Transforming the Dream

Charles Sokol Bednar

Description

Transforming the Dream challenges American mainstream culture's obsession with unlimited economic and industrial growth. Drawing on works by Roy Morrison, Murray Bookchin, Daniel C. Maguire, Paul Taylor, C. A. Bowers, and others, Bednar critiques the ideological status quo, offering an alternative ecological economics, political economy, ethics, and pedagogy. This new outlook on humankind's relationship to the environment is, he argues, better positioned to address critical issues of the twenty-first century, including the ecological and social limits of economic growth, the social and economic requisites for authentic democracy, the ethics of human interaction with the natural environment, and the educational curricula and practices required to promote ecological literacy. Bednar's perspective provides the opportunity to develop economic and political institutions that permit a sustainable relationship with the environment and offers a socially richer and more fulfilling life for the individual than the "American Dream" promised by the current system.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Ecological Economics

2. Ecological Political Economy

3. Ecological Ethics

4. Ecological Pedagogy

5. Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• USA
• United States of America
• Political economy
• 20th century
• History of the Americas
• Central
• États-Unis
• National

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791486863
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

94761 pb 2/5/03 1:12 PM Page 1
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES / POLITICAL SCIENCE
Transforming the Dream
Transforming the
Ecologism and the Shaping of an Alternative American Vision
Charles Sokol Bednar
Dream
Transforming the Dream challenges American mainstream culture’s obsession
with unlimited economic and industrial growth. Drawing on works by Roy
Morrison, Murray Bookchin, Daniel C. Maguire, Paul Taylor, C. A. Bowers, and
others, Bednar critiques the ideological status quo, offering an alternative
ecological economics, political economy, ethics, and pedagogy. This new outlook on
Ecologism and the
humankind’s relationship to the environment is, he argues, better positioned to
address critical issues of the twenty-first century, including the ecological and
Shaping of an Alternative
social limits of economic growth, the social and economic requisites for authentic
democracy, the ethics of human interaction with the natural environment, and the
American Vision
educational curricula and practices required to promote ecological literacy.
Bednar’s perspective provides the opportunity to develop economic and political
institutions that permit a sustainable relationship with the environment and offers
a socially richer and more fulfilling life for the individual than the “American
Dream” promised by the current system.
“This is a work of long reflection and relevant scholarship, tempered with
many years of teaching and learning from students. Bednar draws on many sources
and uses them honestly and judiciously. A wonderful book.”
— Herman E. Daly, author of Ecological Economics
and the Ecology of Economics: Essays in Criticism
“Bednar has sorted through major issues that ought to be front and center on
the public agenda, but are not. The result is an important and useful statement of
what ails us and what lies ahead if significant changes are not made in time.”
— David W. Orr, author of The Nature of Design: Ecology,
Culture, and Human Intention
CHARLES SOKOL BEDNAR is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at
Muhlenberg College.
State University of New York Press
www.sunypress.edu
Charles Sokol Bednar
Bednar
SUNY
T
ransforming the Dream
00
100
100
100
25
50
75
100
100
100
100
25
50
75
100
100
100
100
25
50
75
100
100
100
100
25
50
75
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
50
50
50
100
100
100
100
50Transforming the DreamTransforming the Dream
Ecologism and the Shaping of an
Alternative American Vision
Charles Sokol Bednar
State University of New York PressPublished by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2003 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, address the State University of New York Press,
90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207
Production by Judith Block
Marketing by Anne Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bednar, Charles.
Transforming the dream : ecologism and the shaping of an alternative
American vision / Charles Sokol Bednar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-5715-X (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5716-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Green movement—United States. 2. Environmental ethics—United States.
3. Environmental economics—United States. I. Title.
GE197.B43 2003
363.7'0973—dc21 2002070849
10 987654321To the most important people in my life,
my wife and my parents—
and to all those whose imagination can escape the
gravitational force of the current “reality”Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1 Ecological Economics 17
2 Ecological Political Economy 51
3 Ecological Ethics 89
4 Ecological Pedagogy 129
5 Conclusion 167
Notes 183
Bibliography 209
Index 215
viiPreface
There is a thesis of long standing advanced by such writers as Louis Hartz
and Daniel Bell to the effect that the American society is singularly
characterized by a dominant ideology which has its roots in the classical liberalism
of John Locke. According to the thesis, this Lockean liberalism conjoined in
