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Human Ecology Review
Winter 2001
Volume 8
Number 2
In this Issue
Social Indicators through Newfoundland’s Cod Crisis
Lawrence C.Hamilton and Melissa J.Butler
Toward an Ecology of Social Action
Paul McLaughlin
Public Participation in Watershed Management Planning
Thomas Webler and Seth Tuler
Neighborhood Civic Participation
Michael R.Greenberg
Caiçara Communities and the Atlantic Rain Forest
Rosely Alvim Sanches
Literary Theory and Ecology
Vernon Gras
Relational Zoöntology
Ralph R.Acampora
Official Journal of the Society for Human Ecology
Human Ecology Review
Editor
Linda Kalof
Environmental Science & Policy Program
George Mason University
Fairfax,VA 22030 USA
LKalof@gmu.edu
hereview@gmu.edu
Book Review Co-Editor International Editor Book Review Co-Editor
Thomas Burns Eva Ekehorn William Abruzzi
University of Oklahoma Commonwealth Human Muhlenberg College
Department of Sociology Ecology Council Department of Sociology
Norman, OK 73019 USA 72 Gloucester Court, Kew & Anthropology
tburns@ou.edu Richmond,Surrey,TW9 3EA UK Allentown,PA 18951 USA
eva_ekehorn@compuserve.co abruzzi@hal.muhlberg.edu
Assistant Editor
Heather L. Heckel
Department of Sociology & Anthropology
George Mason University
Fairfax,VA 22030 USA
Phone: 703-993-1443 Fax: 703-993-1446
hheckel@gmu.edu
Founders
Jonathan G. Taylor
Scott D. Wright
www.humanecologyreview.org
Editorial Board
Marc Bekoff University of Colorado Lawrence Hamilton University of New Hampshire
Richard J. Borden College of the Atlantic Luc Hens Free University, Brussels
Sherry Cable University of Tennessee Gary A. Klee San Jose State University
Caron Chess Rutgers Univ.,New Brunswick Ardeshir Mahdavi Vienna University of Technology
Susan Clayton Wooster College Allan Mazur Syracuse University
Melville P. Cotè College of the Atlantic Bonnie McCay Rutgers Univ.,New Brunswick
Debra Davidson University of Alberta Paul McLaughlin Hobart & William Smith Colleges
Federico Dickinson Unidad Merida Thom Meredith McGill University
Thomas Dietz George Mason University Susan Opotow University of Massachusetts, Boston
Myron Floyd Texas A&M University Peter Richerson University of California,Davis
R. Scott Frey Univ.of North Florida J. Timmons Roberts Tulane University
Scott Friskics Fort Belknap College Robert Sommer University of California,Davis
Bernhard Glaeser Gothenburg University Joanne Vining University of Illinois, Urbana
Vernon Gras George Mason University Thomas Webler Antioch New England
Michael Greenberg Rutgers Univ.,New Brunswick Michael Welsh Albright College
Human Ecology Review (ISSN 1074-4827) is a refereed journal published twice a year by the Society for Human
Ecology. The Journal publishes peer-reviewed research and theory on the interaction between humans and the
environment (Research in Human Ecology),book reviews (Contemporary Human Ecology),essays,commentary
and applications relevant to human ecology (Human Ecology Forum),and letters,announcements of meetings,
awards and other items of interest (Human Ecology Bulletin). Information for contributors to the refereed section is
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Information is also at www.humanecologyreview.org.
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Bibliography (EPB), Linguistic and Language Behavior Abstracts, Social Planning and Policy Abstracts, Uncover,
and Sociological Abstracts.
© Society for Human Ecology
Human Ecology Review
VOLUME 8 WINTER 2001 NUMBER 2
CONTENTS
Research and Theory in Human Ecology
Outport Adaptations: Social Indicators through Newfoundland’s
Cod Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lawrence C.Hamilton and Melissa J.Butler 1
Toward an Ecology of Social Action: Merging the Ecological and
Constructivist Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paul McLaughlin 12
Public Participation in Watershed Management Planning:
Views on Process from People in the Field. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas Webler and Seth Tuler 29
Elements and Test of a Theory of Neighborhood
Civic Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael R.Greenberg 40
Caiçaras Communities of the Southeastern Coast of São Paulo
State (Brazil): Traditional Activites and Conservation Policy
for the Atlantic Rain Forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rosely Alvim Sanches 52
Human Ecology Forum: Essays, Commentary and Applications
Literary Theory and Ecology: Some Common Problems and a Solution . . . . . . . . . Vernon Gras 65
Real Animals? An Inquiry on Behalf of Relational Zoöntology . . . . . . . . . . . Ralph R.Acampora 73
On the Cover
“Trees fighting for life,”The Ming Tombs,Beijing,PRC, by Adam Douglas Henry
© Society for Human Ecology
Human Ecology Bulletin
The Society for Human Ecology
Executive Board
President Jonathan Taylor
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ommendations for implementing those solutions
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ii Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Research in Human Ecology
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 1
© Society for Human Ecology
Abstract
The 1992 moratorium on fishing for Northern Cod
marked a symbolic end to the way of life that had sustained
Newfoundland’s outports for hundreds of years. It also
marked the completion of an ecological regime shift, from an
ocean ecosystem dominated by cod and other predatory
groundfish, to one in which such fish are comparatively
scarce, and lower-trophic-level invertebrates more common.
We examine patterns of change seen in large-scale social
indicators, which reflect the smaller-scale adaptations of
individuals and communities during this ecological shift.
Trends in population, migration, age, unemployment and
dependency suggest declining conditions in rural
Newfoundland over the years of fisheries troubles. The 1992
crisis accelerated previous trends, but did not produce great
discontinuities. Some trends date instead to the late-1980s
resource-depletion phase that ended the “glory years” of
Newfoundland’s groundfish boom. Government interventions
meant to soften the economic impact of the 1992 crisis also
blunted its social impacts, effectively postponing or distribut-
ing these over a number of subsequent years. Outport soci-
ety is adapting to shifts in the regulatory and global-market
environment, as well as changing marine ecology. Adaptive
strategies include new investments in invertebrate fisheries,
changes in education and migration, and continuing reliance
on the informal economy.
Keywords: Newfoundland, fisheries, social indicators,
population, migration, cod crisis, dependency
Introduction
The Northern Cod, an Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua)
population inhabiting the continental shelf off Newfound-
land’s east and northeast coasts, historically has been among
the world’s richest fishery resources. This resource support-
ed European settlement of North America (Innis 1978;
Kurlansky 1997), and shaped society on the island of New-
foundland itself for five hundred years (Sider 1986; Sinclair
1988; Candow and Corbin 1997). During those centuries,
fishing technology and effort increased slowly, having incre-
mental and hard-to-perceive effects on the resource (Hutch-
ings and Myers 1995). In the decades after World War II,
however, technology and effort leaped forward. The Northern
Cod came under new pressure from industrialized trawler
fleets. Canada’s 1976 declaration of a 200-mile economic
exclusion zone (EEZ) sharply cut back fishing by foreign
fleets, but Canadian domestic capacity soon built up to com-
pensate. Signs of depletion were noticeable, but not yet offi-
cially acknowledged, in the late 1980s (Chantraine 1993;
Finlayson 1994). By 1992, as Northern Cod biomass fell to
one percent of its earlier level, a crisis was undeniable.
Facing ecological collapse on a historically unprecedented
scale, the government declared a moratorium on fishing for
the Northern Cod.
It was soon apparent that this collapse involved more
than the Northern Cod. Cod resources off Nova Scotia, New
England, Greenland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence also
were dangerously depleted by the early 1990s (Boreman et al.
1997). Populations of other fish species — some valued by
commercial fisheries, and others taken unintentionally as
bycatch — fell in many areas as well (Hamilton, Duncan and
Haedrich 2001). Northeastern Atlantic fisheries, including
those of Iceland, Norway and the Faroe Islands, had experi-
enced their own crises in groundfish resources during the late
1980s or early 1990s (Hannesson 1996; Hamilton and
Haedrich 1999). In Newfoundland’s case, however, the fall
from abundance to commercial extinction was most pro-
found. In the years since the Northern Cod moratorium, there
has been little evidence of recovery (Lilly et al. 2000), and
recovery appears unlikely at present levels of fishing
(Haedrich and Hamilton 2000).
On land, the Northern Cod moratorium affected tens of
thousands of Newfoundland workers, and undermined hun-
dreds of coastal communities (Candow and Corbin 1997;
Palmer and Sinclair 1997; Harris 1998). There were dire
warnings about the social consequences, but government
interventions softened these — initially, providing income
assistance through the $484 million Northern Cod Adjust-
Outport Adaptations: Social Indicators through
Newfoundland’s Cod Crisis
Lawrence C. Hamilton and Melissa J. Butler
Sociology Department
University of New Hampshire
Durham, NH 03824
USA
1
Hamilton and Butler
2 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
ment and Recovery Program (NCARP), followed in 1994 by
The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy (TAGS) with an allocation
of $1.9 billion. As TAGS expired in 1998, a further $730 mil-
lion package was announced to assist with retraining and
restructuring adjustments for workers displaced by the down-
sizing fishery. The benefits of TAGS and other supports, dis-
tributed unevenly among outport residents, created new in-
equalities and social divisions.
Although groundfish have not returned to their earlier
abundance, alternative species have become the new main-
stays of Newfoundland fishing. These alternatives — princi-
pally invertebrates such as crab and shrimp — currently yield
catches comparable in value to the former cod fishery. In-
come from the alternative fisheries is distributed differently,
however. It does not necessarily benefit the same people,
enterprises or places that formerly were supported by cod.
In this paper, we examine some of the social changes
occurring in Newfoundland through the Northern Cod mora-
torium. Comparisons of social indicators across five New-
foundland regions provide a large-scale perspective on this
period, and show the crisis aftermath in the context of earlier
trends. Finer-scale perspectives help to interpret these trends.
From Cod to Crustaceans
In 1991, 45% of Newfoundland’s 568,000 people lived
on the Avalon Peninsula, many of them around the capital
city of St. John’s (Figure 1). Away from St. John’s, New-
foundland’s population is dispersed among a handful of
smaller regional centers, and hundreds of coastal towns or
villages called outports. Most outports had been settled ini-
tially for cod fishing. Often they possessed few local re-
sources besides cod, and were distant from population cen-
ters or markets. In the analyses that follow, we focus on the
comparatively urban Avalon Peninsula and on four rural
regions (Census divisions) that are Newfoundland’s most
fisheries dependent: the Northern Peninsula, Notre Dame
Bay, South Coast and Burin Peninsula. In 1991, more than
20% of the Northern Peninsula’s labor force worked in “fish-
ing and trapping” (primarily fishing) industries. The Notre
Dame Bay (12%), South Coast (10%) and Burin Peninsula
(8%) regions also leaned heavily on fishing. In contrast, fish-
ing comprised a smaller fraction (2%) of jobs on the Avalon
Peninsula. Even the Avalon, however, contains rural areas
and outports.
Figure 2 tracks changes in the landed value of fisheries
products by type, in four rural regions over 1986-2000. Raw
data were provided by the Newfoundland Region Department
of Fisheries and Oceans (see Collins and Corbett 2000). For
our analysis, we aggregated port-of-landing information into
Census division units, and applied the consumer price index
to convert nominal values into approximately constant (2000)
Canadian dollars. The vertical scale in Figure 2 extends from
zero to $90 million. Figure 3 graphs similar data for the
Avalon Peninsula; note that the vertical scale runs from zero
to $240 million. Fishing activities based on the Avalon were
larger in total value, although proportionately smaller in
terms of employment.
Figures 2 and 3 depict fisheries responding to an eco-
logical regime shift. Historically, groundfish species (espe-
cially cod) comprised most of the value. In these graphs,
groundfish landings show general declines punctuated by
sharp drops around 1992-94, as the Northern Cod and other
key fisheries closed down. While groundfish declined, two
crustacean species became much more important: snow crab
(Chionoecetes opilio) and northern shrimp (Pandalus bore-
alis). These and some other invertebrates grew more abun-
dant as predatory groundfish disappeared (for one analysis of
the cod-shrimp correlation, see Lilly, Parsons and Kulka
2000). At the same time that the ecological regime was shift-
ing, there were also market changes (Apostle et al. 1998).
Figure 1. The island of Newfoundland, showing locations of the five
regions compared, and the home of the Northern Cod.
Hamilton and Butler
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 3
Shrimp, crab and other invertebrates increasingly brought
high prices on the new global markets. Together, the ecolog-
ical and market shifts allowed Newfoundland’s fishing indus-
try to substitute invertebrates for the vanishing cod.
The cod-to-crustaceans transition appears to have been
roughly an even exchange, for the economy of Newfoundland
as a whole. At smaller scales, we see
less even effects. Landings on the
Northern Peninsula fell and then
rose again, with booming shrimp
harvests in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
and Labrador Sea. Notre Dame Bay
landings also increased, largely due
to snow crab. But South Coast and
Burin Peninsula fisheries, which in
the 1980s had values similar to Notre
Dame Bay, subsequently faced
decline or stagnation. The Avalon
Peninsula (Figure 3) showed com-
paratively steady and diverse expan-
sion, based not only on crab and
shrimp, but also groundfish -
notably, turbot or Greenland halibut
(Reinhardtius hippoglossoides).
Although Newfoundland’s his-
torical cod fishery changed slowly
over centuries, the final outcomes
after fifteen years of rapid change in
Figures 2 and 3 should not be taken
for a new stable state. Shrimp are
relatively short-lived species, known
for population fluctuations partly
driven by ocean conditions (Parsons
and Colbourne 2000). Their estimat-
ed biomass at this writing remains
high, but the average size of individ-
uals has decreased (Orr et al. 2001;
DFO 2001a). This depresses the
catch value, and raises uncertainty
about the stock’s future. Legal and
trap-design limitations theoretically
ought to keep most female snow crab
from being caught, and thus protect
that stock from overfishing. Never-
theless, after increasing for several
years, the estimated biomass of snow
crab — including mature females —
fell sharply in 1999, and declined
further in 2000 (DFO 2001b).
Greenland halibut, one of the most
important remaining groundfish
stocks, have been the object of international incidents termed
the “turbot wars” in Canadian press (Harris 1998). Like other
slow-growing, long-lived deepwater fish, this species cannot
support intensive exploitation (Koslow et al. 2000). A recent
article described northwest Atlantic Greenland halibut stocks
as “clearly in trouble and very likely on the verge of collapse”
Figure 2. Adjusted value of landed catch by species type in the most fisheries-dependent Newfoundland
regions, 1986-2000. Data source: Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Newfoundland.
Figure 3. Adjusted value of landed catch by species type on the Avalon Peninsula, 1986-2000. Data
source: Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Newfoundland.
