect of generating support for further marine research
and for governmental and/or corporate stewardship of marine resources, In the USA, perhaps the most visible spokesperson for this
movement has been publicist/authof/burcaucrat/oceanographcr Sylvia Earle, supported by a marine research and development militaryindustrial complex represented by individuals such as computer entrepreneur and former US Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard
and retired Admiral James Watkins, a former US Chief of Naval Operations and US Secretary of Energy who presently heads the

The rise of the sustainable

development discourse, however, is only one component of a multifaceted
shift in our perception, use, and regulation of ocean space . Even as this
image of the ocean as a space of resources has gained popularity, other images have also been ascendant.
Contrasting with the image of the ocean as a cornucopia of exploitable resources,
cultural products such as the film Waterworldand the television program Sea Quest have depicted the sea as
a distinctly resource-free space, an empty surface across which and through
which people move in search of adventure . In Water- world (1995), for instance, the ocean is
devoid of nature; the weather is always good, the sea is always calm, and, with only one highly
denaturalised exception, there is no evidence of fish or other marine life. The sea docs not even provide the resource of
water; drinking water is obtained not by desalinating seawater but by purifying urine. This Hollywood representation of
the sea complements a corporate imagery in which the sea is portrayed as an
empty space across which capital flows with increasing case as it seeks out profitgenerating opportunities on land. Thus, the geocconomic region known as the Pacific Rim is notable for its imagery
Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (Broad, 1997).

of discrete, deccntered units (nation - states, world cities, sweatshops, etc) revolving around a space of (marine) emptiness: "The hegemonic
construction of a Pascalian sublime whose 'circumference is everywhere and center nowhere'... [characterized by] the dcterritorializing
power of oceanic vastness" (Wilson and Dirlik, 1995, page 1), "a perfect image for a centeredness with no central power" (Connery, 1995,

). For the corporate practitioner of capitalist globalization, the

ocean that binds the rim (and, more generally, the space of the world economy) is an
unprofitable nuisance space to be progressively annihilated by capital in
its search for complete freedom of movement and the conquest of distance. Corporate
page 34; see also Dirlik, 1993

advertisements take this representation of the ocean to fantastic excess; in a 1990 Merrill Lynch advertisement a panoramic photograph of
the ocean is accompanied by the caption, "For us, this doesn't exit" (reproduced in Roberts, 1996), and in a 1997 advertisement the
telecommunications firm Concert envisions a 'global village' wherein the world has been impacted by a fortuitous act of tectonic
convergence in which the continents have been squeezed together, eliminating practically all inter- vening ocean space (figure 2). AT&T

similarly advertises its international service with a slogan celebrating its ability to annihilate the marine divide: "Oceans separate. And we
connect" (cited in Carvajal, 1995).

The desire to explore or modernize the ocean is rooted in a capitalist

epistemology that annihilates the oceans inherent independence
from capitalist structures
Steinberg 98 (Phillip E, Department of Geography, Florida State University, 10/28, The maritime mystique: sustainable
development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean, file://vmware-host/Shared%20Folders/Downloads/Sustainable
%20Development.pdf

the ocean as a space

progressively annihilated by capital in its conquest of distance, as a space of
historical memory (and consumable icons) for postindustrial society, and as a space of
sustainable development. Each of these images represents an attempt by capital to
cope with the increasing use of the ocean as an arena for both capital mobility
and capital fixity. The ocean as annihilated space Regarding the first of these images, many scholars have noted the important
We are now in a position to revisit the three marine images with which this paper began:

role that speed and the conquest of distance play in contemporary capitalism. Even those who caution that this phenomenon masks the
continued importance of place (for example, Cox, 1997) or continuity with past political-economic processes (for example, Harvey, 1989)

the ability to transgress space with unprecedented speed and agility is

a defining feature of today's capitalist political economy. Within this system of hypermobile
acknowledge that

capitalism, the ocean has taken on special importance as a seemingly friction-free surface across which capital can move without hindrance:
"Water is capital's element The bourgeois idealization of sea power and ocean- borne commerce has been central to the mythology of
capital, which has struggled to free itself from the earth just as the bourgeoisie struggled to free itself from tilling the soil. Moving capital is
liquid capital, and without movement, capital is a mere Oriental hoard .... [The ocean] is capital's favored myth-element" (Connery, 1995,

. If capital were truly able to transcend the barriers

to seamless mobility imposed by the distance and nature of ocean space, then, at
the point at which this transcendence were achieved, the ocean could no longer
have utility. Although the ocean may be "capital's favored myth-element," its utility to capital as a transportation
surface lies in the ease with which it can be annihilated. As we have seen, the ocean's service in a world of capital
fluidity lies in the apparent ability of corporations such as Merrill Lynch, Concert, and AT&T to wish away both its nature and the very
pages 40, 56). There are several layers of irony here

space it occupies. The underlying utility of the ocean as an antithetical space of movement (and the irony in capital's desire to annihilate it)
is supported by Deleuze and Guatarri's iden- tification of the ocean as "a smooth space par excellence" (Deleuze and Guatarri, 1988 page
479). As sites of alterity, 'smooth' spaces serve as necessary counterpoints to the 'striated' spaces of capital whose physical and social
features and points of friction enable investment, sedentari/ation, enclosure, surveillance, and other processes asso- ciated with modern life

agents of capital progressively seek to

absorb and 'modernize' these \smoolh' spaces because they are resistant to
essential capitalist categories and institutions. Thus, the tendency to annihilate the
formal independence o\^ ocean space is indicative of a more general tendency
toward self-destruction, whether this annihilation is achieved through
colonization by modernist institutions of navigation and militarism (as is depicted by
(Deleuze and Guatarri, 1988, pages 474 500). Despite their utility,

Virilio, 1986, pages 37 49, as well as Deleuze and Guatarri) or through physical obliteration (as is idealized by Merrill Lynch and Concert).

the intervening distance of ocean space amplifies difference, and, as political economists have long asserted, the ability to shift capital between 'different'
places provides a crucial mechanism for capital accumulation (Hilferding, 1981; Lenin, 1939;
Luxemburg, 1964). Capital's perverse desire to annihilate its "favored myth-element"
although perhaps rational from a short-run profit-maximization standpoint runs
the risk of also annihilating opportunities for the realization of value through
movement, thereby reducing capital to the status of "a mere Oriental hoard." Last,
Additionally,

this capitalist fantasy of annihilating ocean space is ironic because, despite its representation during the industrial capitalist era as a
friction-free void, the ocean may in fact be the portion of the earth's surface least amenable to time space compression. Eurodollars move
from New York to Tokyo in fractions of seconds, but hydrodynamics limit the speed of the ocean freighters that carry the bulk of the world's
commodities to the same speed as at the end of the First World War (Sekula, 1995, page 50). Sckula elaborates on this characteristic of the
ocean in his discussion of transoceanic labor Hows: "Acceleration is not absolute ... A society of accelerated Hows is also in certain key
aspects a society of deliberately slow movement. Consider, as a revealing case, the glacial caution with which contraband human cargo
moves. Chinese immigrant- smuggling ships can take longer than seventeenth-century sailing vessels to reach their destinations, spending
over a year in miserable and meandering transit. At their lowest depths, capitalist labor markets exhibit a miserly patience" (Sekula, 1995,

The sea is also an object of consumption:

page 50). The ocean as nostalgic space

a space (and a view) that
provides historical groundings for the tourist-oriented spectacles that increasingly characterize the 'post- modern' urban waterfront. As

dominant aspects of 'postmodern'

capitalism are incessant move- ment, the self-conscious production of places, and
the perpetual consumption of images (see also Harvey, 1989; Lash and Urry, 1994; Soja, 1989; 1996). These
scholars such as Baudrillard (1988) and Urry (1990; 1994) discuss, three

character- istics all manifest themselves in tourism, where the tourist (by definition a moving subject) seeks out notable places and
consumes their images (Britton, 1991). Indeed, the links between tourism and postmodernism are so strong that Urry (1990, page 87)
claims that even during the modern era tourism was "prefiguratively postmodern." Nonetheless, for Urry, post modern tourism is
distinguished by the gazed upon object's lack of claim to authenticity and by the tourist who comprehends this charade but still chooses to
accept the presented object as an image to be consumed.

Sustainable Development Link (It Fails)

Sustainable development isnt sustainable. Their discourse
perpetuates capitalist control over nature, allowing for its
degradation
Steinberg 98 (Phillip E, Department of Geography, Florida State University, 10/28, The maritime mystique: sustainable
development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean, file://vmware-host/Shared
%20Folders/Downloads/Sustainable%20Development.pdf
The language of sustainable development suggests a belated recognition of this
ecological contradiction, as attempts are made to incorporate the material
obstacles of space and time into the business cycle, with corporate leadership
providing environ- mental stewardship (Bridge, 1998; O'Connor, 1994, pages 125- 151). This
discourse of a resource-rich but fragile ocean in need of comprehensive
management and planning is the result (Nichols, 1999). Thus, National Geographic asserts that individuals engaged in fishing
must come to terms with "this world of inevitable limits" and give way to long- range planning and
corporate management. This challenge has been taken up by the Marine Stewardship Council, a joint effort of the multinational food
corporation Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund designed "to harness market forces and con- sumer power in favour of healthy, wellmaintained fisheries for the future" (Marine Stewardship Council, 1997). Although National Geographic regrets the loss of the independent
fishing boat owner plying the ocean's wilds, the bureaucratization of ocean management and the privatization of rights to its resources is
presented as the maturation of our attitudes toward nature. The stewardship of marine resources by agents of capital is naturalized through
explicit parallels to the enclosure of agricultural land in the western United States: fisheries, like post-dust-bowl agriculture, must be
allowed to evolve into "big industry: highly regulated, tidy," where rational manage- ment is applied for long-term sustainability (Parfit,
1995). Likewise, The Economist declares: "In fact, [the ocean] is a resource that must be preserved and harvested. To enhance its uses, the
water must become ever more like the land, with owners, laws and limits. Fishermen must behave more like ranchers than hunters" {The

This managerial environmentalist perspective is supportive of

general guidelines for governing the uses of the sea without actually mandating
its governance as territory. Indeed, parallels can be made with the mercantilist-era regime. Under both regimes, the ocean
Economist 1998, page 4).

is recognized as a crucial space for essential social processes but care is taken to protect it from the ravages of competitive territorial states.

The mercantilist designation of the sea as a special space of commerce (res extra commercium),
immune to territorial appropriation but susceptible to exertions of social power, is being
paralleled by a postindustrial designation of the sea as a special space of nature (res
extra naturd). In contrast to the intervening industrial era, when the sea was denigrated as a void between the terrestrial spaces of

the ocean is now once again configured as a significant space

wherein states and intergovernmental entities are permitted to exercise
nonterritorial power so as to manage the ocean's resources in a rational,
efficiency-maximizing manner. The regulatory policies consistent with this
corporate environmentalism will likely prove inadequate to resolve the ongoing
spatial crisis in the regulation of ocean space. Even if an ocean-management
regime were to negotiate successfully the ecological contradiction of capital, it
still would need to negotiate capitalism's spatial contra- diction. The account of the regulatory
production and consumption,

crisis surrounding the proposed manganese nodule regime demonstrates that this spatial contradiction is increasingly intense in ocean
space, and it is questionable whether any regulatory regime that preserves the sea's nonterritorial character (whether the 'common heritage'
regime proposed at UNCLOS III or a regime whereby stewardship of the ocean's resources is entrusted to a global 'ecocracy') would provide
enough security for potential investors in extra- state production sites.

Nostalgia Link
Viewing the ocean as a space for nostalgia provides the backdrop for
its capitalist exploitation
Steinberg 98 (Phillip E, Department of Geography, Florida State University, 10/28, The maritime mystique: sustainable
development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean, file://vmware-host/Shared
%20Folders/Downloads/Sustainable%20Development.pdf
The image of the ocean as a space of nostalgia is particularly apparent in the harborside festival
marketplace, an increasingly popular urban redevelopment strategy that both reflects the spatiality of postmodern
capitalism (Kilian and Dodson, 1996) and provides an ideal backdrop for promoting
consumption of commodities within the postmodern tourist economy (Goss, 1996). In the
harborside festival marketplace, the place's mercantile past is celebrated through the fetishization of human interactions with marine space.
These marketplaces are frequently located in former customs houses or warehouses (or perhaps in a new building constructed to look like it
had served a former maritime function), fishing nets and anchors abound, and there may even be a restored clipper ship parked outside.
And, of course, the sea itself (or a surrogate water body) is within view, providing, as it did during the industrial era, romantic possibilities
of escape, danger, and untamed nature. The difference from the industrial era is that this image of alterity, although still linked with

also linked with the potential for asserting individuality through

the consumption of commodities. The sea is represented as a space of
consumable icons and 'memories'. This representation of ocean space rests uneasily alongside that
of the ocean as an empty space without value, an obstruction to be obliterated by the
forces of hyper- mobility. On the urban waterfront, in contrast, the sea and its landward referents are fetishized as images
romantic escape, is now

to be consumed. Many of the goods sold at festival marketplaces are marketed as global exotica in which the ocean adds value by

'global village' rhetoric used in marketing these products (such as 'global

village') implies the time - space compression that is idealized by the repre- sentation of
the ocean as an empty space capable of being annihilated . The uneasy balance of contradictory
contributing to global differentiation. Yet the

representations is largely achieved by portray- ing the urban waterfront as a space of historical social activity but one that is now devoid of
any human interaction. Evidence of contemporary labor, production, or transportationdockyards, fish markets, container terminals
would contradict the ocean's separateness, and so designers of festival marketplaces consciously obscure such signs of contemporary
marine activity while flaunting the safely historical (Atkinson et al, 1997; Atkinson and Laurier, 1998; Goss, 1996; Sekula, 1995). The
parallel with the countryside presented to tourists in England is striking: "The countryside is thought to embody some or all of the following
features: a lack of planning and regimentation, a vernacular quaint architecture, winding lanes and a generally labyrinthine road system,
and the virtues of tradition and the lack of social intervention .... A particular feature of this construction of the rural land- scape has been to
erase from it farm machinery, labourers, tractors, telegraph wires, concrete farm buildings, motorways, derelict land, polluted water, and
more recently nuclear power stations. What people see is therefore highly selective, and it is the gaze which is central to people's

the image of the sea as a space

of nostalgia, like its image as annihilated space, rests at a point of uneasy balance
between the tendency to value individual places and the idealization of
placelessness, inherent in the need of capital to embody fixity and mobility
simultaneously. The sea is to be gazed at and even celebrated, but as an actual
place of production and transportation it is largely hidden .
appropriation" (Urry, 1990, page 97-98; see also Mitchell, 1996; Williams, 1973). Thus,

Ocean Conflict Link

Understanding the ocean as an empty space for states to control
through conflict is rooted in a western capitalist orientation towards
the ocean, this view props up false political economic systems focused
on profit maximization.
Steinberg 98 (Phillip E, Department of Geography, Florida State University, 10/28, The maritime mystique: sustainable
development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean, file://vmware-host/Shared
%20Folders/Downloads/Sustainable%20Development.pdf
Modern-era representations and regulations of ocean space are particular to our
society and have their origins in underlying social structures and uses of the sea . As
a point of departure, modern regimes governing the ocean can be compared with those of
nonmodern societies (Steinberg, 1996b), ranging from the societies of Oceania, where the
sea was governed like land as an integral space of society (Jackson, 1995; Nakayama and Ramp,
1974), to those of the Indian Ocean, where the sea was constructed as a zone so external to land-based society that the ships of states
warring on land ceased being adversaries when they encountered one another at sea (Anand, 1983; Braudel, 1984; Chaudhuri, 1985). Set
against this broad spectrum of possible systems for ocean governance, the event usually heralded as the beginning of the modern oceanspace regimethe early seven- teenth century 'Battle of the Books' between Grotius (1916) and Selden (1972)is revealed as a relatively
narrow debate wherein all parties argued for modifications of preexisting European ocean-space traditions in an effort to craft a governance
system appropriate for the emergent era of merchant capitalism (Anand, 1983; Steinberg, 1996a, pages 186-200). Although Grotius and
Selden are typically portrayed as polar opposites, the former advocating freedom of the seas and the latter advocating enclo- sure (see
O'Connell, 1982, page 1 -14), both authors shared a common basis in the legal principle of imperium that had guided Roman control of the

the ocean is
immune to incorporation within the territory of any individual state, but, as an
essential space of society, it is perceived as a legitimate arena for
exertions of power by land-based state entities. This Early Modern
ocean-space regime was particularly well suited to the spatiality of the
era's mercantilist political economy. On the one hand, the interstate political- economic system was
Mediterranean (Fenn, 1925; Gormley, 1963; Lobingier, 1935; O'Connell, 1982, pages 14-20). According to this doctrine,

(and remains) dependent upon competition among multiple sovereign states (Chase-Dunn, 1989; Wallerstein, 1984). The transformation of
world hegemony into one global world empire would have stifled the political competition that drove (and continues to drive) capitalism's
search for ever-increasing accumula- tion. On the other hand, during this early era of capitalism there were few domains in which sovereign
states could actually compete with each other for economic domi- nance. High-risk investments in the mainstays of mercantilist political
economyover- seas agriculture, mineral extraction, and the carriage tradegenerally would have run at a loss if mediated solely by a
'depoliticized' free-enterprise market (Andrews, 1984; Braudel, 1982; Davis, 1962) and there were few opportunities for profits to be

European powers
soon discovered that by applying state violence they could claim exclusive rights
to the products of distant areas and gain monopolistic control over long-distance
trade routes, and this served as a crucial means for generating capital accumulation (Chaudhuri, 1985; Davis, 1962; Nijman, 1994).
realized from investment in European production sites (Dunford and Perrons, 1983). However, rising

Analyzing these factors, Bunker and Ciccantell (1995; forthcoming) have suggested that the one distinct characteristic of this early period of
capitalism was that the primary means for capital accumulation was control of trade, or channeled circulation, and they have suggested that

in a system in which economic power was

based upon controlling discrete channels of trade, the surface upon which much
of this trade was carried out (the ocean) would emerge as a site for exercising
power and implementing state violence Thus, the control of trade routes rapidly
became conflated with political domination and military might, and the deep seas
became constructed as a 'force-field' for exercis- ing these forms of power (Mollat du
Jourdin, 1993), and innovations in the means for crossing its expanse were among the
driving forces in modern technological progress (HugilU 1993). Even as the sea became an
essential arena for the gathering and expression of social power , nascent international law
clearly placed the ocean outside the realm of state territoriality . Incorporation of ocean space within the
borders of the state could interfere with its function as a circulation surface, and
during this era circulation was the dominant means by which states accumulated
the era be renamed the age of transport capitalism. It follows that

wealth. Thus, although the 1493 Papal Bull and the 1494 Treaty of Tordcsillas are often described as dividing the seas between Spain
and Portugal (sec Gold, 1981, page 35; Grotius, 1916, pages 37-38), a careful reading reveals that these documents were specifically worded
to avoid any implication that the seas were to be partitioned. Rather, each state was granted exclusive policing powers in its respective

By con- structing the ocean as a space where states

competed for influence and use, but not for outright possession, the mercantilistera ocean-space regime preserved both the inter- state competition and the
channeled circulation that were essential attributes of the era's political-economic
system. With the Industrial Revolution of the mid-eighteenth century, the spatiality of capitalism underwent a transformation, as did
region of the sea (Steinberg, 1996a, page 176- 183).

the social perception and regulation of the sea. Although the dominant use of the seatransportation of commodities across its surface
remained constant with the previous era, its perceived significance in the context of political economy changed markedly. At the root of this
transformation in political economy were a host of new opportunities for investing in land space. Following from these opportunities, the
industrial era's rationalist 'development discourse'justified the reification of developable places and denigrated the spaces between.
According to the discourse, all societies were to 'develop' themselves by identifying what they produced best and directing investment

Through the application of reason to investment decisions, a

society could progress (Sachs, 1992; Watts, 1993). Development was to occur in 'territories'units of land
space that could be bounded, governed, planned for, and 'emptied'and 'filled'according to generalizablc
rules of profit maximization (Sack, 1986; Steinberg, 1994). The development of a place
through the rational application of spatially fixed investmentswas equated with
enlightenment, progress, and civilization. Capital circulation remained an important aspect of political
toward production of that good.

economy during this era, but, at least in the popular imagination, fixity and development replaced it as the essential activities of economic
life. Gold's account of the lack of attention given to trade at the Congress of Vienna (1815) exemplifies how, during the industrial era, little
formal attention was given to capital mobility, or, more specifically, to the ocean as a space of capital circulation: "For most European
countries, commerce was no longer 'fashionable' nor something on which great amounts of energy needed to be expended. Commerce was
considered to be sufficiently self-motivated and self-perpetuating that whatever loose regulation it needed could be supplied by lesser
government bodies. As long as commerce could provide a convenient tax base for government ambitions, necessary employment for the
expanding population, and new markets for imports and exports, it was left to its own devices. Ocean transportation, as a part of the

the ocean became

discursively constructed as removed from society and the terrestrial places of
progress, civilization, and development. Movement across spaces that resisted
development, although necessary, was rhetorically defined as a subordinate activity
outside social organization. The ocean was to serve capitalism as an empty space
across which the free trade of liberal capitalist fantasy could transpire without
hindrance from natural or social obstacles. As an 'other' space, the ocean was
con- structed not so much as a space within which power could be deployed (as it had been during the mercantilist era, when
control of channeled circulation was an essential component in garnering social power) but as an empty space across
which power could be projected (Latour, 1986; Law, 1986).< > Evidence of this abstraction of ocean space during the
commercial structure, fitted well into this laissez-faire philosophy" (Gold, 1981, page 80). Thus

industrial era can be observed in both the regulatory and representational spheres. When regulations were required for certain maritime
activities, such as shipping or piracy, policymakers continued the mercantilist-era practice of avoiding territorial control by sovereign states.
However, unlike in the previous era, the sea was now also discursively constructed as a subordi- nate arena beyond the social practice of
formal interstate competition. In the case of shipping, states largely abandoned global shipping regulation, leaving the industry to govern
itself and, in some cases, effectively giving national industry associations the authority to negotiate international treaties (Gold, 1981).
Recognizing shipping's dependence on the maintenance of an indivisible ocean, hegemonic players developed a series of regulations and
institutions that reflected their diverse interests and their desire for systemic stability rather than promoting regimes crudely calculated to
multi- ply their social power and maximize short-term accumulation of economic rents (Cafruny, 1987). A somewhat different route was

piracy, but here too regulation in ocean space was crafted so as to define the ocean as a space beyond state
ships not claiming allegiance and
rootedness in one of the civilised 'places' of the landwere declared to be of the
wild, of the anticivilization of the sea. They were defined in international law as hostis humani generis (the
taken with regard to

competi- tion (Thomson, 1994). Ships not flying a national flagthat is,

enemy of humankind), a designation that transcended the division of land space into sovereign states and left pirate ships legitimate prey

. The axis of social power enabling regulation of piracy

in ocean space was thus scripted as a 'free-for-all' between the forces of land
space and ocean space rather than a structured, intrasystemic competition among
land powers seeking riches from assertions of social power in the sea.
for ships of all land-based 'civilized' nations

Answers to

AT: Perm
Western epistemology is based on a totalizing worldview that
singularizes knowledge and claims an objective understanding that
necessarily excludes other knowledge. To be inclusive is severing out
of the exact reason we critique western epistemology; the only
inclusive approach is the alternative.
Nicholson 8 B.A., The College of Charleston M.A., Indiana University Ph.D., Duke University (Brantley, Spiritual
Organization and Epistemic Rupture: Questing for Zion in Roberto Bolanos The Savage Detectives , volume 8.1 & 8.2, spring & fall 2008,
https://www.academia.edu/738981/Spiritual_Organization_and_Epistemic_Rupture_Questing_for_Zion_in_Roberto_Bolanos_The_Sa
vage_Detectives//SRSL)

To approach knowledge, in the Western/Modern sense of the word, is to

approach a complex colonial systematization of plural existence. When I say
plural existence, I do not mean that the totalizing epistemology of the West is plural in
itself but that it singularizes the plural. It is to say that Western/Modern knowledge
codifies plurality singularly, or through the singularity of locution and does not necessarily
give agency to the cultures/knowledges totalized within its systematic
organization. Let us take the Spanish conquest as an example of the subjugation of autochthonous agency in the name of a
totalizing episteme. A common trend in the disregard of local knowledge in the name of a
grander metanarrative within the New World can be traced from Columbuss arrival through the present day. With the
arrival of Columbus, the Spanish justified the subjugation of the autochthonous populations through the metanarrative of the salvation of
souls. This narrative was, of course, superficial as Columbus merely used religiosity as a means of marketing the continuation of his
exploration of the New World, which in turn paid dividends in resources such as gold and silver that were exotic to Europeans and as a
result were valued commodities. This fact, accompanied by the initial impetus of Columbuss voyage, the exploration of new trade routes to
the Indies, signals that even the pre-Capitalist voyages funded by Ferdinand and Isabelle showed signs of foundational Atlantic mercantile

the subjugation of autochthonous knowledges and religions as a

means of justifying the further exploitation of the New World resources shows
that in this novel historical moment of the conquest of mind, body, and soul, the
inextricable link between economic, epistemic, and spiritual dominance arises .
dominance. Additionally,

But the Spanish conquest of the New World precedes the secularization of knowledge that occurs through the rise of a European middle
class, democratic revolutions, and the rationalization of society. In other words, the example of Spanish colonialism does not adequately
describe the Modern coloniality of knowledge because, in effect, it precedes Modernity. It is during the 18th century that the metanarrative
of reason and the creation of the nation-state displaces the metanarrative of the salvation of souls. Homocentric and democratic

American society purports the rationalization of knowledge based on

the inheritance of Modern European philosophy as their founding narrative , thus
painting the spiritual or the non-eurorational as ontologically inferior in all
aspects. Nonetheless, enlightened society continues to be economically dependent on trade with the colonies showing the
continuation of the pre-modern Spanish colonial project on at least one level . Even in Adam Smiths Leyenda Negra ridden account of
European/North

Spains imperial failure, Smith describes Englands dependency on the colonies as a means of maintaining an economic advantage over
other European nations. As Northern Europe, namely France and England, displaces the Spanish religious-based conquest with their own

reason-centered culturally-based conquest, they essentially do little more than displace

the discourse of the salvation of souls with the discourse of civilization, while at the
same time maintaining the same colonial dynamic under the guise of a new name . The
Northern European approach then falls victim to its own critique due to the fact that the rationality that Moderns use as a measuring stick
to classify and organize society and existence in the process of turning ontology into a commodity of knowledge within the universal
academic system repeats the centrality of religion in the Spanish conquest. Christ is simply replaced by Kant and Descartes, and salvation is

eurorationality that pretends to be an objective ahistorical entity that

grants itself the right to codify and organize the world.
replaced by the

Perm doesnt solve-policymakers will always exclude indigenous

views for western epistemologies
Tsosie 12-Proffessor of Law-Indian legal program, Faculty fellow-Center for law and global
affairs, Affiliate Professor-American Indian studies program (Rebecca Tsosie, indigenous
peoples and epistemic justice: science, ethics, and human rights,
https://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/1185/87WLR1133.pdf?
sequence=1)//JL

many of the conflicts between indigenous peoples and scientists

revolve around fundamental differences in their respective systems of thought,
particularly as these concern the categories of experience that are relevant to
understanding the natural world. These epistemological differences, in turn,
heavily influence the formation of public policy and can operate to cause forms of
epistemic injustice for the affected groups. Within the United States, domestic
policymaking is dependent upon a model of secular pluralism. Secular pluralism
privileges Western European understandings of science, economics, and
technology as the appropriate constructs for domestic public policy. Although
indigenous peoples have analogous concepts, such as traditional ecological
knowledge, these understandings are routinely disregarded within public policy
discourse. Policymakers and jurists tend to understand indigenous cultural
worldviews as religious beliefs and marginalize these interests as matters of
private conscience. To the extent that Western society excludes indigenous
worldviews from important social interactions within domestic policy structures,
indigenous peoples are likely to suffer epistemic forms of injustice. In most cases, these
As demonstrated above,

harms will not be seen or appreciated by others, meaning that the legal system will be unable to provide any redress. Miranda Frickers

epistemic injustice facilitates an understanding of the subtle ways in

which indigenous peoples have been excluded from full participation in shaping
domestic law and public policy. Although Frickers account is potentially illuminating for all societies, this Article
account of

discusses its utility for understanding the effect of U.S. public policy upon Native peoples in this country.

Perm doesnt solve-western epistemologies dont take into

account ethics that are key to indigenous knowledge productionthe west also suppresses indigenous thinking
Tsosie 12-Proffessor of Law-Indian legal program, Faculty fellow-Center for law and global
affairs, Affiliate Professor-American Indian studies program (Rebecca Tsosie, indigenous
peoples and epistemic justice: science, ethics, and human rights,
https://digital.law.washington.edu/dspace-law/bitstream/handle/1773.1/1185/87WLR1133.pdf?
sequence=1)//JL

defines science on a more fundamental level as the pursuit of knowledge,

and claims that Native peoples and Western peoples equally participate in this
pursuit. However, they do so in different ways and with different understandings
of the universe. In this way, the effort of Western scientists to define the
parameters of a valid pursuit of knowledge may negate alternative accounts
that would reveal valuable information. Another danger is that Western scientists
will seek an incomplete form of knowledge and perhaps unwittingly endanger the
environment or human health. This is one problem with contemporary scientific
innovation that seeks to mine indigenous traditional knowledge but rejects the
ethical constraints that indigenous cultural norms place on such knowledge. In
sum, many conflicts between scientists and indigenous peoples result from
fundamental differences on what science encompasses and what forms of
Little Bear

knowledge might be used to access information for societys benefit. A second set
of conflicts arises from the use of science as a tool of public policy. In the public policy sense,
science becomes a tool to effectuate a particular set of interests . As the following discussion
demonstrates, conflicts between Western scientists and indigenous peoples typically
arise because indigenous peoples are treated as the objects of Western scientific
discovery rather than as equal participants in the creation of knowledge or public policy (as a shared
endeavor). This is not the fault of science or scientists. It is largely the fault of a public policy discourse that uses terms such as

knowledge and benefit as though they are neutral and fully capable of intercultural exchange. In fact, the terms are
often used as political devices to advance or suppress particular interests and
values.

AT: Enviro Prag

Environmental pragmatism can never truly incorporate ocean agency
into the decision making process
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

An obvious shortcoming of a pragmatic approach to environmental decision

making such as Nortons, with its focus on policy and practical outcomes, is that the
potential remains for the loud voices of the majority or powerful elite to
be reinforced. Representation in real-world liberal democracies is affected by
social and economic inequalities. Differences in income, wealth, status,
knowledge, and communicative power between actors create
distortions to democratic process. Hence, we must ask, as Eckersley (2002) does, how
we can account for the disparities between those with communicative and others forms of power
and those without? Where are the safeguards for a just and informed hearing? Examined from the
perspective of non- humans and other marginalised and oppressed classes and
groups, there may be little or nothing to gain in such a process.
Eckersley (2002) suggests that strategies of empowerment and special forms of representation for those who
are under-represented in debates and policy discussions can help ensure better levels of
communicative equality in democratic processes. I describe Latours (2004) model of the collective process, below, as one way of
providing or, at least, improving communicative equality among actors.

while
environmental pragmatism may be able to account for non-humans in the
democratic process indirectly by being inclusive of some ocean views that advocate for the value and/or agency of nonhumans, it falls short of guaranteeing specific representational rights to non-humans
as a matter of procedure in the democratic process.
A further limitation of Nortons pragmatic approach resonates with a point I made earlier in relation to stewardship:

AT: Environmental Movements

Mainstream environmental movements otherize the indigenous
because of cultural malpractice by Eurocentric standards
leading to cultural genocide and xenophobia
Kitossa 2k (Tamari, writer and environmental activist, Prof @ Brock University,
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Same+difference
%3A+biocentric+imperialism+and+the+assault+on+indigenous...-a030002334,
12/1/00, acc. 7/11/14, arh)

Efforts to combat eco-imperialism increasingly focus on culture as the site of

articulating critiques, struggle, and solutions to complex problems. The discourses
articulated by some White environmental and conservation organizations are being hotly
contested by radical White scholars, and world majority peoples( 1) and scholars. George
Wenzel's (1991) Animal Rights Versus Human Rights, aptly captures what is at the heart of the growing conflict between some
environmentalists and animal rights activists, and large segments of Indigenous peoples in Canada, the USA, and indeed worldwide.