later years with the American constitutional system and later yet with a
capitalist economy represents the hegemonic American ideology which has
historically marginalized or silenced dissenting viewpoints. For Francis Fukuyama
this dominant American ideology, given the fall of the Soviet Union, may
even represent the culmination of humankind’s ideological evolution. The
purported public consensus on American social values and institutions
constitutes for these writers an end-of-ideology era in which differences between
the major political parties are based not on fundamentally opposed visions of
the American future but on disagreements over which policies can best achieve
goals on which a consensus already exists.
Yet, within the contemporary American society there exist currents
beneath the surface of the ideological consensus which challenge the status
quo. Transforming the Dream draws together the major strands of a
contemporary American ecological literature to display the emergence of a cogent
critique of the ideological consensus or what is referred to here as the
dominant techno-industrial paradigm. This critique constitutes a new ecological
paradigm that offers a vision of an alternative American future, one very
different from the American Dream and its taken-for-granted assumptions
about economics, political economy, ethics, and pedagogy.
ixx Transforming the Dream
This book represents a more comprehensive and complete treatment of
a significant American contemporary ecological literature than I was able to
provide in teaching college environmental courses for some fifteen years. In
my lectures I attempted to convey both the outlines of a body of ecological
thought which could be construed as a new and philosophically sounder way
of understanding human relationships with the natural environment and the
implications of this new understanding for social, political, and economic
institutions. While the students were essential in providing a sounding board
for the concepts presented in the lectures, the limited time frame of a
onesemester course resulted in something less than a substantial and equal
treatment of ecological economics, political economy, ethics, and pedagogy. The
book as it is organized provides that needed substantial and equal treatment
of these four major areas. The book also answers the plaintive query
addressed to me by a student in the last class I taught: “Wherever do you get
these ideas?”
My own graduate education was in political science and my Ph.D. is in
political philosophy. As chairman of a small political science department in
a private liberal arts college, I grew intellectually restive in a field which like
the other social sciences largely trained students to reproduce the dominant
paradigm system rather than to challenge it in terms of the environmental and
social instability it created. I found myself increasingly repelled by the way
in which the college curriculum reflected the unecological and
anthropocentric perspectives of the dominant paradigm. Over the years I had more and
more recourse to a literature that had never been mentioned in graduate
school, a literature represented in this book and one that deserves to be
recognized in all institutions of higher learning if college graduates in the
twenty-first century are to become facilitators of, not obstacles to, an
American society which is environmentally and socially enlightened. Explicitly or
implicitly, the writings that constitute what I have termed the new ecological
paradigm are a coherent and compelling rejection of the taken-for-granted
assumption that two million years of hominid evolution have found their
consummation in a system that thrives on a reckless if not mindless
consumerism and aspires to globalize itself while unhinging ecosystems and cloning
all of humanity in its image. The new ecological paradigm offers, I am
convinced, an opportunity to develop economic and political institutions that
permit a sustainable relationship with the environment and offer a socially
richer and more fulfilling life for the individual than can the American Dream
as promised by the current system.Preface xi
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my thanks to the writers discussed in the book for the varied
ways in which they have provided a pathway out of the narrowly
circumscribed boundaries of the still reigning intellectual orthodoxy. Some of them
like Herman E. Daly and David W. Orr I met personally. To all I am grateful
for making possible a discussion of the American future which is free of the
banal rhetoric and sloganeering typical of much of public discourse today.
Thanks go also to those colleagues at Muhlenberg College who helped to
design the first environmental course ever offered, one that was team taught
and interdisciplinary. Dan Wilson of the history department and Carl Oplinger
of the biology department were two prominent pioneers in this endeavor.
My deepest appreciation goes to my wife who undertook the entire
range of secretarial duties without relinquishing any of her many activities.
She not only kept up with my almost daily revisions of the manuscript, but
also, when my creative juices occasionally ran dry, she would gently remind
me that she had not received any material to type for some time. All of this
work was done despite a handicap that limits her to one functioning hand.
Without her the book would still be in progress.
I list below sections of this volume where I quote from other sources.
I thank these publishers for granting permission to quote from copyrighted
material.
Introduction, pp. 1, 5–6, and Chapter 4, pp. 162–6