4 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
(Haedrich, Merrett and O’Dea 2001, 118). DFO assessments
are more optimistic, pointing to recent increases, but total
biomass remains a fraction of its early-1980s value
(Bowering 2000). We believe that ten years from now, if
Figures 2 and 3 are redrawn with new data, they will reflect
further ecological change.
One correlate of the cod-to-crustaceans transition in
Figures 2 and 3 has been a growing inequality between re-
gions, and between communities within regions. Capital in-
vestment, essential to the new fisheries, has been concentrat-
ed. Places with access to rich invertebrate resources, or with
appropriate processing plants, had new geographical advan-
tages. Figure 4 shows one measure of the inequality among
Newfoundland’s sixteen DFO-designated statistical areas. In
1986, the top 25% of these areas landed 42% of the total
value; by the late 1990s this fraction was above 55%. It bears
noting that the trend took off in the late 1980s, predating the
official fisheries crisis — but not the ecological transforma-
tion that propelled it (Hamilton, Duncan and Haedrich 2001).
We will see similar patterns in social-indicators trends.
Cod are a democratic fish, historically accessible near
shore to almost anyone with a small boat. Shrimp, in con-
trast, tend to concentrate farther offshore, and require larger
vessels with more power for trawling. These two species
consequently have different socioeconomic implications.
Snow crab, which recently surpassed shrimp as Newfound-
land’s most valuable landed product, also has a different pro-
file than shrimp. Crab trapping requires less investment than
shrimp trawling, and crab tends to support more processing
jobs on land. In 1998, roughly 30% of the snow crab land-
ings value (and none of the shrimp) was brought in by vessels
of the smallest size class (Collins and Corbett 2000).
Although small boats cannot drag a shrimp net, other
vessels frequently are equipped to pursue multiple species,
including either crab or shrimp depending on market and
resource conditions. Fishing regulations vary with vessel
length, and there are restrictions against modifying any ves-
sel to exceed its current size category. In general, vessels in
the 35-44 foot class can be increased up to 44 feet 11 inches;
and vessels in the 45-64 foot class up to 64 feet 11 inches.
The upper limits of these size classes have seen all of the
growth in Newfoundland’s fishing fleet since 1988, while
most other sizes declined (Collins and Corbett 2000). Many
of the newer or recently modified vessels in Newfoundland
harbors have an odd truncated appearance, unexpectedly
wide and deep (also powerful) for their length. Such designs
compress the maximum fishing capacity into a given length
class. The (barely) under-65 foot vessels, though traditional-
ly characterized as “nearshore” equipment, now often pursue
resources on multi-day trips more than 200 miles at sea.
Parsons (1998) notes that the under-65 foot class, which
arose through regulations with “no apparent rationale,” is
below the optimal size for Labrador Sea or Grand Banks fish-
ing in terms of crew comfort, safety or onboard processing
(hence, value of landed products).
The multispecies fishing power, long range and com-
pressed hull designs of these boats reflect recent adaptations
to several environments: the ecological conditions underwa-
ter, including sparser and more dis-
tant resources; global markets, such
as Japanese demand for inverte-
brates; and the constantly evolving
regulatory environment on land.
Investments to build Newfound-
land’s post-cod fishing fleet have
come in part from large fish-process-
ing concerns.
Population
In Newfoundland, population
change provides a rough measure of
community well being. Figure 5
depicts population trends in the rural
regions. Populations grew until the
mid-1980s, with the groundfishing
“glory years” that followed Cana-
dian expansion into the 200-mile
EEZ (see Palmer and Sinclair 1997).
Populations subsequently declined
Hamilton and Butler
Figure 4. The percentage of total value landed by the top 25% (four of sixteen) Newfoundland fisheries
statistical areas. Data source: Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Newfoundland.
across all four regions, as resource depletion set in. From
1986 to 1998, the Northern Peninsula and South Coast re-
gions both lost 18% of their populations. The Burin Penin-
sula fell by 14%, and Notre Dame Bay by 13%.
Figure 6 graphs population on the Avalon Peninsula.
Whereas rural populations had been declining since the mid-
1980s, along with groundfish,Avalon continued to grow until
collapse was officially recognized in
1992. Some of this growth reflected
in-migration from rural regions. In
comparison to the outports, the St.
John’s area on Avalon offers a wide
range of employment and education-
al opportunities. However, follow-
ing the crisis, Avalon population fell
too, so that by 1998 it had again
reached its 1986 level.
Figure 7 shows trends in net
migration 1987-97, a period that
coincides with the end of the “glory
years,” and the subsequent era of cri-
sis. Except for the early 90s on
Avalon, net migration was predomi-
nantly negative for all of these places
and years. Outmigration has long
been typical of rural Newfoundland,
but in the past this was offset by high
birthrates. Due to modernization of
women’s roles, Newfoundland’s his-
torically high birthrates have been
declining, to a point where they no
longer compensate for migration.
The Northern Cod moratorium of
1992 was followed by increasing
outmigration from Notre Dame Bay
and the Avalon and Burin Penin-
sulas. On the Northern Peninsula
and South Coast, however, migration
downturns did not begin until a year
or two later, when Northern Gulf of
St. Lawrence cod also came under a
moratorium (1993-94).
Outmigration is a selective phe-
nomenon that alters the demograph-
ics of source communities. Limited
job and educational opportunities,
combined with the turmoil in fish-
eries, made outport life less attrac-
tive to young adults. From 1986 to
1996, Canada experienced a 7.3%
increase in the number of males aged
20-44, while Northern Peninsula (- 11.4%), South Coast
(-9.4%), Notre Dame Bay (- 8%) and Burin (- 5.5%) all expe-
rienced declines. A similar picture emerges for women
between the ages of 20-44: Canada experienced an 8.8%
increase from 1986-1996, but we see a net loss of young
women on the Northern Peninsula (- 9.9%), South Coast
(- 9.0%), Notre Dame Bay (- 7.3%) and Burin (- 5.3%). The
Hamilton and Butler
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 5
Figure 5. Populations of the most fisheries-dependent regions, 1974-98. Note changing vertical scales.
Vertical lines mark the 1992 Northern Cod moratorium. Data source: Newfoundland Statistics Agency.
Figure 6. Population of the Avalon Peninsula, 1974-98. Data source: Newfoundland Statistics Agency.
Avalon Peninsula, which exported some people but also
received migrants from the outports, showed no net change in
young men, and a 3.3% gain in young women, during this
decade.
As the population of young people in a region decreases,
the proportion of elders increases. In Canada, the fraction of
the population over the age of 65 grew by 14% between 1986
and 1996 (from 10.7% to 12.2%), but in rural Newfoundland
this segment’s relative size grew much faster. The proportion
of individuals over 65 increased at double the national rate on
the South Coast (from 7.6% to 10.4% over 1986-1996) and
Northern Peninsula (from 7.2% to 10.2%). As they grew pro-
portionately older, outport communities were left with less of
the human capital that could be critical for their economic
and social futures. At present, however, they still remain
younger than Canada as a whole.
A more detailed analysis of migration statistics, using
the Community Accounts database of the Newfoundland
Statistics Agency, reveals behavioral changes that underlie
the demographic changes. The group most prone to leave
rural Newfoundland over 1991-96 consisted of 15 to 19 year
olds. However, the Avalon Peninsula during the same period
experienced a net gain of such people. Avalon outmigrants
were more often from the 20-24 year old group, or older.
Whereas traditional outport youth might have seen little need
for education, and often dropped out before completing high
school, in modern times — especially since the fisheries cri-
sis — the value of schooling has become more apparent.
Increasing proportions of outport youth, with new encour-
agement from families, government and outport realities,
have opted for post-secondary edu-
cation. St. John’s, home of New-
foundland’s only university, gained
from this migration stream. After
college or training, however, many
of the young adults continued mov-
ing out of Newfoundland. Such be-
havior helps to explain both the
older profile of Avalon outmigrants,
and the delay between rural and
Avalon population downturns seen in
Figures 5-6.
Examining survey results in
which most Northern Peninsula
youth express intentions to move
away, Sinclair (2001, 44) concludes:
As outmigration proceeds, and
assuming the birth rate remains
low, declining population will
challenge the capacity of the
province to provide services to
those who remain ... At this time, the people of the
Great Northern Peninsula face a challenge as great
as any in their history.
Employment
Population shifts reflect and reinforce changes in
employment prospects. Table 1 draws on data from the 1986,
1991 and 1996 censuses to compare employment patterns
before, during and after the cod crisis. Canada’s unemploy-
ment rate fell slightly, from 9% in 1991 to 8.6% in 1996.
Rural Newfoundland’s base rates stood around four times this
national level (34-37%) by 1996, though they had actually
declined on Notre Dame Bay. Even as many people left rural
regions to seek jobs, an increasing proportion of those left
behind appeared jobless.
There are notable contrasts between male and female
unemployment trends. Although male unemployment
declined for Canada and Avalon over 1991-96, it increased on
Burin, the South Coast and the Northern Peninsula.
However, while male unemployment rose in these rural
regions, female unemployment decreased everywhere except
Burin; there it increased at a much slower rate (an 8.7%
increase for females as opposed to a 49.6% increase for
males). These findings might partly reflect the tertiary-sector
(non-fishery) occupations of many women, and their move-
ment into the work force as male employment declined.
Higher male unemployment reflects hard times in the
fishing industry. Among all Canadians, the percentage of
Hamilton and Butler
6 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Figure 7. Net migration rates 1987-97. Data Source: Newfoundland Statistics Agency.
income coming from employment declined 3.2% during
1986-96 (from 78.7% to 75.3%). On Avalon, the percentage
of income from employment fell by 4.5% (75.8% to 71.3%).
More dramatic falls occurred on the South Coast (14%),
Burin (11.2%), Northern Peninsula (10.1%) and Notre Dame
Bay (9.5%), with the largest declines happening over 1991-
96. By 1996, only 56% of all income in the three most fish-
eries-dependent regions (South Coast, Notre Dame and
Northern Peninsula) came from employment.
Government subsidies sought to offset the loss of jobs
due to the fisheries troubles. In Canada as a whole, some
14% of all income came from the government in 1996. This
compares with 20% on Avalon, and 35-40% in the rural
regions. The percentage of reported income from govern-
ment transfers on Burin rose from 26.3% to 34.6%, a 31.6%
increase in only five years. The South Coast experienced the
most dramatic increase in government transfers from 1991 to
1996 (from 27.2% to 37.9%). Notre Dame and the Northern
Peninsula had even higher levels of dependence on transfer
payments.
In a U.S. or urban Canada context, such high levels of
unemployment and dependency would paint a picture of mis-
erable poverty. Newfoundland outports do not necessarily
conform to this picture, however. Instead, some small places
that have lost hundreds of jobs nevertheless give a hopeful
impression, with neat yards, painted houses and a fair num-
ber of new cars. The apparent discrepancy underlines a need
for caution in interpreting unemployment statistics. Reliance
on Canada’s unemployment insurance (UI) program has
long been very high in Newfoundland outports. Analysis of
Statistics Canada data by the Newfoundland Statistics
Agency in the early 1990s found that in 45% of Newfound-
land communities, all of the workforce accepted unemploy-
ment insurance at some time. UI has been part of the fabric
of modern outport life, with many people seeking work for
the minimal 11-week periods required to qualify for benefits.
Since much outport employment is temporary or seasonal,
the “unemployment rate” can vary substantially from week to
week. Moreover, the loss of fishing or fish-processing jobs
might be offset economically so long as there exist any other
ways to qualify for UI. The TAGS program further compli-
cates interpretation of unemployment statistics in the 1996
census. Jobless TAGS recipients could have been counted
either as “unemployed” or “not in the labor force,” depending
on their own (or Census interviewers’) perceptions.
Rural Newfoundland hosts a strong informal economy
(Felt and Sinclair 1992), which also contributes to outport
adaptations. This informal economy includes the use of
country foods such as moose meat or fish, or local firewood
cut for heating. It also includes barter or cash-based ex-
changes of goods and services such as home-building and
vehicle maintenance. A 1986 study (House, Hanrahan, and
Simms 1986, 146) gave the following estimates of personal
income by source, for full and part-time fishermen.
Full-time
P
art-time
fishing 40% 20%
other employment 4% 13%
transfer payments 24% 25%
household production 32% 42%
“Household production” refers to the replacement value of
shelter, fuel, repairs and food obtained directly through
household labor.
Employment for cash, unreported meat, fish or timber
sales, and other informal-economy income further con-
tributes to outport standards of living without casting much
shadow in official statistics. The total magnitude of informal-
economy activities is unknown, but it appears capable of pro-
viding a buffer against the troubles of the formal economy.
Hamilton and Butler
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 7
Table 1. Changes in employment and sources of income, from the
1986, 1991 and 1996 censuses. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
%
change
Variable Region 1986 1991 1996 1991-96
% Unemployed Canada 8.5 9.0 8.6 -4.4
Avalon 17.5 19.9 16.9 -15.1
Burin 20.5 25.7 33.8 31.5
South Coast 22.9 30.6 33.7 10.1
N. Peninsula 29.4 36.1 36.8 1.9
Notre Dame 32.6 41.5 34.6 -19.9
% Males Canada — 8.9 8.7 -2.2
Unemployed Avalon — 20.3 18.2 -10.3
Burin — 24.0 35.9 49.6
South Coast — 27.3 33.6 23.1
N. Peninsula — 34.7 36.8 6.1
Notre Dame — 44.3 39.0 -13.6
% Females Canada — 9.2 8.5 -7.6
Unemployed Avalon — 19.4 15.5 -20.1
Burin — 28.6 31.1 8.7
South Coast — 35.8 33.9 -5.3
N. Peninsula — 37.7 36.8 -2.4
Notre Dame — 37.5 28.2 -33.0
% income from Canada 78.7 77.8 75.3 -3.2
employment Avalon 75.8 75.1 71.3 -5.1
Burin 71.4 69.7 60.2 -13.6
South Coast 70.2 68.5 56.2 -18.0
Notre Dame 61.2 61.1 55.8 -9.5
N. Peninsula 66.1 63.0 56.0 -11.1
% income from Canada 11.1 11.4 14.0 22.8
government transfer Avalon 17.4 17.5 20.2 15.4
Burin 26.0 26.3 34.6 31.6
South Coast 26.7 27.2 37.9 39.3
N. Peninsula 32.2 33.9 39.4 16.2
Notre Dame 35.8 35.0 38.4 8.9
Education
Table 2 depicts changes in education over the course of
the groundfish collapse. Overall, we see that the people
remaining in the region tended to stay in school longer, and
were more likely to have earned a college degree, in 1996
than in 1986. The percentage of individuals over 15 years old
but without a ninth-grade education decreased in all regions.
Even so, the percentage of individuals with low education in
1996 remained well over twice the national level on the South
Coast (31.6%), Northern Peninsula and Notre Dame Bay
(both 27.9%).