Variously called "putting nature first" and "allocation for nature,"

the biocentric discourse prioritizes environmental justice over social
justice . In so doing, this discourse strikes directly at efforts to redress injustices to
Aboriginal peoples. In keeping with this discourse, biocentrists such as David Orton argue
that, "any resolution, even if respectful of the rights of Native peoples, would still
be disrespectful of the rights of nature" (Orton 1995: 15, see also Federation of Ontario Naturalists (FON) 1993:
vi, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) 1993: 27). Who determines the rights of nature? Aboriginal
peoples? Colonizers? Nature itself? If nature is to speak for itself who translates
its language? I believe that determining the rights of nature -- as though nature
articulates itself outside the boundaries of culture -- is at issue in biocentric
discourse. Consistent with western culture, which tends to view the
world in binaries, biocentrists construct social justice and
environmental justice as mutually exclusive. Consequently, where pre-existing
Indigenous rights ostensibly stand in the way of environmental justice , one of two
solutions is recommended by biocentrists. " Choice" one -- cultural genocide . The charge of
genocide against conservationists, environmentalists and animal rights activists
who fall within the rubric of biocentrism is apt in that they seek direct and
purposeful disruption of millennia old methods of socio-cultural organization
techniques which center on Aboriginal land and animal use. For example, one anonymous deep
ecologist at the height of the anti-sealing campaign argued, "To me, Inuit culture is a dying one. I see my
job as helping it to go quickly" (cited in Wenzel 1991: 5). And go Aboriginal cultures will if their right to hunt is
terminated without resistance. Georges Erasmus, among other Aboriginal leaders, observes that without the right to harvest wildlife

aboriginal people [will] lose both their livelihood and

their way of life" (cited in WWF 1993: 4). In this context, genocide is more than the physical
extinction of Aboriginal ethnic groups as was the case with the Tobacco, Neutral, Tsetaut and the Beothuks
(Purich 1986: 19). It also includes actions "intended ... to signify aiming at the
destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups...." (Lemkin, cited in
according to tradition, custom, and necessity, "

Robinson and Quinney 1985: 37; see also Craven 1998: 22). Consistent with Lemkin's view, the 1991 Draft Universal Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples asserts that any effort to deprive Aboriginal peoples of their traditional lifeways associated with the "total
environment of the land, waters, air and sea, which they have traditionally occupied and otherwise used" (cited in Knudtson and Suzuki
1992: 206) are acts of aggression and genocide. I assert that to separate environmental justice from social justice leads inexorably to the

Choice" two, seemingly

less strident and offensive -- the abrogation of Aboriginal rights . According to this perspective,
Indigeneity is a strict function of legal statute, outside of which, Aboriginal land
and animal use would have no support (Australians for Animals 1999, Wenzel 1991: 160). The West Coast Antiperpetuation of Canada's recorded efforts to physically and culturally eliminate the "Indian." "

Whaling Society (WCAWS) argues, "It is our belief that whales hold an inherent biological value, which should be respected and studied,

). It is ironic that no
mention is made by the WCAWS that "studying" the environment has been a
principle means for Western Europeans to exploit nature to their benefit and to
the detriment of others. Thus, in the name of environmental protection, the
and no group has the right legal or otherwise to hunt and kill whales" [my emphasis] (WCAWS 1999

rights of Aboriginal peoples need to be curtailed or abrogated

altogether

(FON 1993: 26, WWF 1993: 6). In an overly sanguine position taken by Donald Purich, the likes of biocentrists will

have little success in abrogating Aboriginal rights because it would take "a `world reversal' in Canadian law to take away Indian rights"
(Purich 1986: 48). History however, has shown that in spite of laws, or because of them, the desires of Europeans have generally overruled
the inherent rights of Aboriginal nations in Canada (Sundown 1998: 5) and the world over. Unless Aboriginals can successfully resist the
sustained onslaught to disinherit them of their lands and life-ways Canada will have succeeded in its "Final Solution" to the Indian
"problem." However, if the Chiapas, Kanaesatake and Kahnawake rebellions are any indication, regardless of how we in consumer society
may feel about such uprisings, Aboriginal peoples will not be accomplices to their own cultural demise. In defending Aboriginal hunting

: The animal rights perspective is culture-specific. It takes a

position on the issue of Inuit consumptive use of wildlife based in its own
ideological evaluation of Western philosophy and ethics and its assumptions
about the relationship of Inuit culture to southern society. In this regard, it deserves analysis and
challenge (Wenzel 1991: 37). Revealing the Eurocentric universal pronouncement
rights, George Wenzel maintains

on environmental protection, Wenzel draws attention to the

reproduction and perpetuation of White supremacist domination of
"Other" cultures and nature itself.

Building on Wenzel's critique, I will explore the moral and political

philosophy which guides the discourse of the biocentric perspective through an analysis of its location within race and culture as relations of
ruling (Higginbotham 1992: 251, see also Bock 1989: 15, Smith 1990: 6).

AT: Biocentrism
Biocentrism is inherently racist aboriginal knowledge
production puts white, Eurocentric knowledge production
under scrutiny
Kitossa 2k (Tamari, writer and environmental activist, Prof @ Brock University,

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Same+difference
%3A+biocentric+imperialism+and+the+assault+on+indigenous...-a030002334,
12/1/00, acc. 7/11/14, arh)
Analytical Framework Inspired by Edward Said's (1979) Orientalism, this essay may be called an Occidentalist critique of biocentrism. In
returning the gaze I attempt a tentative but critical elaboration of the race, and cultural consciousness which informs biocentrism.

the environmental racism movement demonstrates that class, gender, and

race, are significant factors determining who is disproportionately affected by
toxins, and even how environmental concerns are framed in the public domain (see
Elsewhere,

Bryant 1995, Bullard 1994). This essay differs but is complementary to that literature. I lay out an initial exploration of the methodologies

White racism and imperialism in the environmental movement are

performed through discourses such as biocentrism. Some `self-evident truths'
follow the actions and political philosophy of biocentrists -- cultural chauvinism
and anti-Aboriginal racism. I am not concerned to argue that all advocates and all of what represents biocentrism is
and processes by which

racist. There is no need for this. Given a "saturated field of racial visibility" (Butler 1993: 15) which has historically given `white' skinned
people privilege in terms of social, cultural and material value, even if individual White people are not racists and reject their whiteness,
they are automatically conferred a constellation of rights denied others who are not White. Like the dynamics of the physical principle that
energy cannot be created nor destroyed, whiteness is discursively and unconsciously constructed for its beneficiaries as a fact of the present
with neither past nor future -- it just exists -- and has a right to exist. In this way it is forgotten that whiteness can be abolished because it is

spite of the constructedness of whiteness

biocentrists enact their discourse of environmental protection as though the
constellated relations of ruling which place social value on their whiteness within
political, linguistic and experiential fields are beyond their recognition. Hence denial. For
a matter of social contract rather than a natural law. In

instance, the West Coast Anti-Whaling Society, although an organization largely of White people, argue that their anti-whaling stance
against the Makah have nothing to do with race (Canadian Press Newswire 1998: 2). In protesting the Makah whale hunt, Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society too has attempted to demonstrate that the organization is not racist. It did so, in a divide and conquer strategy, which
helped frame media accounts of the Makah as obstinate ananchronists, by sending an entirely Native crew into the waters of Neah Bay to
interfere with the hunt (Piatote 1998: 42). In so doing, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society constructed a discourse of Aboriginal versus

. With both organizations denying

White privilege, while being trapped within the Eurocentric preferred discourse
of polar evaluatives -- good vs. bad -- Aboriginal accusations of racism have
transfixed biocentrism under the light of scrutiny. The resolution to the
contradiction in which biocentrists find themselves is increasingly being worked
out through the exertion of White power and denial of that power itself, rather
than through an honest recognition and admission of how White privilege has
shaped biocentrism's interventions in Aboriginal life.
Aboriginal, rather than a European versus Aboriginal discursive framework

AT: Science Good

Our critique is about opening up space for alternative non-western
epistemologies, it does not deny that science as a practice, rather it
contests an unrelenting faith in how science operates in society.
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

science is tied up with certain values and beliefs is an important matter to address because
there is great store attached to the idea that science produces objective
knowledge. Ocean matters are widely perceived as scientific concerns: Government institutions, industry, environmentalists and
That fisheries

other interest groups, the media and the public draw heavily on scientific advice to interpret marine environmental issues. Scientific

Thus, science has a profound

effect on the way we think of, and interact with, oceans in Western societies .
In recent decades, the failures of fisheries science have undermined claims to its
authority to guide the sustainable human exploitation of oceans . Rather,
assessments are used in shaping regulatory decisions and other protection initiatives.

uncertainty in the capacity of science to develop theories and make accurate predictions about complex and dynamic ocean environments
has come to the fore.20 I have contextualised MPA science as a response to this uncertainty.
MPA science employs a more inclusive approach to the production of knowledge than fisheries science because it must account for political,
economic and social factors. However, in discussing MPA science, I draw attention to the current trajectory toward marine reserves and the
perpetual propensity to define oceans in scientific terms. This makes oceans susceptible to conceptions and relations that place humans
outside of them.

major Western discourses that

structure contemporary human-ocean relations. Fisheries science and MPA science demonstrate how
the most widely accepted variants of ocean-related science constrain our
understandings of, and possibilities for, interacting with oceans in Western
culture.
The shortfalls of science point to the need to open up assessment, debate and
discussion about oceans through processes that allow a broader range of
communities, human and non-human, to contribute . Hence, my dissertation continues to sail onward
guided by the thesis that improved knowledge about oceans will be generated , and
subsequently successfully applied, if greater inclusivity of perspectives about the
oceans are structured into policy debates.
Moreover, a space must be made for oceans themselves. We need a democratic process
that provides for the agency of oceans, so that oceans are not defined by science
from the outset. Rather, questions about what oceans areresources, for examplecan be contested. In this way, knowledge can
This chapter has, then, continued the focus on that part of my thesis concerned with the

better be connected to actions that advance social and natural well being.

The critique of ocean science presented in this Chapter is not intended to argue
against all scientific understandings of the oceans or scientific
solutions to the vast problems it faces. I suggest science as it is actually
practised, not in its idealised form, is critical to developing less exploitative
human-ocean relations, and this idea is a major part of the discussion of the final Chapter of this dissertation
Science is never neutral, ocean sciences always reflect cultural,
political and social biases which attempt to further a specific agenda
or profit
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

Science is the dominant Western discourse for expressing knowledge about the
external and physical world or reality. Indeed, in Western societies the understandings of scientists

are regarded as the most legitimate form of knowledge for policy and management
decisions about the natural world (Blount 2003; Braidotti et al. 1995; Simmons 1993). That the pronouncements of
science are so extraordinarily powerful in Western societies in cultivating our understanding of reality is largely to do
with the perception that science provides the most rational methods we have for investigating the world and, practised
properly, will yield objective knowledgean

accurate and reliable account of the external and

physical world, free of bias and able to predict future events. 2
The last few decades have brought a surge of criticism against the idea of
universal and value-free science in its pursuit of truth.3 For all its achievements, scientific
knowledge is always, in part, a product of social, political and cultural worldviews. 4
The worldviews that inform scientific knowledges underpin the biases that exist
in scientific discourses and are made manifest through specific relationships with power. Bleier writes in this
regard:

while the work of discourse appears to be uncovering truth, it rests upon and conceals

the struggle
between those who have the power to discourse and those who do not . Both by their
practices of exclusion and their definition of what is, what is to be discussed, and what is false or true, discourses
produce rather than reveal truth. The conditions and circumstances under which the discourses
take place reflect conditions of social power at the time and thus themselves define the theories and practices (such as
scientific methodology) brought to bear in the discourse, consequently determining outcome. (1984, 194)
A broad expression of this insight is that specific

developments in scientific knowledge can be

interpreted in terms of the economic and social priorities of military agencies,
corporations, governmental bodies and individuals who finance and profit from
their creation and application (Hallen 1989; Taylor 2005). The link between science and vested
interests undermines claims to objectivity.
Historical studies of the ebb and flow of the development of the ocean sciences in the
twentieth century by and large reflects an alignment with powerful Western military and
economic interests.5 Certainly the two major peaks in research interest and funding that aided the proper
establishment of the ocean sciences have been aligned with the economic and military interests of Western nations. The
first peak transpired in response to a declining fish catch in the North Atlantic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century. This first peak is my major concern in this Chapter, but it is noted that World War II sparked the second peak
(Deacon 1978).6

AT: Science Good Indigenous Knowledge Better

Indigenous methodologies are mutually exclusive with western
science-they use two contrasting data sets in order to draw
conclusions
Hester and Cheney 01-Professor of American Indian Studies University of Arts and
Sciences of Oklahoma, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha (Lee Hester and Jim
Cheney, truth and native american epistemology,
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~morourke/524-phil/Readings/hester.pdf)//JL

there is no question that the tribal method of gathering

information is more sophisticated and certainly more comprehensive than
Western science. In most tribal traditions, no data are discarded as unimportant
or irrelevant. Indians consider their own individual experiences, the accumulated wisdom of the
community that has been gathered by previous generations, their dreams, visions, and prophecies, and any information
received from birds, animals, and plants as data that must be arranged, evaluated, and understood as
a unified body of knowledge. This mixture of data from sources that the Western
scientific world regards as highly unreliable and suspect produces a consistent
perspective on the natural world. It is seen by tribal peoples as having wide application. Knowledge
about plants and birds can form the basis of ethics, government, and economics
as well as provide a means of mapping a large area of land. This epistemological
style of openness contrasts with the focus on extracting very speci fic pieces of
information, understood within an equally specific set of concepts that
characterizes the controlled experiment of modern science. Deloria in fact
contrasts Native American epistemology with Thomas Kuhns understanding of science as
proceeding within paradigms and as being therefore highly selective both in its
attention to data and the problems on which it chooses to focus . Native American
In an epistemological sense,

epistemological style, as depicted by Deloria, is even more radical than I have so far indicated. The principles of epistemological method so
far mentioned are at least straightforwardly epistemological. But Deloria goes further. Many statements coming from Native American

Native American
world views are best understood as principles of epistemological method of a
rather different sort than those so far mentioned. Consider, for example, Delorias portrait of the universe
worlds that non-Native Americans would understand to be statements of belief (truth claims) concerning

as a moral universe

AT: Rationality Solves Environment

Western rationalism can never truly care for the environment; the
hyper separated nature is always a secondary concern
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

In liberalism, the individual self is conceived as that which stands apart from an
alien other and denies his own relationship to and dependency on this other
(Plumwood 1993, 142). Prior to Locke, rationality was applied to mind and internal nature (Plato) and mind and external nature

Locke introduced a dualistic structure to mind and the social world

(Descartes).
perhaps
reaching its zenith in British Prime Minister Thatchers famous remark in 1987 that there is no such thing as society (cited in Keays,

the subject is now an alienated

individual as a matter of principle. Plumwood terms this take on the social world as egoism, and she sees it as a
crucial foil in rationalitys instrumentalist intensification.
1987).13 This further expansion of the scope of rationality is important because

In egoism there is no real cause for any individual to demonstrate their separateness from particular objects, such as specified natural or

a connection and relationship must be demonstrated to a sceptical world, and to make

is only readily demonstrated if it is an instrumental one.

social phenomena. It is more the case that

things more difficult, that relationship

Thus if we return to Lockes analogy in Plumwoods analysis, we see that:
If we divide a persons goals into primary, non-interchangeable ones pursued for their own sake, and secondary ones pursued as contingent

in the case of
enlightened self-interest the welfare of others can figure only in the
secondary set, never the first, primary set of ends. The resulting agents are conceived as
hyperseparated and self-contained because no internal relations of
interest or desire bind people to one another, and primary goal sets are exclusive ,
without overlap. The primary interest set of such a rational agent is assumed to concern only himself. The welfare of
and intersubstitutable means to the primary ones, then the thesis of philosophical egoism is that even

others may be considered, but only in ways which treat it as secondary to primary goals. (1993, 144)

AT: Impacts Reversible

Anthropogenic phenomena have been empirically proven to
have irreversible ecological effects
Norton 7 (Simon D. Norton, PhD (Department of Maritime Studies, University of Wales), 10/01/2007, The natural environment
as a salient stakeholder: non-anthropocentrism, ecosystem stability and the nancial markets,
http://www.lib.umich.edu/articles/details/FETCH-proquest_dll_13764222611.)//ky

Distinction between anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic phenomen a, risk and

uncertainty In the context of phenomena occurring in the natural environment, a distinction should be made between anthropogenic and

the former comprises the

effects of human intervention in the natural environment while the latter is confined to biologically
or ecologically rooted events. Examples of the former would be deforestation to make way for increased
soya production, deliberate introduction of new species of plant life into an environment to enhance food
production, or the cultivation of genetically modified crops to prevent pest infestation. An extreme
example of human intervention would include the attempt by the former Soviet
Union to become a global producer of cotton by diverting rivers feeding the Aral
Sea. The result was an environmental catastrophe; the Sea effectively dried up
and became desert, the attempt to create a cottongrowing region a failure .
Ecological damage was irreversible as a consequence of this anthropogenic
intervention, the natural environment unable to return to the status quo ante due
to the formation of desert where there had previously been sea. Examples of nonnon-anthropogenic causes. Minteer et al. (2004) have averred to the distinction as follows:

anthropogenic causation would include forest fires started by sunlight striking dry forest floor debris, floods, evolution of species in
response to naturally occurring phenomena such as meteorologically derived shortening or lengthening of seasonal weather patterns.

AT: Oceans Resilient

The belief that the ocean will be resilient from human impact is false,
reject their scientific knowledge
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

Underpinning these aspirations is a long-standing and widely held belief in

Western societies that oceans are safe from overfishing and other forms of
human induced degradation because of its size and depth and the abundance of ocean dwellers.
We can recall an early expression of this view in Grotius assumption in Mare Liberum that the ocean would remain in the
same condition in perpetuity as when it was first created by nature (Grotius 1916, 27). Professor Thomas Henry Huxley
(1825- 1895), esteemed nineteenth-century evolutionary biologist and President of Londons Royal Society (1883-1885), is
another influential progenitor of this view. In addressing concerns about falling numbers of fish catches in the late
nineteenth century, Huxley (1883) maintained the view that fish could not in fact be exhausted in the open oceans because
of their abundance.8
There were at the same time far less optimistic views about the effect of fishing on fisheries. Ray Lankester (1847-1929),
another of Britains most prominent scientists, noted both sides of the debate at Londons International Fishery Exhibition
in 1883. Lankester observed that some participants took the position that protective measures and regulations were
necessary to avoid disaster for salt-water fisheries (as was the case for fresh-water fisheries), while others argued for the
removal of all restrictions to quench the spirit of enterprise (cited in Smith 1994, 38). However Lankester himself argued
that, [i]t is a mistake to suppose that the whole ocean is practically one vast store-house (cited in Smith 1994, 39).

Some prominent scientists continued to express their belief in the bounteousness

of the oceans well into the twentieth century. For example, British biologist Michael Graham states:

It seems that the effects of man on the ocean has been small, that there remain relatively untouched sources of wealth, and
that, even if these are greatly exploited in the future, the ocean will remain much as it is and has been during the human
epoch. It may be rash to put any limit on the mischief of which man is capable, but it would seem that those hundred and
more million cubic miles of water, containing every natural chemical element and probably every group of bacteria,
supporting every phylum of animals, moving on the surface from the equator toward the poles, and returning below,
stirred to many fathoms depth by the windit would, indeed, seem here at the beginning and the end is the great matrix
that man can hardly sully and cannot appreciably despoil. (1956, 501) 9
In summary, scientific

research of fisheries in the twentieth century has been directed

by political forces toward the critical problem of the day as defined by social and economic concerns . The
development of fisheries science has, furthermore, been informed by entrenched
cultural beliefs and attitudes about the character of oceans. Those beliefs hold the
oceans and ocean dwellers to be inexhaustible and resilient to the impacts of
fishing and that there is the potential for ever-increasing fishing yields facilitated
by the application of science and technologies. Scientific enquiry into concerns about
falling fish numbers of fish is not an objective enterprise. Cultural assumptions and beliefs,
political and socio-economic interests, technological and scientific developments have all worked to direct
scientific lines of enquiry and shape the theories and practices of fisheries
science. To better understand why the knowledge and practices of fisheries science have taken the form they have, we
must think about them in the context in which they develop.

AT: Otherizing the Ocean

Status quo environmental destruction necessitates an examination of
human/ocean relations. Rejecting the western notion of the ocean as
alien is key
Alaimo 11 (Stacy, Department of English, UT Arlington, Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 10/31, New
Materialisms, Old Humanisms, or, Following the Submersible, http://www.uta.edu/english/alaimo/pdfs/NORA%20Follow%20the
%20Submersible-1.pdf)

it unravels the Human as such, by tracing the

material interchanges between each human body and the substances, flows, and
forces that are ultimately global in nature. The current crisis in ocean ecologies
calls us to examine human entanglements with the far reaches of pelagic and benthic zonesthe very
Although trans-corporeality begins as an anthropocentric moment,

limits of trans-corporeality. It is difficult scientifically and imaginativelyto trace how terrestrial human bodies are accountable to and

the Western conception of

the ocean as alien, or as so vast as to be utterly impervious to
human harm, encourages a happy ignorance about the state of the
seas. Nonetheless, the ocean creatures themselves embody something akin to the ontologies that new materialisms and post-humanisms
advocate. Take, for example, the jelly-fish, which seems barely to exist as a creature, not only because it is a body without organs
but because it is nearly indistinguishable from its watery world . Seemingly flimsy and fragile, these
interconnected with as yet unknown creatures at the bottom of the sea; moreover, even

gelatinous creatures are nonetheless thriving, provoking fear of a clear planet in which jellies over-populate the degraded oceans, causing

the nekton (swimming organisms) in the

oceans may be considered ecosystem engineers, because, as they transport
themselves, they take a portion of their original environment with them, and
thus they actively support the chemical and biological processes on which they
depend (Breitburg et al. 2010: 194). Thinking with marine life fosters complex mappings of
agencies and interactions in whichfor humans as well as for pelagic and benthic creaturesthere is, ultimately,
no firm divide between mind and matter, organism and environment, self and
world. Thinking with sea creatures may also provoke surprising affinities, from Elizabeth Brown Blackwells feminist musings on the
harm to fisheries, mining operations, ships, and desalination plants. More generally,

parenting duties of male sea-horses (Brown Blackwell 1875: 74) to Eva Haywards recent exploration of what her own being transsexual

Submersing ourselves, descending rather than

transcending, is essential lest our tendencies toward Human exceptionalism
prevent us from recognizing that, like our hermaphroditic, aquatic evolutionary
ancestor,3 we dwell within and as part of a dynamic, intra- active, emergent,
material world that demands new forms of ethical thought and practice . I would like to
knows about being starfish (Hayward 2008: 82).

invite feminists, queer theorists, new materialists, and post- humanists to follow the submersible.

AT: Tragedy of the Commons

The tragedy of the commons is based on a western view of human
nature that ignores alternative human-ocean relations.
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)
Grotius rationale for freedom of the seas was in part a belief that marine dwellers such as fish were inexhaustibly
abundant. In contemporary times this assumption is demonstrated to be incorrect. A

widely held view in

Western resource management discourse about the threat posed by Grotius concept of freedom of the seas
to ocean environments can be summarised as follows: the right of open access exacerbates problems associated with limits
to ocean resources because it continues to facilitate largely unconstrained levels of exploitation of the oceans (Bocking
2004). That is to say, open access provides for each state or individual to pursue their own best interest without regard for
fish or ocean environments. By holding the oceans in common, theoretically they are available for everybody to use but
effectively nobody takes responsibility for their ecological well being.
This view draws upon Hardins influential thesis ,

tragedy of the commons, first published in Science

that freedom in the commons inevitably
leads to a tragedy, which is basically that the gains to each individual user from overexploiting natural resources will always compensate any individual for losses owing to
degradation of the commons. Central to Hardins thesis is the assumption that individuals
will always attempt to maximise their own gains in spite of the wider and long-term consequences.
magazine in 1968. Hardin, a resource economist, argues

In short, he equates the pursuit of ones own best interest in the commons with the irresponsible use of resources.
Hardins thesis has successfully brought attention to the relationship between open access rights to the exploitation of
oceans and ocean dwellers and their subsequent over-exploitation and degradation. Hardin writes:
The oceans of the world continue to suffer from the survival of the philosophy of the commons. Maritime nations still
respond automatically to the shibboleth of the freedom of the seas. Professing to believe in the inexhaustible resources of
the oceans, they bring species after species of fish and whales closer to extinction. (1996, 178)
There is considerable historical evidence to support Hardins thesis, especially since the mid-twentieth century wherein
the alignment of technology and dominant industrial-capitalist discourse has led to the overexploitation and pollution of
ocean environments at unprecedented rates, a topic I discuss in more detail in Chapter 5. Nonetheless, I want to make the
case here that Hardins

notion of commons is narrowly defined and culturally biased

and that this has had important repercussions for how matters of overexploitation and degradation of ocean environments have been addressed . Critically,
Hardin is concerned with commons such as the high seas that are characterised by their right of open access. Open
access commons are not the same as common property regimes historically associated
with villagers in the English commons (Rigsby 1998). Nor are they the same as the communal
property rights of traditional maritime cultures such as Australian coastal
Indigenous groups. These types of commonsoften referred to as communal sea tenure or customary marine
tenurespeak of rights held by a well-defined community of users accompanied by
certain agreed customs or rules involving cooperation (Rigsby 1998; Sharp 2002). The
power to manage these types of commons lies with the community (Fairlie, Hagler and
ORiordan 1995).

Hardins thesis is founded upon a Western orthodox economic interpretation of

human behaviour that each individual will seek to maximise ones self-interest .
This is a construction of human behaviour as unreserved individualism , itself influenced
by scientific notions of competition, predation and parasitism (Rigsby 1998; Sharp 2002). We find this view in Charles
Darwins (1809-1882) influential theory of natural selection (or survival of the fittest), for example, set forth in, The
Origin of Species, and published in 1859.15 The upshot of Hardins cultural bias is that competition among individuals for
natural resources is emphasised at the expense of cooperation (Berkes 1989).
Hardins thesis has had the effect of framing the debate about what is to be done with regard to the over-exploitation and
degradation of ocean environments primarily in terms of two options: unregulated open access or private use-rights
(Rogers 1998). Situations

that are characterised by cooperation between humans in

relation to the non-human natural world have received relatively little attention

in resource management discourse. The trend toward private use-rights in the oceans is a powerful one.
Certainly economists and corporations have embraced private property rights to the ocean environment with enthusiasm
(Fairlie, Hagler and ORiordan 1995). The allocation of private property rights to fish has been the primary response to the
knowledge that there are too many vessels chasing too few fish. The mechanism used to limit access to fisheries is the
individual transferable quota system (ITQs). ITQs are transferable quotas representing fish stocks that can be traded
between fishers and fishing companies. ITQs have the effect of redistributing fish away from communities and individual
fishers into the hands of powerful corporate interests. Under a system of ITQs, cash is what will more and more
determine access to the seas (Fairlie, Hagler and ORiordan 1995, 62).

AT: Nature = Constructed

Understanding nature as socially constructed perpetuates a nature
human dualism that denies the ability for the non-human to define
itself on its terms. The only solution is a case-by-case reflection that
always recognizes the co-agency of nature, including oceans.
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

discourse that proposes humans construct nature carries a risk

of hiding or denying the agency of non-human nature and the ecological
dependence of humans upon nature (Plumwood 2001). A great deal of social constructivist theorising does not, of
Alternatively, de-naturalising

course, dispense with the independence of nature but, importantly, reminds us of the social character of naturean understanding
Plumwood is attuned to. Nonetheless, what Plumwood wants to promote is a more concise, careful, politically strategic approach in
developing theories about the social character of nature. Thus, she elaborates on her critique of the construction of nature as follows:
Philosophical concepts and terminology need to be sensitive to our present problems and context, and in this context it seems misleading at

To talk of construction is in many

contexts to imply that what is often mere influence or impact is actually control,
to suggest that because we humans have an (often blind) impact or effect on the
biosphere we can produce the outcomes we want. It is also to suggest that we can
reconstruct it, when we cannot even reconstruct a birds feather . [The term constructivism]
best to talk about humans constructing nature in any general way.

can involve serious overestimations of human contributions in a range of cases, and invite slippery slides into implications of control that
are very dangerous in the present circumstances. (Plumwood 2001, 19)

Plumwood (2001) is similarly critical of images of the production of nature that attempt
to supplant the construction of nature. This criticism extends to theorists such as Smith, for example, who
theorises that to view nature as a product will defy, the conventional, sacrosanct separation of nature and society (1984, xiv). Smith is
inspired by anti-essentialist feminist critiques of the ideological equation of women and nature (1996, 50), and argues from within this
frame that the production of nature idea:
gets beyond the powerful fetishism of a nature-in-itself to focus on the social relationship with nature. It takes seriously the
constructedness of nature at the turn of the twenty-first century, but it does so in such a way that it incorporates material with conceptual
construction. The production of nature is as much a cultural as it is an economic process and should be understood in the broadest sense of
transforming received natures. (1996, 50)
According to Smith, the image of the production of nature is justified under capitalism because human society has put itself at the centre
of nature (1984, xiv), so much so that nature bears the indelible trace of labor (1996, 52).

the image of the production of nature is overgeneralised, onesided and monolithic in its recognition of agency (2001, 19). Humans are placed on
the active side of the dualism and the non-human on the passive side, rather than
allowing for the possibility of equal and mutual distribution of activity and
passivity (Plumwood 2001). For Plumwood (2001), one-sided narratives of humans producing nature do not allow for the possibility
For Plumwood, however,

of humans and nature co- producing. Plumwood (2001, 20) maintains:

The productivists hyperbolized concept that humans produce alternative natures could be restated in more modest and less misleading
terms as the idea that our actions can contribute (often unwittingly) to bringing about alternative forms or states of nature. ... As a general
model for human relations to nature, the production metaphor vastly overstates human causal contributions.

In re-thinking nature in non-dualist terms, Plumwoods critique of boundary breakdown between the social
and natural is instructive. She points out that boundary breakdowns that subsume nature into the social imply lack of respect, and are
implicated in projects of colonising and erasing the other (Plumwood 2001, 22).

Plumwood calls for sensitivity to context, which requires us to

critically examine situations and instances on a case-by-case basis . In
some instances we will need to highlight the social character of nature while in
others natures independence and agency. We need not employ images of construction or production of
nature but can develop pluralistic, context-sensitive concepts of influence,
interaction and mutuality (2001, 19). In this way, human actions will be more compatible
with a project that seeks to recognise nature as a sphere of agency and co-agency.