Although rural residents tended
to stay in school longer in 1996 than
in 1986, the prevalence of university
degrees remained far below national
levels. The percentage of university
graduates increased in Canada from
9.6% in 1986 to 13.3% in 1996, and
showed similar trends on Avalon
(from 8.1% to 11.3%). The propor-
tions of college graduates grew in all
four rural Newfoundland regions
too, but in 1996 they were still less
than half of the national level.
A more educated population
could improve prospects for eco-
nomic diversification in the outports.
Upward trends notwithstanding, out-
port human capital levels are low.
For college graduates, the employ-
ment opportunities in outports can-
not generally compete with those in
cities. This reality motivates continuing outmigration of
young people seeking education and white-collar jobs.
Although adaptive for individuals and probably for their
extended families, outmigration limits the human resources
that might support community development beyond fishing.
Crime
Through this period of economic instability and
increased unemployment, there was no general increase in
crime. On the contrary, crime rates (Figure 8) declined in
four of the five study regions over 1991-96. The total num-
ber of crimes reported per 1,000 people dropped 42% on the
Northern Peninsula (75.8 to 44.3), 24% on Burin (89.9 to
68.4), 23% on Notre Dame Bay (53.9 to 41.3), and 20% on
the Avalon Peninsula (from 104 to 83.2). South Coast crime
rates rose during 1994-95, but subsequently returned to a
point below their 1991 level.
Taken separately, property crime rates (not shown)
declined in all these regions over 1991-96: by 38% on the
Northern Peninsula (16.9 to 10.4 per 1,000), 35% on Burin
(28 to 18.3), 27% on the South Coast (17.8 to 12.9, but with
a spike at 25.1 in 1995), 24% on Notre Dame Bay (15.3 to
11.7) and 17% on Avalon (42.9 to 35.4). Violent crime rates,
on the other hand, peaked in years following the cod crises on
Avalon (1992), Notre Dame (1993-94), Burin (1992-94), and
the South Coast (1993-95). By 1996, however, Avalon and
Notre Dame violent crime rates had fallen below their 1991
level; and the rates of Burin and the South Coast were near
Hamilton and Butler
8 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Table 2. Human capital changes: Education statistics from the
1986, 1991 and 1996 censuses. Data Source: Statistics Canada.
%
change
Variable Region 1986 1991 1996 1991-96
% population > Canada 17.3 13.9 12.1 -12.9
15 years, w/o grade 9 Avalon 19.8 14.6 12.1 -17.1
Burin 33.9 27.5 23.0 -16.4
South Coast 43.2 35.7 31.6 -11.5
N. Peninsula 38.6 32.5 27.9 -14.2
Notre Dame 38.6 31.3 27.9 -10.9
% population > Canada 9.6 11.4 13.3 16.7
15 years, with college Avalon 8.1 9.3 11.3 21.5
Burin 3.1 3.9 4.5 15.4
South Coast 3.1 3.4 3.8 11.8
N. Peninsula 2.9 3.6 4.9 36.1
Notre Dame 2.7 3.3 4.0 21.2
Figure 8. Total crimes reported per 1,000 people, 1991-96. Data source: Newfoundland Statistics Agency.
their 1991 levels (around 7 and 8 violent crimes per 1,000,
respectively). Northern Peninsula data show a steady de-
crease in violent crime during this period. Although the tem-
porary rise of violent crimes in four areas deserves closer
scrutiny, we otherwise see no indication that the fisheries cri-
sis brought a broad increase in delinquency. Disproportion-
ate outmigration by teenagers and young adults might have
contributed to the actual declines seen.
It is worth emphasizing that on the Northern Peninsula,
Notre Dame Bay and Burin Peninsula, crime rates throughout
this period remained comparatively low. Like some outports’
cared-for appearance, the low crime rates of rural New-
foundland suggest that social integration often remained
effective despite economic stress.
Conclusion
Sociologists have examined the problems of boom-bust
cycles, lagging human and social capital, dependency and
underdevelopment in natural resource dependent communi-
ties or NRDCs (e.g. Bunker 1989; Freudenburg 1992;
Freudenburg and Gramling 1994; Humphrey 1995; Johnson
and Stallman 1994; Rural Sociological Society Task Force on
Persistent Rural Poverty 1993). Some generalizations about
NRDCs can be offered on the basis of forestry, mining and
energy-community studies (following Freudenburg and
Gramling 1994; Humphrey 1995):
• Many NRDCs experience persistent, long-term pover-
ty. Resource extraction industries did not link to other
industries to produce more diversified economic
growth, nor did most of their workers invest in human
capital sufficient to support adaptation to other indus-
tries or locations.
• There has been a long-term downward trend in
employment, due to shifts from labor-intensive to cap-
ital-intensive extraction and processing, global com-
petition among resource providers, and “dematerial-
ization of manufactured goods in advanced industrial
countries” (Humphrey 1995, 94).
• Resource-extraction industries’ backward and forward
linkages (e.g., manufacturing resource-extraction
equipment; processing raw materials into finished
products) often take place outside the NRDCs them-
selves. This limits the local benefits derived from
their natural-resource industries.
• Even in NRDCs, workers increasingly need advanced
training and technological skills that are unavailable
in their remote locations. The skills mismatch and
“institutional mismatch” further hinder local develop-
ment and lead to regional centralization.
These generalizations apply well to rural Newfoundland,
which suggests that its troubles have at least partly structural
causes not tied to fishing per se. On the other hand, the timing
of changes seen in Figures 5-8 and Tables 1-2 support infer-
ences that fisheries-specific events — the late-1980s decline
and the early-90s crisis in groundfish resources — had social
impacts as well. Subjective evidence for ecological effects can
be found among the first-person accounts of fisher folk (e.g.,
Hamilton and Duncan 2000). Similar patterns of demograph-
ic change following fisheries events have been observed in
other fisheries-dependent regions of the northern Atlantic
(Hamilton and Otterstad 1998; Hamilton and Haedrich 1999).
Social changes since Newfoundland’s cod crisis show
adaptations to multiple environments: not only shifting marine
ecosystems, but also the global economy and fisheries regula-
tions. Some adaptations follow traditional outport patterns —
intensification and increasing range in the fisheries, reliance
on the informal economy and transfer payments, and borrow-
ing from fish processors. Although once again rich, today’s
fisheries are more concentrated, requiring more capital and
less labor than their predecessors. The changes make fisheries
less broadly supportive of outport society as a whole.
Declining population due to reduced family size and increased
outmigration, especially among young people with education
and skills, is one unsurprising though unfortunate result.
Economic diversification efforts, including tourism and
offshore energy development, have made visible impacts on
some ports. These provide a prominent source of hope for
the future. Expanding rural Newfoundland economies to the
point where they could support present populations remains a
formidable challenge, however (House 1999). At least equal-
ly formidable is the challenge of operating Newfoundland’s
currently booming invertebrate fisheries in a sustainable way.
Despite fishing’s narrowing role, a decade after the cod crisis
it remains the foundation of outport life.
Endnote
1. E-mail: Lawrence.Hamilton@unh.edu; MButler3197@hotmail.com
Acknowledgments
Cliff Brown, Cynthia M. Duncan and Richard Haedrich contributed
to the research underlying this paper. We are grateful for comments and
assistance with data from Alton Hollett at the Newfoundland Statistics
Agency, and from Frank Corbett at the Newfoundland Region Department
of Fisheries and Oceans. Discussions with Sean Cadigan, Earl Dawe,
George Lilly, David Orr, Peter Sinclair and Michael Wernerheim, as well
as suggestions by anonymous reviewers, helped to strengthen the final
draft. The North Atlantic Arc (NAArc) project has been supported by
grants from the Arctic System Science and Arctic Social Sciences pro-
grams of the U. S. National Science Foundation.
Hamilton and Butler
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 9
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State-of-the-art shellfish fleet based at the village of Port de Grave,
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Abstract
In this article, I trace organizational sociology’s inabil-
ity to develop a comprehensive framework integrating struc-
ture, agency and environment to the persistence of essential-
ism within the ecological tradition and nominalism within the
constructivist tradition. Drawing on parallels with the
Darwinian revolution, I argue that these impasses can be
overcome through a combination of population thinking and
a relational approach to categorization. This combination
provides the metatheoretical foundation for an “ecology of
social action” which merges organizational ecology and
resource mobilization theory’s insights into structure-envi-
ronment interactions with constructivists’attention to agency,
language, culture and power. The concept of a socially con-
structed adaptive landscape is put forward as a central
metaphor for linking the ecological and constructivist tradi-
tions.
Keywords: organizational ecology, constructivism,
agency, essentialism, nominalism
Introduction
An inability to capture the dialectic between structure,
agency and environment has plagued organizational sociolo-
gy from its inception. Reed (1988, 42) argues that this prob-
lem can only be resolved within an historical framework that
focuses “on those social practices through which social struc-
tures are created, maintained and transformed over time.” At
first glance, organizational ecology’s evolutionary account of
social change seems ideally suited to this task. However,
organizational ecology has not only failed to provide the
needed synthesis. If anything, it has driven the rhetorical
wedge between structure and agency and macro and micro
perspectives even deeper.
In order to set their new paradigm apart from so-called
“adaptationist” theories, Hannan and Freeman (1977)
premised organizational ecology on the assumption that
organizations are largely inert relative to the speed of envi-
ronmental change. While the inertia metaphor initially
served as an effective counterpoise to managerial theorists’
nearly exclusive reliance on rational choice to account for
organizational change, the limitations of this metaphor have
now become apparent. As critics point out, organizational
ecologists have simply constructed an inverted image of man-
agerial omnipotence — a theoretical framework in which
individual and corporate actors are incapable of significantly
modifying themselves or their environments (Fombrun 1988;
Meyer 1990; Winter 1990; Zucker 1989).
In contrast, constructivist theorists (e.g., Snow et al.
1986) have succeeded precisely where organizational ecolo-
gists have fallen short. By focusing on the rhetorical and
claims-making activities of individual and corporate actors,
constructivists have exposed the historical and contested
character of intra- and inter-organizational relations and
demonstrated that actors, and the alternative meanings they
espouse, can play an independent causal role in history.
However, although they have made significant advances in
integrating agency and culture into organizational analysis,
constructivists have thus far failed to connect their insights to
a broader theory of organizational dynamics (Musolf 1992).
The complementary strengths and limitations of the eco-
logical and constructivist traditions suggest the need for a
synthesis. However, achieving such a synthesis requires
placing these traditions within a broader theoretical and
philosophical context. Drawing upon parallels with the
Darwinian revolution, I argue that the primary obstacle to
merging these perspectives is the persistence of essentialism
within the ecological tradition and nominalism within the
constructivist tradition. Moreover, the key to overcoming
these impasses is to combine population thinking with a rela-
tional approach to categorization. This combination provides
the metatheoretical foundation for an “ecology of social
action” which integrates organizational ecology and resource
mobilization theory’s insights into structure-environment
interactions with constructivists’ attention to agency, lan-
guage, culture and power. The concept of a socially con-
structed adaptive landscape is put forward as a central
metaphor for linking the ecological and constructivist tradi-
Research in Human Ecology
12 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
© Society for Human Ecology
Toward an Ecology of Social Action: Merging the Ecological
and Constructivist Traditions
Paul McLaughlin
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Geneva, NY 14456
USA
1
tions. In the final section of the paper, I discuss the implica-
tions of this revised version of organizational ecology for the
study of the origins, legitimation and diversification of orga-
nizational forms.
From Frame-Invariant to
Frame-Relative Thinking
The Essentialist Roots of Western Science
The inability of social theorists to come to grips with the
interrelationships between structure, agency and environment
can best be understood in terms of the legacy of essentialism
in the social sciences and the divergent reactions engendered
by that legacy. Essentialist theorists from Tylor, Morgan,
Marx, Durkheim and Spencer to twentieth-century advocates
of “functionalism” and “evolutionism” all share a commit-
ment to Aristotle’s Natural State Model (NSM). In his
Physics, Aristotle writes:
...natural things are exactly those which do move
continuously, in virtue of a principle inherent in
themselves, towards a determined goal; and the
final development which results from any one such
principle is not identical for any two species, nor
yet is it any random result; but in each there is
always a tendency towards an identical result if
nothing interferes with the process.
(as quoted in Bock 1978, 43)
Whether applied to physics, biology or politics, Aristotle’s
approach to theory construction involves: (1) defining a class
of objects so that each and every member of that class and
only members of that class possess certain “essential” char-
acteristics, (2) defining the “natural” state or path of change
characteristic of members of that class and (3) distinguishing
these internally generated “natural” tendencies from “devia-
tions” caused by external “obstacles” or “interfering forces.”
Aristotle’s model represents a frame-invariant approach to
theory construction because its goal is to analytically strip
away the effects of external forces in order to uncover con-
text-independent universal patterns (Sober 1980).
Early chemists’ formulation of the periodic table and
Newton’s “laws of motion” were both products of successful
essentialist research programs (Sober 1980). They were suc-
cessful because researchers in these fields were able to theo-
rize “interfering forces” — e.g., the effects of friction on
falling bodies — to systematically account for observed
“deviations.” Such successes clearly undermine any attempt
to construct a global anti-essentialist argument (e.g., Popper
1972). They likewise undercut Bock’s (1956) contention that
the NSM does not allow for a “science” of the “accidental.”
These points are crucial for understanding the strengths and
limitations of this doctrine because they belie the common
charges that essentialism is inherently ahistorical, determin-
istic or non-scientific. In principle it is none of these. It only
becomes so in practice when theorists in a given field fail to
construct systematic theories of obstacles. It is this domain-
specific, rather than global, failure that explains the historical
demise of essentialism in biology. A clear understanding of
why essentialism was abandoned in biology can shed new
light upon the ongoing collapse of essentialism in the social
sciences. Moreover, it also points to an alternative framework
for constructing theories of social change — population
thinking.
The Breakdown of Essentialism in Biology
The breakdown of essentialism in biology was a com-
plex process spanning at least two centuries. The essentialist
belief that each species had a distinct and fixed nature first
came under attack in the 18th century. Nominalists such as
Bonnet and Robinet (Lovejoy 1936; Mayr 1976) contended
that “All groupings, all classes, are artifacts of the human
mind” and that, therefore, only individuals are “real” (Mayr
1976, 429). This blurring of species boundaries was rein-
forced in the minds of some naturalists — e.g., Buffon — by
a commitment to Aristotle’s principle of continuity — the
belief that species grade imperceptibly one into another
(Lovejoy 1936). Both of these ideas suggested that species
were merely the arbitrary constructions of human observers.
The growing conviction, in the minds of some naturalists,
that species boundaries were “vague” and/or that species
lacked fixed essences provided a first step towards theories of
species transformation.
2
The first theories of biological “evolution” were merely
“temporalized” versions of the Chain of Being (Lovejoy
1936). That is, the originally static scale of nature — the uni-
linear sequence believed to extend from the least to the most
complex organism — was reinterpreted towards the end of
the 18th century as a process occurring in time. Such theo-
ries of biological progress were essentialist in that they
posited a context independent natural path of change with
the environment treated as a secondary interfering force.
Lamarck’s theory of evolution is perhaps the best-known
example of this approach to theorizing biological change.
However, the inability of Lamarck and other biologists to
construct convincing theories of obstacles — e.g., Lamarck’s
theory of use and disuse (Ruse 1979, 8) — eventually under-
mined attempts to build theories of biological evolution based
on Aristotle’s NSM.
Darwin eventually overcame these difficulties by reject-
ing essentialism in favor of population thinking (Mayr 1976).
That is, rather than seeing variation as merely “deviations”
from some fixed ideal, Darwin took it as his theoretical start-
McLaughlin
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 13
McLaughlin
14 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
ing point.
3
Darwin likewise abandoned the essentialist belief
in a context-independent “natural” path to evolution. Instead,
he used his theory of natural selection to argue that the dif-
ferential survival of variants within a population would even-
tually lead to divergences in character and adaptation to local
conditions. Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, underscored
this radical shift to population thinking by renaming the “law
of errors” the “normal” curve (Sober 1980).
4
That is, prior to
the Darwinian revolution essentialists saw this curve as use-
ful because it provided a methodology for separating the
“natural” from the “accidental.” One need only plot data on
a particular phenomenon and ascend the curve to find the
mean. For essentialists it was this ideal — e.g., the “nature”
possessed by each member of a species — that was causally
efficacious and thus explanatory. Diversity was neither. It
was simply a side effect — i.e., “errors” made by nature in
attempting to reproduce a prototype. Such “errors” were
“explained or explained away” through reference to interfer-
ing forces (Sober 1980, 370). In contrast, Darwin and subse-
quent populationists attempted to account for patterns of
diversity in one time period through reference to earlier pat-
terns of diversity. From the perspective of populationists, the
diversity represented by the bell curve was now seen as “nor-
mal,” not only because it was found everywhere in nature, but
because existing diversity was seen as a cause of subsequent
diversity. As Sober (1980, 370) notes, “Rather than looking
for a reality that underlies diversity, the populationist can
postulate a reality sustained by diversity.”
Thus, in contrast to the NSM, Darwin’s approach to the-
ory construction is frame-relative because it abandons
Aristotle’s goal of partitioning the natural from the acciden-
tal. From the perspective of evolutionary theory, such a par-
titioning is considered impossible even in principle (Sober
1980). For instance, at the ontogenetic level a gene quite lit-
erally has no “meaning” except in relation to a specific
genomic and environmental context. Likewise, at the phylo-
genetic level changes in diversity in successive time periods
can only be explained through reference to intervening envi-
ronments (Sober 1980). Thus, biologists have replaced the
twin essentialist problematics of analytically separating
“nature” from “nurture” and the “ahistorical” from “histori-
cal” elements of evolution in favor of more interesting frame-
relative questions, such as constructing norms of reaction
which graph the alternative developmental outcomes of a
given genotype across varying environments (e.g., the height
of a single corn genotype as a function of different levels of
soil nitrogen) or niche theories which predict a population’s
optimal niche width in relation to specific patterns of envi-
ronmental change.
Finally, although Darwin ([1859] 1958, 67) himself
never entirely overcame his conviction that the term
“species” was “arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience,”
the subsequent history of biology has demonstrated that the
choice between essentialism and nominalism is a false one
(Mayr 1976). Both have been supplanted by a biological
species concept that defines species as bounded networks, the
boundaries of which are delimited by a lack of exchange of
genetic information. Darwin’s confusion derived from the
erroneous assumption that categories had to be “fixed” in
order to be “real” (Sober 1980). A biological species concept
cuts through this false dichotomy. While in the early stages of
speciation the differences between varieties are ambiguous,
and thus purely “nominal,” as boundaries to genetic exchange
form distinct and non-arbitrary species emerge. Such a rela-
tional concept of species escapes the twin horns of the essen-
tialist versus nominalist dilemma by being historical yet
realist.
The Breakdown of Essentialism in the Social Sciences
Essentialist social theorists have met with the same dif-
ficulties as their earlier counterparts in biology. As noted
above, until recently virtually all theories of social “evolu-
tion” have been predicated on Aristotle’s NSM. As in the bio-
logical case, the complexity of social history requires that
theorists employing this framework construct systematic the-
ories of “obstacles” to account for “deviations” from predict-
ed “natural” paths of change. In the absence of such ancillary
theories, accounting for the relationship between social struc-
ture and environment (physical, biological or social) becomes
impossible within an essentialist framework because it is a
theory of obstacles which provides the mapping between the
uniformity of hypothesized natural states and the diversity of
actual historical experience. Marxian theorists’ inability to
explain the persistence of the family farm (McLaughlin 1998)
and functionalists’unsuccessful attempts to explain change in
terms of “flexibilities and strains” (Bock 1956) are just two
examples of this recurrent failure. Moreover, in contrast to
biologists, social scientists must account for the role of
human agency in history. Essentialists have had even less
success addressing this question. Typically, actual agents on
the historical stage are replaced with puppets whose move-
ments are dictated by the strings of a closed conceptual sys-
tem (Dally 1991).
Essentialists’ inability to clarify the interrelationships
between structure, agency and environment has led to a num-
ber of divergent reactions within twentieth-century social
science. For instance, theorists in the ecological tradition —
ecological anthropology, organizational ecology, evolution-
ary economics — have abandoned the NSM, attempting
instead to explain the relationship between social structure
and environment by employing various concepts of adapta-
tion — e.g., homeostasis, development, rational choice and
McLaughlin
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 15
population thinking (Toulmin 1981). Sociologists in the con-
structivist tradition have likewise rejected the NSM but have
moved towards a focus on culture and language in order to
address the complexities of human agency. However, each of
these traditions has reached an impasse precisely at the point
where it fails to deal with the other’s concerns.
The Ecological Tradition
In the following discussion, I will focus on organiza-
tional ecology (Hannan and Freeman 1989) to illustrate both
the strengths and limitations of the ecological tradition.
Organizational ecology is one of a number of populational
accounts of social change to have recently emerged within
various subdisciplines of the social sciences — e.g., human
ecology (Boyd and Richerson 1985; Dietz, Burns and Buttel
1990), economics (Nelson and Winter 1982), political sci-
ence (Ostrom 2000) and philosophy (Jensen and Harre 1981).
However, of these, organizational ecology has generated the
most sustained program of empirical research and thus will
be taken as an exemplar of the ecological tradition.
Seen within the context of the history of organizational
sociology, organizational ecology represents the culmination
of a shift from “closed” to “open” systems theories that began
within this field in the early 1960’s (Scott 1987). Underlying
this transition is the same radical inversion of philosophic
assumptions that occurred in the course of the Darwinian
revolution — i.e., a shift from frame-invariant to frame-rela-
tive thinking.
Prior to 1960, organizational theorists took it for granted
that the first step in theory construction was to identify the
“essential” characteristics of all organizations or a limited
number of organizational “types.” The central analytical task
for these theorists was to derive the theoretical implications
of such classifications. For instance, Frederick Taylor
assumed that “rationality” was an essential feature of all
organizations and proceeded to derive propositions regarding
the nature of control arrangements and reward systems based
on this definition. Likewise, Parson’s AGIL scheme was
premised on the classification of all organizations into cate-
gories based on the functional “need” — i.e., adaptation, goal
attainment, integration and latency — that they serve. The
difficulty with such typologies is that they explain neither the
origins of the organizational types posited nor how diversity
within or between types was subsequently modified by envi-
ronmental circumstances (Scott 1987). In short, closed sys-
tem theorists lacked a systematic theory of obstacles.
In the 1960’s, theorists such as Stinchcombe (1965) and
Thompson (1967) abandoned the search for essential charac-
teristics and began focusing on organizational diversity and
processes of adaptation. As Thompson (1967, vii) observed:
No useful theory can rest on the assumption that
everything is unique. It is probably inevitable that
the early history of a scientific endeavor will be
characterized by the opposite assumption, and by
the search for universals. This certainly has been
the case with organization theory, which until
recently has been preoccupied with discovering the
essential elements of all complex organizations.
I believe it is a sign of relative maturity when a field
begins to focus on patterned variations (emphasis
mine).
Organizational ecologists have taken this trend toward open
systems thinking to its logical conclusion. Rather than pos-
tulating a context-independent “natural” path to organiza-
tional evolution, they have attempted to follow Darwin’s lead
by conceptualizing change in populational terms as a contin-
uous interaction between variation and context and by seeing
organizational categories not as preexisting abstractions but
rather as outcomes of historical processes (Hannan and
Freeman 1986). The result has been a rich and rapidly
expanding research program on the demography, population
ecology and community ecology of organizations.
Yet, organizational ecology’s undeniable success has
been bought at the price of an overly structuralist and thinly
historical account of social change (Zucker 1989). The iner-
tia metaphor has restricted organizational ecologists’focus to
the ecological level of analysis and precluded any serious
consideration of the interpretive processes by which individ-
ual and corporate actors perceive their surroundings and act
on those perceptions to continuously construct and recon-
struct themselves and their environments (Fombrun 1988).
Moreover, by treating actors as passive, by reifying social
environments as “natural” and by not adequately addressing
questions of power and conflict, organizational ecologists
have left themselves open to charges of conservative bias
(Perrow 1986). The inertia metaphor has likewise impeded
attempts to build bridges to other open system theories that
employ homeostatic, developmental or rational modes of
adaptive explanation (Meyer 1990). By labeling these “adap-
tationist” and opposing them to population thinking (e.g.,
Hannan 1986), organizational ecologists needlessly perpetu-
ate social scientists’ tendency to treat these various mecha-
nisms as competing rather than complementary forms of
explanation (Toulmin 1981). Such difficulties are compound-
ed by an overly positivist style of research and a concomitant
neglect of thick historical description and substantive rele-
vance (Baum and Powell 1995). Organizational ecologists
have thus undermined their own stated goal (Hannan and
Freemen 1989) of readdressing the broader theoretical, his-
torical and political concerns of the classical theorists.
McLaughlin
16 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Resource mobilization theory exhibits a similar set of
strengths and limitations. Paralleling the shift from closed to
open systems thinking in organizational sociology, resource
mobilization theorists (e.g., Jenkins 1983; McCarthy and
Zald 1977; Tilly 1978) have abandoned earlier “breakdown”
models that conceptualized social movements as “deviations”
from some “normal” path of development, focusing instead
on frame-relative questions involving the intersection of
organizational strategy and resources. However, despite their
greater attention to historical context, power and conflict,
resource mobilization theorists have failed to adequately
address questions of agency, ideology and grievance interpre-
tation (Klandermans 1992). In McCarthy and Zald’s (1977)
case, these limitations derive directly from a reliance on
essentialistic assumptions about “rational” actors (Ferree and
Miller 1985). As Buechler (1993) notes, using such simplify-
ing psychological assumptions runs the risk of treating par-
ticipants and movements who do not fit this model as
“deviant.” While organizational ecologists make no specific
assumptions about “human nature,” their importation of the
inertia metaphor from Newtonian mechanics has led to a sim-
ilar set of difficulties.
The Constructivist Tradition
One route to recapturing the broader agenda premature-
ly surrendered by organizational ecology is to build stronger
theoretical bridges to the constructivist tradition. Construc-
tivists have reacted to essentialists’ failure to address human
agency by reconceptualizing social categories, not as univer-
sal and invariant, but rather as cultural conventions that are
negotiated and contested by actors situated within particular
historical contexts (Donati 1992). Such interconnected sets of
socially constructed categories or “frames” provide a basis
for forging shared meanings and coordinating social action.
The constructivist tradition has generated a compelling
set of perspectives linking agency, language, culture and
power. However, although it has succeeded precisely where
the ecological tradition has fallen short, the constructivist tra-
dition has failed to adequately theorize the dynamics of social
structure. A principal cause of this failure is the tension
between nominalism and realism which constructivism inher-
ited from pragmatism (Ritzer 1992). While early construc-
tivists, such as Schutz, resolved this tension and maintained
the goal of an objective science of subjective meaning by
placing phenomenological brackets around questions of
ontology (Thomason 1982), in recent years constructivism
has taken a decidedly nominalist turn. Thomason (1982) con-
tends that Berger and Luckman (1967) accelerated this shift
by rejecting Schutz’s “ontological agnosticism” in favor of a
view of social categories as merely “reifications.” As Ritzer
(1992, 252) notes, “Berger and Luckman gave absolutely no
sense of the other aspect of reification — i.e., the degree to
which society, as a result of the subjective processes they
describe, objectively comes to acquire a life of its own.”
Radical post-modernists such as Latour (1987) and Woolgar
(1988) have taken this nominalist position to its logical anti-
realist extreme by questioning the intelligibility and even
existence of an “external reality.”
Nevertheless, it would be premature to abandon con-
structivism as a relativist and anti-realist cul-de-sac. On the
contrary, I argue below that moderate constructivists’ (e.g.,
Snow et al. 1986) insights into agency, language, culture and
power hold the key to filling in the lacunae of organizational
ecology and resource mobilization theory. Moreover, even
radical post-modernists may unwittingly be contributing to a
new science of society. By focusing on the socially unique
and idiosyncratic, on life on the margins, by substituting local
for grand narratives, in short, by making “normal” what from
a modernist perspective is merely “deviant,” radical construc-
tivists are driving the final nails in the coffin of essentialism.
Shifting the starting point of theory construction from
“essential” characteristics and “natural” paths of change to
variation and diversity was precisely the role that nominalism
played in the Darwinian revolution.
Towards a Populational Theory of Social Change
The historical parallels with the Darwinian revolution
suggest a way out of the current impasse in the social sci-
ences. Although radical post-modernists remain wedded to a
deconstructionist project, other theorists increasingly recog-
nize the need to stake out a middle ground between essen-
tialist-based objectivism and nominalist-induced relativism
(Bourdieu 1985). For example, Brown (1990) has discussed
what he calls “symbolic realism,” while Rorty (1991) has
elaborated a related neo-pragmatist position. More recently,
Rosa (1998) has developed the notion of “reconstructed real-
ism” in relation to questions of risk.
I believe that this emerging consensus reflects two
assumptions. First, it represents an acknowledgment that
“even if reality is symbolically constructed, some construc-
tions are surely preferable to others” (Simons 1990, 22). If
such preferences are systematically related to the physical,
biological and social environments in which specific social
constructions are instantiated, then processes of variation,
selection and retention may provide a mechanism by which
alternative constructions are perpetuated or sifted from the
historical stream. Such a position is consistent in spirit, if not
detail, with an evolutionary perspective on social change. In
fact, it is not difficult to find incipient forms of population
thinking within constructivism. West (1985) provides such an
analysis of Weber, while Rorty (1991) notes the parallels
between Darwinism and pragmatism. Likewise, the theory of
McLaughlin
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 17
cultural change that Lyman (1990) claims to have “discov-
ered” in Goffman, by his own accounting, amounts to noth-
ing more than variation, selection and retention.