Alternatives

Generic Alternative Solvency

Changing our relationship to the ocean is key
Jacques 06 Professor of political science at Central Florida (Peter, Globalization and the World Ocean, p. 10-11)
The Borgese Test Most simply, sustainability is the convergence of improving social, political, economic, and ecological conditions
(Goodland I995). In what I am calling the "Borgese Test," I specify what this means for the ocean. Borgese was a political scientist and
international-law scholar at Dalhousie University in Canada, as well as a strident advocate for the ocean and hunun justice. Moreover, along
with her colleague and Maltese delegate, Arvid Pardoe, she was a sincere advocate for the "common heritage of humankind" (chapter 3)
provision within the Law of the Sea, which intends to distribute resources from the high sea soil to the poor and the cause of international
development. Borgese wrote several important documents, but The Oceanic Circle (published in I 998) was among her most important

The Oceanic Circle describes sustainable ocean governance, and she uses
. Nonhierarchical and
nonviolent social relations should inform local management of resources with
global cosmopolitan consciousness (knowing that what one locality does affects
and has a responsibility to others). This is what she meant by making "oceanic
circles," which she believed reflected the actual organization of the ocean itself.
Her plea is for radical democracy, nonviolence, and material equity, which are
essential to nonhierarchical relations. Importantly, global equity means that no one is deprived of basic needs. It
does not imply equal shares of goods or wealth. Further, she argues that this social change can occur as
societies develop a deepening relationship with the global ocean . This
requires grassroots empowerment to make global governance accountable;
nonviolence; knowledge of interdisciplinarity; and global North-South equity , some
of which is articulated by Gandhi in his poem "Oceanic Circles" (Borgese I998). R esources should be comanaged
through decentralized democratic authority, with the aim of using and improving ecological productivity
and function, coordinated with national, regional, and global governance (part of "comanagen1ent"). North-South equity
implies that material conditions of the industrialized countries should not
impoverish poor countries. Interdisciplinary science is used to avoid hierarchical knowledge-based power to approach
contributions.

Gandhian thought to make her case for saving the seas and people who are dependent on them

complex environmental problematiques with "solutiques," or holistic global solutions. I impose on this definition the expectation that
sustainability is a set of long-term processes, instead of an ideal which can easily become a form of authoritarian design from above; I
believe Borgese would find this acceptable (see Lee I993; Capra 2002). In sum, sustainability is the evolution of nonviolent governance
accountable to multiple levels of human organization ensuring global human material equity and productive ecologies through
interdisciplinary knowledge. I will refer to this definition of sustainability as the "Borgese Test." One region cannot live unsustainably

If the North lives

off of and undermines Southern ecology while the South lives in squalor, social
and ecological sustainability is endangered, to varying degrees, around the world.
without endangering the livelihoods of the rest. This is captured in Borgese' s ideas of North-South equity.

Also note that sustainability could be defined as simple stocks and flows of energy and material, but I use Borgese' s ideal because it

social hierarchy, often

empowered through violence, allows for ecological resources to become
concentrated and overexploited, reinforcing the hierarchy and flow of resources
and potentially triggering scarcity and more violence, ad infinitum until the
system reaches impenetrable limits forcing rearrangement. Thus, distributive and nonviolent
includes the politics of justice that determine human use of stocks and flows. Steep

justice is fundamental to a sustainable world. We are not building Borgese' s hopeful oceanic circles, and global ocean sustainability is, if
anything, slipping farther and farther away. Neoliberal globalization has increased hierarchies at the coastal level, and I show that along
with increased economic globalization comes increased armed conflict. Violence and neoliberal economics seem to be globalized together
(Chua 2003).

2NC Stopping Internal Dialogue Alternative

Only opening up to indigenous forms of knowledge and embracing the
natural world allows for good and complete knowledge productionwe need to reject their form of western knowledge which is rooted in
the concept of domination and control.

Hester and Cheney 01-Professor of American Indian Studies University of Arts and

Sciences of Oklahoma, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha (Lee Hester and Jim
Cheney, truth and native american epistemology,
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~morourke/524-phil/Readings/hester.pdf)//JL
If speculation and analogy end where Native Americans end it, then the idea of the living earth is not even speculative: it is obvious on the

theory construction or metaphysics is

necessary. The last two sentences in the quotation put another twist on the matter: They fold the idea of the living
earth into a ceremonial world orienting Native Americans on the moral road. The
notion of a living world is not part of a Native American world viewa truth
claimit is an everyday observation fitted into a ceremonial world in a way that
enhances its epistemological effectiveness. That is, by casting humans as lesser
beings in relation to the living earth, we more effectively gain insights and
knowledge about the real essence of the earth: Coming last, human beings were the
younger brothers of the other life-forms and therefore had to learn everything
from these creatures. Thus human activities resembled bird and animal behavior in
many ways and brought the unity of conscious life to an objective focus . The
notion of a living universe, therefore, is not merely obvious on the face of it, but it also provides
epistemological direction in the search for knowledge (as just stated) as well as powerful moral
direction. The epistemological direction is itself ethically informed, as we have seen. The living universe requires
mutual respect among its members, and this suggests that a strong sense of individual identity and self is a
dominant characteristic of the world as we know it. The willingness of entities to allow others to fulfill
themselves, and the refusal of any entity to intrude thoughtlessly on another,
must be the operative principle of this universe. Consequently, self-knowledge and self- discipline are
high values of behavior . . .. Respect . . . involves two attitudes . One attitude is the acceptance of selfdiscipline by humans and their communities to act responsibly toward other
forms of life. The other attitude is to seek to establish communications and
covenants with other forms of life on a mutually agreeable basis . These
conclusions are not forced upon us by the notion of a living universe, of course,
but they are the sorts of conclusions one might expect within a ceremonial world
built around the moral purpose of finding the proper moral and ethical road upon
which human beings should walk. They extend in quite natural ways the general attitude of universal consideration
face of it. Not that it cannot be denied, but at that point speculation,

discussed earlier as a feature of Native American worlds. The principles of epistemological method discussed thus far are perhaps summed

ed, ratherin the well-known phrase All my relatives, which is used as an opening invocation and closing benediction for
. All my relatives . . . also has a secular purpose, which is to remind us of our
responsibility to respect life and to fulfill our covenantal duties. But few people
understand that the phrase also describes the epistemology of the Indian
worldview, providing the methodological basis for the gathering of information
about the world. (Deloria et al., 1999, p. 52) We are all relatives when taken as a methodological tool for obtaining knowledge
upor uni

ceremonies

means that we observe the natural world by looking for relationships between various things in it . . . and the total set of relationships makes
up the natural world as we experience it. This concept is simply the relativity concept as applied to a universe that people experience as alive
and not as dead or inert. Thus Indians knew that stones were the perfect beings because they were self-contained entities that had resolved
their social relationships and possessed great knowledge about how every other entity, and every species, should live. Stones had mobility

but did not need to use it. Every other being had mobility and needed, in some specific manner, to use it in relationships. We can see from

: these
principles could be said to (at least partially) constitute the epistemological
dimension of ceremonial worlds. We can also see, by this time, that when Deloria
says that by employing various principles of epistemological method we gain
insights and knowledge about the real essence of the earth (Deloria et al., 1999, p. 50) he is not
speaking of deep truths about the world; rather, he is speaking of a deeply practical map of the world (a ceremonial world): Reality
for tribal peoples, as opposed to the reality sought by Western scientists, was the
experience of the moment coupled with the interpretive scheme that had been
woven together over the generations. The central value that informs Delorias principles of epistemological
these passages that the line between principles of epistemological method and ceremonial worlds is rather arbitrary

method is that of adaptive fit-finding the proper road upon which human being should walk rather than domination and control.

Oriented to the natural world by a set of what non-Native Americans would think of as (probably false) beliefs
about the world, but which are better understood as a set of (powerful) epistemological guidelines, those who
adopt these guidelines become remarkably attuned to what the world tells them
about human adaptive fit in the larger, more-than-human community . Knowledge
shaped by indigenous principles of epistemological method guarantee that
knowledge is the result of deep and continuous communication between humans
and the more-than-human world of which they are citizens. Epistemologies
shaped by values of domination and control of nature virtually guarantee that the
resulting knowledge certainly not wisdomis a human monologue that structures its
understanding of the world around human order and purpose . The world is not
permitted to speak on its own behalf. It merely answers questions posed by
human culture and answers these questions, not in its own voice, but in a
vocabulary, and according to an agenda, not its own. In Francis Bacons graphic imagery, nature is put on the rack and forced to
confess. Native American epistemology, by contrast, is marked by respect.

FYI: Differing Worldviews

Hester and Cheney 01-Professor of American Indian Studies University of Arts and
Sciences of Oklahoma, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha (Lee Hester and Jim
Cheney, truth and native american epistemology,
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~morourke/524-phil/Readings/hester.pdf)//JL
This is because English has equated belief with truth. Now, Im doing some Euro- American looking philosophy. I hope you dont mind.

When we assert a belief we are

asserting the truth of a certain picture of the world. There is, on one hand, our
worldview . . . whether we are Native American or Euro-American . . . and on the
other hand the world. What has been called metaphorically, the map and the
territory. I think most of us agree that we all live in the same territory. I think it is also clear that the maps held by the Native
Americans and Euro-Americans are quite different. However, the main point of this talk is belief. Belief is our attitude
toward the relationship between the map and the territory. Western belief
generally implies some kind of correspondence between the map and territory.
The most extreme version of this is that we can have a completely clear and
correct map, a one-to-one correspondence between the map and the territory . Or to
put it in the vernacular, we can have the Truth . This was clearly the project of the Enlightenment. Even though
modern thought has cast doubt on this, the West still clings to it. I would characterize the
attitude of Native Americans as one of agnosticism concerning the relationship
between their map and the territory. Though this may seem strange from a Western stance, it is actually very
Euro-Philosophers express beliefs as propositions and assign them truth values.

practical. Indeed, I would argue that it can even make a great deal of sense given modern Western understandings of the limits of

Using the map and territory metaphor, Heisenberg seems to be

the clearer our map of any particular part of the territory, the less clear
our map will be elsewhere. Godel seems to be telling us that when our map becomes too broad,
it will be incorrect. If we go too far in detail or breadth, our map becomes
confused. The Native American map is not meant to be a high fidelity picture of
the territory, but is an action guiding set of ideas. Indeed, the action guiding element is central.
knowledge. Think of Heisenberg and Godel.
telling us that

Remember the John Proctor story. Particular actions are what makes one Creek. One of the main puzzlements Indian people have
expressed historically is how Europeans could assert the truth of their ideas, but act in ways that did not correspond to the truths they
asserted. Popular sovereignty, religious freedom, the sanctity of property, peace, brotherhood and all the rest seem to be ignored nearly as
often as they are upheld. Of course one answer is that there are bad people and bad governments who do not maintain their own lofty ideas.

it is worsened by Western belief. If you are convinced that your

map truly embodies the territory, despite the fact that it is necessarily incomplete
or incorrect (and probably both) then you are going to make many false turns. Your
actions will be contradictory. When you have mistaken the map for the territory,
you will continue to claim that you have reached the right destination even when
you are hopelessly lost. Western philosophers are perhaps the best examples of
this tendency and it is one that has cost them much in the way of practical influence in society. We have all entertained skeptical
Though this is true, I think

ideas, examined odd metaphysical systems and sometimes built careers defending their truth. But what if they are true? Many of the maps
we have posited be followed. Just how should a solipsist act? Laying aside the question of truth, if your map cannot be followed, what use is
it? The Western rejoinder might be, How can agnosticism concerning the connection between the map and territory be action guiding? The
answer is that it cannot, but it is an attitude which can be very helpful. Though Native Americans may not know what the connection is
between their map and the territory, there are some things that they do know. Key among these is their experience. This includes their own
actions and the observed consequences of those actions.

Merculieff and Roderick 13-Elder for 4 decades of the Aluets of the Pribilof Islands
(Ilarion Merculieff and Libby Roderick, stop talking, indigenous ways of teaching and learning
and difficult dialogues in higher education,
http://www.difficultdialoguesuaa.org/images/uploads/Stop_talking_final.pdf)//JL

This is a complex subject with many important nuances and threads, and this discussion will of necessity be abridged. But, as previously

there are several fundamental differences between the educational practices

of traditional Alaska Native cultures and todays higher education culture.
Central to Western educational systems is the quantitative scientific research
paradigm. Central to traditional Alaska Native educational systems is the
qualitative experiential observation system that centers around a nonquantifiable experience of connectedness to the web of life. This is often referred to by Native
noted,

educators as spirituality. Native traditions view the experience of being connected to and a student of all creation as central to the
educational process. Higher education doesnt even have a good word for this. These two ways of attempting to understand the world have

Scientists seek to understand, explain, and predict the natural world.

They want to understand how things work and to create technologies to better
human lives. Practitioners of traditional knowledge and wisdom seek to
understand, adapt to, and live in balance within the natural world so that all
human and more-than-human worlds can flourish in perpetuity . Although Ilarion has spoken
different goals.

about this issue on many occasions, we decided to share an outside voice for this book as a way of linking our local Alaska Native experience
with that of other indigenous peoples in North America. Dennis Martinez is Co-Chair of the Indigenous Peoples Restoration Network, an
organization dedicated to supporting Native and tribal communities in environmental restoration, cultural rehabilitation, and the
application of traditional ecological knowledge. He has advocated for indigenous perspectives through forty years of work in resource and
knowledge protection, climate change, forest restoration, and projects bridging Western science with traditional ecological knowledge. He
spoke at a national conference in 2008, organized by a society for the advancement of Chicano and Native American scientists.* Just as
traditional knowledge and culture is the context for traditional ecological knowledge, says Martinez, so Western culture is the context for

Western science developed historically within an increasingly secular

and materialistic culture without spiritual, reciprocal obligations to the natural
world, [one] that views nature as without spirit. It is reductionist, not holistic. It
is linear, not circular. It is product more than process. Nature is divided into its
component parts in order to gain a large measure of control for technological
innovations and development as well as for the verification or falsification of
hypotheses through replicable empirical experiments for predictions of natural
phenomena in short intervals of time and space. In other words, according to Martinez, Western
science seeks to understand nature at least in part in order to control it. It is a powerful
Western science.

tool, he acknowledges, but the kinds of questions Western science asks or doesnt ask of nature are culturally determined to a large degree,

and it is a quantitative tool that operates in a spiritual and non-Western cultural

and historical vacuum. Tools can be used for the benefit or the detriment of the world. Science has done both. The same

scientific toolkit can be used to benefit Indigenous peoples as well. But its technology has also led to the poisoning of our waters and lands

Western science strives for objectivity, to

by relying on verifiable data

and has had, more often than not, a devastating effect on our health.

reduce or eliminate biases, prejudices, or subjective evaluations

.** Much of its practice
maintains a strict separation between observer and observed that is intended to ensure the resulting data wont be limited by human senses

Traditional knowledge and wisdom relies on

the centrality of the observers intimate relationship to and experiential
knowledge of a particular place and ecosystem. Traditional knowledge systems
use keen observation and direct personal experience by a community of datagatherers to gain critical information from the environment, through sustained
intimate relationship with a particular place over a long period of time.
or contaminated by personal or political agendas or biases.

2NC Political Epistemology Alternative

The alternative
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)
Latour sets out the problem

a political process that allows for a diversity of environmental

values and interests in making decisions about ocean existences is inclusive of
specific representational rights for non-humans. Latour does not claim that non- humans
contribute to debates through the use of language, but that they do contribute in other
ways to debates about what is to be done. Latour argues for taking non- humans
seriously and for the important role scientists have to play in this but at the same time,
the mediation of knowledge about non-humans should not be left entirely to
scientists. Latours collective process facilitates critical enquiry into, and reconfiguring of, prevailing Western knowledge and
Latours procedure for

understandings of oceans.

the problem with the model we are currently working with for determining the
common world or reality is that it is split into two houses: Nature and Society . The construction
of these two houses has effectively worked to prevent political epistemology which is for
Latour argues

Latour a superior form of epistemology to the myth of objectively determined epistemological models championed by some. Latour explains
that the old Constitution is founded upon,
two equally illicit assemblies: the first, brought together under the auspices of Science, was illegal, because it defined the common world
without recourse to due process; the second was illegitimate by birth, since it lacked the reality of the things that had been given over to the
other house and had to settle for power relations, for Machiavellian cleverness alone. The first had reality but no politics: the second had
politics and mere social construction. Both had in reserve a quick
shortcut that could bring discussion to an end: irrefutable reason, indisputable force, right and might, knowledge and power. (2004, 54)

With respect to the first house, Latour argues Science has posited itself as the
spokesperson for Nature.8 The method that Science uses in maintaining its role as
spokesperson includes routinely withholding its debates and perplexities about
Nature from wider society. Society is only given access to Nature once it
has been established by Science as a matter of fact that is, once Science has
made Nature incontestablethus ruling out, or at least severely constricting, the space for
politics and democratic processes. Sandilands makes a similar argument: that if scientific understandings are
established as natures commonality before the event or conversation, the essence of natureand environmental issues[are put]
beyond constitutive public discussion (2002, 121). Sandilands makes this criticism in relation to environmentalisms that rely on scientific
truth for validation on account of its effect, which is to close the public spaces for a plurality of opinions to form a common understanding of
nature.

the isolation of Science from politics is a shortcut and a deficient approach

to the production of soundly constituted knowledge. He argues that Nature conceived by Science
For Latour,

makes it possible to subject the human assembly to a permanent threat of salvation by Science that paralysed it in advance (Latour 2004,

an inclusive democratic process precedesnot followsthe

pronouncements of science. Indeed, good process constitutes good
epistemology. Latour argues for a process that, first of all, insists the scientific mediation of
nature is visible to society, and second the objectified, universal conception of non-human
nature is replaced with natures where they are given a voice in the collective.
57). For Latour,

With respect to the second house, Societylocated in the province of the social sciences where the work is done of describing and theorising
about society-nature relationsLatour observes that the postmodern turn in the social sciences has done away with the reality of nature,
privileging the social construction of nature. With only a social construction of nature in place, the politics of nature becomes impossible: if
nature does not exist apart from human constructions, humans can only ever speak for nature.9

Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)
Chapter 6, the final Chapter, focused on supporting that part of my thesis that is concerned with pursuing just existences for oceans through
a democratic political process, which I have referred to, along with others, as political epistemology.

Political epistemology, I

is useful for generating knowledge of oceans and for shifting policy

towards a particular set of social-environmental goals that are not widely
imagined by the Western subject. Political epistemology involves a greater
inclusivity of perspectives structured into policy debates , including the
creation of spaces for the agency of oceans to contribute .
The importance of de-centring of expertsas a political and ethical strategy
aimed at promoting just existences for oceansgoes to the heart of my
observation and supporting argument that the Western discourses of law, aesthetics and
science have the effect of crowding out of different perspectives and a diversity of humanhave argued,

ocean relations. I have demonstrated in this dissertation some of the ways in which Western subjects and institutions have worked, and
continue to work, tirelessly to sustain a sense of legitimacy and garner material benefits through assertions of authority and hegemony that
are grounded in the discourses of law, aesthetics and science.

Chapter 6 was written as a challenge to the Western practices of asserting

authority and driving toward hegemony in relation to questions regarding what
to do about the oceans. Integral to the discussion of Chapter 6 was a further insight of a social construction perspective
outlined in the Introduction to this dissertation that oceans are not simply artefacts of culture . Rather,
oceans are living entities that are independent of us. A part of the discussion in Chapter 6 focused on
how we might acknowledge the agency of oceansindeed give a voice to ocean dwelling life in deciding what is to be done about oceans. I

in working towards just ocean existences, oceans must be

considered as active participants in marine environmental disputes and policy
making. This needs to occur through pluralistic, democratic environmental
political processes.
argued in Chapter 6 that

I began Chapter 6 with a discussion of the problems of essentialist and constructionist notions of nature and argued that we need a concept

imagine oceans as
a co-construction between humans and non-humans. I drew upon the insights of particular ecological
of oceans that are not reducible to human objectivity or human subjectivity, or nature or culture but rather

feminist theories and performative notions of nature that support the idea of oceans as indissolubly mixed in with culture.
Second, I discussed a range of approaches to ocean ethics and politicsa Sea Ethic, marine stewardship and environmental pragmatism. I
pointed out the strengths of all three approaches but was critical of their failure to consider the moral worth of the self-directedness of nonhuman oceanic life or how democratic representation might be widened to acknowledge non-humans as agents.

I advocated for in Chapter 6 was a process for political epistemology involving an

inclusive democratic processof humans and non-humansthat seeks
cooperative solutions to shared problems and critical enquiry. I argued Latours model of the
collective procedure is a useful theoretical model in this regard that moves us toward consensus and
cooperation in the pursuit of marine environmental policy through multifaceted
engagement. In setting out Latours model, I highlighted that his approach specifically addresses and
facilitates non-human agency in a democratic process. This approach I believe
would help to perform the oceans along new lines or, in the words of Shakespeare (1964), a sea
change into something rich and strange.
The approach

FYI: Political Epistemology and Oceans

Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)
Healy supports his observations by reference to Habermas in writing that:

rational scientific, instrumental-technical reasoning has been allowed to crowd

out moral and emotive-aesthetic reasoning that more typically characterize the
lifeworld of personal existence, impoverishing both our lifeworld and economic and
political life. (2003, 96, emphasis in original)
In particular, so called cooperative discourse, informed and structured by representational
scientific rationality, controls and circumscribes public involvement, ultimately
reflecting rather than transcending instrumental-technical reasoning (Healy 2003, 97,
emphasis in original).

Political epistemology, as an alternative approach to scientific rationality in the

production of knowledge, is developed in the work of Latour (2004). Latour is an important thinker in developing
the ideas of political epistemology into a practical form. Latour decentres the role of experts, especially scientists,
in defining the natural world. Latours collective procedure revises and elaborates upon his earlier idea of the
Parliament of Things described in his text, We Have Never Been Modern (1994). According to Latour, the Parliament of Things (1994)
and the Collective (2004) simply describe phenomena we are currently facing in environmental policy making.
There are two observations to be made here about Latours view of the effects of present phenomena: the first relates to the very substance
of the world (Latour 1994, 4). Latour (1994; 2004) is concerned with hybridsthe not-quite-natural, not- quite socialthat have become
ubiquitous in the world such as genetically modified organisms and climate change and Latour (1994) employs a network metaphor for
thinking about such socio-natural imbroglios. Castree and Macmillan explain about these networks that they are multiple and relentlessly
heterogenous typically involving the unique alignment of humans, machines, animals, inscription devices, and other materials in relations
which vary in stability, time-space extension and time-space form (2001, 211).
Networks would, for example, link in one continuous chain the chemistry of the upper atmosphere, scientific and industrial strategies, the
preoccupations of heads of state, the anxieties of ecologists (Latour 1994, 11). Socio-natural imbroglios cast in terms of networks signal the
inter-connectedness between actors and affective relations between actors that are made up of all manner of energetic exchanges within
and between them (Whatmore 2006, 160-61).

Actor Network
Theory (ANT), of which Latour is a major proponent. In elaborating here upon this conception of the network image, ANT can be
thought of as a set of overlapping propositions intended to guide thinking and
research about human-nature relations (Castree & Macmillan 2001, 211). In describing events, ANT
does not distinguish between natural and social actors in contrast to
representational perspectives; rather, [o]bjects or subjects, which are
categorised as natural or social under modern ontology, are described in the same terms (Bell
It is worth noting at this juncture that this way of conceptualising human-nature relations is developed in

2003, 56). In ANT, it is the relations between actors and the relations that comprise actors that are of interest (Bell 2003; Healy 2003). The
social and natural are imagined as co-constitutive within a multitude of networks (Castree & Macmillan 2001).

ANTs hybridity and networks makes for the re-ordering of ethical community
beyond the human (Whatmore 2006, 161). As Castree and Macmillan note:
[as] ANT dissolves any a priori division of society from nature it requires a politics
attuned to all the actors in given socionatural networks . Because the fate of any one actant in a

particular network is so intimately bound up with that of others, ANT suggests the necessity for hybrid politics in which the fate of humans,

since
human and non- human actants are considered ontologically equivalent here, a
hybrid politics of nature should be neither anthropocentric or ecocentric; it would refuse to
machines, organisms, plants, and animals, and so on are considered simultaneouslyand on a case by case basis. Moreover,

serve the interests of one or other actor in a network. (2001, 220)

Furthermore, networks provide the condition of immanent potentiality that harbours the very possibility of their coming into being
(Whatmore 2006, 161). Whatmore elaborates by writing that:

the cartography of networks ... hybridity disturbs the habits that reiterate
the cumulative fault-lines between human/subjects and non- human/objects
prescribed by an ethical reasoning abstracted from the particularity of embodiment
and territorialized as the exclusive preserve of a Society from which everything
but the universal human has been expunged. Instead a multitude of affective actants-in-relation take and
Articulated through

hold their shape performatively, as precarious achievements whose durability and reach is spun between the potencies and frailties of more
than human kinds. (2006, 161)

The just existences of oceans, as they may be perceived through networks, are states of being in
which the ocean is able to play a part in taking and holding its own shapefluid
as that may be.
The second observation to be made here about Latours view of phenomena we currently face in environmental policy making is that
political ecology has been ineffective in producing positive environmental outcomes because scientists have defined environmental issues

making decisions about environmental

problems is beginning to reflect a greater collaboration of ethicists, economists,
politicians and other communities (Latour 2004). The idea that scientists in particular
need to be brought together with ethicists, economists, politicians and other
communities to debate and decide upon environmental, public health and
scientific and technological agendas has been identified in recent policy forums
and literature (see, for example, Leshner 2005; Levidow & Marris 2001; Nowotny 2005). Inclusive approaches are being
and agendas from the outset. However, defining the common world and

employed in some programs such as the United States National Human Genome Research Institutes Ethical, Legal and Social Implications
program and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (Leshner 2005).

Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

The approach for which I advocate in this Chapter is an inclusive democratic process that
seeks cooperative solutions to shared problems. At the heart of my idea about an inclusive democratic
process is the recognition that non-humans possess an interest in their own
survival (Eckersley 2002, 64) and that there are ways to be inclusive of non-humans . Latour
(2004) provides a useful theoretical procedure in this regard that moves us toward consensus and cooperation in the pursuit of marine
environmental policy through multifaceted human and non-human engagement. Latours procedure allows for what Eckersley (2002)
would see as a healthy constitutive tension between those focused on mediating a plurality of moral values for practical democratic
outcomes as well as critical enquiry into, and reconfiguring of, prevailing Western human-ocean relations. My conception of political
ecology fits with this essentially democratic process for resolving ecological questions about what is to be done.

we need to
develop a more discerning concept of oceans that is not reducible to human
objectivity or human subjectivity, nature or culture. I argue we need a theory that
imagines oceans as a co-construction between humans and non-humans . In this task, I
I begin this chapter by outlining the problems with essentialist and constructionist notions of nature, arguing that

draw on particular ecological feminist and performative theories of nature that acknowledge the instability of the categories of nature and
society and human and stress the independence and agency of non- human nature.
This Chapter includes a review of a range of approaches to ocean ethics and politics. These approaches all have their strengths. However,
my basic criticism of these approaches is that the meaning, value and ideas are interpreted through a lens that focuses on what it means for
humans. They do not consider the moral worth of the self-directedness of non-human oceanic life (Cuomo 1998) or how democratic
representation might be widened to acknowledge non-humans as agents.

Political
epistemology is a term I use to conceptualise a process characterised by reciprocal
knowledge making (Fawcett 2000, 1367) where all assertions of knowledge about the
oceans are assessed openly and transparently. I concur with Fawcett when she writes that [t]he
choices we make and the actions we take on any environmental problem depend
on the quality and reflexivity of our knowledge making in that area (2000, 1367). In the
course of this Chapter I will explain how knowledge can be generated democratically and
rigorously, yet constantly open to challenge and change.
In the final section of this Chapter I present Latours (2004) collective procedure for facilitating political epistemology.

AT: No Agency to Oceans

The ocean has agency, it transforms relationships and places with
embedded intent.
Jessica Lehman 2008, Researcher at The University of British Columbia in international fields and data analysis, Expecting
the Sea: Displacement and the Environment on Sri Lankas East Coast

a relational
ontology sees the network or assemblage as saturated with power; power that comes about as a
Resonating with the understanding that Foucault developed of power as multi-nodal, productive, and creative (1968),

result of these burgeoning connections. ANT theorists maintain that an analytical symmetry must be applied that considers in considering
the weight of human and nonhuman actions (Callon, 1986); it must not be pre-determined which actors have power. For the researcher,

The ocean is both an actor and a

network, yet this is true of all actors, even the human body (Bingham, 1996). The sea works within
extensive networks of soldiers, civilians, fisherfolk, coastlines, management
policies, ships, and countless others to influence even, or perhaps especially, what are seen as
political or social realities in Sri Lanka. While it is superficially apparent that nonhuman entities can
act (waves can crash on the shore, bacteria decompose, tree roots cause sidewalks
and roads to buckle), nonhuman agency means something more. In their work on the agency of trees, Jones and Cloke (2008)
revisit questions of nonhuman agency. They draw on theoretical accounts that deny intentionality as a
prerequisite for agency, citing that it is relationality that gives meaning to actions
(Haraway, 2008; Barad, 2003). Jones and Cloke (2008: 80-81) identify four ways that nonhumans (in their case
specifically trees) can be understood to enact agency. They can engage in routine action ,
which may be prevented, encouraged, or shaped by humans, but renders them far from passive. They can
participate in transformative action, creating or influencing relationships and
places. They can act with purpose and imbedded intent; for example DNA
contains an obvious plan for the future. Finally, they can act non-reflexively, with
a capacity to engender affective and emotional responses from the humans who dwell amongst
them to contribute to the haunting of place via exchanges between the visible
present and the starkly absent in the multiple and incomplete becoming of agency (2008: 81). The ocean
can be seen to possess all of these types of agency . It practices routine action in the
quotidian processes and activities of tides, currents, not to mention its role in the biological
functioning of its inhabitants. It transforms relationships and places through
incremental action, such as physical weathering, and also through events such as
the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. While Jones and Cloke caution against being reductionist and essentialist with
regards to intent, it could be said that the ocean also practices embedded intent in wearing away
rocks and other materials that impede its movement. Finally, the ocean inspires
strong affective responses, as seen in the preceeding discussion, and radically contributes to the
meaning of places through its absence or presence, on multiple timescales. While the focus of accounts
power relations can only emerge by following the actors and their connections.

of nonhuman agency has typically been on animals or technological hybrids such as Haraways cyborg, other natural entities deserve
attention (Jones and Cloke, 2008). Hence, my research contributes to previous work on the agency of nonhuman entities, particularly in
shaping political and lived outcomes. In Chapter Two I explore and build upon the growing literature on theorizing the sea. While some of

in most cases the agency of the sea has

remained curiously absent. By bringing these bodies of literature into
conversation, I believe we can come to a more complete understanding of the role
that the ocean plays in shaping outcomes on Sri Lankas East coast.
this work has made nods to posthumanism (cf. Lambert et al., 2006),

The ocean is an actor

Jessica Lehman 2008, Researcher at The University of British Columbia in international fields and data analysis, Expecting
the Sea: Displacement and the Environment on Sri Lankas East Coast

My project in this chapter has been to lay the foundations for an alternative frame with
which to understand Sri Lankas East coast. Privileging the ocean as an actor, I bring
posthumanism into conversation with social theories of the sea to create a frame
that explains the emergence of power through discursive and material relations
(Latour, 1995). This frame contributes to posthumanist literature by drawing attention to a non-sentient
natural element, deviating from recent focus on animals and technology as key subjects for
posthumanist analysis (Conner, 2006; Jones and Cloke, 2008). Nowhere is the significance of the ocean more evident than in Eastern Sri

the ocean has both materially brought about destruction and provided
sustenance, and has also been a locus of relations through which humans and
nonhumans negotiate power and resistance, resilience and survival . In this chapter, I
Lanka, where

the
sea occupies a central role in coastal residents daily lives, and hence integrally
shapes both their physical and social environments, such that the sea becomes
embodied as an actor. Second, while for many the sea is thought of as a void or a space to be
transcended (Steinberg, 2001), for the participants in my research, the ocean, at least near coastal areas, was understood as a
provided evidence to draw out three reflections on theorizing the ocean that are particular to my research site. First, I have shown that

place, with defining material characteristics that allowed them to predict its dynamic qualities. Finally, as discussed by others, yet

contrary to many dominant tropes, for the residents of Batticaloa, the ocean was not inherently
unpredictable or Other (Lambert et al., 2005; Connery, 2006; Westerdahl, 2005). However, unpredictability and volatility
emerged with force as a result of the 2004 tsunami, changing the ways that people conceptualized and observed the ocean. Furthermore,
the tsunami rearranged the coastal network, reconfiguring relations between human and nonhuman actors. In the coming chapters, I
elaborate on the significance of understanding the ocean as an actor in Sri Lanka, taking a network-based approach to exploring the
relations that have formed post-tsunami reality on the East coast.

AT: How do Oceans Speak?

They speak their own way
Kennedy 7 Ph.d in philosophy from Murdoch Univesrity (Ocean Views: An investigation into human-ocean
relations http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/123/2/02Whole.pdf)

There will be the new voices of non-humans engaging in the debate. Latour
allows for them by specifying a conception of subjects and objects , nature and society.
When introducing the idea that non-humans are active participants in
processes of knowledge production, Latour does not claim that non-humans
speak on their own. Indeed, he makes the more radical observation that no beings, not even humans,
speak on their own, but always through something or someone else (Latour 2004, 68,
emphasis in original).10 What Latour means by non-human speech is that through the perplexity and controversies they provoke,

speech comes from those gathered around them and arguing over them (2004, 66).
However, Latour argues that all spokespersons for humans and non-humans must be treated with
scepticism because their partial perspectives limit their ability to represent them.
Non-humans act further through their associations with other actors. Latour challenges the often accepted wisdom that a thing cannot be
said to be an actor, in any case not a social actor, since it does not act, in the proper sense of the verb; it only behaves (2004, 73). For

non-humans are social actors because they modify other actors through their
associations with them. This is how they participate in the constitution of their
collective existence. Moreover, the idea of recalcitrance,
offers the most appropriate approach to defining their action. ... Actors are defined above all
else as obstacles, scandals, as what suspends mastery, as what gets in the way of domination, as what interrupts the closure and
the composition of the collective. To put it crudely, human and non-human actors appear first of all as
troublemakers. (Latour 2004, 79)11
Latour,

Language is more than just human speech

Lewis Williams 2012, Founding Director of the Koru International Network, Associate Professor with the Department of
Native Studies and the Department of Public Health at the University of Saskatchewan, Radical Human Ecology: Intercultural and
Indigenous Approaches
Every iwi (tribe) will have its muanga (mountain), its awa (river), its mana (divine authority), its people, its whenua (land). And thats the
whole essence of who you are.

a human person does not

stand alone, but shares with other animate and, in the Western sense,
inanimate beings a relationship based on the shared essence of life. In Maoridom, this shared essence is referred to as
The words of this Ngai Te Rangi signify a fundamental truth for many in Indigenous societies:

mauri, meaning life-force energy. Mauri is regarded as the binding life force energy that gives ride to unity in diversity and impels the
cosmic process forward (Marsden 2003). Within this interconnected cosmology, the significance of place, of landscape, and of other things

With their emphasis on

the shared essence inherent in the metaphysical underpinning of reality, these
fundamentals of an Indigenous cosmology are profoundly different from
modernist (humanist) and postmodernist conceptualizations. Indigenous
worldviews conceive the fundamental reality of the universe as a continuum , a unitive
in the universe, are definitive in terms of shaping a persons essential being (Tuawhai Smith 1999).

field or fabric of energy and consciousness, that is beyond time, space, and all forms, and yet within them (Metzner 1997: 4). Referred to
earlier as the mauri within Moaridom, this cross-culturally recognized phenomenon is also recognized as the Tao within Taoism, and the
Wakan-Tanka (creator spirit) and Boea Fikcha/Puyvfekev within some Native American Lakota and Creek traditions respectively. Within

consciousness is embedded in the nature of all things and is intimately

linked to matteranimate, and again in the Western sense, inanimate. The idea that all phenomena in the
this worldview,

world possess subjective inner natures is distinct from anthropomorphism (projecting human qualities into non-human forms) and
traditional notions of animism that held that primitive man viewed all objects as being inhabited by spirits. As the unitive fabric of
energy of which we are part is also consciousness, and we are at all times embedded in this unifying energy of consciousness, we have the
potential to attune with, identify with and communicate with any and every other life form, object or being in the universe (Metzner
2005b: 12). This holistic perception is the keynote of traditional Indigenous cultures and includes, but goes beyond, the material sphere to
embrace the metaphysical. As a form of Native Science (Cajete 2000, 2006), expertise in this area was commonly the providence of the

this relational worldview sees things in a more than

human-to-human context. it is a perspective that involves human beings, animals, plants, the natural environment and
Shaman in Indigenous societies. In essence,

the metaphysical world of visions and dreams (Fixico 2003: 2). It is an inclusive notion of kinship that in Donald Fixicos words

involves more accountability on the part of native people for taking care of and
respecting their relationships with all things (2003: 2). I see this as an Ethics of Ecology, which I believe

must inform our work for planetary well-being. The Wests partial re-emergence from modernity in recent years has intersected with and
arguably been underpinned by an array of scholarly endeavor in the area of relational consciousness. In particular the work of Maurice

Meleau-Ponty, French philosopher, articulated in his famous book The Primacy of Perception (1964) and David Abramss
(1996) thesis of an Ecology of Language lay important theoretical groundwork with respect to the
Indigenous and shamanic approach to ecological relationship advocated here .
They do so in demonstrating the primacy of the embodied nature of human language and significantly, de-centering
language as an exclusive human property (Abram 1996: 78). Merleau-Ponty critiqued the Cartesian
dualism of mind-body through his dialectical concept of consciousnessour ability to reflect comes through the pre-reflective ground of
perception in which the body plays a central role. For Merleau-Ponty, the bodys structures of perceptual consciousness are our first route of
access to being and truth: such structures underlie and accompany all the structures of higher level individual consciousness (1964: xvi).
Perception is, therefore, a reciprocal exchange between the living body and the animate world that surrounds it. It is on this preverbal form

Prior to
language preverbal perception is already in exchange, and the recognition that
this exchange has its own coherence and articulation, suggests that perception is
the very soil and support of that more conscious exchange we call language. (Abram
of inter-subjective perceptionwhich I refer to as empathic resonancethat David Abram bases his ecology of language:

1996: 74) Language, as articulated by Merleau-Ponty, is rooted first in our sensorial experience of each other; the gestural, somatic

It is only by solely conceiving

language as an abstract phenomenon, a structure composed of arbitrary signs
and linked by formal rules, that it can be claimed as an exclusively human
attribute: If language is always in its depths physically and sensorially resonant, then it can never be definitively separated from the
evident expressiveness of birdsong.. language as a bodily phenomenon accrues to all expressive
bodies, not just human moreover if we allow that spoken meaning remains rooted in gesture and bodily expressiveness,
dimension of language is always present and underpins its abstract structure.

we will be unable to restrict our renewed experience of language solely to animals as we have already recognized in the untamed world of
direct sensory experience, no phenomena presents itself as utterly passive or inert. (Abram 1996: 80-81) The terrain of

Empathetic Resonance

(my term) described in various ways by an array of Indigenous scholars (Cajate 2000, Fixico
2003, Ermine et al. 2005) and Western phenomenologists such as Abram (1995, 1996) and Merleau-Ponty (1964), is implicitly shamanic: it

allows the possibility of human attunement with all other life forms: animate and
inanimate (Abram 1995, Metzner 2005b). This potential is, I argue, a cross-cultural commonality; not as a form of
transcendence, but rather as a type of incendence to our common archaic tap
root of ancient community. This is not about going back. Rather, it represents the perceptual wisdom we must carry into
the future. It was in the ancient communities of our ancestors that the shaman mediated between the human and non-human community,

ensuring there was an appropriate flow of nourishment not just from the
landscape to the human inhabitants, but from the human community back to the
local earth. Importantly, to some extent, every adult in traditional communities was engaged in these process of listening and
attuning as part of their everyday survival (Abram 1995), a way of being that we need to reintegrate into
contemporary consciousness.

Misc., but relevant

Earth Democracy Aff Advocacy

We must engage in Earth Democracy a system that challenges
Western epistemologies of growth and capital accumulation and
treats nature with respect giving and taking, always this
allows for a critical reinvestigation of our relationship with
nature
Shiva 11
(Vandana, author of many books, eco-spiritualist, Earth Democracy and the Rights of Mother Earth,
http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/earth-democracy-and-the-rights-of-mother-earth, 12/12/11, acc. 7/11/14, arh)

The ecological and economic problems we face are rooted in a series of

reductionist steps, which have shrunk our imagination and our identity, our
purpose on the earth, and the instruments we use to meet our needs . We are
first and foremost earth citizens . And our highest duty is to maintain the living systems of the earth that
support our life. Earth citizenship needs earth-centered cultures, earth-based
democracy, and earth-centered economies. However, society and culture have
been reduced to economies; economies have been reduced to market economics;
market economics has been reduced to finance; and finance has been reduced to
abstract instruments like derivatives, securitization, and collateral debt
obligations. Simultaneously, the conception of humans as earth citizens
global subjects with duties and rights to the earth has been
replaced by a focus on corporations,

which have no duties to either the earth or society, only limitless

rights to exploit both the earth and people. Corporations have been assigned legal personhood, and corporate rights are now extinguishing
the rights of the earth, as well as the rights of people to the earths gifts and resources. Corporate rights are premised on maximization of

The first is the use of technologies that

transfer production from local communities to distant corporations, substitute
biodiversity with toxic products, and make everyone into consumers of toxic,
nonrenewable products whose cost is high but price is cheap. The second instrument is the
profits. There are two tools corporations use to maximize profits.

creation of tools for wealth accumulation. These tools include measuring wealth as capital, thus ignoring both natures wealth and societys
wealth. They also include measuring wealth as the growth of GNP and GDP. At

the core of the second

instrument of profit maximization is the privatization of water and

even the atmosphere. More often than not, the tools of technology
and economic tools of wealth appropriation go hand in hand,
reinforcing each other.

Thus genetic engineering goes hand in hand with patents on life and privatization of

biodiversity. Dams for long-distance water transfer go hand in hand with water privatization. We need a new paradigm for living on the
earth because the old one is clearly not working.

for the human species.

An alternative is now a survival imperative

We

need an alternative not only at the level of

tools, but also at the level of our worldview. How do we look at

ourselves in this world? What are humans for? Are we merely a
money-making and resource guzzling machine? Or do we have a
higher purpose, a higher end? I believe we do have a higher end. I
believe that we are members of the earth family of Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam. And as
members of the earth family, our first and highest duty is to take care of Mother Earth : Prithvi,

Earth rights are

first and foremost the rights of Mother Earth, and our corresponding duties and
responsibilities to defend those rights. Earth rights are also the rights of humans
as they flow from the rights of Mother Earth: the right to food and water, the right to health and a safe
environment, and the right to the commons (the rivers, the seeds, the biodiversity, and the atmosphere). I have given the
name Earth Democracy to this new paradigm of living as an Earth Community,
respecting rights of Mother Earth. Earth Democracy enables us to envision and
create living democracies. Living democracy enables democratic participation in
all matters of life and death the food we eat or lack; the water we drink or are
denied due to privatization or pollution; the air we breathe or are poisoned by .
Living democracies are based on the intrinsic worth of all species, all peoples, all
cultures; a just and equal sharing of this earths vital resources ; and sharing the decisions about
the use of the earths resources. Earth Democracy protects the ecological processes that
maintain life and the fundamental human rights that are the basis of the right to
life, including the right to water, the right to food, the right to health, the right to
education, and the right to jobs and livelihoods. Earth Democracy is based on the
recognition of and respect for the life of all species and all people . Ahimsa (nonviolence) is the
Gaia, Pachamama. And the better we take care of her, the more food, water, health, and wealth we have.

basis of many faiths that have emerged on Indian soil. Translated into economics, nonviolence implies that our systems of production,
trade, and consumption do not use up the ecological space of other species and other people.

Violence is the result

when our dominant economic structures and economic organization

usurp and enclose the ecological space of other species or other
people . According to an ancient Indian text, the Isho Upanishad: The universe is the creation of the
Supreme Power meant for the benefits of [all] creation. Each individual life form
must, therefore, learn to enjoy its benefits by forming a part of the system in close
relation with other species. Let not any one species encroach upon other rights. Whenever we engage in consumption or
production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence. Non-sustainable consumption and non-sustainable
production constitute a violent economic order. In the Isho Upanishad it is also said: A selfish man over utilizing the resources of nature to
satisfy his own ever increasing needs is nothing but a thief, because using resources beyond ones needs would result in the utilization of

The rights of corporations extinguish the rights of the

Earth and all her children, including humans. The economy as currently
structured is centered on corporations and corporate profits. Corporate profits
are based on destruction of the earth and dispossession and uprooting of people.
The technological and economic systems that impoverish the earth also
impoverish local communities . The rights of the earth are ultimately
resources over which others have a right.

intertwined with the rights of the people.

The rights of corporations to appropriate or

contaminate the earths resources undermine both the rights of the Mother Earth and the human rights of people to livelihoods and basic
needs of food and water. That is why the rights of Mother Earth are the very basis of the human rights of people to land and natural
resource, food and water, to livelihoods and basic needs. Earth rights are the basis of equity, justice, and sustainability. On Earth Day 2010,
Bolivian President Juan Evo Morales Ayma organized a conference on Rights of Mother Earth. The idea was to start a process for adopting a
Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth on the lines of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

. Without

Earth Rights, there can be no human rights. It is time to deepen human

rights by deepening the recognition that humans depend on the earth. Earth
rights are human rights. Humanity stands at a precipice. We have to make a
choice. Will we obey the market laws of corporate greed or Gaias laws for
maintenance of the earths ecosystems and the diversity of her beings? The laws for
maximizing corporate profits are based on: Privatizing the earth Enclosing the commons Externalizing the costs of ecological destruction of

: Respecting the integrity of the earths

ecosystems and ecological process Recovering the commons Internalizing
hazards The laws for protecting the rights of Mother Earth are based on

ecological costs Corporate ideology has presented corporate profits as growth,

and growth as beneficial to all, even though corporate greed is taking away
resources necessary to meet peoples needs. Peoples needs for food and water
can only be met if natures capacity to provide food and water are protected . Dead
soils and dead rivers cannot give food and water. Defending the rights of Mother Earth is
therefore the most important human rights and social justice
struggle of our times.

Earth Democracy is essential to counter pervasive notions of

violence and destruction
Shiva 12 (Vandana, author of many books, eco-spiritualist, Earth Democracy, http://www.navdanya.org/earth-democracy, acc.
7/11/14, arh)

We need a new paradigm to respond to the fragmentation caused by various

forms of fundamentalism. We need a new movement, which allows us to
move from the dominant and pervasive culture of violence,
destruction and death to a culture of non-violence, creative peace
and life
Navdanya started the Earth democracy movement, which
provides an alternative worldview in which humans are embedded in the Earth
Family, we are connected to each other through love, compassion, not hatred and
violence and ecological responsibility and economic justice replaces greed,
consumerism and competition as objectives of human life
. That is why in India,

Counter-Conversion Advocacy
Counter-conversion is key to casting away hegemonic
Americanism and colonial imposition
Tillett & Fear-Segel 13 (Jacqueline Fear-Segal is Reader in American History and Culture at the University of East
Anglia and the author of White Mans Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation. Rebecca Tillett is Senior Lecturer in
American Literature and Culture at the University of East Anglia and the author of Contemporary Native American Literature. October
2013, Indigenous Bodies,

http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/books/9781438448220.) //ky

This chapter explores the representation of indigenous bodies within the context of the trans-indigenous Pacific. Drawing on the life

, I argue that Pacific

indigenous body politics are very much connected to an oceanic body and
constitute a counter-conversion from land to sea. In his thought-provoking book Be Always
Converting, Be Always Converted: An American Poetics, Rob Wilson invokes the experience of counterconversion as a reversal and turn away from Americanist codes of nation-state
boundaries, a developmentalist framework of global dependency and
neocolonial entanglement in modern worlding that stresses Native Pacific
smallness and belittlement (121). All such hegemonic Americanism across the
Pacific, colonial imposition of nationhood, race, boundary lines, and false
confinement into smallness, littleness, irrelevance, and global dependency (127)
could be turned over and cast away via countervision of Pacific place-making
and history-shaping (130). If the United States is the hegemonic superpower that has
converted the Pacific into the American Lake,1 nowadays, as Wilson contends,
Pacific Island authors and culture-makers figure the regenerations of native
attitude taking place across the contemporary Pacific otherwise and elsewhere
(120), which constitutes a counter-conversion, re-worlding the Pacific through
their counter-visions and counter-memories (119120). To this, I would add that it is
furthermore a counter-conversion from the continental to the insular, from
land to sea, from islands in a far sea to an interconnected sea of islands alive
with mobility, counter-mapping and counter-memory, and generative of action
and community, as Hauofa figures it in his influential essay Our Sea of Islands (2740). For Pacific island peoples, this
narratives of Epeli Hauofa and Syaman Rapongan, two authors who are native to the Pacific region

entails belonging to the region through sea-loving genes and by adoring the sea. In We Are the Ocean (Hauofa, 2008) as well as Cold

to liberate
the indigenous body from the limitations of nationalistic discourse and social
constraint; the respective resolutions of their life stories point us toward
solutions to global problems of discrimination and ethnic or racial exclusion. In
these works, the indigenous body is a cultural cipher, an index of (post)colonial
history, as well as a figure upon which the cultural identities and life paths of
Pacific indigenous peoples are inscribed.
Sea, Deep Passion (Rapongan, 1997) and Black Wings (Rapongan, 1999), Epeli Hauofa and Syaman Rapongan set out

We are the Ocean Poems

Home at last
Hau'ofa 8 (Epeli Hau'ofa, PhD, Social Anthropology, Australian National University, 2008, We Are the Ocean : Selected Works,
http://site.ebrary.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lib/umich//docDetail.action?
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I am tired
of being naive
talking to myself
winding handless clocks
and bailing the ocean
tomorrow
I shall go
to church, the police station
parliament house, the courts
other corridors and the market
places
they say
where you can buy truth easily.

In Transit
Hau'ofa 8 (Epeli Hau'ofa, PhD, Social Anthropology, Australian National University, 2008, We Are the Ocean : Selected Works,
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(thoughts from the windows of the Palace Office)
Grey light filters
Through dusted leaf screen
Thrilling laughter from Pangai
Tossed by the beat of breakers
On coral walls
That check an ocean
To make it crawl
To alien guns guarding
The fishermens beach
Another day has gone
Passed in time-filling chats
And floorboard creaks
In this old house
That nurses fading portraits
Of those who led our land
Stood awhile
With the Norfolk pines
Evergreen sentinels
Dwarfing the red spires
Of the kauri chapel
With arched doors
And arched windows
Foreign structure
That has sat
Six generations
Breathing briny weathers
Marking Kava Calls
To become almost Tongan
As you and I
Only much older and
With the alien pines and guns
Will still remain To gauge the tide when
After brief sojourn
In our native land
We leave.

Blood in the Kava Bowl

Hau'ofa 8 (Epeli Hau'ofa, PhD, Social Anthropology, Australian National University, 2008, We Are the Ocean : Selected Works,
http://site.ebrary.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lib/umich//docDetail.action?
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This card/poem has been modified for inappropriate and gendered language and we do not endorse the gendered language in this card/
poem. Certain phrases have been kept to maintain academic accuracy.
In the twilight we sit
drinking kava from the bowl between us.
Who we are we know and need not say
for the soul we share came from Vaihi.
Across the bowl we nod our understanding of the line
that is also our cord brought by Tangaloa from above,
and the professor does not know.
He sees the line but not the cord for he drinks the kava not tasting its blood.
And the kava has risen, my friend,
drink, and smile the grace of our parents
at him who says we are oppressed
by you, by me, but its twilight in Vaihi
and his vision is clouded.
The kava has risen again, dear friend,
take this cup . . .
Ah, yes, that matter of oppression
from Vaihi it begot in us unspoken knowledge
of our soul and our bondage.
You and I hold the love of that inner mountain
shrouded in mist and spouting ashes spread
by the winds from Ono-i-Lau,
Lakemba, and Lomaloma
over the soils of our land, shaping
those slender kahokaho and kaumeile
we offer in first-fruits to our Hau.
And the kava trees of Tonga grow well,
our foreheads on the royal toes!
The Hau is healthy,
our lands in fine, fat shape for another season.
The professor still talks
of oppression that we both know,
yet he tastes not the blood in the kava
mixed with dry waters that rose to Tangaloa
who gave us the cup from which we drink
the soul and the tears of our land.
Nor has he heard of our brothers who slayed Takalaua
and fled to Niue, Manono, and Futuna
to be caught in Uvea by the tyrants offspring
and brought home under the aegis of the priest of Maui
to decorate the royal congregation and to chew for the king
the kava mixed with blood from their mouths,
the mouths of all oppressed Tongans,
in expiation to Hikuleo the inner mountain
with an echo others cannot hear.
And the mountain spouts ancestral ashes
spread by the winds from Ono-i-Lau, Lakemba, and Lomaloma
over the soils of our land, raising fine yams,
symbols of our mynhood, of the strength of our nation,
in first-fruits we offer to our Hau. The mountain also crushes our people,
their blood flowing into the royal ring
for the health of the Victor and of Tonga;
the red waters from the warm springs of Pulotu
only you and I can taste, and live
in ancient understanding begat by Maui in Vaihi.
The kava has risen, my sibling,
drink this cup of the soul and the sweat of our people,
and pass me three more mushrooms which grew in Mururoa
on the excrement of the cows
Captain Cook brought
from the Kings of England and France!

We are the Oceans Aff

Current communications prevent a true understanding of
indigenous cultures.
Hau'ofa 8 (Epeli Hau'ofa, PhD, Social Anthropology, Australian National University, 2008, We Are the Ocean : Selected Works,
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I believe that a major part of the problem is the disjunction between peoples
expectations of us probably they would like us to draw portraits of them and
of our special social scientific aims. At times this arises from the fact that when we explain our
purposes to those among whom we conduct our fieldwork, we feel unable to
explain fully to them our real aims. This is so partly because of the problems of
communication that we all know. What we often end up saying is that we are there to learn their customs and to
write books about them. They cooperate with us thinking that we are going to tell their
stories taking their points of view into consideration. When we produce our
articles and monographs and they and their children or grandchildren read them,
they often cannot see themselves or they see themselves being distorted and
misrepresented. In many cases our field of discourse, and our special social scientific language,
preclude any comprehension of what we are talking about even to those who have
started training in anthropology. Thus, for example, in the late 1960s perhaps the most popular first-year subject
taught at the University of Papua New Guinea was the introductory course in social anthropology. Students flocked to it partly because of
the belief that anthropology, which purportedly deals with their traditional cultures and societies, would help them with their problems of

interest dropped rapidly once they were

confronted with our esoteric language. I do not think that we have produced at
the University of Papua New Guinea a native graduate who has entered our
profession. As in other parts of the Pacific, students are attracted more to history that deals with their past as people.
alienation and partly to see what we are saying about them. Their

Current research only presents the physical and brutal traits of the
indigenous, they ignore the ethics and moralirty of the indigenous
tribe
Hau'ofa 8 (Epeli Hau'ofa, PhD, Social Anthropology, Australian National University, 2008, We Are the Ocean : Selected Works,
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This may be an extreme example, but it is indicative of the fact that after decades of anthropological field
research in Melanesia we have come up only with pictures of people who fight,
compete, trade, pay bride-price, engage in rituals, invent cargo cults, copulate,
and sorcerise each other. There is hardly anything in our literature to indicate
whether these people have any such sentiments as love, kindness, consideration,
altruism, and so on. We cannot tell from our ethnographic writings whether they have a sense of humour. We know
little about their systems of morality, specifically their ideas of the good and the
bad, and their philosophies; though we sometimes get around to these, wearing
dark glasses, through our fascination with cargo cults. We have ignored their
physical gestures, their deportment, and their patterns of nonverbal
communication. By presenting incomplete and distorted representations of
Melanesians we have bastardised our discipline, we have denied people
important aspects of their humanity in our literature, and we have thereby
unwittingly contributed to the perpetuation of the outrageous stereotypes of

them made by ignorant outsiders who lived in their midst. We should not, therefore, be surprised
when we see equally distorted pictures, painted by angry nationalists, depicting them as being more moral and better human beings than

These are reactions against years of indignities heaped upon them. We talk about this in
We are not even aware that in Papua
New Guinea we, and through us our discipline, are being increasingly blamed for
most of the nasty stereotypes of the people. We are generally innocent of the sins of commission, but we
are guilty of the sins of omission and of insensitivity. We tend to be smug and complacent in our selfgenerated, self-perpetuated, and self-righteous image of ourselves as being better than any other category of foreigners in Melanesia. We
congratulate ourselves for being of economic and medical benefit to the
communities we study through our free dispensation of medicines, old clothes,
some money, and sticks of tobacco to the natives. We assume that because we live
for one and a half years or so in their villages and partake of their foods, people
must judge us kindly. Today we are judged not so much on that as on our writings. It will not be through our interference in
us.

conversations among ourselves, but we do not care enough to write it down.

the affairs of Pacific nations that we improve our relationship with Pacific people; rather it will be on the basis of what we have written,
what we are writing, and what we will write.

Development decreases cultural diversity and marginalizes the nonmonetised society

Hau'ofa 8 (Epeli Hau'ofa, PhD, Social Anthropology, Australian National University, 2008, We Are the Ocean : Selected Works,
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When people view things from the vantage point of national economies, they may be excused for thinking that Australia and New Zealand

when reality is perceived from the

point of view of a regional economy, then the answer to the question of who
benefits most comes out differently. The main beneficiaries from this point of
view are the privileged, elite groups all over the region, not just Australia or New Zealand groups
that are directly or indirectly concerned with economic activities in the South Pacific. These include elements of both
the public and private sectors in the islands as well as in Australia and New Zealand. These elite groups
are locked to each other through their privileged access to and control of
resources moving within the region and between the South Pacific and other
regions of the world. They form the ruling tiers of the emerging regional society . I
are the main beneficiaries in the intraregional economic relationships. But

use the word society deliberately. Through governmental, business, professional, educational, and other connections, including migration
and marriage, members of these groups have forged intimate links to the extent that they have a great deal more in common with each other
than with members of the other classes in their own communities. These groups, to which most of us attending this conference belong, form

I include the intelligentsia in these groups because

they are the intellectual arm of the ruling classes. As part of the process of
integration and the emergence of the new society, the ruling classes of the South
Pacific are increasingly culturally homogeneous: they speak the same language,
which is English (this language is becoming the first tongue of an increasing number of children in the islands); they share the
the backbone of the emerging South Pacific society.

same ideologies and the same material lifestyles (admittedly with local variations due to physical environment and original cultural factors,

The privileged classes share a single

dominant regional culture; the underprivileged maintain subcultures related to
the dominant one through ties of patronage and growing inequality. These localised
but the similarities are much more numerous than the differences).

subcultures are modified versions of indigenous cultures that existed before the capitalist penetration of the South Pacific. Scholars and
politicians often point to the enormous diversity and persistence of traditional cultures in the South Pacific as a factor for disunity and
economic backwardness at the national and regional levels. But they overlook the fact that today the important differences and problems in
development are due not so much to the multiplicity and persistence of indigenous cultures as, increasingly, to the emergence of classes in
the region. I suggest that we should not be misled by the existence of subsistence, nonmonetised sectors of economy and by cultural
diversity as well as national politics into concluding that there is neither regional integration nor a regional class system.

The

nonmonetised sectors are being marginalised especially through aided

development with its overemphasis on commercial and export-oriented
production. Subsistence activities are rapidly becoming the preserve of the poor.

Cultural diversity is also largely found among the underprivileged classes

especially in rural areas.
The underprivileged are key to preserving indigenous relations and
are all derived from the consequeneces of current development
trends
Hau'ofa 8 (Epeli Hau'ofa, PhD, Social Anthropology, Australian National University, 2008, We Are the Ocean : Selected Works,
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Among the privileged there is homogeneity throughout the region through the sharing of a single dominant culture. Variations among these
homogeneous groups are minor in character: the differences largely add spice to social intercourse as Chinese, Indian, Lebanese, and other
exotic dishes make bourgeois dinner parties more interesting. It is one of the privileges of the affluent classes to have access to a wide range
of superficial cultural experiences and expertise; it is the privileged who can afford to tell the poor to preserve their traditions. But their

In the final
analysis it is the poor who have to live out the traditional culture; the privileged
can merely talk about it, and they are in a position to be selective about what
traits they use or more correctly urge others to observe; and this is increasingly
seen by the poor as part of the ploy by the privileged to secure greater advantages
for themselves. I return to this theme later. The point I wish to emphasise now is that the poor in the islands are not so different
in their relative deprivation from the poor in New Zealand and Australia. And from the perspective of the
regional economy, they all belong to the same underprivileged groups since their
deprivation is directly related to the same regional and indeed international
development forces and trends that always seem to favour the already privileged.
perceptions of which traits of traditional culture to preserve are increasingly divergent from those of the poor.

Only self-sufficiency and a shift away from development can lead to

decolonization
Hau'ofa 8 (Epeli Hau'ofa, PhD, Social Anthropology, Australian National University, 2008, We Are the Ocean : Selected Works,
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Another problem with the use of the term aid in our region is that it purportedly aims to help the Pacific Islands to become self-reliant so

instead of increasing self-reliance the

development trends over the past decades have been towards economic and
social integration. That the Pacific Islands will ever again be truly self-reliant is an impossibility. It is an
impossibility not because, as experts say, they lack the necessary resources to be
self-reliant for given a different economy and society they could very well be
selfsufficient as they were for centuries until about a hundred years ago. They
cannot be self-reliant because they are in an economy that will not allow them to
be; they are too much part of the overall regional strategic alignment for the
protection of that economy to be allowed any real measure of independence .
that there will be no need for further aid. But as I have tried to show,

Furthermore, the ruling classes in the whole region benefit so much from the present arrangements that, despite rhetoric to the contrary,

What is termed aid has in fact turned out to be a necessary

corrective and integrative mechanism, and as such will continue unabated and
grow, for it does not really cost much to keep a few tiny communities with very
small populations within the system. In fact, as I have pointed out, it costs Australia and New Zealand hardly
they would have it no other way.

anything to maintain and even to intensify the integration. I have argued elsewhere that there is no such thing as aid. 1 I will not repeat that
argument here except to reinforce it by saying that since aid has achieved the complete opposite of its stated aims, it is no longer aid. Either
we should adopt a new term for the resource distribution it represents, or we should give it a new and more honest definition.