The second element of this emerging consensus is the
reconceptualization of social categories in relational rather
than essentialist or nominalist terms (Bourdieu 1985). Like
biologists, many social scientists are beginning to treat cate-
gories as bounded networks. Such an historical yet realist
approach to categorization has always been implicit within
constructivism. Perhaps the best example is Weber’s (1946,
187) definition of a status group as a “style of life” which
places “restrictions on ‘social’ intercourse.” However, the
strong nominalist undercurrents within constructivism have
continually driven adherents of this tradition onto the twin
horns of the same dilemma that plagued pre-Darwinian biol-
ogists — i.e., assuming that categories are either fixed or not
real. As Mayr (1976, 288) notes, it was precisely this “wrong
choice of alternatives” — i.e., between essentialism and nom-
inalism - that was the major obstacle to the Darwinian revo-
lution. This same false dichotomy pervades the radical con-
structivist literature. Woolgar (1988) makes precisely this
mistake when he concludes that the failure of sociologists of
“science” to find some stable, invariant object underlying the
historically variable activities given this label leaves nomi-
nalism as the only coherent alternative. Even Thomason
(1982, 89), in defending Schutz’s ontological agnosticism,
falls into this trap when he concludes that Schutz’s “approach
is constructivist, nonetheless, and does, therefore, assume
that the ‘things’ which are reified are ‘really’ not ‘things.’”
Conceptualizing social categories as bounded networks
will cut through this false dichotomy, just as it did in biolo-
gy, while maintaining constructivism’s central insight that
social categories are historically fluid and manipulable by
human agency. When extracted from a nominalist framework
the constructivist metaphor becomes a powerful tool for
understanding social change and the sense in which subjec-
tive processes come to acquire an objective “life of their
own” becomes readily intelligible — i.e., purely arbitrary
social and ideological contrasts such as race or class become
distinct categories to the extent that they provide a basis for
well-defined networks of social interaction. When bound-
aries between such networks form, the frequencies of social
rules, idiosyncratic language and culture on respective sides
of the boundary typically diverge (Burns and Dietz 1992).
Not surprisingly, network theorists have been among the first
to argue that social networks should be seen not just as
“measurement constructs” but also as “phenomenological
realities” (White 1992, as quoted in Emirbayer and Goodwin
1994, 37).
To summarize, social scientists can take a major step
towards integrating structure, agency and environment by
fully absorbing the major lessons of the Darwinian revolu-
tion. That is, they need to reject both essentialism and nom-
inalism and replace them with population thinking and an
historical yet realist approach to categorization (Mayr 1976).
Beyond the Impasse:
Towards an Ecology of Social Action
The above discussion is intended to provide a metatheo-
retical foundation for an “ecology of social action” which
combines organizational ecology and resource mobilization
theory’s insights into structure-environment interactions with
constructivists’ attention to agency, language, culture and
power. In fact, the elements for such a synthesis already
exist. Probably the best example of an historical yet realist
approach to organizational taxonomy is Hannan and
Freeman’s (1986) discussion of organizational boundaries.
However, to date, organizational ecologists have failed to
connect this provocative analysis to their populational
accounts of organizational change (Baum and House 1990). I
argue below that this failure can be traced to the reintroduc-
tion of essentialist biases into organizational ecology through
the borrowing of the “inertia” metaphor from Newtonian
mechanics. This metaphor is preventing organizational ecol-
ogists from moving beyond very limited borrowings from
institutional theory (Zucker 1989) to incorporate the more
profound insights of constructivism.
For their part, constructivist theorists have made cri-
tiques of resource mobilization theory that parallel those
made by institutionalists against organizational ecology,
arguing that they focus narrowly on “the how” to the neglect
of “the why” of social dynamics (Zucker 1989). Construc-
tivists have attempted to correct this imbalance by focusing
on the discursive practices used by individual and corporate
actors to transform social networks and boundaries. Never-
theless, while some constructivists recognize the need to see
the social construction of meaning as occurring within an
organizational context (Klandermans 1992), and that framing
activities can impact organizational founding and disbanding
rates (Snow et al. 1986), they have thus far failed to connect
their analyses to a theory of organizational dynamics.
Clearly, the challenge is to merge these intellectual tra-
ditions so as to readdress the macro-structural concerns of
Marx and Durkheim in a more dynamic and non-essentialist
fashion while retaining Weber and Schutz’s commitment to
an objective science of subjective meaning. In the following
sections, I argue that such a synthesis can be achieved by: (1)
abandoning Hannan and Freeman’s (1977) inertia metaphor
in favor of an explicit focus on organizational plasticity and
integrating various modes of adaptive explanation, (2) mov-
ing questions of individual and corporate agency and interest
McLaughlin
18 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
to the center stage of ecological analysis and (3) reconceptu-
alizing the legitimation of organizational forms as a process
occurring within the context of a socially constructed adap-
tive landscape and by focusing on the discursive practices
that individual and corporate actors use to manipulate such
landscapes and the boundaries between discrete organiza-
tional networks.
Abandoning the Inertia Metaphor
Several authors have argued that organizational ecolo-
gists’ reliance on the inertia metaphor ignores the adaptive
capacities of organizations (Fombrun 1988; Meyer 1990;
Perrow 1986; Zucker 1989). Though accurate, these critiques
fail to penetrate to the heart of the problem, which is the inap-
propriateness of grounding an evolutionary theory of organi-
zational change on a concept with essentialist roots. Al-
though Hannan and Freeman (1989) are careful to define
organizational “inertia” in terms of relative rates of change
rather than “natural tendencies,” the inertia metaphor still
carries with it essentialist overtones derived from its origins
in Newtonian mechanics.
5
Importing such a metaphor into an
evolutionary framework allows the developmentalist assump-
tions, which organizational ecologists claim to have aban-
doned (Carroll 1984), to be subtly reintroduced.
Thus, although they avoid making explicit essentialist
assumptions about “rational actors,” organizational ecolo-
gists have used the inertia metaphor as a justification for
“black boxing” questions of agency and interest. Organi-
zational ecologists’theoretical strategy, in this regard, is sim-
ilar to institutionalists’ “defocalizing” the role of agency in
institutional processes (DiMaggio 1988). While Hannan and
Freeman (1989, 339) maintain that they are simply construct-
ing theories “that are robust with respect to assumptions
about individual motivation,” in practice this agential agnos-
ticism results in an effective severing of the micro and macro
levels of analysis. Moreover, since questions of meaning and
interests are sidestepped and the internal dynamics of organi-
zations ignored, questions of power and conflict are rarely
addressed (Perrow 1986).
Echoes of Aristotle’s division between the “natural” and
the “accidental” are also apparent in organizational ecolo-
gists’ desire to partition the “ahistorical and historical ele-
ments” of social evolution (Hannan and Freeman 1989, 19)
and in their tendency to “artificially separate organizations
from their environments” (Fombrun 1988, 230). For in-
stance, with respect to organizational size distributions, orga-
nizational ecologists have failed to differentiate between an
evolutionary approach, which maintains that environmental
heterogeneity may produce bi-modal size distributions, and a
frame-invariant one which treats such an outcome as a uni-
versal, context-independent process — i.e., one which
occurs, as Durkheim insists, “not because external circum-
stances are more varied, but because the struggle for exis-
tence is more acute” (Hannan and Freeman 1989, 125).
Additional essentialist echoes are apparent in organizational
ecologists’ tendency to decontextualize processes of legiti-
mation and competition. Such processes are treated as “inter-
nal,” “timeless” and “ahistorical,” while “external” historical
factors are relegated to the status of “controls” (Hannan and
Freeman 1989) or ignored altogether in the case of physical
and biological environments. For example, organizational
ecologists have abandoned their earlier concerns with the role
that collective action, the closure of social networks and the
gaining of “insider knowledge” (Marrett 1980) play in the
legitimation process. Instead, legitimation has been reduced
to a “cognitive” process — i.e., increased taken-for-granted-
ness — that is treated as an unmeasured intervening variable
between organizational density and various vital rates. Thus,
while much of postmodern social science is moving towards
an emphasis on the historical embeddedness of social actors
and processes — what Dally (1991, 90) calls “radical rela-
tionalism” — population ecologists are moving in the oppo-
site direction. Such a strategy is inconsistent with evolution-
ism and needlessly sacrifices any hope of capturing the
active, contested character of the legitimation process (Baum
and Powell 1995).
These difficulties could have been avoided simply by
recognizing that inertia is not a necessary component of a
Darwinian theory of change, which requires only three pre-
conditions: (1) variation, (2) selection and (3) retention
(Campbell 1965). Moreover, the latter should not be mis-
construed as equivalent to inertia (e.g., as in Carroll 1984;
Hannan and Freeman 1977). Even in the biological case, her-
itability is compatible with a wide range of structural and
behavioral plasticity (Scheiner 1993). Recent empirical work
on organizational change has, in fact, begun to move in this
direction, painting a more complex picture in which the
impact of change on organizational fitness depends on orga-
nizational age, size and the frequency, sequencing and type of
changes (Amburgey, Kelly and Barnet 1993; Haveman 1993;
Kelly and Amburgey 1991; Miner, Amburgey and Stearns
1990). However, if organizations vary in their adaptive
capacities and if environments vary in the degree to which
they select for such capacities (Fombrun 1988), then “inertia”
is neither a necessary precondition nor an invariable conse-
quence (Hannan and Freeman 1984) of organizational evolu-
tion. It is simply an empirical question (Winter 1990).
The preceding arguments suggest that “inertia” and
related Newtonian metaphors such as “momentum” (Kelly
and Amburgey 1991) should be abandoned in favor of an
explicit focus on organizational plasticity and integrating
various modes of adaptive explanation (Toulmin 1981).
McLaughlin
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 19
Organizational ecologists’ primary goal should not be to try
to establish which is more important, selection or adaptation,
structure or agency, but rather to integrate these concerns into
“a general theoretical framework which would capture the
dialectical interplay between ‘action’ and ‘structure’ ” (Reed
1988, 35). Rather than settling for the limited objectivist goal
of building theories that are “robust” with respect to agency
and interests, organizational ecologists need to put such ques-
tions at the center stage of ecological analysis.
The Centrality of Agency and Interests to
Organizational Evolution
In contrast to organizational ecology’s current agential
agnosticism, Dietz and Burns (1992) contend that an evolu-
tionary perspective on change actually facilitates the integra-
tion of agency into social theory. A brief consideration of
Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) recent discussion of agency
supports this claim and highlights the potential affinity
between evolutionary theory and a concern with agency.
Emirbayer and Mische (1998, 963) define agency as:
...a temporally embedded process of social engage-
ment, informed by the past (in its habitual aspect),
but also oriented toward the future (as a capacity to
imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the
present (as a capacity to contextualize past habits
and future projects within the contingencies of the
moment).
Emirbayer and Mische’s definition emphasizes that agency is
inherently temporal and thus can only be understood within a
dynamic framework. The necessity of taking the temporal
dimensions of change seriously is one the hallmarks of evo-
lutionary theorizing (Greenwood 1984). In contrast, essen-
tialist theories, which are rooted in Aristotle’s distinction
between the “natural” and the “accidental,” have been exten-
sively criticized for their tendency to become disconnected
from considerations of time and place (Bock 1956). Although
organizational ecology exhibits some of these latter difficul-
ties, it nevertheless shares with other evolutionary perspec-
tives a commitment to understanding the temporal dimen-
sions of social processes, as evidenced by its extensive use of
event-history methodology.
Emirbayer and Mische (1998, 975) also argue that
agents have the ability “to recall, to select, and to appropri-
ately apply the more or less tacit and taken-for-granted
schemas of action that they have developed through past
experience.” Although this iterational dimension of agency
occurs with little conscious reflection, the proper deployment
of alternative schemas within specific temporal-relational
contexts still requires attention and engagement on the part of
actors. Such a conceptualization of agency is consistent with
an evolutionary perspective. In fact, “heritability” is one of
the three prerequisites of any evolutionary theory (Campbell
1965). As Dietz and Burns (1992) note, social learning
through imitation is much more efficient than trial and error
experimentation. Moreover, they argue that social learning is
an active process, one that always requires some degree of
improvisation on the part of actors.
Essentialistic theories also contain an iterative dimen-
sion. However, within such a teleological framework actors’
choices are typically reduced to accelerating or retarding
“natural” developmental trends (Dietz and Burns 1992). The
agentic moment of iteration is thus neglected or ignored.
Rational choice models, which essentialize individual actors,
exhibit similar difficulties (Burns and Dietz 1992). While the
“heritability” of social rules and routines is central to organi-
zational ecology (Hannan and Freeman 1989), the inertia
assumption has led theorists in this tradition to likewise dis-
regard the agentic dimensions of iteration. For example, orga-
nizational ecologists’ strategy of treating legitimacy as an
unmeasured intervening variable — linking density and vital
rates — leads them to gloss over the complex internal and
external projects engaged in by actors to legitimate new orga-
nizational forms. Similar difficulties are apparent in recent
work on intraorganizational evolution by Burgelman and
Mittman (1994). While these authors concede to managers
some degree of bounded “rationality,” other organizational
participants are treated as passive receptacles for “induced”
or “autonomously” created managerial routines.
According to Emirbayer and Mische, actors also mani-
fest agency through their orientation toward the future and
their ability to imagine alternative possibilities. Moreover,
they note that social scientists have tended to ignore this pro-
jective dimension of agency due to a perceived incompatibil-
ity between subjective phenomena and “behavioral observa-
tion, survey techniques, and macrostructural analysis”
(Emirbayer and Mische 1998, 991). I would argue that social
scientists’ neglect of the projective dimension of agency is
also rooted in the historical dominance of essentialism in the
social sciences. Within an essentialistic framework, variabil-
ity of any type tends to be discounted as merely “deviations.”
Such theories fail to capture the spontaneous and reflexive
abilities of actors, treating them instead as passively “pro-
grammed” by their respective cultures (Dietz and Burns
1992). In contrast, evolutionary theories take variation as
their theoretical starting point. In fact, Dietz and Burns
(1992) go so far as to suggest that theories of social evolution
may require the concept of agency because agency is the only
mechanism able to produce sufficient variability to make
such a theory viable.
From an evolutionary perspective, the variability pro-
duced through the creative and even playful engagement of
McLaughlin
20 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
social actors is inevitably subject to the selective forces pre-
sented by the environment. The resulting differential propa-
gation of alternative social rules, schemas or forms of orga-
nization produces additional diversity on successive levels of
analysis as networks with different frequencies of these
respective types of variation diverge and rediverge — and
sometimes merge — into discrete networks of social interac-
tion (Burns and Dietz 1992). As Darwin’s ([1859] 1958)
metaphor of a branching tree suggests, evolution is inherent-
ly multilinear. While selection within specific environments
may push populations to evolve along particular trajectories,
there is no overall direction to the evolutionary process.
Translated into the social domain, such an open-ended frame-
work is entirely compatible with the notion that actors pursu-
ing alternative imaginative projects can play an indepen-
dent causal role in history. Successful projects become the
branching points of the socio-historical tree. In contrast,
essentialistic theories, which privilege certain historical tra-
jectories as “natural,” tend to treat peoples and projects that
behave in a manner inconsistent with the hypothesized devel-
opmental trend as deviant or pathological. Organizational
ecology, because it has focused primarily on the dynamics of
individual organizational populations, has thus far had little
to say about the broader patterns of organizational evolution.
However, I will argue below that confronting this issue will
require organizational ecologists to address the discursive
and claims making activities of individual and corporate
actors directly.
Finally, Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) approach to
agency underscores the social embeddedness of actors and
their ability to contextualize past patterns of thought and
action and alternative projections of future actions within the
contingencies of current circumstances. Such a conceptual-
ization of agency is consistent with Dally’s (1991, 90) con-
tention that the social sciences are moving towards a form of
“radical relationalism.” Such a position is completely at vari-
ance with essentialistic theories whose very goal is to decon-
textualize social actors and processes in order to produce
frame-invariant laws (Bock 1956). Organizational ecologists’
reliance on the inertia metaphor has led to a similar tendency
to abstract organizational actors and processes from histori-
cal context. However, as the above discussion of the Darwin-
ian revolution makes clear, evolutionary thinking is premised
upon a commitment to a frame-relative approach to theory
construction (Sober 1980) which insists that the entities
evolving — whether biological species, social rules or orga-
nizations — cannot be divorced from their respective con-
texts. As Burns and Dietz (1992) note, the necessity of con-
textualizing social action within historically specific physi-
cal, biological and social environments is one of the defining
features of an evolutionary perspective on social change.
If an “ecology of social action” is to avoid the current
pitfalls of organizational ecology and provide a theoretical
framework that is fully dynamic, open-ended and contextual-
ized, it must studiously avoid the twin traps of reducing indi-
vidual or corporate agents to essentialized “rational actors”
or “ideological dupes” (Donati 1992, 155). Both of these
traps can be averted by explicitly grounding a revised ecolo-
gy of organizations on a constructivist perspective on agency.
Constructivists conceptualize actors as operating within a
discursive framework, interpreting their experiences in rela-
tion to hierarchical and articulated sets of “frames” which
provide “ ‘schemata of interpretation’ that enable individuals
‘to locate, perceive, identify, and label’ occurrences within
their life space and the world at large” (Snow et al. 1986,
464). Moreover, alternative frames constitute “tools kits”
used by contending parties to actively construct and decon-
struct social and political reality (Donati 1992). Conceptual-
izing agency in terms of framing processes is consistent with
Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998, 993) definition of agency as
a process of “temporally constructed engagement.” The next
question to be addressed is how such a constructivist per-
spective on agency can be integrated into an evolutionary
account of social structure? In the following section, I devel-
op the concept of a socially constructed adaptive landscape as
the central metaphor for linking the ecological and construc-
tivist traditions.
Organizational Evolution within a Socially Constructed
Adaptive Landscape
In his path-breaking work on forms of control in the
labor process, Edwards (1979) put forward the metaphor of a
“contested terrain” to describe processes of negotiation and
contention within the workplace. Although Edwards and
other labor process theorists were successful in refocusing
attention on issues of power and conflict, their contribution
was ultimately limited by their commitment to an essentialist
analysis of organizational dynamics. More recently, Bourdieu
(1985), in what he describes as a break with Marxist theory,
has advanced the concept of a social topology — i.e., a
socially constructed and contested multi-dimensional space
defined by accumulations of various forms of social and
material capital. Donati (1992) alludes to a similar concept.
The metaphor of a contested terrain suggests the possi-
bility of a more profound convergence between the ecologi-
cal and constructivist traditions. From an evolutionary per-
spective, various dimensions of the physical, biological and
social environment can be conceptualized as “adaptive land-
scapes.” The hills and valleys of such landscapes define vary-
ing levels of fitness and, thus, differential probabilities of sur-
vival and propagation for social rules, routines or organiza-
tions.
6
Thus, in contrast to the above metaphors, the notion of
McLaughlin
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 21
an adaptive landscape has the advantage of providing a mech-
anism — differential survival — that can explain patterns of
structural change. Such a metaphor is implicit within organi-
zational ecology. Unfortunately, the inertia metaphor has led
organizational ecologists to reify such landscapes as “natur-
al” (Perrow 1986). The result is a fairly mechanistic image of
the evolutionary process, one in which organizations are pas-
sively selected by social environments which are treated as
entirely exogenous. However, if individual and corporate
actors are continually generating alternative courses of action
and bringing those imaginative projections and the lessons of
past experience to bear on current pragmatic situations, then
it is theoretically untenable and historically inaccurate to
treat adaptive landscapes as simply “given.” Rather, as both
Bourdieu (1985) and Donati (1992) suggest, such landscapes
must themselves be seen as subject to continual construction
and reconstruction. I believe that the metaphor of a socially
constructed adaptive landscape provides a more dynamic
and historical image of the evolutionary process, one in
which more or less bounded networks of organizational
actors are conceptualized as simultaneously adapting to and
actively reshaping their environment(s).
Such a reformulation of organizational ecology has a
number of advantages. First, it clarifies the interrelationship
between structure, agency and environment. For instance, it
provides an intelligible framework for answering the follow-
ing question posed by Emirbayer and Mische (1998, 964): “If
structural contexts are analytically separable from (and stand
over and against) capacities for human agency, how is it pos-
sible for actors to mediate or transform their own relationships
to these contexts?” Within a socially constructed adaptive
landscape, individual and corporate actors alter their structur-
al contexts by engaging in various discursive and claims-mak-
ing activities and by directly employing economic and politi-
cal power. To the extent that they are successful in persuad-
ing, manipulating or dominating other actors who control var-
ious forms of social and material resources they reshape the
contours of the social dimensions of the adaptive landscape.
Actors also modify biophysical dimensions of the landscape
by deploying various technologies and associated organiza-
tional routines. In either case, such reconstructions of the evo-
lutionary terrain alter the structural contexts of action by
changing the founding and disbanding rates for social rules,
routines and organizations. Such structural shifts, in turn, cre-
ate opportunities for and impose constraints upon subsequent
action. Thus, the metaphor of a socially constructed adaptive
landscape acknowledges the centrality of agency to organiza-
tional evolution without giving agency unlimited scope (Dietz
and Burns 1992). At the same time, it retains organizational
ecology and resource mobilization theory’s emphasis on
resources as a fundamental constraint on social action.
A second advantage of this metaphor is that it allows
critical theorists’ (Fischer and Sirianni 1984) concerns with
power and conflict to be brought back into the ecological
model, while avoiding the essentialist pitfalls associated with
Marxian approaches to organizational dynamics. Relative
power within this framework can be conceptualized in terms
of individual or corporate actors’ position within the adaptive
landscape, which represents accumulations of various forms
of social and material capital (Bourdieu 1985). Considered
in dynamic terms, power implies the ability to actively mold
the contours of the adaptive landscape. As Dietz and Burns
(1992, 266) note, powerful actors can not only determine
what rules are applied in a given situation, but, in the long
run, change the distribution of rules to favor their own inter-
ests. Questions of power and conflict also arise in relation to
the construction and deconstruction of boundaries between
organizational networks (see below).
Finally, from the perspective advocated here questions
of “why” social actors do what they do must be seen as theo-
retically on a par with questions relating to “how” actors
accomplish their objectives (Zucker 1989). That is, if indi-
vidual and corporate actors’ perceptions of and attempts to
manipulate the adaptive landscape are guided by hierarchical
and articulated sets of “frames” (Clemens 1993; Snow et. al
1986), then questions of meaning and interests, ideology and
grievance interpretation cannot be black boxed or side-
stepped. Rather, as Emirbayer and Mische (1998) contend,
such questions must be seen as constitutive to any attempt to
understand social dynamics. In the final section of the paper,
I briefly explore the implications of such a revised version of
organizational ecology for the study of the origins, legitima-
tion and diversification of organizational forms.
From Theory to Practice
The Origins of Organizational Forms
As noted above, closed-system theorists had little to say
regarding the origins of organizational forms (Scott 1987).
Unfortunately, despite their many other contributions, organi-
zational ecologists have provided few additional insights into
this critical issue. In their empirical work, they have taken the
emergence of new forms for granted, defining the origins of
a form as coinciding with the appearance of the first organi-
zation of the population in question (Hannan and Freeman
1989). While this strategy may be adequate for purposes of
modeling the subsequent dynamics of the form, it leaves the
antecedent causal processes undergirding form emergence
unexamined.
The reformulation of organizational ecology sketched
above suggests that a complete account of form emergence
will require an understanding of the interrelationships
McLaughlin
22 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
between structure, agency and environment. Of course, it is
agency that is most conspicuously absent from organization-
al ecologists’ current accounts of form emergence.
Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) perspective implies that the
emergence of a new organizational form should coincide with
a shift towards the projective dimension of human agency.
But precisely when do such shifts in agentic orientation
occur? Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) suggestion that such
shifts occur during “unsettled times” is similar to Snow et
al.’s (1986) argument that new forms of social movement
organizations (SMO’s) emerge when master frames can no
longer cope with changing political, economic, or environ-
mental conditions.
While Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) arguments
regarding shifts in agentic orientation and Snow et al.’s
(1986) thesis concerning frame changes provide crucial ele-
ments that are missing from organizational ecologists’
accounts of form emergence, their respective references to
“unsettled times” and “changing conditions” suggest that the
timing of such shifts may themselves be mediated by struc-
tural and environmental dynamics. For instance, elsewhere I
(McLaughlin 1992, 1996) have argued that the origins of the
farmers’ movement in Saskatchewan Canada can only be
understood in terms of: (1) individual and corporate actors
reacting against the competitive ethos of frontier capitalism
by developing an alternative injustice frame grounded in
cooperative ideology, (2) a shift from a generalist to a less
flexible specialist cost structure among family farmers —
rather than simply crop-specialization per se as suggested by
Lipset (1968) — which was driven by an accelerating trend
toward debt-financed mechanization at the turn of the centu-
ry and (3) an unpredictable physical environment and an
unstable wheat market which kept farmers’ incomes highly
variable (Fairbairn 1989). The resulting cost-price squeeze
created a niche mismatch between the increasingly rigid cost
structures of family farms and highly variable physical and
economic environments that eventually undermined alterna-
tive explanations of farm stress or failure — e.g., attributing
failure to personal characteristics such as bad management or
a lack of hard work or to uncontrollable external forces such
as bad luck or bad weather. Capitalism was left as the most
plausible villain. It was thus a confluence of agentic, struc-
tural and environmental factors which forced Saskatchewan’s
farmers’ to gain the “reflective distance” (Emirbayer and
Mische 1998, 973) necessary to question the routinized
assumptions of competitive capitalism and embark on a trans-
formative “project” to reconstitute the socio-economic land-
scape of the province by constructing new niches for educa-
tional and lobbying organizations, marketing and consumer
cooperatives and a farmers’ political party.
The above arguments suggest that organizational ecolo-
gists can strengthen their accounts of form emergence by: (1)
moving beyond their current exclusive focus on structural
dynamics to consider cultural, agentic and, where relevant,
the physical-environmental dimensions of form emergence,
(2) supplementing their excellent quantitative analyses with
equally sophisticated qualitative analyses of the temporal-
relational contexts of form emergence and (3) exploring inno-
vative quantitative approaches to analyzing these same
processes. For instance, frame shifts and changes in agentic
orientation might be quantified using various new methods of
textual analysis (Roberts 1997). In the above case, analysis of
editorials and letters to farmers’ magazines might allow one
to explore whether these shifts coincided with increases in
the farm failure rates or whether there was a relationship
between changes in agentic orientation and the origins of var-
ious farmer organizations.
The Legitimation of New Forms
As in the case of form emergence, I argue that the dis-
cursive and claims-making activities of individual and corpo-
rate actors likewise play a crucial role in the legitimation of
new organizational forms.
7
Organizational ecologists allude
to these concerns in their descriptions of the legitimation
process:
The process by which organizational forms gain
taken-for-granted status encompasses at least two
kinds of activity. One is collective action by mem-
bers of the population to define, explain, and codify
its organizational form and to defend itself from
claims and attacks by rival populations. The sec-
ond is collective learning by which effective rou-
tines and social structures become collectively fine-
tuned, codified, and promulgated. (Hannan and
Carroll 1992, 41)
It is clear from this statement and others (e.g., Carroll and
Hannan 1995; Hannan and Freeman 1989) that organization-
al ecologists see human agency, including the rhetorical activ-
ities typically studied by constructivist theorists, as central to
the legitimation process. Although organizational ecologists
allude to this complexity, for reasons discussed above, they
typically do not analyze it. While this strategy has produced a
series of empirical studies that seem to “confirm” the density
dependence model (Singh and Lumsden 1990), these same
studies have been widely criticized for being poorly opera-
tionalized and weakly contextualized (Delacroix and Rao
1994; Baum and Powell 1995; Zucker 1989).
The above reformulation of organizational ecology sug-
gests a new direction for the analysis of legitimation, one that
recognizes the need to integrate organizational and cultural
dynamics (Baum and Powell 1995). Rather than treating
McLaughlin
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 23
legitimation as an unmeasured intervening variable that is
passively driven by increases in organizational density, I
argue that legitimation should be explicitly reconceptualized
as an active social process that encompasses the social con-
struction of organizational niches and boundaries. Individual
and corporate actors construct new organizational niches by
employing alternative discursive frames to remold the con-
tours of a socially constructed adaptive landscape. That is, by
actively modifying the social and, in some cases, biophysical
dimensions of the adaptive landscape, actors engaged in the
legitimation of a new form alter its fitness and, thereby,
produce the observed patterns of increased founding and
decreased failure rates.
Such a reformulation exposes organizational ecology’s
current lack of a vocabulary for discussing legitimation as an
active social process. However, as suggested above, concepts
derived from the constructivist tradition can fill this concep-
tual gap.
8
For instance, the various “frame-alignment” pro-
cesses discussed by Snow et al. (1986) can be translated into
an evolutionary framework as descriptions of the reciprocal
interactions between organizational populations and their
adaptive landscapes. In some instances, niche construction
may involve simply “frame bridging” to previously existing
social networks. In others it might involve the “frame ampli-
fication” of the latent values and beliefs of unmobilized sen-
timent pools, thereby raising the underlying landscape and
increasing the form’s fitness. In still other cases, niche con-
struction may involve “a deliberate attempt by a social actor
to create consensus among a subset of the population”
(Klandermans 1992, 78) through such processes as “frame
extension” or “frame transformation.” The former might be
visualized as a widening of an existing ridge of the adaptive
landscape to create a lateral niche whereas the latter might be
seen as an attempt to construct an entirely new hill or fold in
the landscape.