Development towards self-reliance and full national sovereignty has been the
stated goal of decolonisation. But we have seen that decolonisation has led to
integration. Without self-reliance there can be no real national sovereignty in the
South Pacific islands. It follows that what we call national sovereignty in the region is little more than a measure of local
autonomy in the hands of competing national interests within the larger regional economy. These interests are represented by the ruling

groups within each community. Their control of the resources within their communities and their privileged access to resources moving

Many of the
resources including aid moving from these centres to the regional communities
go towards the support of elite groups that, as we have seen, have strong
economic, social, and cultural ties with Australia and New Zealand. The economic and strategic integration that I
through the region make them indispensable to the regional centres located in Australia and New Zealand.

have discussed rests on the maintenance of the local ruling classes and their continued affiliation with regional centres of control.

Consumerism leads to a wealth gap where the poor have to feed off
the effluent of the affluent
Hau'ofa 8 (Epeli Hau'ofa, PhD, Social Anthropology, Australian National University, 2008, We Are the Ocean : Selected Works,
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Finally, I think that a very important development, one that we have to watch
carefully, is the emergence of privileged classes in the islands. For it is certain that the fates of
the island communities are being decided by the ways in which these groups act, first, in relation to their own underprivileged people and,

. It has been said that

a main problem with Pacific Islanders is their high level of material aspirations
that they desire goods and services which their own communities resources
cannot provide. An immediate reaction to this is to say that this is so because Pacific Islanders are part of an economy that
second, in relation to their important connections with each other and with similar groups elsewhere

thrives on consumerism. To have drawn people into an economy dominated by Australia and New Zealand and then to expect them to have
aspirations different from Australians and New Zealanders is to expect something that is not in the nature of human beings. A further

peoples aspirations are not uniformly high. We would

most likely see that the levels of aspiration vary according to social classes. The
highest levels would be found among the privileged; the poor merely struggle to
survive and scrounge for what they can get from the effluent of the affluent . The
examination of the problem would reveal that

privileged have high aspirations because they can generally get what they want through their ability to plug into the wider economy and, as
well, by strictly regulating the access to the same resources by others. The underprivileged are poor because of their inability to tap the
regional resources and are therefore left to make the best out of what is available in their immediate physical surroundings.

Economic development creates a system where the privileged decide

the fate of the poor causes the condition of the under privileged to
deteriorate
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There are people who believe that our economy is wrong and that the conditions
of the underprivileged in the islands will continue to deteriorate. My experiences over the last
decade have led me towards the same conclusion. But I also think that, in the short-term future at least, the present system
will continue and that in the South Pacific there cannot be any real change
without fundamental structural alterations in Islander relations with Australia and New
Zealand, the twin hubs of our region. It is no longer realistic to say that each island country must be able to clean up its own house. Those

there are
no bounded economies in the region. Given that situation, the problem of the
poor remains or perhaps I should say that the problem of the affluent remains. It
is the privileged who decide on the needs of their communities and the directions
of development and whose rising aspirations and affluence entail the worsening
conditions of the poor. I deliberately state this truism because it is something relatively new to the islands. There is a
strong reluctance on the part of the regional privileged, including academics, to
recognise the emergence of modern classes in the island world. There is a
tendency for island analysts, businessmen, state officials, and politicians,
influenced by their Western mentors, to blame the poor for their own conditions .
who wish to see Pacific Islanders living at the levels their own national resources can support overlook the obvious fact that

They are said to be too culture-bound to see things as they should be seen and act accordingly. If they could only be less traditional and less

indolent, pull up their socks (as if they had any to begin with), and adopt the Protestant Work Ethic, they could easily raise their standards
of living. I submit that this is a red herring. Firstly, the problem is not so much a cultural issue of stubborn adherence to outmoded
traditions as it is an economic matter. The poor adhere to some of their traditions because they have consistently been denied any real
benefits from their labour. Their adherence to their traditions is a matter of necessity and economic security. Given real opportunities
within the larger economy, they would more than pull up their socks: witness the rush of Polynesians to the factories of New Zealand,
Australia, and the United States when real opportunities and alternatives were in the offing.

Indigenious society has been belittled due to derogatory discourse,

removing this is key to promote autonomy
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Having clarified my vantage point, let me make a statement of the obvious: views held by those in dominant
positions about their subordinates can have significant consequences for peoples
self-image and for the ways they cope with their situations. Such views, often
derogatory and belittling, are integral to most relationships of dominance and
subordination, wherein superiors behave in ways or say things that are accepted
by their inferiors, who in turn behave in ways that perpetuate the relationships.
In Oceania, derogatory and belittling views of indigenous cultures are traceable to
the early years of interaction with Europeans. The wholesale condemnation by
Christian missionaries of Oceanian cultures as savage, lascivious, and barbaric
has had a lasting and negative effect on peoples views of their histories and
traditions. In a number of Pacific societies people still divide their history into
two parts: the era of darkness, associated with savagery and barbarism, and the
era of light and civilisation ushered in by Christianity. In Papua New Guinea,
European males were addressed as masters and workers as boys. Even
indigenous policemen were called police boys. This use of language helped to
reinforce the colonially established social stratification along ethnic divisions.
Colonial practices and denigration portrayed Melanesian peoples and cultures as
even more primitive and barbaric than those of Polynesia . In this light, Melanesian attempts
during the immediate postcolonial years to rehabilitate their cultural identity by cleansing it of its colonial taint are natural reactions.
Leaders like Walter Lini of Vanuatu and Bernard Narokobi of Papua New Guinea have spent much of their energy extolling the virtues of
Melanesian values as equal to if not better than those of their erstwhile colonisers. Europeans did not invent belittlement. In many societies
it was part and parcel of indigenous cultures. In the aristocratic societies of Polynesia, parallel relationships of dominance and
subordination with their paraphernalia of appropriate attitudes and behaviour were the order of the day. In Tonga, the term for commoners
is mea vale, the ignorant ones, which is a survival from an era when the aristocracy controlled all important knowledge in the society.
Keeping the ordinary folk in the dark and calling them ignorant made it easier to control and subordinate them. I would like, however, to

focus on a currently prevailing notion about Islanders and their physical

surroundings that, if not countered with more constructive views, could inflict
lasting damage on peoples images of themselves and on their ability to act with
relative autonomy in their endeavours to survive reasonably well within the
international system in which they have found themselves. It is a belittling view
that has been propagated unwittingly mostly by social scientists who have
sincere concern for the welfare of Pacific peoples. According to this view, the small island states and

territories of the Pacific, that is, all of Polynesia and Micronesia, are too small, too poorly endowed with resources, and too isolated from the
centres of economic growth for their inhabitants ever to be able to rise above their present condition of dependence on the largesse of
wealthy nations.

We dont need credentials, we have the personal experience of

Hau'ofa
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Initially I not only agreed wholeheartedly with this perspective but participated
actively in its propagation. It seemed to be based on irrefutable evidence on the reality of our existence. Events of the
1970s and 1980s confirmed the correctness of this view. The hoped-for era of autonomy following

political independence did not materialise. Our national leaders were in the
vanguard of a rush to secure financial aid from every quarter; our economies
were stagnating or declining; our environments were deteriorating or threatened
and we could do little about it; our own people were evacuating themselves to
greener pastures elsewhere. Whatever remained of our resources, including our
exclusive economic zones, was being hawked for the highest bid. Some of our islands had
become, in the words of one social scientist, MIRAB societiespitiful microstates condemned forever to depend on migration,

Even the better-resource-endowed

Melanesian countries were mired in dependency, indebtedness, and seemingly
endless social fragmentation and political instability. What hope was there for
us?
This deterministic view leads to fatalism and moral paralysis
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The idea that the countries of Polynesia and Micronesia are too small, 1 too poor,
and too isolated to develop any meaningful degree of autonomy is an economistic
and geographic deterministic view of a very narrow kind that overlooks culture
history and the contemporary process of what may be called world enlargement
that is carried out by tens of thousands of ordinary Pacific Islanders right across
the ocean from east to west and north to south, under the very noses of academic and consultancy experts, regional and
remittances, aid, and bureaucracy, not on any real economic productivity.

international development agencies, bureaucratic planners and their advisers, and customs and immigration officialsmaking nonsense of
all national and economic boundaries, borders that have been defined only recently, crisscrossing an ocean that had been boundless for ages

. If this very narrow, deterministic perspective is not

questioned and checked, it could contribute importantly to an eventual
consignment of whole groups of human beings to a perpetual state of wardship
wherein they and their surrounding lands and seas would be at the mercy of the
manipulators of the global economy and world orders of one kind or another.
Belittlement in whatever guise, if internalised for long and transmitted across
generations, may lead to moral paralysis, to apathy, to the kind of fatalism we can
see among our fellow human beings who have been herded and confined to
reservations or internment camps. People in some of our islands are in danger of being confined to mental
before Captain Cooks apotheosis

reservations if not physical ones. I am thinking here of people in the Marshall Islands, who have been victims of atomic and missile tests by
the United States.

Adopting the mythical tradition of Oceania gives us a holistic view

that counters colonial thought
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But if we look at the myths, legends, and oral traditions, indeed the cosmologies
of the peoples of Oceania, it becomes evident that they did not conceive of their
world in such microscopic proportions. T heir universe comprised not only land surfaces but the surrounding
ocean as far as they could traverse and exploit it, the underworld with its fire-controlling and earth-shaking denizens, and the heavens
above with their hierarchies of powerful gods and named stars and constellations that people could count on to guide their ways across the

Their world was anything but tiny. They thought big and recounted their
deeds in epic proportions. One legendary Oceanian athlete was so powerful that
during a competition he threw his javelin with such force that it pierced the
horizon and disappeared until that night when it was seen streaking across the
sky like a meteor. Every now and then it reappears to remind people of the
mighty deed. And as far as Im concerned it is still out there, near Jupiter or somewhere. That was the first rocket ever sent into
seas.

. Islanders today still relish exaggerating things out of all proportion.

Smallness is a state of mind. There is a world of difference between viewing the
Pacific as islands in a far sea and as a sea of islands. 2 The first emphasises
dry surfaces in a vast ocean far from the centres of power. Focussing in this way
stresses the smallness and remoteness of the islands. The second is a more
holistic perspective in which things are seen in the totality of their relationships.
The success of societies are because of the people, not developement
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In general, the living standards of Oceania are higher than those of most thirdworld societies. To attribute this merely to aid and remittances misconstrued
deliberately or otherwise as a form of dependence on rich countries economies
is an unfortunate misreading of contemporary reality. Ordinary Pacific people
depend for their daily existence much, much more on themselves and their kin,
wherever they may be, than on anyones largesse, which they believe is largely pocketed by the elite
classes. The funds and goods that homes-abroad people send their homeland relatives belong to no one but themselves. They earn
every cent through hard physical toil in the new locations that need and pay for
their labour. They also participate in the manufacture of many of the goods they
send home; they keep the streets and buildings of Auckland clean; they keep its
transportation system running smoothly; they keep the suburbs of the western
United States (including Hawaii) trimmed, neat, green, and beautiful; and they
have contributed much, much more than has been acknowledged. Islanders in their
space

homelands are not the parasites on their relatives abroad that misinterpreters of remittances would have us believe. Economists do not

They overlook the

fact that for everything homeland relatives receive, they reciprocate with goods
they themselves produce, by maintaining ancestral roots and lands for everyone,
homes with warmed hearths for travellers to return to permanently or to
strengthen their bonds, their souls, and their identities before they move on
again. This is not dependence but interdependence purportedly the essence of the global system. To
take account of the social centrality of the ancient practice of reciprocity the core of all oceanic cultures.

say that it is something else and less is not only erroneous but denies people their dignity.

The indigenous are the best guardians for the ocean

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But the islands are not connected only with regions of the Pacific Rim. Within Oceania itself people are once again circulating in increasing
numbers and frequency. Regional organisations intergovernmental, educational, religious, sporting, and cultural are responsible for
much of this mobility. The University of the South Pacific, with its highly mobile staff and student bodies comprising men, women, and
youth from the twelve island countries that own it and from outside the Pacific, is an excellent example. Increasingly the older movers and
shakers of the islands are being replaced by younger ones; and when they meet each other in Suva, Honiara, Apia, Vila, or any other capital
city of the Pacific, they meet as friends, as people who have gone through the same place of learning, who have worked and played and

The importance of our ocean for the stability of the global environment,
for meeting a significant proportion of the worlds protein requirements, for the
production of certain marine resources in waters that are relatively clear of
pollution, for the global reserves of mineral resources, among others, has been
increasingly recognised and puts paid to the notion that Oceania is the hole in the
doughnut. Together with our exclusive economic zones, the areas of the earths
surface that most of our countries occupy can no longer be called small. In this regard,
Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia, and French Polynesia, for example, are among the largest countries in the world. The
emergence of organisations such as spachee (South Pacific Action Committee for
prayed together.

Human Environment and Ecology), sprep (South Pacific Regional Environment

Programme), the Forum Fisheries Agency, and sopac (South Pacific Applied
Geosciences Commission); of movements for a nuclear-free Pacific, the
prevention of toxic waste disposal, and the ban on the wall-of-death fishing
methods, with linkages to similar organisations and movements elsewhere; and
the establishment at the University of the South Pacific of the Marine Science and
Ocean Resources Management programmes, with linkages to fisheries and ocean
resources agencies throughout the Pacific and beyond all indicate that we could
play a pivotal role in the protection and sustainable development of our ocean .
No people on earth are more suited to be guardians of the worlds
largest ocean than those for whom it has been home for generations.
Although this is a different issue from the ones I have focussed on for most of this essay, it is relevant to the concern for a far better future

Our role in the protection and development of our

ocean is no mean task; it is no less than a major contribution to the well-being of
humanity. Because it could give us a sense of doing something not only
worthwhile but noble, we should seize the moment with despatch.
for us than has been prescribed and predicted.

Cooperation solves against the current market economic system of

greed and amorality
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A common identity that would help us to act together for the advancement of our
collective interests, including the protection of the ocean for the general good, is
necessary for the quality of our survival in the so-called Pacific Century when, as
we are told, important developments in the global economy will concentrate in
huge regions that encircle us. As individual, colonially created, tiny countries
acting alone, we could indeed fall off the map or disappear into the black hole of a gigantic panPacific doughnut, as our perspicacious friends, the denizens of the National Centre for Development Studies in Canberra, are fond of telling

But acting together as a region, for the interests of the region as a whole, and
above those of our individual countries, we would enhance our chances for a
reasonable survival in the century that is already dawning upon us. Acting in
unison for larger purposes and for the benefit of the wider community could help
us to become more open-minded, idealistic, altruistic, and generous, and less
self-absorbed and corrupt, in the conduct of our public affairs than we are today.
In an age when our societies are preoccupied with the pursuit of material wealth,
when the rampant market economy brings out unquenchable greed and
amorality in us, it is necessary for our institutions of learning to develop
corrective mechanisms, such as the one proposed here, if we are to retain our
sense of humanity and community. An identity that is grounded in something as vast as the sea should exercise our
us.

minds and rekindle in us the spirit that sent our ancestors to explore the oceanic unknown and make it their home, our home. I would like
to make it clear at the outset that I am not in any way suggesting cultural homogeneity for our region. Such a thing is neither possible nor

Our diverse loyalties are much too strong for a regional identity ever to
erase them. Besides, our diversity is necessary for the struggle against the
homogenising forces of the global juggernaut. It is even more necessary for those
of us who must focus on strengthening their ancestral cultures in their struggles
against seemingly overwhelming forces in order to regain their lost sovereignty.
desirable.

The regional identity that I am concerned with is something additional to the other identities we already have, or will develop in the future,
something that should serve to enrich our other selves. The ideas for a regional identity that I express here have emerged from nearly
twenty years of direct involvement with an institution that caters to many of the tertiary educational needs of most of the South Pacific
Islands Region and, increasingly, countries north of the equator as well. In a very real sense the University of the South Pacific is a

microcosm of the region. Many aspects of its history, which began in 1968 in the era of decolonisation of island territories, mirror the
developments in the regional communities it serves. The well-known diversity of social organisations, economies, and cultures of the region
is reflected in a student population that comprises people from all twelve countries that own the university, as well as a sprinkling from
other regions. This sense of diversity is heightened by daily interactions between students themselves, among staff, and between staff and
students that take place on our main campus in Suva, and by staff visits to regional countries to conduct face-to-face instruction of our
extension students, summer schools, research, and consultancy, and to perform other university duties.

The Ocean maintains isolated and pure traditions, but modernization

has increased cultural diffusion, risking this
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On the largest island of Oceania, New Guinea, products of the sea, especially the much-valued shells, reached the most remote highlands
societies, shaping their ceremonial and political systems. But more important, inland people of our large islands are now citizens of
Oceanian countries whose capitals and other urban centres are located in coastal areas, to which they are moving in large numbers to seek

Many of us today are not directly or personally

dependent on the sea for our livelihood and would probably get seasick as soon as
we set foot on a rocking boat. This means only that we are no longer sea travellers or fishers. But as long as
we live on our islands we remain very much under the spell of the sea; we cannot
avoid it. Before the advent of Europeans in our region, our cultures were truly oceanic in the sense
that the sea barrier shielded us for millennia from the great cultural influences
that raged through continental landmasses and adjacent islands. This prolonged
period of isolation allowed for the emergence of distinctive oceanic cultures with
no nonoceanic influencesexcept on the original cultures that the earliest settlers
brought with them when they entered the vast, uninhabited region. Scholars of antiquity
advancement. The sea is already part of their lives.

may raise the issue of continental cultural influences on the western and northwestern border islands of Oceania, but these are exceptions,

Asian mainland influences were largely absent until the modern era.

and
On the eastern
extremity of the region there were some influences from the Americas, but these were minimal. For these reasons Pacific Ocean islands,
from Japan through the Philippines and Indonesia, which are adjacent to the Asian mainland, do not have oceanic cultures and are

This definition of our region that delineates us clearly from Asia

and the preColumbian Americas is based on our own historical developments
rather than on other peoples perceptions of us. Although the sea shielded us from
Asian and American influence, the nature of the spread of our islands allowed a
great deal of mobility within the region. The sea provided waterways that connected neighbouring islands into
therefore not part of Oceania.

regional exchange groups that tended to merge into one another, allowing the diffusion of cultural traits through most of Oceania.

These common traits of bygone and changing traditions have so far provided
many of the elements for the construction of regional identities. But many people
on our islands do not share these common traits as part of their heritage, and an
increasing number of true urbanites are alienated from their ancient histories . In
other words: although our historical and resource potentials of the open sea and the
ocean bed, the water that united subregions of Oceania in the past may become a
major divisive factor in the relationships between our countries in the future. It is
therefore essential that we ground any new regional identity in a belief in the
common heritage of the sea. Simple recognition that the ocean is uncontainable
and pays no respect to territoriality should goad us to advance the notion , based on
physical reality and practices that date back to the initial settlement of Oceania, that the sea must remain open to all of us.

We must become the custodians of the Ocean, the impacts are already
happening, we just have to wake up to it
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A regional identity anchored in our common heritage of the ocean does not mean
an assertion of exclusive regional territorial rights. The water that washes and
crashes on our shores is the water that washes and crashes on the coastlines of

the whole Pacific Rim from Antarctica to New Zealand, Australia, Southeast and East Asia, and right around to the
Americas. The Pacific Ocean also merges into the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans to
encircle the entire planet. Just as the sea is an open and ever-flowing reality, so
should our oceanic identity transcend all forms of insularity, to become one that
is openly searching, inventive, and welcoming. In a metaphorical sense the ocean that has been our
waterway to each other should also be our route to the rest of the world. Our most important role should be that
of custodians of the ocean; as such we must reach out to similar people elsewhere
in the common task of protecting the seas for the general welfare of all living
things. This may sound grandiose but it really is not, considering the growing
importance of international movements to implement the most urgent projects in
the global environmental agenda: protection of the ozone layer, the forests, and
the oceans. The formation of an oceanic identity is really an aspect of our waking
up to things that are already happening around us. The ocean is not merely our
omnipresent, empirical reality; equally important, it is our most wonderful
metaphor for just about anything we can think of. Contemplation of its vastness and majesty, its
allurement and fickleness, its regularities and unpredictability, its shoals and depths, its isolating and linking role in our histories all this
excites the imagination and kindles a sense of wonder, curiosity, and hope that could set us on journeys to explore new regions of creative

What I have tried to say so far is that in order to give

substance to a common regional identity and animate it, we must tie history and
culture to empirical reality and practical action. This is not new; our ancestors
wrote our histories on the landscape and the seascape; carved, stencilled, and
wove our metaphors on objects of utility; and sang and danced in rituals and
ceremonies for the propitiation of the awesome forces of nature and society.
We need to engage in an Oceanic Renaissance, where we perceive a
commonality as a step towards decolonization
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enterprise that we have not dreamt of before.

Some thirty years ago, Albert Wendt, in his landmark paper Towards a New Oceania, wrote of his vision of the region and its first season

: I belong to Oceania or, at least, I am rooted in a fertile

and it nourishes my spirit, helps to define me, and feeds my imagination.
A detached/objective analysis I will leave to sociologists and all the other ologists. . . . Objectivity is for such
uncommitted gods. My commitment wont allow me to confine myself to so
narrow a vision. So vast, so fabulously varied a scatter of islands, nations,
cultures, mythologies and myths, so dazzling a creature, Oceania deserves more
than an attempt at mundane fact; only the imagination in free flight can hope if
not to contain her to grasp some of her shape, plumage, and pain. I will not pretend that I
know her in all her manifestations. No one . . . ever did; no one does . . . ; no one ever will because whenever we
think we have captured her she has already assumed new guises the love affair
is endless, even her vital statistics . . . will change endlessly. In the final instance, our countries,
of postcolonial cultural flowering. The first two paragraphs read
portion of it

cultures, nations, planets are what we imagine them to be. One human beings reality is anothers fiction. Perhaps we ourselves exist only in
one anothers dreams. [1976, 49] At the end of his rumination on the cultural revival in Oceania, partly through the words of the regions

This artistic renaissance

is enriching our cultures further, reinforcing our identities/selfrespect/and pride,
and taking us through a genuine decolonisation; it is also acting as a unifying
force in our region. In their individual journeys into the Void, these artists,
through their work, are explaining us to ourselves and creating a new Oceania.
This is very true. And for a new Oceania to take hold it must have a solid
dimension of commonality that we can perceive with our senses. Culture and
first generation of postcolonial writers and poets, Wendt concluded with this remark (1976, 60):

nature are inseparable. The Oceania that I see is a creation of countless people in
all walks of life. Artists must work with others, for creativity lies in all fields, and
besides we need each other. These were the thoughts that went through my mind as I searched for a thematic concept
on which to focus a sufficient number of programmes to give the Oceania Centre a clear, distinctive, and unifying identity. The theme for the
centre and for us to pursue is the ocean and, as well, the interactions between us and the sea that have shaped and are shaping so much of
our cultures. We begin with what we have in common and draw inspiration from the diverse patterns that have emerged from the successes
and failures in our adaptation to the influences of the sea. From there we can range beyond the tenth horizon, secure in the knowledge of

We shall
visit our people who have gone to the lands of diaspora and tell them that we
have built something: a new home for all of us. And taking a cue from the oceans ever-flowing and
encircling nature, we will travel far and wide to connect with oceanic and maritime
peoples elsewhere, and swap stories of voyages we have taken and those yet to be
embarked on. We will show them what we have created; we will learn from them
different kinds of music, dance, art, ceremonies, and other forms of cultural
production. We may even together make new sounds, new rhythms, new
choreographies, and new songs and verses about how wonderful and terrible the
sea is, and how we cannot live without it. We will talk about the good things the
oceans have bestowed on us, the damaging things we have done to them, and how
we must together try to heal their wounds and protect them forever. I have said
elsewhere that no people on earth are more suitable to be the custodians of the
oceans than those for whom the sea is home. We seem to have forgotten that we
are such a people. Our roots, our origins, are embedded in the sea. All our
ancestors, including those who came as recently as sixty years ago, were brought
here by the sea. Some were driven here by war, famine, and pestilence; some
were brought by necessity, to toil for others; and some came seeking adventures
and perhaps new homes. Some arrived in good health, others barely survived the
traumas of passage. For whatever reasons, and through whatever experiences they endured, they came by sea to the Sea, and
we have been here since. If we listened attentively to stories of ocean passage to new lands,
and of the voyages of yore, our minds would open up to much that is profound in
our histories, to much of what we are and what we have in common.
Weve let development take over our identity, we must use the sea as a
metaphor to overtake this and establish a new saga
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Contemporary developments are taking us away from our sea anchors. Most of
our modern economic activities are land based. We travel mostly by air, flying
miles above the oceans, completing our journeys in hours instead of days and
weeks and months. We rear and educate our young on things that have scant
relevance to the sea. Yet we are told that the future of most of our countries lies there. Have we forgotten so much that we will
the home base to which we will always return for replenishment and revision of the purposes and directions of our journeys.

not easily find our way back to the ocean? As a region we are floundering because we have forgotten, or spurned, the study and

We
have thereby allowed others who are well equipped with the so-called objective
knowledge of our historical development to continue reconstituting and
reshaping our world and our selves with impunity , and in accordance with their shifting interests at any
given moment in history. We have tagged along with this for so long that we have kept our
silence even though we have virtually been defined out of existence . We have floundered
contemplation of our pasts, even our recent histories, as irrelevant for the understanding and conduct of our contemporary affairs.

also because we have considered regionalism mainly from the points of view of individual national interests rather than the interest of a
wider collectivity.

And we have failed to build any clear and enduring regional identity

partly because so far we have constructed edifices with disconnected traits from
traditional cultures and passing events, edifices without concrete foundations.
The regional identity proposed here has been built on a base of concrete reality.
That the sea is as real as you and I, that it shapes the character of this planet, that
it is a major source of our sustenance, that it is something we all share in
common wherever we are in Oceania all are statements of fact. But above that level of
everyday experience, the sea is our pathway to each other and to everyone else,
the sea is our endless saga, the sea is our most powerful metaphor, the ocean is in
us.
Dependence prevents autonomy, the past needs to be reconstructed to
establish a new hegemony of discourse
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In an earlier publication (1993), I offered a view of ourselves that is more optimistic than the currently prevailing notions of our present and

That view is tied to my firmly held belief that all social realities
are human creations and that if we fail to construct our own realities other
people will do it for us. It can be said that this concern is much ado about nothing. I wish that this were true, but it is not.
People with powerful connections have presented us in certain ways that have
influenced our self-perceptions and the ways in which we have been perceived
and treated by others. Sir Thomas Davis, former prime minister of the Cook Islands, was a prominent Pacific Islands
future as peoples of Oceania.

regional leader in the 1970s and 1980s. In his book Island Boy, he offers a telling statement of what could happen when we accept other
peoples representations of us: Because we believed it when we were told that small Pacific Islands States could never make a go of it
without largesse from their former colonial masters, we did not try very hard to see the possibilities from our own points of view which had
to be quite different from theirs [Australians and New Zealanders]. . . . We, therefore, accepted largesse as a right, without questioning the
matter any further, and without the thought that some day it may not be forthcoming. [1992, 305] As I said at the beginning, I have tried to

. I propose now to look into our past. I believe that in

order for us to gain greater autonomy than we have today and maintain it within
the global system, we must in addition to other measures be able to define and
construct our pasts and present in our own ways. We cannot continue to rely on
others to do it for us because autonomy cannot be attained through dependence .
deal with aspects of our present and future

Intermittently in the 1980s and through to the very early 1990s, I followed the discussions of ideas propounded by certain anthropologists

What these cultural constructionists are

doing is what we have been doing all along that is, constructing our pasts, our
histories, from vast storehouses of narratives, both written and oral, to push
particular agendas. One of the more positive aspects of our existence in Oceania
is that truth is flexible and negotiable, despite attempts by some of us to impose
political, religious, and other forms of absolutism. Versions of truth may be accepted for particular
about the constructions of the past and the politics of culture. 1

purposes and moments, only to be reversed when circumstances demand other versions; and we often accede to things just to stop being
bombarded, and then go ahead and do what we want to do anyway. But cultural constructionists of a certain persuasion have gone beyond
the bounds by arrogating to themselves the role of final arbiters of what is true or false in our societies: true history, false history; genuine

It is a new hegemony, or perhaps it is the old one in a new guise.

Our chiefs and other leaders have been doing it, but we have ways of dealing with
this sort of thing. Our freedom lies in the flexibility in all kinds of discourses on
the nature of our societies and on the directions of our development. There are no
final truths or falsehoods, only interpretations, temporary consensus, and even
impositions, for particular purposes. Cultural constructionists aim to control and
direct our discourses on our own affairs, which is unwarranted . It is also potentially dangerous,
culture, spurious culture.

for these scholars could be politically influential, as Haunani-Kay Trask (1991) has asserted.

Imperialism has reshaped Pacific Indigenous history, marginalizing

its importance and erasing all existence before the first European
encounter

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Until recent years with the rise into prominence of historical anthropology and ethnographic history, there has been a neartotal domination of the scholarly reconstructions of our pasts by the Canberra school of Pacific
historians. From their works we can see that fundamental to the conceptualisation
and writing of our histories is the division of our past into two main periods: the
precontact and postcontact periods. The determining factor for this is the presence of Europeans with their
traditions of writing and recording. Many years ago, while visiting a rural community in Papua New Guinea, I was invaded by a particularly
virulent kind of lice. Some people call them crab lice, but these looked more like giant lobsters. I went to a nearby hospital run by a group of
missionary sisters, one of whom told me in a serious and concerned manner to be very careful, for any slight body contact with the local

As used by
historians and other scholars the term is very apt; it describes accurately the first
and early encounters between Oceanians and European sailors as carriers of
dangerous diseases that wiped out large proportions of our populations in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Within one hundred years the indigenous population of Hawaii, for
inhabitants would cause much misery. Since then I have always associated the word contact with nasty infections.

example, was reduced by more than ninety percent. There was a real concern towards the end of the nineteenth century that we would
vanish from the face of the earth because of such rampaging diseases. Ironically, a major concern in the twilight years of the twentieth

. Marxist sociologists, who began arriving at our

university in the early 1980s, would not use the term contact because of its
capitalist association. Instead they introduced a beautiful substitute,
penetration, as in capitalist penetration of the Pacific or get penetrated. This is
century was that there were too many of us around

also a very apt term for it connotes consummation without mutual consent. We should get rid of these words and use better ones like

The point is that for Pacific scholars the main factors for the
reconstruction of our pasts are events determined by Euro-American
imperialism. Our histories are commonly structured on the temporal division of
the past into precontact, early contact, colonial, and postcolonial or neocolonial
periods. In this formulation, Oceania has no history before imperialism, only
what is called prehistory: before history. In many if not most of our history
books, more than nine-tenths of the period of our existence in Oceania is
cramped into a chapter or two on prehistory and perhaps indigenous social
organisation. These comprise a brief prelude to the real thing: history beginning
with the arrival of Europeans. As it is, our histories are essentially narratives told
in the footnotes of the histories of empires. For those of us who want to reconstruct our remote and recent
meet, encounter, and so on.

pasts in our own images for the purpose of attaining and maintaining cultural autonomy and resisting the continuing encroachments on
and domination of our lives by global forces aided and abetted by comprador institutions this kind of history is a hindrance.

Although it is very useful, even essential, for the understanding of vital aspects of
our heritage, it is a hindrance in that it marginalises our peoples by relegating
them to the roles of spectators and objects for transformation into good
Christians, democrats, bureaucrats, commercial producers, cheap labourers, and
the like. It does not see them as major players in the shaping of their histories. The
main actors are explorers, early traders, missionaries, planters, colonial officials, and so forth.

Imperialism has become a dominant culture, robbing and engulfing

other cultures and severing people from their own histories
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When you view most of a peoples past as not history, you shorten very drastically
the roots of their culture or even declare their existence doubtful. It is not surprising, then,
that many academics hold the view that the peoples and cultures of Oceania are
inventions of imperialism. This view has attained the status of truth only because

people have been sidelined from their histories and conceptually severed from
most of their pasts. It has been used to frustrate our endeavours to attain
autonomy by characterising most of what we say or do as being borrowed from
the dominant cultureas if borrowing is unique to us. As far as I know, our cultures have always been
hybrid and hybridising, for we have always given to and taken from our
neighbours and others we encounter; but the dominant culture is undoubtedly
the most hybrid of all, for it has not just borrowed but looted unconscionably the
treasures of cultures the world over. Like cultural constructionism, the prevailing
Pacific historiography is hegemonic. With only minor concessions it admits of no
other than mainline historiography.
The affirmative advocates for a reconstruction of our pasts by
delineating a new history separate from European influence,
effectively decolonizing and supporting grass-roots movements that
take down the capitalist utopia
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Having identified the problem, we may ask: Where do we go from here? What should we do? If we are to go beyond adding our viewpoints
to history as usual, we have to devise other methods, using our own categories as much as possible for producing our histories, our cultures.

but we
Oceanians must find ways of reconstructing our pasts that are our own . NonOceanians may construct and interpret our pasts or our present, but those are
their constructions and interpretations, not ours. Theirs may be excellent and very instructive, but
we must rely much more on ours. The rest of this chapter suggests some ideas for getting the ball rolling. We
may begin with delineating a new temporal dimension of history by doing away
with the division of the past in which most of it lies outside history. Our histories
did not begin with the coming of Europeans. If we continue to rely mainly on the works of archaeologists,
We could learn from the works of ethnographic historians and historical anthropologists, as well as from mainline historians,

linguists, botanists, zoologists, and the like for the reconstruction of our remote pasts, we will still be trapped with our pasts as prehistory.

We must resort very seriously to our ecologically based oral narratives . Most historians,

nurtured on written records and other kinds of concrete documentation as their primary sources, are leery of oral narratives, which they
take to be free-floating tales disconnected from the physical world, impossible of verification, and therefore outside their purview. A few
years ago I came across the work of an Oceanian historical anthropologist, Okusitino Mhina, who argued very strongly that ecologically
based oral traditions are as valid sources for academic history as are written documents (see Mhina 1992). As I read Mhinas work,
which is an entire history based largely on oral traditions backed wherever possible with the findings of archaeology and related disciplines,
it dawned on me that here in the making was a new Pacific historiography by an Oceanian scholar. A few historians may be working along
similar lines, but it is significant that Mhinas background is anthropology, the discipline that has spearheaded the rethinking of Pacific
historiography. The point at issue here is whether there are legitimate histories apart from mainline history. If there are, and I believe that

Human events occur as interactions

between people in time and space. First we look at people. In our reconstructions
of Pacific histories of the recent past, for example, we must clear the stage and
bring in new characters. We bring to the centre stage, as main players, our own
peoples and institutions. For this purpose we lay to rest once and for all the ghost of Captain Cook. This is not a suggestion
there are, then our histories are as old as our remembered pasts.

to excise him entirely from our histories far from it. Others, especially in New Zealand and Australia, will still consider him a superstar, so
he will be looming large on the horizon. As for us, we merely send Captain Cook to the wings to await our summons when it is necessary to
call in the Plague, and we may recall him at the end to take a bow. As long as this particular spirit struts the centre stage, our peoples and
institutions will remain where they are now: as minor characters and spectators. Once we sideline Captain Cook it will be easier to deal with

As long as we rely mainly on written documents, and as long as

Europeans, Americans, and similar others are seen to dominate our pasts as main
actors or manipulators of local people to carry out their designs, our histories will
remain imperial histories and narratives of passive submission to
transformations, victimisations, and fatal impacts. There have been tragic and awful victimisations. But
other and lesser intruders.

from a long-term perspective, which is the best kind of historical outlook, what is of more importance is how people, ordinary people, the
forgotten people of history, have coped and are coping with their harsh realities, their resistance and struggles to be themselves and hold
together. Patricia Graces brilliant novel, Cousins (1992), is the best record I have yet read of how an ordinary Oceanian family struggles to

maintain its coherence in the face of adversity. Until relatively recently, Pacific histories have generally been silent on resistance and the
struggles to cohere that went on, mostly unnoticed, through decades of domination and exploitation. Even in the late 1960s, Hawaii and

In order to bring to centre stage grassroots

resistance and other unnoticed but important events for our peoples, we must
refocus our historical reconstructions on them and their doings. The new knowledge and
New Zealand were still touted as societies of multiracial harmony.

insights we might gain from this reversal of historical roles could open up new and exciting vistas. Let others do their reconstructions of our
pasts; we have dialogue with them, we form alliances with some. But we must have histories our roots and identities that are our own

After we look at the people, we introduce into our historical

reconstructions the notion of ecological time, which is perhaps both the egg and
the chicken to a marked emphasis in our traditional notions of past, present, and
future. Our modern conception of time stresses linear progression in which the
past is behind us, receding ever further, while the future is ahead, in the direction
of our progression, which is an evolutionary process leading to ever higher and
more advanced forms. Let it be clear that by linear progression I include the
notion of cumulative development or modernisation, which is equated with
progress towards the capitalist utopia, the dream of the wretched of the earth.
distinctive creations.

Lineality was not absent in our traditional notions. In fact it was particularly strong in Central and East Oceania, 2 where it featured in
genealogies, especially those of high chiefs and their deeds. Histories obtained from genealogies have a lineal emphasis, and they are also
aristocratic histories. In West Oceania, where genealogies were relatively shallow, lineality was expressed in other ways. Oceanian lineality,
however, was neither evolutionary nor teleological, but sequential; it had much to do with assertions of rights for succession and
inheritance, not, perhaps ever, with evolutionary development as we know it.

Although technology is key to promote harmony, the transfer of

modern technology has wreaked havoc on human lives and nature
itself, disrupting the natural cycles of ecological relationships
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Of equal importance in the consideration of the relationship between Oceanian societies and nature is the role of technology. The
driving force that propelled human activities was the knowledge and skills
developed over centuries, fine tuned to synchronise actions with the regularities
in nature. As it provided the vital link between society and nature, technology
cannot be dissociated from either. It was a vital and compatible component of the cycles. This made for
balance and continuity in the ecological relationship. Living in harmony with
nature is a more popular way of putting it. For a genuinely Oceanian historiography, we could use this
notion to reconstruct some of our pasts in terms of peoples endeavours always to adapt and localise external borrowings and impositions,

In this way they actively transformed themselves rather than

just being passively remodelled by others. 4 This has been the case since the early settlement of Oceania; it
fitting them to their familiar cycles.

still holds true for much of our region today. Anthropologists, especially those who worked in the Papua New Guinea highlands in the 1950s
and 1960s, have in fact recorded such indigenisations among peoples who had just encountered westerners for the first time. And more
recently, growing numbers of anthropologists are writing their works as historical anthropology and historians are writing theirs as

But things have not always fitted into familiar cycles, which
creates a problem that lies at the core of the study of social change and history .
One of the cardinal tenets of modernisation, a notion of linear progression that
takes little or no consideration of natural cycles, is the necessity and hence the
moral imperative of the transfer of technology. Modern technology, conceived of
as independent of both nature and culture, can therefore be transferred anywhere
in the world unencumbered with natural or cultural baggage. This notion has, on
application, wreaked havoc on human lives and nature everywhere. The attempt
to transfer high technology as the engine for modernisation to societies that have
for ages accommodated themselves to natural cycles of ecological relationships is
like leading an elephant into a china shop.
ethnographic histories. 5

Education in the status quo erases our individual and cultural

identities; it seals ourselves in to isolation, rendering us helpless.
Language is key to break this and to create a space for ourselves that
can understand the physical environment
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I am reminded here of a piece of advice by Machiavelli to his Prince. It was rather extreme, so I do not advocate its being followed to the
letter. Machiavelli said that when you kill someone, kill everyone else connected to him so that no one survives to nurse the memory and

We cannot therefore have our memories erased, foreshortened, or

directed. With weak roots we would be easily uprooted, transplanted, grafted
upon, trimmed, and transformed in any way that the global market requires. With
plot to do you in.

little or no memory, we stand alone as individuals with no points of reference except to our dismally portrayed present, to our increasingly
marketised national institutions, to international development agencies, international lending organisations, transnational corporations, fit
only to be globalised and whateverised, and slotted in our proper places on the Human Development Index. Let Eric Waddell have the final

It is forbidden to speak Fijian (Hindi, Cook

Island Maori, Samoan, Tongan . . .) in the classroom and the school playground.
Everything must take place in English (or French). On entering the school the
child must take leave of his past, his present, his kin. The classrooms and corridors may be decked
with flowers, the teachers smiling, the joys immense. But it is like a door which is sealed behind him, so
that a new world may be designed afresh, unhindered by the weight of tradition,
unmoved by the voices of the ancestors. And in this new world, . . . each child
stands alone: small, remote and ultimately helpless. [1993, 28 29] I submit that this is not confined to
our primary schools. It is characteristic of all our formal educational institutions and our
workplaces. In our educational programmes we provide our students with materials that for the most part have been produced by
say on this: I hear the same voices in the Pacific today:

people in the United States, Britain, and other leading countries of the global system. Ideas that we impart to our students pertain mainly to

. We and our students digest these

notions and then enter international discourses on progress almost always on
other peoples terms. We play their games by their rules, and accept the outcomes
as inevitable and even morally desirable, although these may be, as they have often turned out to be, against
our collective well-being. We are thus eroding whatever is caring and generous in our
existence, sacrificing human lives and our natural surroundings in order to be
competitive in the world market. We need therefore to be much more inventive and creative than we have been, for
these societies, even though they may be projected as universal verities

our own humane development. Our vast region has its own long histories, its storehouses of knowledge, skills, ideals for social
relationships, and oceanic problems and potentials that are quite different from those of large landmasses, in which hegemonic views and

we could use the notion of natural cycles and our traditional

ecological relationships to formulate our own philosophies and ideologies for
resistance against the misapplication of modern technologies on our societies . We
cannot do away with the global system, but we can control aspects of its
encroachment and take opportunities when we see them in order to create space
for ourselves. We could, for example, formulate a benign philosophy that would
help us pay greater reverence and respect to our natural environment than we do
today. I have touched on the development of traditional technologies to link natural cycles and cycles of human activity in enduring,
agendas are hatched. In addition,

total ecological relationships. As has been pointed out, one of our major contemporary problems is that linear progression is based on
systematic and cumulatively destructive deployment of dissociated technology on dissociated nature and society, as required by the global
economy. But if we believe that we are dependent on nature to tell us, as it told our ancestors, when and how to derive our livelihood from
it, and how to care for it, we would think very hard before meddling with it for shortterm advantage, knowing that our actions could break
the cycles and probably cause irreparable damage to ourselves. Earlier I said something about the idea of the spiral as a model for historical
reconstruction. We could go further and incorporate this notion in the formulation of an Oceanian ecological ideology, tying linear
development to natural cycles, with the view of guiding the applications of modern technologies on our environment. Our long-term
survival within Oceania may very well depend on some such guidance. Kalani Ohele, a Hawaiian activist, told me something that has been

We do not own the land, we only look after it.

said before but is worth repeating here:

This leads us to the
consideration of the relationship between history and our natural landscapes. I first came upon this theme in reading Okusitino Mhinas
thesis, although I later found out that this has been done for Hawaii and that the New Zealand Maori have been working on it for quite
some time. Most of our sources of history are our oral narratives inscribed on our landscapes. All our important traditions pinpoint

particular named spots as landing places of original ancestors or spots from which they emerged, as arenas of great and decisive battles, as
sites of past settlements, burials, shrines, and temples, as routes that important migratory movements followed, as markers of more
localised mobility out of ones own into other peoples territories, which made much of the land throughout our islands enduringly
contested by parties deploying not only arms but also oral narratives, including genealogies, to validate their claims and counterclaims.

Populations seem always to be in flux and so too were the dispositions of land,
providing much of the flexibility and motion to the operation of Oceanian
societies. All of this is recorded in narratives inscribed on the landscape. Our
natural landscapes, then, are maps of movements, pauses, and more movements.
Sea routes were mapped on chants. Nearly thirty years ago, Futa Helu wrote a
series of articles on a particular dance chant, the meetuupaki, believed to be
Tongas most ancient. The chant is in an archaic form of the language that almost
no one today understands, which is taken to be the indication of its antiquity.
Helus translation reveals that it is about a voyage from Kiribati to Tonga . The
verses of this chant pinpoint places along the route arranged precisely in their
geographic locational sequence. 6 I believe that the chant is the chart of a long
and important sea route that people used in the past. I once asked a very
knowledgeable seaman how people of old knew sea-lanes, especially between
distant places. He replied that these were recorded in chants that identified
sequences of landfalls between points of departure and final destinations . Distances
were measured in how long it generally took to traverse them. I believe that the Australian Aborigines did roughly the same with their

landscapes and seascapes are

thus cultural as well as physical. We cannot read our histories without knowing
how to read our landscapes (and seascapes). When we realise this, we should be able to
songlines that connected places all across their continent from coast to coast. Our

understand why our languages locate the past as ahead or in front of us. It is right there on our landscapes in front of our very eyes. How
often, while travelling through unfamiliar surroundings, have we had the experience of someone in the company telling us of the
associations of particular spots or other features of the landscape traversed with past events. We turn our heads this way and that, and right
ahead in front of our eyes we see and hear the past being reproduced through running commentaries. And when we go through our own
surroundings, as we do every day, familiar features of our landscapes keep reminding us that the past is alive. They often inspire in us a

These are reasons why it is essential not to

destroy our landmarks, for with their removal very important parts of our
memories, our histories, will be erased. It may be significant in this regard that in
several Austronesian languages the word for placenta and womb is also the
word for land. Among a group of people once well known to me, the Mekeo of Papua New Guinea, the dead were traditionally
sense of reverence and awe, not to mention fear and revulsion.

buried in front of their houses on the sacred ceremonial ground that ran through the centre of their rectangular landscape.

If we dont act now, land will be destroyed, sending livelihoods,

ancestries, and identities into oblivion. We are in a position to stop
this, to reconstruct our histories and form the resistance against
these capitalist corporations and colonialist institutions
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There is a vast difference here that shows diametrically opposed perceptions of
our relationship with our world: world as property versus world as lasting home
home as a heritage, a shrine for those who have cared for it and passed it on to
us, their descendants. For those of us who hold this view, our relationship with
our Earth is indeed spiritual. Opponents and even some sympathisers of resistance and sovereignty movements in
Oceania and elsewhere frequently express utter contempt for assertions of this kind of relationship, the importance of which is felt most
acutely when your ancestral homelands are gone or threatened. I recall having read a statement by a New Zealander who characterised
Maori spirituality as so much mumbo jumbo. This could have been an expression born of ignorance, or an unconscious trivialisation of
something that is powerfully threatening. I once met a very liberal-minded person in Australia who talked of Aboriginal spirituality in a
manner that was perfectly correct and no more. At least she was trying to come to grips with it. Whatever others may say, we need to
include in our philosophy of reverence for nature a strong element of spirituality that we may borrow from our pasts or other peoples pasts,

To remove a people from

their ancestral, natural surroundings or vice versa or to destroy their lands with
or even invent for ourselves, because our Earth is being subjected to intolerable pressures.

mining, deforestation, bombing, largescale industrial and urban developments,

and the like is to sever them not only from their traditional sources of
livelihood but also, and much more importantly, from their ancestry, their
history, their identity, and their ultimate claim for the legitimacy of their
existence. It is the destruction of age-old rhythms of cyclical dramas that lock
together familiar time, motion, and space. Such acts are therefore sacrilegious
and of the same order of enormity as the complete destruction of all of a nations
libraries, archives, museums, monuments, historic buildings, and all its books
and other such documents. James Miller (1985), the Australian Aboriginal educator best known for his book Koori, told
me that his people, the Wonnarua, who once occupied the Hunter Valley all the way down
to the central coast of New South Wales, have a history that dates back only to the
beginning of the British settlement. Their lands are gone, and only a handful of
the words of their original language are still in use. They have no oral narratives,
no memory whatsoever of their past before the invasion and obliteration of their
ancestral world. We, who are more fortunate, cannot afford to believe that our
histories began only with imperialism or that as peoples and cultures we are the
creations of colonialism and Christianity. We cannot afford to have no reference
points in our ancient pasts to have as memories or histories only those imposed
on us by our erstwhile colonisers and the present international system that seems
bent on globalising us completely by eradicating our cultural memory and
diversity, our sense of community, our commitment to our ancestry and progeny,
and individualising, standardising, and homogenising our lives, so as to render
our world completely open for the unfettered movement of capital and
technology. We must therefore actively reconstruct our histories, rewrite our
geography, create our own realities, and disseminate these through our
educational institutions and our societies at large. This is absolutely necessary if
we are to strengthen our position for surviving reasonably as autonomous
peoples within the new international order. We, who are more fortunate, cannot
afford to let our own compradors continue to conspire with transnational
corporations and others to strip and poison our lands, our forests, our reefs, our
ocean. Many of the critical problems that we confront today are consequences of
acts, such as large-scale land deals, committed by our very own ancestors. We must be
careful not to continue repeating similar acts, thus bequeathing to future generations a heritage of misery . We cannot talk
about our spiritual relationship with Earth while allowing ourselves and others to
gut and strip it bare. We need to strengthen cultures of resistance within our
region. For generations, our peasantries have resisted many if not most
introduced development projects simply through noncooperation or through
withdrawal of support as soon as they realised the harmful implications of such
projects for their lives. In more remote eras our ancestors devised very effective
and at times drastic methods of political resistance. For instance, the greatest fear
of high chiefs in the past was the ever-present threat of assassination. The heads
of despots everywhere in Oceania were taken regularly, in a literal and figurative
sense. The Tui Tonga, for example, were so often taken care of that they created a lower paramountcy to be a buffer between them and
an oppressed and enraged population. Series of assassinations of these officials compelled them to establish an even lower paramountcy to
take the heat. And so it went. And so we must follow and resist the erosions, the despoliations, and the exploitations that are going on in our
region. We owe this much to ourselves and to the future. I conclude with the following reflection on past, present, and future.

Wherever I am at any given moment, there is comfort in the knowledge stored at

the back of my mind that somewhere in Oceania is a piece of earth to which I

belong. In the turbulence of life, it is my anchor. No one can take it away from me.
I may never return to it, not even as mortal remains, but it will always be
homeland. We all have or should have homelands: family, community, national
homelands. And to deny human beings the sense of homeland is to deny them a
deep spot on Earth to anchor their roots. Most East Oceanians have Havaiki, a shared ancestral homeland that
exists hazily in primordial memory. Every so often in the hills of Suva, when moon and red wine play tricks on my aging mind, I scan the
horizon beyond Laucala Bay, the Rewa Plain, and the reefs by Nukulau Island, for Vaihi, Havaiki, homeland. It is there, far into the past
ahead, leading on to other memories, other realities, other homelands.

This spills over onto other communities and regions

Hau'ofa 8 (Epeli Hau'ofa, PhD, Social Anthropology, Australian National University, 2008, We Are the Ocean : Selected Works,
http://site.ebrary.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lib/umich//docDetail.action?
docID=10386742.)//ky
In 1996, while trying to produce a thematic concept that would give the Oceania Centre a clear, distinctive, and unifying identify, I wrote

The theme for the centre and for us to pursue is the ocean and, as well,
the interactions between us and the sea that have shaped and are shaping so
much of our cultures. We begin with what we have in common and draw
inspiration from the diverse patterns that have emerged from the successes and
failures in our adaptation to the influences of the sea. From there we can range beyond the tenth
the following:

horizon, secure in the knowledge of the home base to which we will always return for replenishment and revision of the purposes and

We shall visit our people who have gone to the lands of diaspora
and tell them that we have built something: a new home for all of us. And taking a
cue from the oceans everflowing and encircling nature, we will travel far and
wide to connect with oceanic and maritime peoples elsewhere, and swap stories
of voyages we have taken and those yet to be embarked on. We will show them
what we have created; we will learn from them different kinds of music, dance,
art, ceremonies, and other forms of cultural production. We may even together
make new sounds, new rhythms, new choreographies, and new songs and verses
about how wonderful and terrible the sea is, and how we cannot live without it.
We will talk about the good things the oceans have bestowed on us, the damaging
things we have done to them, and how we must together try to heal their wounds
and protect them forever. We still hold on to these sentiments. They belong to
the constellations that we use to guide us on our journey towards an ever creative
and free Oceania.
directions of our journeys.

Offshore Wind Bad

Wind turbines cause species extinction
Hambler 13 Clive was educated at school in Bradford and as an undergraduate at St Catherine's College in Oxford, obtaining a
BA in Zoology in 1981 (subsequently converted to an MA). After graduation he did several international conservation research expeditions,
and worked for some years as a professional conservationist. He undertook nature reserve surveys and management, and was selfemployed as an environmental consultant. His interests in ecology and environmental education led him back into academia, through
research with colleagues in the Zoology Department (into the impacts of woodland and grassland management), and through teaching on
the first conservation courses being introduced into degrees in Oxford.Clive has been a College Lecturer at Merton, St Anne's, Pembroke
and Oriel colleges in Oxford. In 1998 he joined Hertford as Lecturer in Biological and Human Sciences, acting as the Director of Studies for
Human Sciences in the college. (Clive Hambler, Wind farms vs wildlife, The Spectator, 1/5/13,
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8807761/wind-farms-vs-wildlife/)//AS
Wind turbines only last for half as long as previously thought, according to a new study. But even in their short lifespans, those

turbines can do a lot of damage. Wind farms are devastating populations of rare
birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction. Most
environmentalists just dont want to know. Because theyre so desperate to believe in renewable energy,
theyre in a state of denial. But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater
threat to wildlife than climate change. Im a lecturer in biological and human sciences at Oxford university. I trained as a
zoologist, Ive worked as an environmental consultant conducting impact assessments on projects like the Folkestone-to-London rail link

I
havoc
wreaked on wildlife by wind power, hydro power, biofuels and tidal barrages . The
environmentalists who support such projects do so for ideological reasons. What
few of them have in their heads, though, is the consolation of science. My speciality is species extinction. When I was a child, my
and I now teach ecology and conservation. Though I started out neutral on renewable energy, ve since seen the

father used to tell me about all the animals hed seen growing up in Kent the grass snakes, the lime hawk moths and what shocked me

how few there were left. Species extinction is a serious issue:

around the world were losing up to 40 a day. Yet environmentalists are urging us to adopt technologies that are
hastening this process. Among the most destructive of these is wind power. Every year in
Spain alone according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife between 6 and 18 million birds and
bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds . This
when we went looking for them was

breaks down as approximately 110330 birds per turbine per year and 200670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservative if you
compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: In a summary of avian impacts at wind
turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden. Because wind farms

, they kill a disproportionate number of raptors.

wind farms
are killing tens of thousands of raptors including golden eagles and Americas national bird, the bald eagle. In
tend to be built on uplands, where there are good thermals

In Australia, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle is threatened with global extinction by wind farms. In north America,

Spain, the Egyptian vulture is threatened, as too is the Griffon vulture 400 of which were killed in one year at Navarra alone. Norwegian

wind farms kill over ten white-tailed eagles per year and the population of Smla has
been severely impacted by turbines built against the opposition of ornithologists.
Nor are many other avian species safe. In North America, for example, proposed wind farms on the
Great Lakes would kill large numbers of migratory songbirds. In the Atlantic, seabirds such as
the Manx Shearwater are threatened. Offshore wind farms are just as bad as onshore
ones, posing a growing threat to seabirds and migratory birds, and
reducing habitat availability for marine birds (such as common scoter and eider ducks). Ive
heard it suggested that birds will soon adapt to avoid turbine blades. But your ability to learn something
when youve been whacked on the head by an object travelling at 200
mph is limited. And besides, this comes from a complete misconception of how long it takes species to evolve. Birds have
been flying, unimpeded, through the skies for millions of years. Theyre hardly going to alter their habits in a few months. You hear similar
nonsense from environmentalists about so-called habitat mitigation. There has been talk, for example, during proposals to build a Severn
barrage, that all the waders displaced by the destruction of the mud flats can have their inter-tidal habitat replaced elsewhere. It may be
what developers and governments want to hear, but recreating such habitats would take centuries not years even if space were available.

The birds wouldnt move on somewhere else. Theyd just starve to death. Loss of
habitat is the single biggest cause of species extinction. Wind farms not only reduce habitat size but
create population sinks zones which attract animals and then kill them. My colleague Mark Duchamp suggests birds are lured

in because they see the turbines as perching sites and also because wind towers
(because of the grass variations underneath) seem to attract more prey . The
turbines also attract bats, whose wholesale destruction poses an ever more
serious conservation concern. Bats are what is known as K-selected species: they
reproduce very slowly, live a long time and are easy to wipe out . Having evolved with few
predators flying at night helps bats did very well with this strategy until the modern world. This is why they are so heavily protected by
so many conventions and regulations: the biggest threats to their survival are made by us. And the worst threat of all right now is wind
turbines. A recent study in Germany by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research showed that bats killed by German turbines may
have come from places 1,000 or more miles away. This would suggest that German turbines which an earlier study claims kill more than
200,000 bats a year may be depressing populations across the entire northeastern portion of Europe. Some studies in the US have put
the death toll as high as 70 bats per installed megawatt per year: with 40,000 MW of turbines currently installed in the US and Canada.

an annual death toll of up to three -million. Why is the public not more
aware of this carnage? First, because the wind industry (with the shameful complicity of some ornithological
organisations) has gone to great trouble to cover it up to the extent of burying the corpses of victims. Second,
because the ongoing obsession with climate change means that many
environmentalists are turning a blind eye to the ecological costs of renewable
energy. What they clearly dont appreciate for they know next to nothing about biology is that most of the species they claim are
This would give

threatened by climate change have already survived 10 to 20 ice ages, and sea-level rises far more dramatic than any we have experienced

Climate change wont drive those species to

extinction; well-meaning environmentalists might
in recent millennia or expect in the next few centuries.

Rocks Have Value

Rocks, whales, redwoods, and all atomic structures have
intrinsic value we are equal
Merchant 92 (Carol, Ecofeminist and Historian of Science, Radical Ecology Genesis of Eden 1992, acc. )
Each individual thing, whether a living organism or an atom, has intrinsic value and there is a
continuity between human and nonhuman experience. One's attitude toward a
dog, which is a compound individual, differs from that toward a plant, which is also a
compound individual but has no center of enjoyment, and toward a rock, which,
as a mere aggregate, has no intrinsic value. All three, however, have instrumental
value in supporting each other in the ecosystem." Process thought is consistent with an ecological
attitude in two senses: (1) its proponents recognize the "interconnections among things,
specifically between organisms and their total environments," and (2) it implies
"respect or even reverence for, and perhaps a feeling of kinship with, the other
creatures." Cobb and Griffin argue that process philosophy implies an ecological ethic and a policy of social justice and ecological
sustainability: The whole of nature participates in us and we in it. We are diminished not only by the misery
of the Indian peasant but also by the slaughter of whales and porpoises, and . . .
the 'harvesting' of the giant redwoods. We are diminished still more when the imposition of temperate-zone
technology onto tropical agriculture turns grasslands into deserts that will support neither human nor animal life." For Cobb's former

Atoms as individual things have

intrinsic value. Rocks express the energy inherent within their atoms. They too
have intensity and intrinsic value, albeit less than that of living organisms. Outer form
is an expression of inner energy. The assumption that rocks have intrinsic value , however,
student jay McDaniel, intrinsic value includes the entire physical world.

does not mean that rocks and sentient beings would necessarily have
equal ethical value , but rather that they would all be treated with reverence. This
could result in a new attitude by Christians toward the natural world, one that involves both objectivity and empathy." Philosopher Susan
Armstrong-Buck also sees Whitchead's philosophy as providing an adequate foundation for an environmental ethic because intrinsic value
is assigned to nonhuman nature. Process is the continuity of occasions or events that are internally related-each present occasion is an

drops of experience, complex, and

interdependent." The world is itself a process of fluent energy; actual entities are
self-organizing wholes. Differences exist in the actual occasions that constitute
each entity. Intrinsic value is not based on an extension of self-interest to the rest
of nature, but on the significance of each occasion and its entire interdependent past history. Assigning
integration of all past occasions. Occasions, Whitehead wrote, are "

preferences to biosystems is based on the degree of diversity, stability, freedom of adaptation, and integration of actual occasions inherent
in each 30 system.

Capitalism Cards, but relevant

Methane Hydrates Link

Methane Hydrate technology further perpetuates damage to our
ecosystem and furthers the western system of thinking
Morningstar 12-investigative journalist, environmental activist (Cory Morningstar,
8/16/12, Methane Hydrates, GV consulting, http://gregoryvickrey.com/tag/methanehydrates/)//JL

Another point of contention is your stated reliance on capitalism in the developed

world for various funding mechanisms. It should be well understood that reliance
upon any functional component of industrial capitalism for mitigation,
adaptation, and reparation for any length of time lends credence to the mechanism, perpetuates it, and
demands the growth of it, ironically, as the world condition grows more dire. Making
statements where the world utilizes the very economic machinery responsible for the planet being on the brink of collapse in order to

Do you really believe the patriarchal industrial

north has the means, the
motive, and the benefit of planetary reality to
stem the tide through finance? Many of us in developed countries know what it means to call for, and succeed in
prevent the collapse is more than troubling. It is criminal.

getting, 100% reductions. It means the end of nearly all we know, save maybe the planet. Those of us who understand the demands of
Mother Earth in that context also recognize more people must rise up and fight for 100% all over the globe. Will La Via Campesina do so? I
very much look forward to your responses and the ensuing dialogue. I have cced my dear colleague and friend based in Canada, Cory
Morningstar. We received no response. On January 5, Cory Morningstar again sought feedback from the Via Campesina representative. No

And now we are at the eve of Rio+20, where most of the same players will convene and further
deteriorate any reasonable chance we have, as civil society, to stem the tide of climate change. As expected, the usual
troop of NGOs will attend, claiming to speak for all of us while clamoring for cozy
seats and sharp cocktails amongst the global elite. La Via Campesina will be there, too. Climate
justice allies would like to continue to convince us that an inside-outside strategy
is to our advantage. That it is tenable. Yet the historical results state otherwise. This culture of
response.

compromise where lesser-evilism prevails and excuses for maintaining the status quo flow eloquently from the lips as well as the pen must

the mechanisms we have employed

collectively and individually have done nothing but render a trail of tears and
destruction for all peoples, and all ecologies. The time for strategic charades and
whimsical hopes is over. It starts with one entity willing to say no, loudly, to the nefarious players (NGOs, governments,
and corporations) creating the Green Climate Fund (GCF ). We understand the fraudulent nature of the
participatory process, the criminal dependence upon industrialized capitalism,
and the woefully inadequate reality of yet another false solution. We say no. It continues with
end. From the Tongass in the north, to Durban in the south,

another entity joining in the refusal, and rejecting the corporate tradeshow that is Rio+20. Canadians for Action on Climate Change so

It is now beyond obvious that those who control the worlds economy are
hell-bent on burning all of our planets remaining fossil fuels including those that not long ago,
declares.

were considered impractical to exploit. Corporate-colluded states, corporate-controlled media and corporate-funded scientists will be redlining the well-oiled engine of the propaganda machine as it works overtime. They will try to convince you the methane hydrates in the
worlds oceans are deep enough that the inevitable increased temperature will not affect them. (Think again. Take a look at the map the
methane hydrates, even outside of the Arctic, are almost all located on shallow continental shelves.) And if that doesnt work they will try to
convince you that mysterious bacteria will rapaciously devour all methane gas. In the following paragraphs, the danger that this
misinformation presents is outlined. Layered upon the aforementioned spin, at the same time they will try to convince you that because the
methane hydrates are now destabilizing and melting (because governments have done nothing for decades to halt global warming), we have

f the misinformation contradicts

itself, this in itself is of little to no importance as long as the key message is allowed to weave itself into
the collective subconscious. The key message being: There is no emergency. Methane risks are non-threatening. Corporatized
states, media and scientists who have pledged allegiance to protect the current
economic system will try to convince us that methane hydrates will provide
society with a clean, sustainable fossil fuel. [14] Make no mistake they are
not clean or sustainable. Nor are they renewable. [15] The burning of fossil fuels including natural gas/methane creates
no choice but to extract the methane and burn it for the safety of humanity. I

All the spin in the world will not make this fact any less true. On 14 January
2001, Dr. Gideon Polya explains that a further phony approach that is now being
implemented on a massive scale around the world is a coal-to-gas transition on
the basis that natural gas is clean. He states, The reality is that gas burning
seriously threatens the Planet because (a) humanity should be urgently
decreasing and certainly not increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution; (b) Natural Gas (mainly methane,
CO2.