The construction of organizational niches should simul-
taneously be accompanied by the creation and closure
of boundaries between distinct organizational networks
(Fombrun 1988; Van de Ven and Garud 1989). That is, I
argue that a new organizational form cannot be perceived as
“natural” or “taken-for-granted” unless it is first seen as dis-
tinct. By reproblemitizing boundaries and by focusing our
attention on the discursive practices that actors use to trans-
late “nominal” distinctions into well-defined networks of
social interaction, this reformulation counterbalances organi-
zational ecologists’ tendency to “artificially separate organi-
zations from their environments” (Fombrun 1988, 230).
Likewise, questions of power and conflict are again high-
lighted. The negotiation and contestation over organizational
boundaries must be seen as a central component of the broad-
er political struggle to define the social categories through
which the world is perceived (Bourdieu 1985). As DiMaggio
(1988, 13) notes, such “institutionalizing projects” are “pro-
foundly political” and reflect “the relative power of organized
interests.”
Hannan and Freeman’s (1986) discussion of “segregat-
ing” and “blending” processes provides an excellent starting
point for the analysis of boundary formation. Although this
provocative piece provides a natural theoretical bridge to
constructivism, in their empirical work organizational ecolo-
gists have largely ignored its implications. Moreover, Hannan
and Freeman’s discussion still places insufficient emphasis
on the role of agency and culture. Here again constructivism
can provide additional concepts. For example, the legitimat-
ing and delegitimating struggles attending boundary forma-
tion can be conceptualized using Benford’s (1993) concept of
“frame disputes.” As Benford argues, in a social movement
context, frame disputes — over diagnoses of problems, prog-
noses or solutions to problems and disagreements over the
resonance or effectiveness of various rhetorical strategies —
arise at the boundaries of movement subsectors and play a
key role in shaping a movement’s overall structure. While
such disputes can occur at any time in the course of the evo-
lution of an organizational population, they should be partic-
ularly prevalent during the early history of new forms.
Moreover, although Benford’s concept was intended to apply
to SMO’s, I believe it should be equally applicable to other
types of business and non-business organizations. As Dally
(1991, 100) notes, “the economy, like all other spheres, is the
terrain of a political struggle, and is governed not by a single
logic but by a proliferation of discourses/language games.”
The above arguments underscore the need for organiza-
tional ecologists to revise and extend their approach to study-
ing legitimation. Whatever its other advantages, the “density
dependence” model clearly fails to capture the historical
embeddedness and socio-political character of the legitima-
tion process. It is not enough, as Carroll and Hannan (1989,
545) contend, to simply “establish the plausibility of the
argument that legitimation drove the early (low density) evo-
lution of the population while competition dominated in the
later (high density) period.” Such plausibility is, at best, a
minimal historical standard and one that is not always met.
Thus, organizational ecologists need, first and foremost, to
supplement their quantitative analyses of legitimation with
thick historical descriptions of the rhetorical and claims-mak-
ing activities — particularly the framing processes and strate-
gies — employed in the construction of new organizational
niches. Such analyses should likewise include detailed con-
sideration of such internal processes as the codification of
organizational routines as well as the external frame disputes
attending the creation and closure of network boundaries.
Capturing the multi-dimensional character of the legiti-
McLaughlin
24 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
mation process will also require the exploration of new quan-
titative approaches. For instance, Baum and Powell (1995)
have argued that organizational ecologists should attempt to
measure legitimation directly. One approach, which is con-
sistent with the above perspective, is to use various measures
of print media. For example, McLaughlin and Khawaja
(2000) use the annual count of environmental books pub-
lished to measure the increasing legitimacy of national envi-
ronmental organizations in the U.S. during the period 1895-
1994. This measure was found to be positively associated
with the founding rate even when other variables measuring
resources and changes in the political opportunity structure
were added to the model. More sophisticated approaches
using textual analysis (Roberts 1997) of newspapers or other
documents should also be explored. The latter techniques
might also be employed to explore the relationship between
legitimation and changes in resource levels and shifts in
agentic orientation.
The Diversification of Organizational Forms
Finally, I argue that merging the ecological and con-
structivist traditions is critical to understanding the broader
patterns and processes of social evolution. As the concept of
a socially constructed adaptive landscape makes clear, the
sum total of constructive processes occurring at both the
intra- and interorganizational level continually alter both the
diversity and dynamics of organizational populations and, in
so doing, reconstitute society by altering structures of in-
equality, exploitation, domination and control (Hannan
1988). The final advantage of an ecology of social action is
that it can clarify the role that agency and culture play in such
large-scale social transformations. That is, such a perspective
may help us to better understand how actors and the alterna-
tive meanings they espouse play an independent causal role
in history by actively reshaping collective identities, by
remolding organizational networks and boundaries and, in
the process, creating, extending and transforming organiza-
tional niches. As McLaughlin and Khawaja (2000) argue in
their analysis of the U.S. environmental movement, under-
standing the discursive activities of individual and corporate
actors is critical to unraveling the dynamics of such complex
organizational fields because they provide the critical “isolat-
ing mechanisms” which determine the heterogeneity of orga-
nizational populations (Baum and Singh 1994) and thus, in a
given temporal-relation context, the direction of social evolu-
tion. Identifying the sources of such heterogeneity is crucial
if organizational ecologists are to readdress the broader
theoretical, historical and political concerns of the classical
theorists.
Conclusion
Organizational ecology’s inability to effectively address
questions of individual and corporate agency and interests is
symptomatic of a broader failure within the social sciences to
develop a comprehensive framework for analyzing the inter-
relationships between structure, agency and environment.
Fombrun (1988, 239) contends that organizational ecology’s
failure in this regard can be traced directly to “a lingering
allegiance to the conceptual baggage of the neo-Darwinian
frame of reference.” While I agree that organizational ecolo-
gists need to be more sensitive to the potential disanalogies
between biological and social evolution, my central con-
tention is precisely the opposite of Fombrun’s. Both organi-
zational ecology and the social sciences in general can bene-
fit greatly from a deeper understanding of the Darwinian
revolution.
Such an understanding can, first and foremost, clarify
the sources of some of the central impasses in the social sci-
ences. Most importantly, I argue that the inability of social
scientists to integrate structure, agency and environment can
be traced to the persistence of essentialism within the func-
tionalist, Marxian and ecological traditions and nominalism
within the constructivist tradition. Moreover, as was the case
in biology, I believe that the key to overcoming these impass-
es is a combination of population thinking and an historical
yet realist approach to categorization. This combination can-
not only provide the underpinnings of a more robust and his-
torical organizational ecology, but also has the potential to
provide a new metatheoretical foundation for the broader
social sciences. Although the need to account for human
agency in the case of social evolution precludes any simple
translation of metatheoretical assumptions between biology
and the social sciences, I have tried to demonstrate that an
evolutionary perspective on social change is actually more
compatible with current concepts of agency than the essen-
tialistic approaches that have historically dominated social
theory.
Finally, the concept of a socially constructed adaptive
landscape provides a framework for combining the ecological
tradition’s concerns with structure-environment interactions,
the constructivists’ focus on agency, language, and culture
and the critical tradition’s concern with power and conflict.
Such an “ecology of social action” can provide a more
dynamic, historical and critical organizational ecology, one
that addresses “the co-evolving nature of cultural understand-
ings, organizational forms, and resource constraints” (Baum
and Powell 1995, 536). To borrow Francois Jacob’s (1982)
phrase, the goal of such a revised evolutionary paradigm
McLaughlin
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 25
should be to reconceptualize social evolution as a continuous
dialogue between “the possible and the actual” and see actors
and the discursive practices that they bring to bear on prag-
matic situations as the focal point of that dialogue. In the con-
clusion of the paper, I have tried to suggest how this new eco-
logical paradigm can open up fresh avenues for research on
the origins, legitimation and diversification of organizational
forms.
Endnotes
1. E-mail: pmc1701@aol.com.
2. As Sober (1980) notes, neither the vagueness of species boundaries
nor the mutability of species is, in principle, fatal to essentialism.
However, in practice many naturalists did find such arguments per-
suasive. For instance, the arbitrariness of species boundaries was one
of the major arguments used by Darwin to justify his belief in evolu-
tion (Greenwood 1984, 53).
3. In taking variation as his theoretical starting point, Darwin may have
benefited from nominalists’focus on individual differences. Below I
argue that extreme post-modernists are playing a similar role in shift-
ing the starting point of theory construction in the social sciences
from natural states and paths of change to variation.
4. Although Sober (1980) is correct in acknowledging Galton’s contri-
bution to population thinking, it is important to note that Galton was
a committed Social Darwinist who advocated a theory of progressive,
saltative evolution between fixed racial types. Such a position is
inconsistent with Darwin’s theory of evolution. In fact, Social
Darwinism represents an assimilation of Darwinian concepts back
into an essentialistic framework. As Greenwood (1984) notes, invari-
ably such misappropriations of Darwinian concepts are made for the
purposes of legitimating some moral or political position.
5. In addition to the direct appropriation of Newtonian metaphors such
as “inertia,” organizational ecologists may also be indirectly influ-
enced by physicalist (and hence essentialist) assumptions through
their borrowing of certain mathematical models from ecology. For
instance, two physicists,Alfred J. Lotka and Vito Volterra, created the
Lotka-Volterra equations, which play a central role in biological and
organizational ecology. Lotka and Volterra and subsequent re-
searchers such as Raymond Pearl initially conceptualized these equa-
tions in terms that Sober (1980) would label “frame-invariant.” That
is, their goal was to create ecological “laws” which allowed a strict
separation of “internal” (genetic) and “external” (environmental) fac-
tors (Kingsland 1985). Moreover, the latter were conceptualized as
interfering forces or obstacles while the former were assumed to be
fixed over the short-term — a methodological assumption introduced
to simplify the mathematics. As Kingsland (1985) notes, critics con-
tended that these researchers abstracted biological populations from
their environmental and historical contexts and argued that mathe-
matical modeling needed to be supplemented with detailed natural
histories. Others contended that a rigid separation of internal and
external factors influencing population growth was ultimately not
possible because, among other reasons, organisms significantly mod-
ified their own environments. As Kingsland’s (1985) account makes
clear, over the course of the century, this latter, “frame-relative”
approach to population biology has gradually but not completely won
out. My contention is that organizational ecology’s shortcomings as
currently constructed may derive from the lingering influence of the
earlier, frame-invariant, approach to population dynamics.
6. Fitness in the biological case is defined in terms of relative repro-
ductive success — i.e., the ability of one genotype to produce more
offspring that survive to adulthood than another genotype in a given
environment. Defining fitness in the case of organizational popula-
tions is complicated by two facts. First, although one can metaphor-
ically speak of organizational “births,” in many cases there is no
clearly defined analogue to a “parent.” Second, unlike organisms,
individual organizations can persist indefinitely and thus contribute
directly to subsequent generations. The relative fitness of one orga-
nizational population as compared to another is thus a composite of
their respective rates of founding, merger, disbanding and change.
Organizational ecologists have typically pursued a strategy of model-
ing these rates separately rather than combining them into an overall
index of fitness (Hannan and Freeman 1989, 143).
7. Although the focus here is on evolution occurring at the organiza-
tional level of analysis, I believe that the same framework could be
used to explain the evolution of social units at lower levels of aggre-
gation — e.g., social roles or organizational routines. For instance,
the reformulation of legitimation discussed below could be used to
move discussions of intraorganizational evolution beyond current
concerns with the impact of managerial decisions on firm “efficien-
cy” and “adaptiveness” (Burgelman and Mittman 1994), to consider
both the embeddedness of organizational roles and routines in net-
works of social and symbolic interaction (Miner 1994) and the con-
structed and contested nature of the terrains on which they evolve.
Thus, Hochschild’s (1983) account of how airline supervisors use the
“living room metaphor” to increase flight attendants’ acceptance of
work routines involving excessive emotional labor could be interpret-
ed as an instance of niche construction in which a strategy of “frame
amplification” is used by management in an attempt to increase the
fitness of that routine within the firm. Resistance by flight attendants
might be conceptualized as an attempt to create an alternative niche,
with the conflict between the opposing routines and rhetorics result-
ing in a frame dispute. Taylor’s (1994) analysis of the role that oppos-
ing discourses of “efficiency” and “the social firm” are playing in the
restructuring of the Mondragon Cooperative system might be inter-
preted in similar terms. Finally, recent feminist discussions of how
“gendered spaces” (Mehta 1996) operate to restrict women’s sphere
might be reconceptualized in terms of the differential reproduction of
roles within an adaptive landscape. Specifically, men’s greater access
to resources in many instances allows them to use a patriarchal frame
to shape the social topography and network boundaries in ways that
favor their interests. Challenging patriarchy requires women to iden-
tify, legitimate and defend an alternative space with sufficient
resources to allow them to redefine the larger landscape (e.g., see
Campbell and The Women’s Group of Xapuri 1996).
8. Concepts derived from the constructivist literature on technology —
e.g., actor-network theory (Callon 1986; Latour 1983) — might also
be helpful here, particularly in relation to questions involving human-
environment interactions.
McLaughlin
26 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Brett Fairbairn, Murray Fulton and other
members of the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, for their assistance in the early phases of writing this man-
uscript. I would also like to thank Thomas Dietz and several anonymous
reviewers for their many helpful suggestions.
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Research in Human Ecology
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 29
© Society for Human Ecology
Abstract
Watershed planning is an important focus of environ-
mental protection efforts in many states. Still, how to involve
the public in watershed planning remains controversial. This
paper reports on research that used Q methodology to study
how experienced watershed management planners and
activists perceive the proper way to involve the public in deci-
sion-making. Four perspectives about how best to involve the
public in watershed planning emerged. One emphasizes that
a good process is credible and legitimate and that it maintains
popular acceptance for outcomes. A second sees a good
process as one that produces technically competent outcomes.
A third focuses on the fairness of the process. A fourth per-
spective pays attention to educating people and promoting
constructive discourse. Differences among these views sug-
gest an important challenge for those responsible for design-
ing and carrying out public participation processes.
Conflicts may emerge about process designs because people
disagree about what is appropriate in specific contexts.
Keywords: public participation, Q methodology, water-
shed planning
Introduction
Policy makers and stakeholders widely accept that mem-
bers of the public should be involved in environmental plan-
ning, such as watershed planning (Creighton, Delli Priscoli
and Dunning 1998; National Research Council 1996; Fiorino
1990; Woolley, McGinnis and Herms 1998; Nature 2000;
Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000). Just how to involve them,
however, remains controversial. Researchers and practition-
ers have searched for principles that characterize “good” pub-
lic participation processes. It is a persistent issue for re-
searchers in Human Ecology.