CH4) is not a clean energy greenhouse gas-wise; and (c) pollutants from gas leakage and gas burning pose a chemical risk to residents,

of gas as a fossil fuel is contradicted

agriculture and the environment. The asserted clean-er status

in the recent
analysis by Professor Robert Howarth of Cornell University, who has concluded that A complete consideration of all emissions from using
natural gas seems likely to make natural gas far less attractive than oil and not significantly better than coal in terms of the consequences
for global warming. It is grossly negligent to spend billions of tax dollars on a dangerous scheme that will lock humanity into what is
essentially a promissory note for the annihilation of our children, grandchildren and all life. Polya states: Top climate scientists state that
we must urgently reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from the current damaging 392 parts per million (ppm) to a safe and
sustainable 300 ppm for a safe and sustainable planet for all peoples and all species. This is absolutely true. It is also true that only zero
carbon can achieve any reduction in atmospheric CO2; only zero carbon can reduce ocean acidification.

Offshore Oil Link

Offshore Oil exacerbates the western profit-driven ideology
which seeks to oppress the environment and lower-class
Hughes and Ongerth 4/4/14-Environmentalist and political activist (Elliot Hughes
and Steve Ongerth, towards the general strike-the earth day to may day assembly and days of
direct action, Climateconnections, http://climate-connections.org/2014/04/08/towards-anecological-general-strike-the-earth-day-to-may-day-assembly-and-days-of-direct-action/)//JL

Direct actions are planned in the Bay Area between Earth Day on April 22 and May 1st to raise awareness about the intersections of labor
rights, immigration rights, and environmental issues. Actions may include sit-ins, tree sits, guerrilla gardening, pickets, marches, blockades,
and strikes. Our goal is to challenge the Jobs vs Environment myth, to unite workers and environmentalists against the bosses, and
rapidly transition unsustainable industries through direct action. The process in which we would achieve so, is through directly democratic
workers assemblies and Environmental Unionist Caucuses within our existing unions where we would organize actions to halt the
destruction of the planet. We seek to live up to our IWW Preamble which states that we must abolish wage slavery and live in harmony

We know that the workers, the community, and the planet are exploited
by the state and capitalist forces that rule over our lives, but now the ruling class
is escalating that attack on the working class and the planet we inhabit. We must come
with the Earth.

together to fight back or our planet will be completely destroyed. Recently the concentration of CO2 in the Earths atmosphere exceeded

As the capitalist
class continues their extreme energy rampage including offshore oil drilling, tar
sands mining, mountain removal, and fracking, a mass movement to oppose these forms of energy is
rapidly growing and radicalizing. Recently, there has been an increased amount of oil spills,
pipeline ruptures, oil train derailments, refinery fires, and chemical dumps.
These disasters have not only destroyed the environment, but they have also
injured and/or killed the very workers whom the capitalists depend on to extract
these resources. The same capitalist economic system destroying the Earth
destroying the lives of the workers. Some of their methods of class warfare
include eroding health and safety standards, downsizing and outsourcing the
workforce, establishing a blame the worker safety culture, and creating
dangerous labor conditions all around. These conditions that endanger the
workers are also directly harming the communities around them , for example while the
400 ppm. It greatly surpasses the 350 ppm that scientists argue is the limit to avoid run away global warming.

company towns develop cancers and asthma from air pollution, the workers often breathe in a higher density of these toxins because they

the bosses, through their use of propaganda are able to

convince many exploited workers that environmentalists are their enemy are
threats to their jobs. We must debunk this myth and come together to take direct action for health and safety and a halt to the
work in close proximity with them. Yet,

destruction of our world. A revolutionary ecology movement must also organize among poor and working people. With the exception of the
toxins movement and the native land rights movement most U.S. environmentalists are white and privileged. This group is too invested in

. A revolutionary ideology in the hands of privileged people

can indeed bring about some disruption and change in the system. But a revolutionary
the system to pose it much of a threat

ideology in the hands of working people can bring that system to a halt. For it is the working people who have their hands on the machinery.

And only by stopping the machinery of destruction can we ever hope to stop this
madness. Deep Ecology and Judi Baris concept of Revolutionary Ecology can teach us that all sociopolitical
issues are intersectional. The police and borders are militarizing, we are under constant surveillance, and new
prisons are being built partially because of the inevitability of ecological revolt
and migration. Necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter because of the increasing gas prices as well as drought. Energy
and natural resource companies and regulatory agencies are dismantling health
and safety standards and cutting wages because they want to maximize their
profits before their time runs out. The economic crises is directly connected with
the ecological crises. Colonialism and Racism are tools of oppression originate

from the fight for land and resources. Corporations will most often declare
indigenous communities and other communities of color as sacrifice zones and pollute them. All social
movements must eventually come together because it will become more clear that these sociopolitical issues are environmental issues.
Starting from the very reasonable, but unfortunately revolutionary concept that social practices which threaten the continuation of life on

we need a theory of revolutionary ecology that will encompass

social and biological issues, class struggle, and a recognition of the role of global corporate
capitalism in the oppression of peoples and the destruction of nature.
Earth must be changed,

Offshore Oil drilling perpetuates the western profit-driven way

of thinking-It is impossible to solve for the environment in the
current system-BP spill proves
Lotta 10 (5/15/10, the oil spill disaster and a system not fit to be the planets caretakers,
revcom, http://revcom.us/a/201/oil_spill-en.html)//JL
This environmental disaster was not an "unavoidable accident." It certainly wasn't an "act of god." Oil well blowouts like this are not

BP has refused to spend money and effort on safety and environmental

measures and equipment. BP has been packaging itself as a "green" company, even
branding itself as "Beyond Petroleum." But this "green" corporation, along with other major oil
corporations, was able to block regulations requiring installation of a device called an
"acoustic switch" that triggers an underwater valve to shut down a well in case of a blowoutfinding the $500,000 cost of the
device too high. But what is the costto all life in this whole region and beyond,
including humansof what the BP spill is doing to ecosystems on a vast scale? BP
uncommon. But

tried to initially downplay the seriousness of the current spilluntil it could no longer hide the fact that oil was gushing out at five times the
rate BP was claiming. This corporation has been involved in a series of environmental disasters, including repeated spills in Alaska from
corroded oil pipes. BP has been fined millions of dollars for violations of the Water Pollution Control Act. And in the year before this current
spill, BP aggressively cut back to save $4 billion in operating costs. As outrageous and immoral as all this is,

BP isn't a criminal

acting aloneit has had the open backing of the government. The Obama administration
approved BP's bid to drill in the Gulf in February 2009, despite BP's record. The U.S. Interior Department's Minerals Management
Service (MMS) used a loophole in the law to exempt BP from environmental
restrictions. In fact, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, "MMS exempts hundreds of
dangerous offshore oil drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico every year." BP's plan and environmental
impact statement for the Deepwater Horizon drilling project claimed it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would
occur from the proposed activities." BP said any spill would likely not cause much damage because the oil platform was too far from shore
and that "response capabilities" would be adequateso "no significant adverse impacts are expected." All this is now exposed as bald-faced
lies. Just a month ago Obama lifted a decades-long moratorium on offshore drilling and proposed massively expanding offshore U.S.
drilling into new areas in Alaska, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast from Maryland to Florida. Obama himself offered this
assurance: "Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills." Obama and his administration are now saying BP is responsible and will be made to
pay for the cost of the spill, and that they are rethinking the ending of the offshore drilling moratorium. This is nothing but cover-your-ass

hat dollar amount can be put on the incredible harm being done to all
kinds of animal and plant lifeincluding those in peril of dying out forever
through this oil spill? In a May 7 press release, the Center for Biological Diversity exposed how the MMS approved 27 new
hypocrisy. W

offshore drilling projects since the first day of the BP spill"26 under the same environmental review exemption used to approve the

The
truth is this monstrous environmental disaster had very definite causes in the
short-sighted, profit-driven activity of a capitalist corporationand official U.S.
government policy which encouraged and enabled such activity. But what is
actually behind the drive to expand the drilling for oil in places like the Gulf? To
get at the deeper reality, we have to come to grips with the fact that there is much
more to this oil spill than the greed of a giant oil company (or even the whole oil
industry) and the policiesas outrageous as they areof any one government.
What we're seeing here are the workings of an economic and political system: the
system of capitalism-imperialism. Obama and other world "leaders" are not, and
cannot be, caretakers of the planetbecause they are caretakers of a system that
disastrous BP drilling that is fouling the Gulf and its wildlife." Two of those approvals for drilling operations were awarded to BP.

is, by its very nature, behind the environmental emergency confronting

humanity. The current energy system of extracting oil, coal, and gas (known as fossil fuels) is
tremendously profitable. This is why this system based on fossil fuels is the
dominant form of energy used in the world, despite the fact that it is
tremendously destructive to the environment and now fueling potentially
catastrophic global climate change. Fossil fuel and automobile transport are deeply embedded in
the structures of capitalist production and expansion. Of the 10 largest companies in the world in
2007, six were oil companies and three were car companies. The U.S. is an imperialist power that
dominates, exploits, and oppresses whole nations and peoples worldwide and oil is
integral to the maintenance, defense, and extension of this empire. The U.S. military is the single largest institutional purchaser of oil in the

Because capitalist development and expansion rely on this highly profitable

and environmentally hazardoussource of energy, the more accessible and
conventional sites are becoming depleted. The system's response to the end of "easy oil" has
been to tap more unconventional sources, through deep offshore oil and gas drilling around the world. Natural gas and coal
world.

companies are also pursuing a strategy of maximum extractionby drilling through shale rock or removing mountaintops. Mega-companies
are jousting over who will be the first to lay claim to these new sources, to strike deals with host countries, and to find the means to extract
this energy. And it's not just a matter of individual companies. There are huge geopolitical factors involved. The major capitalist powers
the U.S., European Union countries, China, Russia, Japan, and othersare all vying with each other for strategic control over regions where
new fossil fuel sources are to be found. Not that long ago, the Gulf of Mexico was thought to have been "played out" as a major source of oil,
mainly because the fields known to exist were considered unreachable. But the rush to drill has been enabled by new technological
developments. In the mid 1980s there were several dozen active oil rigs in the Gulfby 2006 there were 3,858. The result has been the
aquatic (and mineral rights) equivalent of a land grab in the Gulfa process going on elsewhere as wellas various companies stake their
claims to different fields recently discovered or recently opened up because of the technological "advances." The following is from an April
30, 2010, NY Times article on the current spill, revealingly titled "The Spill vs. A Need to Drill": There is another reason why offshore
drilling is likely to continue. Most of the new discoveries lie beneath the world's oceans, including the Gulf of Mexico. For the oil companies,
these reserves are worth hundreds of billions of dollars and represent the industry's future. Since the 1980s, the Gulf has turned into a vast
laboratory for the industry to test and showcase its most sophisticated technology. This is where oil companies found ways to drill in everdeeper water, where they developed bigger platforms to pump even more oil, where they pioneered the use of unmanned submarines and

What's totally missing from this picture is

any concern about environmental hazards and impacts. And that is not science
fiction but a brute reality of how the capitalist system operates. In a concentrated
way, the Gulf oil spill is an expression of how this planet's environment and
human destiny itself are being driven to the brink of disaster. This is happening
at a time when there exists wealth on a vast scale and technology on a level never
before imaginedwealth and technology that is in the hands of the capitalistimperialist system. People are rightly outraged by the criminal actions of the oil company and the government in the Gulf. But
the reality is that disasters like this, and the environmental crisis as a whole, cannot be addressed
within the framework of this system. This is a hard truthbut one people must come face-to-face with.
elaborate underwater systems straight out of a science fiction novel.

Environment Impact
Capitalist accumulation results in an unsustainable system
whose effects are magnified with certain factors in the natural
environment, leading to new, unaccounted impacts
Thorpe & Jacobson 13 (Thorpe, C. and Jacobson, B. Ph.D. - University of California, M.A.: Peace and Justice
Studies, University of San Diego (2013), Life politics, nature and the state: Giddens' sociological theory and The Politics of Climate Change.
The British Journal of Sociology, 64: 99122. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12008)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12008/abstract.)//ky

Environmentalisms reconsideration of the human relationship with the broader

living world manifests modernitys inability to keep existential dilemmas and
associated value-questions at bay. The contradiction basic to human existence of
being both in nature and transcending it is no longer effectively suppressed in the
pursuit of economic growth and scientific-technical advance and mediated
through the structures of the state. A key dimension of highmodern reflexivity is that it has become apparent that
the instrumental control of nature through science and technology produces new hazards and uncertainties. This occurs in a context of the

For this reason, the

re-emergence of these suppressed dilemmas calls modern everyday life into
question, presenting life-style as a value problem. Giddens insists that there is no
going back either to tradition or nature. Nature has ended in the sense that it can
no longer be taken for granted. But this does not provide grounds for suggesting that nature has ceased altogether to
be a meaningful category (Dickens 1999: 1024). Giddens recognition that capitalist accumulation [. . .] is not
self-sustaining in terms of resources and reference to environmental limits in
terms of the earths resources suggest that it is still possible to speak of natural
resources as an external condition for human economic activity (1990: 165; 1994: 10).And his
wasteland of everyday life with few patterned ways of mediating existential problems (Giddens 1981: 13).

discussion of problems of deciding what to preserve implies that it does still make sense to think of natural ecosystems as an evolved

Problems of pollution are not

just problems of our created environment but of how what we create interacts
with features of the physical and biological world that human beings have not
created and do not control.For example, in the case of global warming, humans transform nature by burning fossil fuels,
inheritance to be conserved rather than a product of human activity (Giddens 1994: 212).

but do not create or control the heat absorption characteristics of carbon dioxide or the interactions between the Earths atmosphere and
oceans. Climate change therefore represents a complex interaction between nature and technologized second nature. The effects of climate
change on weather patterns (producing floods, droughts, and Life politics, nature and the state 117 British Journal of Sociology 64(1)
London School of Economics and Political Science 2013 storms) exemplify how nature returns in a way in which what is natural and what is
unnatural is problematic. This lack of distinctness of the boundary between the human and non-human nature is a key dimension of the
ontological insecurity of high modernity.

Warming Impact
The drive for growth leads to the ignorance of the effects of
climate change and the human agents relationship to the
environment
Brady & Phemister 12 (Brady, Emily, Phemister, Pauline, Professor of Environment and Philosophy; Head,
Human Geography Research Group; Programme Director: MSc Environment, Culture and Society, M.A. Ph.D. in Philosophy (Edinburgh),
2012, Human-Environment Relations Transformative Values in Theory and Practice,
http://www.springer.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/environment/book/978-94-007-2824-0.)//ky

In the midst of this ideological and political condition of late

liberal capitalism emerges the spectre of anthropogenic climate change. Sea level rises of
Emily Brady & Pauline Phemister

20 cm are the most visible sign of the effects of global warming but predicted sea level rises from polar ice melt range from 1 to 7 m.

Changes in land and ocean temperatures are producing dramatic effects in terms
of the movement of species, and the spread of deserts . In 2005 locusts were for the first time in
recorded history breeding in Southern France, while temperatures in the heavily populated state of Orissa in the Indian sub-continent now
regularly exceed 40C. Climate change challenges the foundations of liberal political economy, and in particular the liberal division of
labour between the amoral desiring individual and social institutions which embody and promote the common good, because it suggests

under conditions where individual consumers and corporations maximise

their preferences with the minimum of moral constraint the long-term health and
stability of the planet and all its inhabitants are threatened. It should not surprise
us then that Straussian-infl uenced globalizers, including American Senators and
Presidents as well as Australian and British politicians, have opposed
government-led efforts to conserve energy and have for many years denied or
ignored the scientifi c evidence for climate change: climate change more than any other modern
that

phenomenon represents a radical challenge to political liberalism, and to its neo-liberal recasting in the guise of the free market,

The collective pursuit of the project of economic growth

through unfettered consumption has been advanced on the basis of the release of
seemingly limitless quantities of energy from the earths crust, fi rst in the form of
coal to fuel the earliest steam-driven machines of the industrial revolution, and
latterly oil to fuel internal combustion engines, electricity generators and jet
engines. These fossil fuels represent the prehistoric warmth of the sun laid down
as carboniferous biomass in the earths crust as plants and sea creatures turned
this energy into oxygen and carbon in the course of geological time. Until the
discovery of anthropogenic climate change there appeared to be no biophysical
limits to the amount of stored energy that could be released into the earths
atmosphere and hence to the size of the energy-driven human economy . However, with a
globalization, and the minimalist state.

current net annual output of seven billion tons of carbon per annum into the atmosphere, the modern human economy is seriously
exceeding the capacity of atmosphere, forests, oceans and soils to absorb its energy emissions. The oceans are already replete with the
excess carbon output of the industrial era which they have taken up in the last 100 years and as they are unable to absorb CO 2 at the same
rate, fossil fuel emissions now increasingly end up in the upper atmosphere, enhancing the greenhouse effect and driving up oceanic and air
temperatures and thus fuelling more extreme weather events and ice melts of a kind never before experienced in the 15,000 year span of the
present Holocene era. Climate extremes were common before the Holocene era and it was precisely the new stability of CO 2 levels, and
hence of relatively stable land and ocean temperatures, which enabled the development of human agriculture and cities, and the dramatic

Climate change represents a

challenge not only to energy-led consumerism and unfettered capitalism, and its
latest guise in the form of borderless global trade, but to the epistemological and
ontological foundations of modern liberalism. At the heart of Rawlsian liberalism, and its neoliberal
expansion of human numbers, in the present geological era (Northcott 2007 ) .

offshoots, lies the assumption that individual actors are seats of consciousness, desire and rational decision-making who are intrinsically
autonomous from other bodies and from the biophysical environment. It is this assumption which explains the liberal division of labour
between individual agency and the body politic; political institutions embody morality in the relational world of public space but individuals

their actions determined by their inner

desires and rational choices rather than by their biological relations to other
agents and to the environment.
are conceived as essentially independent of this bodily domain,

AT: Perm (Warming Affs)

Perm fails, mitigation requires a radical rethinking and
neoliberal intervention directly opposes the limitation of carbon
emissions
Brady & Phemister 12 (Brady, Emily, Phemister, Pauline, Professor of Environment and Philosophy; Head,
Human Geography Research Group; Programme Director: MSc Environment, Culture and Society, M.A. Ph.D. in Philosophy (Edinburgh),
2012, Human-Environment Relations Transformative Values in Theory and Practice,
http://www.springer.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/environment/book/978-94-007-2824-0.)//ky

Attempts to mitigate climate change have so far failed to evince or manifest the
kind of radical rethinking of the liberal project that an embodied approach to
climate change would suggest. There are many reasons for this, not least the continuing infl uence of the disembodied
account of desire and individual agency sustained by the majority of modern Western philosophers. Equally important is
that climate change mitigation depends upon collective action by a whole host of
actors including consumers, corporations, governments and international agencies. For the behaviours of such a
diverse range of actors to be directed towards the shared goal of reducing fossil
fuel emissions, so stemming the future consequences of climate change, requires
a degree of coordination and cooperation which would at fi rst hand seem hard to
achieve, although the current neoliberal economic project of global borderless
trade in goods and services does represent just such a form of global cooperation
and coordination. But this neoliberal project is in direct opposition to the goal of
limiting global carbon emissions. When Africans are encouraged by the current regime of world trade to grow
mangoes for export to Northern Europe, and while American and European farmers use government subsidies to purchase energy-intensive

then the industrial food economy is given

over to a model of carbon consumption which is clearly a major progenitor of
rising carbon emissions. Given the epistemological and ecological inadequacies of
the liberal and neoliberal narratives of (disembodied) private rational choice and
(embodied) public morality it is unsurprising that institutional procedures
influenced by this narrative have produced an international climate change treaty
process which is ineffective in promoting real carbon reductions . But the other principal root
fertilisers and farm machinery so they can export wheat to Africa,

of the problem is the idealistic character of the cost-benefi t calculations which economists apply to the problems of either adapting to or
mitigating climate change. Bjorn Lomborg articulates a widespread bias amongst economists and industrialists when he suggests that the
costs of mitigating the future effects of climate change are so great, and the nature of these effects so uncertain, that it is more economically
benefi cial to plan to adapt human behaviours and procedures to climate change when it occurs than to regulate economic activity so as to
reduce present carbon emissions so that these potential future costs may be reduced (Lomborg 2001 ) . This argument is predicated on the
economic practice of social discounting which compares present and future economic activity and, on the basis of current and predicted
interest rates and hence the growth in value of money saved argues that future activities cost less than present ones.

Aff Perm
Perm is key to achieve a form of alternative development that
forms a post-scarcity world but manages to continue growth
Thorpe & Jacobson 13 (Thorpe, C. and Jacobson, B. Ph.D. - University of California, M.A.: Peace and Justice
Studies, University of San Diego (2013), Life politics, nature and the state: Giddens' sociological theory and The Politics of Climate Change.
The British Journal of Sociology, 64: 99122. doi: 10.1111/1468-4446.12008)

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/10.1111/14684446.12008/abstract.)//ky

Giddens theoretical work in the 1990s drew inspiration from the ways in which life politics called modernitys economic compulsiveness
into question. Life politics could be expressed in lifestyle decisions that limit, or actively go against, maximizing economic returns

A clear part
of increased ecological concern is the recognition that reversing the degradation
of the environment depends upon adopting new 106 Charles Thorpe and Brynna Jacobson London
School of Economics and Political Science 2013 British Journal of Sociology 64(1) lifestyle patterns. He suggested that
Widespread changes in lifestyle, coupled with a de-emphasis on continual
economic accumulation, will almost certainly be necessary if the ecological risks we now face are
to be minimised (Giddens 1991: 2212). A post-scarcity condition also demands the humanising
of technology so as to introduce moral issues into the now largely instrumental relation between human beings and the created
environment (Giddens 1990: 170). Against standard discourses of modernization that assume a
single path of development targeted toward a high-production and
highconsumption economic model, Giddens advocated alternative development
taking into account non-material values as sources of happiness and selfrespect
(Giddens 1994: 102, emphasis in original). Giddens endorsed the need for change within everyday life. He wrote that

(1994: 1638). The global cosmopolitanism emerging from reflexive modernization includes an attitude of respect towards non-human
agencies and beings (Giddens 1994: 253). While Giddens criticized the way in which the value of economic growth has been taken for
granted, he held back from asserting that post-scarcity order would mean an end to growth. Growth would be no longer of overriding

But a post-scarcity economy is not necessarily a no-growth

economy (Giddens 1994: 178). He suggested that industrial production and the market
could be deprived of their compulsive character and shaped by values expressed
in life-political movements (Giddens 1990: 165). Giddens presented his utopian realism
as shaping, but not operating against structural trajectories of the capitalist
economy and the global market. Utopian realist politics seeks to realize life-political
values, but in a way that corresponds to observable trends (Giddens 1994: 101). This problem of
importance (1994: 101).

meshing life-political value-considerations with realism concerning what are taken to be objective economic and social trends remains the

Giddens ThirdWay attempts to

reconcile life politics both with the global market and the political structures of
the nation-state. This attempt, however, necessarily collides with the structural contradictions of the capitalist state,
fundamental tension in Giddens Third Way project (Finlayson 2003: 12531).

contradictions that intensify under conditions of economic globalization. These contradictions have crucial implications for whether
ecological issues can be adequately addressed within the framework of the ThirdWay.2

Aff Answers

Permutation
Permutation do both-the western and indigenous
epistemologies can work together-produces knowledge that has
both local and global focus
Merculieff and Roderick 13-Elder for 4 decades of the Aluets of the Pribilof Islands
(Ilarion Merculieff and Libby Roderick, stop talking, indigenous ways of teaching and learning
and difficult dialogues in higher education,
http://www.difficultdialoguesuaa.org/images/uploads/Stop_talking_final.pdf)//JL

Local people, says Martinez, directly dependent on their environment for subsistence livelihoods and possessing long term
environmental knowledgein other words, local environmental baselines with which to track changeknow their places far better than the
scientist whose research schedule is set by the academic calendar, bound by the vagaries of boom-and-bust foundation and institutional

indigenous communities
appreciate the benefits of the Western scientific objective approach. They
appreciate its technological and methodological gifts and are grateful for many of
the advances it has produced, especially within the medical realm. As long as its
limitations are recognized and its applications are both equitable and used to
preserve rather than destroy the web of life, most indigenous people value what
Western science brings to the table. They are particularly intrigued with the
creativity and new thinking that might emerge if Western scientists and Native
thinkers truly worked together to address some of the challenges facing humanity
and the natural world at this point in time. What they object to is the disrespect many (but by no means all)
practitioners of Western science show towards indigenous communities and traditional ways of knowing. They resent the
marginalization and dismissal by scientists and others who consider their knowledge and wisdom to be merely anecdotal.
funding, and vulnerable to the phenomenon of shifting baselines. By and large,

They object to efforts to integrate, merge, or incorporate indigenous ways of knowing into the dominant approach, as these verbs reinforce

Instead, they argue for balancing the two approaches

one with a global focus, the other with a local orientationand partnering
between two complementary rather than competitive systems. Collaboration
between Western and Indigenous experts is about balancing knowledge that is
locally contextualized with generalized scientific knowledge, not in the abstract or
in literature, but sitting down together as equal partners in integrated discussion
scenarios and hashing things out, says Martinez.
the hegemony of the dominant paradigm.

Perm do both-science and traditional ways of knowing can coexist-they can confirm each others conclusions which leads to
the best knowledge production
Merculieff and Roderick 13-Elder for 4 decades of the Aluets of the Pribilof Islands
(Ilarion Merculieff and Libby Roderick, stop talking, indigenous ways of teaching and learning
and difficult dialogues in higher education,
http://www.difficultdialoguesuaa.org/images/uploads/Stop_talking_final.pdf)//JL

The two approaches are not necessarily destined for eternal conflict; they can also
function in important complementary ways. A growing number of scientists
argue that our understanding of any particular place or species can best be served
by a blending of the data derived from intimate contact with the complex
workings of that place or species over thousands of years and the data derived
from the more detached Western scientific investigation into aspects of the place
or species over shorter periods of time.90 Difficult Dialogues On an Alaska public radio program devoted to the
relationship between traditional knowledge and Western science,* Craig George, Senior Wildlife Biologist for the North Slope Borough

spoke of the many similarities between local/traditional

knowledge and science, citing as an example a question about bowhead whales. One of the more interesting things we
Department of Wildlife Management,

stumbled on is this question of whether bowheads are capable of smelling in air. That came up with respect to offshore oil and gas rigs. The
local knowledge was clearly that whales were capable of smell, but you pick up any textbook on cetaceans and it will say that they are
incapable. We worked with a really good whale anatomist and got permission to take apart a whale skull and, sure enough, found olfactory

It was pretty clear

that they are capable of smelling. He expressed his respect for traditional
knowledge and went on to celebrate the possibilities of partnership. Both are the
collection of empirical data over time, tested through time and updated. In that sense,
the observations made here by the whaling community are clearly science. Weve
really benefited from that, and we are light years ahead doing our whale
population abundance work by sitting on hundreds of years of local knowledge.
Its so exhilarating when the scientific convergences occur, when you get some
deep knowledge such as the whales sense of smell and you confirm it with anatomy and
physiology work. Its really exciting. Given that a spirituality based on intimate connection with the natural world is absent
from Western science and education and central to Native ways of knowing, there is clearly much to be gained
from a reciprocal relationship between the two ways of knowin g. At the very least,
scientists and educators might learn more about the Native regard for all of life,
and Native people might see more benefits from Western scientific and
educational efforts. At the most, who can say how this might change the way things are done to the benefit of all? Indigenous
ways have held up for millennia. Maybe, just maybe, Western education and science and this kind of
spirituality can co-exist.
bulbs are present. In fact, theyre fairly large. Genetic techniques showed that the olfactory genes are active.

Epistemology Focus Bad

Epistemology focus is useless, focus on productive action is
better
Hellmann, Prof of Poli Sci, 9 [Gunther Hellmann is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at AICGS and a professor of
political science at Goethe University, Beliefs as Rules for Action: Pragmatism as a Theory of Thought and Action

International Studies Review, Volume 11, Issue 3, Pages 638-662]

While this is not the place for an in-depth analysis of the possible causes of the resurgent interest in pragmatism, a pointer

The first relates to the disturbances in international

politics in the aftermaths of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in
1989/1990 and the terrorist attacks on the twin towers in September 2001. The second has
to do with an increasing appreciation in IR of an internal perspective on such real
world developmentsthat is, a perspective which tries to understand how individual and collective actors make
sense of such occurrences. Such a turn to an internal (or reconstructive) perspectiveas
opposed to an external (or explanatory) perspective has accompanied , among others,
the rise of "constructivism" and "postmodernism" in general and the refinement of a diverse set
of "discursive" approaches in particular. This confluence of real world developments and disciplinary shifts
provided an extremely fertile soil for the rediscovery of the much older tradition of pragmatism.
This is due to the fact that pragmatism promises to steer a clear course between
the Scylla of eternal repetition without any sensorium for novelty (positivism) and the Charybdis of aloof
criticism without a sufficiently strong grounding in everyday real-life
problems (postmodernism). Pragmatism's attractiveness stems, at least in part,
from its anti-"istic" disposition. In contrast to other "paradigms" or "research programs" in IR, it does not
at two connected factors may be allowed.

lend itself as easily to paradigmatist treatment (cf. Lapid 1989). Richard Bernstein suggested that pragmatism ought to be
thought of as a tradition in the sense of a "narrative of an argument" which is "only recovered by an argumentative
retelling of that narrative which will itself be in conflict with other argumentative retellings." In this view, the history of
pragmatism has not only been a conflict of narratives "but a forteriori, a conflict of metanarratives" (Bernstein 1995:54).
Thus, whereas many Realists, Liberals, or Constructivists are keen on building research programs, most pragmatists
abstain from such endeavors (and the paradigmatic battles that necessarily accompany fights over the true core), not least
because most of them sympathize with Richard Rorty's plea for "liberal irony." As "liberal ironists" accept the contingency
of language, they are also accepting the impossibility of reaching any such things as a "final vocabulary" (Rorty 1989:73
95). As this forum shows, the very diverse recourse to different pragmatist themes that social philosophers such as
Richard Bernstein, Jrgen Habermas (1999:764), Hilary Putnam (1987, 1995), Richard Rorty (1982, 1998), and Nicholas
Rescher (1995) note with regard to philosophical debates, also shows up in the reception of pragmatism in IR.1 In the
spirit of this diversity in recovering the pragmatist tradition, one way to claim a distinctive accent is to present
pragmatism as a coherent theory of thought and action (Hellmann 2009). "Theory" is synonymous here with "doctrine" or
"axiom"a belief held to be true, or, more pragmatically still, a tool to think about thought and action which is held to
enable us to cope better. The core of this theory is the primacy of practice"perhaps the central" principle of the
pragmatist tradition (Putnam 1995:52; emphasis in original). According to this principle, the inevitability of individual as
well as collective action is to be thought of as the necessary starting point of any theorizing about thought and action. Most
social action is habitualized. As William James put it, our beliefs live "on a credit system." They "'pass,' so long as nothing
challenges them" (James [1907] 1995:80). Yet as we cannot flee from interacting with our environment and as the world
keeps interfering with our beliefs, we have to readjust. In such "problematic situations," a (very practical) form of
"inquiry" helps us to find appropriate new ways of coping with the respective problems at hand. Experience (that is, past
thoughts and actions of ourselves as well as others), expectation (that is, intentions as to desired future states of the world
we act in as well as predictions as to likely future states), and creative intelligence merge in producing a new belief (Dewey
[1938] 1991:4147, 105122, 248251; see also Jackson in this forum). The shorthand which many pragmatists have used
to express this interplay is that beliefs are rules for action (Peirce [1878] 1997:33; James [1907] 1995:18) This very
condensed version of the core of pragmatism has far-reaching consequences. The view that a belief is a habit of action
implies, among other things, that all anyone can have (and needs to have) is his or her own point of view. As a matter of
fact this "insistence on the agent point of view" is just another way of expressing the primacy of practice and the
"epistemology" that follows from it: "If we find that we must take a certain point of view, use a certain 'conceptual system,'
when we are engaged in practical activity, in the widest sense of 'practical activity,' then we must not simultaneously
advance the claim that it is not really 'the way things are in themselves'" (Putnam 1987:70) From Dewey onwards,
pragmatists have rejected the "spectator theory of knowledge" which Putnam alludes to herethat is, the view that our
beliefs do (or can) somehow "correspond" to some reality "out there." No doubt: we have to cope with reality, but to do so

successfully, our beliefs do not have to "correspond" to it. For pragmatists, beliefs are not to be thought of as "a kind of
picture made out of mind-stuff" which represents reality. Rather they are "tools for handling reality" (Rorty 1991:118).
Most importantly our beliefs are tools which depend in a fundamental way on language. Thus, Dewey properly called
language "the tool of tools" (Dewey [1925] 1981:134) directly following on Charles Sanders Peirce, the very first exponent
of what later became to be known as the "linguistic turn" (Rorty [1967] 1992). For pragmatists, Peirce's famous line about
man being thought (my language is the sum total of myself; for a man is the thought; Peirce [1868] 2000:67) had in many
ways foreshadowed an obvious solution to a philosophical debate which had dominated for centuries (and continues to do
so in some quarters even now). Rather than positioning themselves on either side in the debate on "realism" versus
"antirealism" pragmatists reject the very distinction as it relies misleadingly on an understanding of truth as accurate
representation. Yet as Donald Davidson convincingly argued "beliefs are true or false, but they represent nothing. It is
good to be rid of representations, and with them the correspondence theory of truth, for it is thinking there are
representations that engenders intimations of relativism" (Davidson [1998] 2002:46). The radical conclusion after having
gotten rid (with Quine and Davdison) of all three "dogmas of empiricism," then, is that language is a tool for coping with
the world rather than for representing reality or for finding truth. Moreover, as is the case with any kind of tool, languages
are "made rather than found" (Rorty 1989:7). Just as the craftsperson may have to adapt his or her tools in dealing with
new types of tasks so human beings in general are always dependent on coming up with new descriptions for new
situations to cope adequately. Yet neither these descriptions nor the vocabularies on which they are based are "out there."
Rather, descriptions are the result of the intelligent use of words and vocabularies which have been invented and adapted
in a gradual process of collective habituation. As Markus Kornprobst argues in this forum, the use of analogies or
metaphors is a particularly good illustration of this point. In this sense, methods provide the central tools for science
(which Dewey defined as "the perfected outcome of learning"). Two points are worth emphasizing in this context. First, as
Dewey put it, "never is method something outside of the material." Rather, good scholarship (as "methodized" inquiry) is
characterized by making intelligent connections between subject matter and method. As there is always a danger of
methods becoming "mechanized and rigid, mastering an agent instead of being powers at command for his own ends," the
scholar has to strike a proper balance between proven techniques based on prior experience with similar problems on the
one hand and innovation based on the novelty (or "problematicness") of the problem at hand on the other. "Cases are like,
not identical." Therefore, existing methods, "however authorized they may be, have to be adapted to the exigencies of
particular cases" (all quotes from Dewey [1916] 2008; see also Sil in this forum). Second, the

central role
attached to methods as tools for problem-solving also has implications with
regard to two other key concepts usually addressed as a sort of trinity in
elaborating one's position vis--vis science and scholarship, that is, ontology
and epistemology. Pragmatism, in essence, dispenses with both. The
"question of ontology"that is, the question of "what exists" (Wendt 1999:22)which scientific realists,
among others, consider to be of central importance, does not arise for pragmatists simply because
an "as if" assumption usually suffices to deal with those aspects of reality (for
example, an "international system" or a "state"), which we cannot observe directly .
Consequently, an "ontological grounding" of science is only worrisome if one had
reason to worry about "the really real" (Rorty 1991:52). Pragmatists see none. The
state is experienced as "real" when I pay taxes or refuse to go to war for it . Thus,
establishing intersubjective understandings as to how to deal successfully with reality
is all that is needed. This is another way of describing what pragmatists view as
"knowledge": The quality of a certain description of reality (in terms of specific conceptual
distinctions and choices of vocabularies) will show in its consequences when we act upon it.
Knowledge in this sense is, as Wittgenstein has argued, "in the end based on acknowledgement" (Wittgenstein 1975:378).

The "question of epistemology" similarly dissolves as the answer to it is the same one
which pragmatists give to the question of action: you settle for a belief (as a rule
for action) through inquiry. Thinking and acting are two sides of the same coin.
The question of how people think would become a problem only if there were a
problem with the way people think. But, as Louis Menand has pointedly put it,
"pragmatists don't believe there is a problem with the way people think. They
believe there is a problem with the way people think they think"that is, they believe that
alternative "epistemologies" which separate thought and action are mistaken as they create
misleading conceptual puzzles. In dissolving the question of epistemology in
the context of a unified theory of thought and action pragmatism therefore "unhitches" human beings
from "a useless structure of bad abstractions about thought" (Menand 1997:xi).

Political Epistemology Flawed

Latours political epistemology is based on a flawed
understanding of nature and excludes care for the reservoir of
the unknown
Pollini 13 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Geography and
Beckman Institute (Jacques Pollini, Bruno Latour and the Ontological
Dissolution of Nature in the Social Sciences:A Critical Review, Environmental
Values, https://www.academia.edu/5841829/Pollini_2013__Bruno_Latour_and_the_ontological_dissolution_of_nature_in_the_social_sc
iences_A_critical_review)//AS
His first argument is that nature represents a threat to politics, because its
objective character is translated into supposedly undisputable claims, thereby
putting an end to public debates. The fact that knowledge about nature is used to
claim undue authority is obviously true. But it is not necessary to reject the idea
of nature as an objective truth in order to open political debates. It is sufficient to
reject any claim to have certain knowledge about that truth. In other words, the
rejection of the dominant epistemology (positivism, or classical empiricism,
according to which the true nature of things can be known) does not imply the
rejection of the most intuitive ontology (the distinction be-tween a unique and
objective nature and its multiple representations). Popper(1966), whose book
The Open Society and Its Enemies starts, like Latours(1999) Politiques de la
nature , with a critique of Platos myth of the cave(a foundational text of positivist
epistemologies), proposes the acceptation that all knowledge is uncertain as a
remedy to hegemonies and authoritative knowledge. Latours (1999) second
argument is that environmentalism deals not with nature but with hybrid natureculture objects that are the outcome of social practices. This hybridity would
render the concept of nature meaningless. Before analysing this argument, a
clarification is required. Latour, here, does not question nature denied as the
objective world out there, as was the case in the first argument. He rather
questions nature denied as the dimension of the world that is not the outcome of
social processes, in contrast to culture. These two conceptions of nature are
unfortunately often amalgamated, another cause of confusion in the debate. For a
clearer distinction between these two meanings of the word nature, it would be
more appropriate to speak about realities and representations when dealing with
the world out there and knowl-edge about it; and to speak of nature and cultures
when dealing with the objects that constitute this world. This clarification being
done, Latours second argument can also be dis - puted because even if no objects
remained in the world that were purely natural(an assertion that is itself
disputable), saying that an object is the outcome of social processes does not
mean that this object does not include any nature. It does indeed, and language
has captured this fact: saying that an object is natural is simply stating
something about its high degree of naturalness, rela-tive to other objects. An
urban dweller travelling in the countryside will feel surrounded by nature, while a

forest dweller travelling in this same countryside will feel surrounded by a

cultural or anthropogenic landscape. Most environ-mentalists are concerned not
with pure nature, but with the natural content of hybrid objects, and by the extent
to which humans can afford to reduce this JACQUES POLLINI 30 Environmental
Values 22.1 content without exposing their societies to collapse or threats. The
question they ask is, as Odum (1969) puts it, how much can we afford of a good
thing (culture) without sacricing too much of another good thing (nature)? Only
the most radical branches of deep ecology, which are highly criticised by many
environmentalists, call for a return to pure nature. Keeling (2008) shows the
fallacies toward which one can be conducted by not differentiating between the
abstract meaning of a concept and its practical meaning in everyday lan-guage
and in particular contextual settings. He shows that saying that there is no
wilderness, in the sense that no place is devoid of human activities, is as empty as
saying that there is no justice on the ground that there is no absolute or perfect
justice. Latours (1999) third argument reects his attempt to depart from social
constructionism. Latour argues that social constructionism, with the exception of
strong versions that equate nature (in the sense of an objective world out there)
with its representation, strengthens the separation between the social and the
natural worlds, because it maintains the distinction between a world out there
that continues to unfold its own history, and a society that constructs a parallel
history by creating social representations. Latour proposes to move ahead of this
dualism. He proposes a new conception of the world in which the social, instead
of an arena in which humans make statements about the nature of a nonhuman
world whose rules are dened once for all, is a collective of humans and
nonhumans whose properties are not xed and that expands by recruiting and
socialising an increasing number of nonhuman objects. This conception actually
reects the way any society works. The world that mat -ters for humans in their
everyday lives, including in the practice of science, is only a subset of the real
world. It is a subset constituted of humans, nonhuman-mans, and hybrid things
that are objects of knowledge and practice; i.e., with which humans have already
established cognitive or physical relations. This subworld is continuously
changing by the addition, but also exclusion, of new elements, following
processes that Latour described with relevance. But one can ask whether this
contingent world is actually the one that fundamentally matters. Unknown
objects not yet recruited by Latours collective can have effects on humans and
their societies, even if these effects are not perceived. Recruited objects can also
carry unknown properties that have unknown and unobserved effects. It can thus
hardly be said that the objective world out there is not entirely part of the
collective. Some of the objects that constitute it are cognitively absent, but are
substantially present nevertheless. The exist-ence of an unknown (unrecruited)
realm thus has to be explicitly postulated, which might precisely be the function
of saying that a domain exists (which is often called nature, but which I prefer to
call reality, in order to avoid the confusion between the nature/culture
distinction), that is ontologically distinct from the representations or social
constructions produced through the interac-tion of humans with nonhumans. If
this conceptualization were not made, then BRUNO LATOUR AND NATURE 31
Environmental Values 22.1 we would not be prepared to anticipate disasters

provoked by processes about which we are ignorant. We would have no reason to

take precautions when fac-ing the unknown, because we would claim that the
world that matters is simply the world we know: the one made of objects that we
have already recruited. And we would have no reason to care for nature, this
reservoir of the unknown.

Enviro Prag
Environmental pragmatism is the best way to solve for
environmental problems

Wapner 8 (Paul Kevin, Associate Professor and Director of the Global Environmental Politics Program in the
School of International Service at American University, The Importance of Critical Environmental Studies in the New
Environmentalism, Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 8, No. 1, p. 6-7)
To many readers, such questions probably sound familiar. Efforts

to rid the world of war, poverty,

human rights abuses and injustice in general are perennial challenges
that require heightened compassion and a commitment that transcends one's time on earth. The questions are
especially relevant, however, to environmentalists. They represent the kind of challenges we
constantly pose to ourselves and to those we try to convince to join us . Environmental issues are some
of the gravest dangers facing humanity and all life on the planet. At their most immediate,
environmental problems undermine the quality of life for the poorest and are
increasingly eroding the quality of life of even the affluent. At the
extreme, environmental challenges threaten to fracture the fundamental organic
infrastructure that supports life on Earth and thus imperil life's very survival. What
to do? Environmental Studies is the academic discipline charged with trying to
figure this out. Like Feminist and Race Studies, it emerged out of a political movement and
thus never understood itself as value-neutral. Coming on the heels of the modern environmental
movement of the 1960s, environmental studies has directed itself toward understanding the biophysical limits of the earth
and how humans can live sustainably given those limits. As

such, it has always seen its normative

commitments not as biases that muddy its inquiry but as disciplining directives
that focus scholarship in scientifically and politically relevant directions. To be sure,

the discipline's natural scientists see themselves as objective observers of the natural world and understand their work as

Most
otherwise remain detached from the political conditions in which their work is
assessed. The discipline's social scientists also maintain a stance of objectivity to the degree that they respect the facts
normative only to the degree that it is shaped by the hope of helping to solve environmental problems.

of the social world, but many of them engage the political world by offering policy prescriptions and new political visions.
What is it like to research and teach Environmental Studies these days? Where does the normative dimension of the
discipline fit into contemporary political affairs? Specifically, how should social thinkers within Environmental Studies
understand the application of their normative commitments? Robert Cox once distinguished what he calls "problemsolving" theory from "critical theory." The former, which aims toward social and political reform, accepts prevailing power
relationships and institutions and implicitly uses these as a framework for inquiry and action. As

a theoretical
enterprise, problem-solving theory works within current paradigms to address
particular intellectual and practical challenge s. Critical theory, in contrast, questions existing
power dynamics and seeks not only to reform but to transform social and political conditions. 1 Critical environmental
theory has come under attack in recent years. As the discipline has matured and further cross-pollinated with other
fields, some of us have become enamored with continental philosophy, cultural and communication studies ,

highlevel anthropological and sociological theory and a host of other insightful

disciplines that tend to step back from contemporary events and paradigms of
thought and reveal structures of power that reproduce social and political life.
While such engagement has refined our ability to identify and make visible
impediments to creating a greener world, it has also isolated critical
Environmental Studies from the broader discipline and, seemingly, the actual
world it is trying to transform. Indeed, critical environmental theory has become almost a sub-discipline to
itself. It has developed a rarefied language and, increasingly, an insular audience . To many, this has

rendered critical theory not more but less politically engaged as it scales the
heights of thought only to be further distanced from practice. It increasingly seems, to
many, to be an impotent discourse preaching radical ideas to an already initiated choir.

Eco pragmatism is the only

Hirokawa 02, [Keith Hirokawa, J.D. from the University of Connecticut and
LL.M. from the Northwestern School of Law, 2002 (Some Pragmatic
Observations About Radical Critique In Environmental Law, Stanford
Environmental Law Journal, Volume 21, June, Available Online to Subscribing
Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)]
Changes in each instance create entirely new contexts in which more (or less)
progressive arguments find a hold. Every time a change occurs, even if it is
incremental or ostensibly seems benign, the change creates a new context within
which an entirely new set of possibilities will arise. n230 The pragmatist
therefore evaluates progress by the distance a new idea causes practices to move
away from past practices and paradigms.
The difference between the pragmatic version of progress and the Kuhnian
version is one only of degree. In the end, the results of both versions of progress
are the same - we look back at the change and realize that earlier ideas do not
make sense anymore. The effectiveness of the pragmatic approach lies in the
simple realization that, in adopting an innovative approach to a legal question,
courts will find comfort in adopting what appears to be an incremental change,
rather than a radical paradigmatic shift. In [*278] contrast to radical theorists
that deny the existence of progress because of a failure to immediately reach the
radical goals of alternative paradigms, the pragmatist recognizes that a series of
incremental changes eventually add up. Environmental pragmatism enables
environmentalists to seek achievable gains by focusing on minor improvements
in the law that incrementally close the gap between the values that pre-existed
current environmental law and the alternative paradigms of environmental
protection.

Science True
Scientific understandings of the world are effective and key to
survival
Coyne, 06 Author and Writer for the Times (Jerry A., A plea for empiricism, FOLLIES OF THE WISE,
Dissenting essays, 405pp. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard, 1 59376 101 5)

Supernatural forces and events, essential aspects of most religions, play no role in
science, not because we exclude them deliberately, but because they have never
been a useful way to understand nature. Scientific truths are empirically
supported observations agreed on by different observers. Religious truths, on the
other hand, are personal, unverifiable and contested by those of different faiths. Science is
nonsectarian: those who disagree on scientific issues do not blow each other up .
Science encourages doubt; most religions quash it. But religion is not completely separable from
science. Virtually all religions make improbable claims that are in principle
empirically testable, and thus within the domain of science : Mary, in Catholic teaching, was
bodily taken to heaven, while Muhammad rode up on a white horse; and Jesus (born of a virgin) came back from the dead.
None of these claims has been corroborated, and while science would never accept them as true without evidence, religion
does. A mind that accepts both science and religion is thus a mind in conflict. Yet scientists, especially beleaguered
American evolutionists, need the support of the many faithful who respect science. It is not politically or tactically useful
to point out the fundamental and unbreachable gaps between science and theology. Indeed, scientists and philosophers
have written many books (equivalents of Leibnizian theodicy) desperately trying to show how these areas can happily
cohabit. In his essay, Darwin goes to Sunday School, Crews reviews several of these works, pointing out with brio the
intellectual contortions and dishonesties involved in harmonizing religion and science. Assessing work by the evolutionist
Stephen Jay Gould, the philosopher Michael Ruse, the theologian John Haught and others, Crews concludes, When
coldly examined . . . these productions invariably prove to have adulterated scientific doctrine or to have emptied religious
dogma of its commonly accepted meaning. Rather than suggesting any solution (indeed, there is none save adopting a
form of religion that makes no untenable empirical claims), Crews

points out the dangers to the

survival of our planet arising from a rejection of Darwinism. Such rejection promotes
apathy towards overpopulation, pollution, deforestation and other environmental
crimes: So long as we regard ourselves as creatures apart who need only repent of our personal sins to retain heavens
blessing, we wont take the full measure of our species-wise responsibility for these calamities . Crews includes
three final essays on deconstruction and other misguided movements in literary
theory. These also show follies of the wise in that they involve interpretations of
texts that are unanchored by evidence. Fortunately, the harm inflicted by Lacan
and his epigones is limited to the good judgement of professors of literature. Follies
of the Wise is one of the most refreshing and edifying collections of essays in recent years. Much like Christopher Hitchens
in the UK, Crews serves a vital function as National Sceptic. He ends on a ringing note: The

human race has

produced only one successfully validated epistemology , characterizing all
scrupulous inquiry into the real world, from quarks to poems. It is, simply,
empiricism, or the submitting of propositions to the arbitration of evidence that
is acknowledged to be such by all of the contending parties. Ideas that claim
immunity from such review, whether because of mystical faith or privileged
clinical insight or the say-so of eminent authorities, are not to be countenanced
until they can pass the same skeptical ordeal to which all other contenders are
subjected. As science in America becomes ever more harried and debased by politics and religion, we desperately
need to heed Crewss plea for empiricism.

Science Good
Science isnt dominating; it allows liberation and freedom
Bronner 04 (Stephen, Prof. Poli Sci @ Rutgers, Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement,
p. 21-23)
Even in scientific terms, progress retained a critical dimension insofar as it implied the need to question established certainties. In

this vein, it is misleading simply to equate scientific reason with the domination of man and
nature.15 All the great figures of the scientific revolution Bacon, Boyle, Newtonwere concerned with liberating humanity from
what seemed the power of seemingly intractable forces. Swamps were everywhere; roads were few; forests remained to be cleared;
illness was rampant; food was scarce; most people would never leave their village. What it implied not to understand the existence of
bacteria or the nature of electricity, just to use very simple examples, is today simply inconceivable. Enlightenment figures like
Benjamin Franklin, "the complete philosophe,"'6 became famous for a reason: they not only freed people from some of their fears
but through inventions like the stove and the lightning rod they also raised new possibilities for making people's lives more livable.
Critical theorists and postmodernists miss

the point when they view Enlightenment intellectuals in general and

scientists in particular as simple apostles of reification. They actually constituted its
most consistent enemy. The philosophes may not have grasped the commodity form, but
they empowered people by challenging superstitions and dogmas that left them mute
and helpless against the whims of nature and the injunctions of tradition.
Enlightenment thinkers were justified in understanding knowledge as inherently
improving humanity. Infused with a sense of furthering the public good, liberating the individual from
the clutches of the invisible and inexplicable, the Enlightenment idea of progress required what the young
Marx later termed "the ruthless critique of everything existing." This regulative notion of progress was never
inimical to subjectivity. Quite the contrary: progress became meaningful only with
reference to real living individuals.

Science Good Warming

Criticisms of science prevent us from taking action on climate change
Berube, 2011, Michael, Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and
Humanities at Pennsylvania State University, where he teaches cultural studies and American literature, The Science
Wars Redux, http://www.democracyjournal.org/pdf/19/BERUBE.pdf,
But what of Sokals chief post-hoax claim that the academic lefts critiques of science were potentially damaging to the left?

the critique of scientific objectivity and

the insistence on the inevitable partiality of knowledge can serve the purposes
of climatechange deniers and young-Earth creationists quite nicely. Thats not because there was something
That one, alas, has held up very well, for it turns out that

fundamentally rotten at the core of philosophical antifoundationalism (whose leading American exponent, Richard Rorty,
remained a progressive Democrat all his life), but it might very well have had something to do with the cloistered nature of
the academic left. It was as if we had tacitly assumed, all along, that we were speaking only to one another, so that
whenever we championed Jean-Franois Lyotards defense of the hetereogeneity of language games and spat on Jrgen
Habermass ideal of a conversation oriented toward consensus, we assumed a strong consensus among us that anyone

the climate-change deniers and the

young-Earth creationists are coming after the natural scientists, just as I
predictedand theyre using some of the very arguments developed by an
academic left that thought it was speaking only to people of like mind. Some
standard left arguments, combined with the leftpopulist distrust of experts and
professionals and assorted high-and-mighty muckety-mucks who think theyre
the boss of us, were fashioned by the right into a powerful device for
delegitimating scientific research. For example, when Andrew Ross asked in
Strange Weather, How can metaphysical life theories and explanations taken
seriously by millions be ignored or excluded by a small group of powerful people
called scientists?, everyone was supposed to understand that he was referring
to alternative medicine, and that his critique of scientists was meant to bring
power to the people. The countercultural account of metaphysical life theories
that gives people a sense of dignity in the face of scientific authority sounds good
until one substitutes astrology or homeopathy or creationism (all of which
are certainly taken seriously by millions) in its place. The rights attacks on
climate science, mobilizing a public distrust of scientific expertise, eventually led
science-studies theorist Bruno Latour to write in Critical Inquiry: [E]ntire Ph.D.
programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the
hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural,
unmediated, unbiased access to truth...while dangerous extremists are using the
very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that
could save our lives. Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies? Is it
on the side of heterogeneity was on the side of the angels. But now

enough to say that we did not really mean what we meant? Why does it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact
whether you like it or not? Why cant I simply say that the argument is closed for good? Why, indeed? Why not say,
definitively, that anthropogenic climate change is real, that vaccines do not cause autism, that the Earth revolves around
the Sun, and that Adam and Eve did not ride dinosaurs to church? At the close of his Afterword to Transgressing the
Boundaries, Sokal wrote: No wonder most Americans cant distinguish between science and pseudoscience: their science
teachers have never given them any rational grounds for doing so. (Ask an average undergraduate: Is matter composed of
atoms? Yes. Why do you think so? The reader can fill in the response.) Is it then any surprise that 36 percent of Americans
believe in telepathy, and that 47 percent believe in the creation account of Genesis? It cant be denied that some sciencestudies scholars have deliberately tried to blur the distinction between science and pseudoscience. As I noted in Rhetorical
Occasions and on my personal blog, British philosopher of science Steve Fuller traveled to Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2005 to
testify on behalf of the local school boards fundamentalist conviction that Intelligent Design is a legitimate science. The
main problem intelligent design theory suffers from at the moment, Fuller argued, is a paucity of developers. Somehow,
Fuller managed to miss the pointthat there is no way to develop a research program in ID. What is one to do, examine

fossils for evidence of Gods fingerprints? So these days, when I talk to my scientist friends, I offer them a deal. I say: Ill
admit that you were right about the potential for science studies to go horribly wrong and give fuel to deeply ignorant
and/or reactionary people. And in return, youll admit that I was right about the culture wars, and right that the natural
sciences would not be held harmless from the right-wing noise machine. And if youll go further, and acknowledge that
some circumspect, well-informed critiques of actually existing science have merit (such as the criticism that the postwar
medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth had some ill effects), Ill go further too, and acknowledge that many
humanists critiques of science and reason are neither circumspect nor well-informed. Then perhaps we can get down to
the business of how to develop safe, sustainable energy and other social practices that will keep the planet habitable.
Fifteen years ago, it seemed to me that the Sokal Hoax was making that kind of deal impossible, deepening the two
cultures divide and further estranging humanists from scientists. Now, I think it may have helped set the terms for an

the shared enemies of their

enterprises are the religious fundamentalists who reject all knowledge that
challenges their faith and the free-market fundamentalists whose policies will
surely scorch the earth. On my side, perhaps humanists are beginning to realize
that there is a project even more vital than that of the relentless critique of
everything existing, a project to which they can contribute as much as any
scientistthe project of making the world a more humane and livable place. Is it
still possible? I dont know, and Im not sanguine. Some scientific questions now
seem to be a matter of tribal identity: A vast majority of elected Republicans have
expressed doubts about the science behind anthropogenic climate change, and as
someone once remarked, it is very difficult to get a man to understand something
when his tribal identity depends on his not understanding it. But there are few
tasks so urgent. About that, even Heisenberg himself would be certain.
eventual rapprochement, leading both humanists and scientists to realize that

Critique of Indigenous Studies

Stop fetishizing the European-Pacific encounters as the first
it was happening before us, cultural whitewashing was not, and
is not, a purely western venture the kritik oversimplifies and
makes it impossible to address things that come before it
Jolly et al. 09 BA (Hons), PhD (Sydney), FASSA Professor/ ARC Laureate
Fellow School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific,
Serge Tcherkezoff is a researcher in Pacific anthropology and ethno-history. In
addition of being the principal specialist of Samoan society in Europe, he is one
of the two specialists in Europe, of ethno-historical approaches to the encounters
between Polynesians and Europeans in the 18th century, Darrell Tryon is a
linguist at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian
National University, Canberra. He is the author of a number of publications on
Polynesian languages, including Conversational Tahitian. (Margaret, Oceanic
Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence, Australian National University,
www.oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=459397)//Roetlin
Firstly, the idea of first contact privileges the meeting of Pacific people and
Europeans, by perceiving these as unprecedented, as first. This risks
occluding all previous cross-cultural encounters between Pacific peoples such
as those between Papuan- and Austronesian-speaking peoples or between
Fijians and Tongans. As Tryon (this volume) stresses, the past and present

patterning of Pacific languages suggests a long history of intensive contact in

trade and exchange between Pacific peoples and through the complex
processes of indigenous migration and settlement . Such enduring contacts

over many millennia brought pacific peoples speaking very different languages
into conversation. Especially notable here was the contact between the
speakers of Papuan and Austronesian languages. As Tryon (this volume)
observes, Papuan languages are thought to be ancient: archaeological evidence
of Papuan-speaking peoples is dated to be 50,000 BP in the interior or Papua
New Guinea (PNG); 30,000 in New Ireland; and 20,000 in Bougainville.
Austronesian-speaking peoples by contrast migrated from Taiwan or
southern China only about 6,000 years ago, were in New Britain and New
Ireland about 4,000 years ago and subsequently dispersed across the
islands of Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia (see Spriggs 1997). Although

clearly two distinct language families, Tyron stresses the pivotal importance of
encounters between people speaking these separate languages, and in that
process their mutual influence and transformation, in both vocabulary and
grammar. He cites a good instance of this from the Santa Cruz archipelago of
the Solomon Islands, where three Papuan and eight Austronesian languages
still coexist and where language contact has induced some striking
symbioses in grammar. So, the languages Nend and iwoo retained a
typically Papuan verb morphology but adopted the four possessive noun
classes which characterise Austronesian languages in Island Melanesia.

Similar patterns are clear in the way in which Polynesian Outlier languages in the

Solomons and Vanuatu have mutually influenced proximate Melanesian

languages. Such examples of indigenous linguistic encounters raise a key

conceptual theme for all cross-cultural encounters: they can generate not
just superficial exchanges of meanings manifest in loan words, but deep
transformations in the grammar of understanding the world . So, Tryon (this
volume) adjudges that it is hard to confidently classify iwoo and Nend as
either Papuan or Austronesian. Thus, the mutual influence and imbrication
born of encounter can be so profound that it is impossible to disentangle the
pre-existing elements as indubitably one or the other . This linguistic process

mirrors broader processes of cross-cultural encounter and exchange, described

through concepts such as creolisation, syncretism and hybridization. In the

process of such indigenous linguistic and cultural encounters, as in later

colonial encounters, power was crucial. This is graphically illustrated in
another example alluded to by Tryon: the encounter between Fijians and
Tongans in the course of trade, cultural exchange and colonisation . Geraghty
(1983) has discerned a simplified register of Fijian, foreigner-talk used to
trade with Tongan neighbours to the east. These trade contacts combined with
increasing cultural exchange and patterns of marital alliance. But these Tongan
traders/neighbours were also colonists. Tongan chiefs, like Maafu,
extended the range of their influence to the eastern islands of the Fiji group
(Spurway 2001) and, in the process, transformed the indigenous chiefly
hierarchy, being later recognised by the British as having legitimate
sovereignty in this region. Such earlier encounters between the indigenous
peoples of the Pacific in the context of trade, exchange and settlement were
perhaps formative in how later strangers or foreigners were perceived as
living humans, divine beings, demonic ancestral spirits or simultaneously
all three (see Ballard 2003 [1992]; Borofsky 2000; Connolly and Anderson 1987;

Jolly 1992a; Sahlins 1985, 1995; Salmond 1991, 1998, 2003; Schieffelin and
Crittenden 1991; Tcherkezoff 2004a; 2004b). We consider this debate below