1
Much of the literature seems
to assume that principles of good public participation are uni-
versally accepted and not contentious. Who would disagree
that a good process should be, for example, fair and compe-
tent (Renn, Webler and Wiedemann 1995)? Despite their
widespread appeal, fairness and competence may not be the
only features of a participatory process that matter to people.
Participants and planners often disagree about what consti-
tutes a good process. In other words, there may be no single
definition of a good process, either in the abstract or in con-
text-specific cases. Conflicts about how to best “do” public
participation create significant design obstacles for those
entrusted with decision-making authority in environmental
policy arenas.
In this paper, we report the results from our inquiry
about how active and experienced people in watershed plan-
ning think about the public’s role in producing a watershed
management action plan. We used Q methodology to learn
participants’ views. Four perspectives about good process
emerged. Differences among these perspectives highlight
different principles important in public participation process-
es. The results illustrate how people can disagree about the
best ways to conduct a participatory watershed planning
process. These disagreements have important implications
for the ways that planners can go about designing “good”
processes.
A Review of Public Participation
Theories and Approaches
“Public participation” means many things to many peo-
ple. In the past, the term was often used to refer to opportu-
nities for providing comments at public hearings, voting in
referenda, or being a member of a social movement. More
recently, “public participation” refers to a variety of proce-
Public Participation in Watershed Management Planning:
Views on Process from People in the Field
Thomas Webler
Antioch New England Graduate School, Keene, NH
Social and Environmental Research Institute, PO Box 253, Leverett, MA 01054-0253
USA
Seth Tuler
Social and Environmental Research Institute, Leverett, MA 01054-0253
George Perkins Marsh Institute, Clark University, Worcester, MA 01610
USA
dures for enabling diverse members of the public to be active
participants in deliberations about preferred policy options,
and in some cases decision-making. Procedures are used that
allow members of the public to have voice and influence. An
evolution away from technocratic-based environmental and
risk decision-making has emerged during the last twenty
years, as the belief grows stronger that many policy initiatives
fail when they follow ‘top-down’ or technocratic approaches
that attempt to separate assessment of technical information
from discussion of values and policy (National Research
Council 1983). Pressures arise from publics’ demands to be
included in more open, transparent processes, and from gov-
ernment agencies seeking legitimacy and credibility. These
pressures have occurred simultaneously with increased calls
generally for ‘civic discourse’ and openness in government
(Gutman and Thompson 1996).
These are reasons that address why public participation
in environmental and risk decision-making should occur.
They are forcing decision-makers to experiment with various
approaches to policy planning based on democratic princi-
ples: the question of “how.” The “social experiments” in-
clude, for example, the use of advisory boards, water quality
councils, informal roundtables, and “living room” meetings.
They have been implemented in a variety of policy domains,
ranging from the cleanup of nuclear weapons facilities to
ecosystem management, species and habitat restoration, and
the siting of hazardous facilities.
Knowledge from practitioners, lay people, and universi-
ty participant-observers has accumulated from these “social
experiments.” Research and practitioner oriented literatures
are rapidly growing with a variety of suggested procedures,
guidelines and evaluation criteria (Chess and Purcell 1999;
Creighton, Delli Priscoli and Dunning 1998; Kasperson
1986; Webler 1997; Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000; Rowe and
Frewer 2000; Carnes et al., 1998; McDaniels, Gregory and
Fields 1999; Daniels and Walker 1996). At the same time,
there has been growing attention to conceptual approaches
for understanding “best practices” for public participation
(Dietz and Stern 1998; Chess, Dietz and Shannon 1998;
National Research Council 1996; Shindler and Creek 1997;
Webler 1995).
For example, a stream of conceptual thought in the pub-
lic participation literature concerns issues of fairness, or pro-
cedural justice. Procedural justice is considered an important
element in people’s satisfaction with decisions, perceptions
of fairness, and support for authorities (Lind and Tyler 1988;
Thibaut and Walker 1978). A variety of criteria have been
proposed, including use of accurate information, representa-
tiveness, participation in decision-making, and suppression
of bias. Researchers have also concerned themselves with
relationships between procedural justice, distributive justice,
support for outcomes, trust, and other variables (Brockner
and Siegel 1996). The role of how people perceive the pro-
cedural fairness of public participation processes and envi-
ronmental decision-making forms a growing body of empiri-
cal research (Lauber and Knuth 1997; Smith and McDonough
2001; Renn, Webler and Kastenholz 1996).
Political theories of democracy have also been used to
identify fundamental principles for public participation. This
is represented by an earlier conceptual piece by Nelson
Rosenbaum (1978) as well as the more recent work of Daniel
Fiorino (1990) and Frank Laird (1993) — both of who de-
rived criteria from democratic theory and used these to eval-
uate generic techniques of participation. Fiorino based his
principles on a conception of participatory democracy, while
Laird added a parallel analysis based on liberal democratic
theory.
In 1996, a committee of the National Research Council
tackled the question of how to advise federal agencies to do
public participation (although it was initially asked to address
a different question). The approach developed by the com-
mittee was innovative. The report, Understanding Risk: In-
forming Decisions in a Democratic Society (National
Research Council 1996), developed the concepts of analysis
and deliberation and constructed a model of participatory
decision-making that sought to integrate the need for lay and
expert knowledge to inform a deliberative, adaptive, and iter-
ative policy-making process. Several scholars have taken
interest in the analytic-deliberative approach (Apostolakis
and Pickett 1998; Dietz and Stern 1998; Jasanoff 1996;
Webler and Tuler 1999; Chess, Dietz and Shannon 1998;
Bradbury 1998; Stern 1998). Two recent National Research
Council reports advocated more use of the analytic-delibera-
tive approach in issues of biodiversity (NRC 1999a) and
watershed planning (NRC 1999b). However, there has been
little development of the central ideas of this approach and no
attempt to link it to other theoretical understandings of pub-
lic participation.
Another stream of theoretical work relevant to the field
of public participation began with Jürgen Habermas’s theory
of universal pragmatics (1979) and his theory of communica-
tive action (1984, 1987). The work of Ortwin Renn (1992);
Thomas Dietz (1987); Judith Innes (1998); John Forester
(1993); Ray Kemp (1985); and Frank Fischer (1985) fall into
this category. In this vein, a theory of fair and competent cit-
izen participation has been advanced by Thomas Webler
(1995, Webler and Tuler 2000). The theory proposes a defi-
nition of “good” or “right” public participation. That is, it
proposes a normative theory of public participation in west-
ern developed democracies. Following Habermas, Webler
used the concepts of validity claims and their corresponding
modes of discourse together with the ideal speech situation
Webler and Tuler
30 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Webler and Tuler
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 31
and communicative competence to reason out criteria of a fair
and competent public participation process (Webler 1995, 81-
86). A key distinction was that Habermas defined compe-
tence in terms of individual capabilities while Webler defined
competence in a procedural sense — that is, the use of the
best available techniques for resolving validity claim disputes
(which are disputes about correctness, appropriateness, and
truthfulness of assertions). This theory has been invoked to
evaluate models of environmental decision-making (Renn,
Webler, and Wiedemann 1995). The theory was used more
recently by Coenen, Huitema, and O’Toole (1998) and Rowe
and Frewer (2000).
Closely associated with the theoretical literature on
public participation is a large literature on evaluating public
participation processes (Bradbury and Branch 1999; Carnes
et al. 1998; Chess and Purcell 1999; Rowe and Frewer 2000;
Shindler and Creek 1997). This literature occasionally draws
on theoretical literatures, but more often it is empirical. Its
purpose is to create criteria and measurable indicators to
evaluate the design or performance of participation process-
es.
Judith Bradbury, Kristi Branch, and their colleagues
have been making progress toward a theory of public partici-
pation through empirical evaluation research of chemical and
nuclear weapons policy issues (Bradbury et al. 1994,
Bradbury and Branch 1999). In their studies of chemical
weapons disposal they discovered that public acceptance of
policy rested on four central criteria, which they suggest a
public participation process should endeavor to meet: (1)
technical competence, (2) fair decision process, (3) account-
ability of decision-makers, and (4) trust and caring relation-
ship between agency and publics. In their studies of DOE
site-specific advisory boards they identified six factors that
contribute to effective processes: community context; board
composition; purpose, goals, and commitment to consensus;
internal process and functions; public engagement; and DOE
and regulator engagement.
In a recent effort to explore the universality of principles
for good participation, we studied a forest planning process
(Tuler and Webler 1999, Webler and Tuler 2000, Webler,
Tuler and Krueger 2001). We found five competing social
discourses about “good” policy processes (Webler, Tuler and
Krueger 2001). Discourses are shared, structured ways of
speaking, thinking, interpreting, and representing things in
the world, and they can have different degrees of stability.
Though there is a growing effort to study discourses about
environmental and risk issues (Dryzek 1997; Gamson 1989;
Satterfield 1996), much less attention has been given to dif-
ferent discourses about process. One perspective emphasized
that a good process acquires and maintains popular legitima-
cy through a consensual democratic process. A second saw a
good process as one that facilitates an ideological discussion
among a core of stakeholders. A third focused on the fairness
of the process, paying special attention to creating high qual-
ity democratic deliberation and to achieving participation by
all segments of society. A fourth perspective conceptualized
participatory processes as a power struggle. The fifth per-
spective highlighted the need for leadership and compromise
in combination with collecting insights and fostering deliber-
ation among a wide range of the public. A primary insight
from this study for theorists of public participation is that it
is inappropriate to expect that criteria will be universally
held. Many theories implicitly or explicitly assume such uni-
versality (e.g., Webler 1995). Another interesting result is
that different participants chose to emphasize different nor-
mative aspects of the process. Some focused on illegitimate
relations of power, some on the role of experts, others
focused on how outreach efforts were conducted. The study
reported here continues this line of inquiry in a different pol-
icy area using similar methods.
Methods
During a workshop for watershed planners and activists
from across Massachusetts, twenty-one individuals complet-
ed a Q sort exercise. The sort occurred just after the individ-
uals completed a constructivist educational module that en-
couraged the attendees to contemplate and critique different
scenarios for involving the public in watershed planning.
People reported that they enjoyed doing it. They mentioned
that it was innovative, fun, moderately difficult, and that it
stimulated their thinking.
Q method is especially suitable for this type of analysis.
It allows a respondent to express his or her own point of view
and preserves subjectively determined meanings during the
statistical analysis (Brown 1986; McKeown and Thomas
1988; Stephenson 1953). Unlike survey methods that ask a
respondent to express a view on isolated statements, in a Q
study individuals react to statements in the context of all
statements included in the study as each statement is ranked
in relation to the others. An “inverted” factor analysis is used
to identify patterns of relationships among statements and
across the individuals who participated in the study. The
analysis maintains an individual’s responses as a whole rather
than dismembering his or her responses according to various
traits. The researchers interpret factors to represent underly-
ing perspectives within the social discourse. The approach
has been around for over fifty years and its use in policy and
planning literature is expanding (Brown 1986; Dryzek 1996;
Focht and Lawler 2000; Woolley, McGinnis and Herms 1998;
Kalof 1998, 2000; Pelletier et al. 1999; Webler, Tuler and
Krueger 2001).
Statements for a Q study are constructed by the re-
searcher, lifted from publications, or extracted from inter-
views. For this study, we took statements that were used in a
previous project on public participation in forest policy mak-
ing (Webler, Tuler and Krueger 2001). The statements were
edited to ensure they were appropriate to this context.
2
It is
essential that the statements represent the full breadth of
opinions associated with the topic. At the same time, people
can be expected to sort only 4-5 dozen statements. Therefore,
each statement has to be chosen carefully.
The research literature on public participation clearly
demonstrates that context matters to how people define a
“good” process. The purpose of this study was to test how
multiple perspectives can exist in regard to a single process
rather than to test how perspectives vary across different con-
texts (although this is also an area in which additional
research would be of benefit). Thus, a hypothetical water-
shed planning case was used to frame the context of the Q
sorting exercise. A Watershed Community Council (WCC)
that was legally charged with the responsibility of producing
a watershed management action plan was described (Table
1). The condition of instruction was:
Imagine that you are designing a public participa-
tion process for the watershed described in the case
description. Sort the statements according to what
you believe should be the most important to least
important ideas guiding the design of the process.
MQMethod program was used to analyze the data.
3
To obtain
factors we used centroid extraction with judgmental rotation.
Any factor analysis requires a certain amount of judgment in
determining the relevant factors. Factors were selected based
on four criteria: (a) explanatory value was > 7%, (b) at least
two subjects loaded significantly, (c) the factor was theoreti-
cally important, and (d) inter-factor correlations were less
than 0.5.
4
To validate the interpretation of factors six individuals
who loaded highly on different factors were consulted. They
reviewed narrative descriptions of each factor and they com-
mented on the overall meaning and subtle wording in the nar-
ratives. Based on their comments we made small changes to
the factor narratives, which are presented in the next section.
Overall, people felt strongly that the narratives were satisfac-
tory descriptions of their thinking about this issue.
Results
Four factors were identified in the Q analysis. Table 2
presents the statements and their scores for each factor. A
factor corresponds to a particular arrangement of the state-
ments on the Q sort board. The numbers from “+5” to “-5”
represent the placement of each statement on the board,
where “+5” means most important and “-5” means least
important. The loading scores presented in Table 3 represent
loading coefficients that depict how closely an individual’s
sort matched each of the factors (where +100 means com-
plete agreement and -100 means complete disagreement).
Webler and Tuler
32 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Table 1. Hypothetical case description for the Beane River Basin.
Physical characteristics:
Drainage area: 602 square miles
River length (in Massachusetts): 37 miles
Tributaries: 4
Acres of ponds, lakes, and reservoirs: 3540
Hydrofacilities and dams: 4
State ownership: 15%, 3 large contiguous state forests, 2 state parks
Demographics:
Number of towns and cities in watershed: 20
Total year-round population: 159,000
Three cities have populations greater than 40,000
Summer population increases by 35,000
The watershed cuts across the cusp of a larger metropolitan area. Two of the
larger cities are suburbs of the metropolitan area. One of these cities is
economically depressed and has a Laotian immigrant community.
Economic:
Median income: $26,000
History of manufacturing industries, but importance declining
Employment by economic sector:
agriculture (crops and livestock) 2%
education (1 community college and 1 4-year college) 5%
government 10%
forest products industry, including 2 mills 12%
tourism (3 seasons; summer, fall, winter) 8%
non-tourist service 22%
self-employed 18%
manufacturing 7%
other 16%
Social:
• Growing conflicts in some towns between full-time residents and second
home-owners (e.g., taxes, services, congestion, land use practices).
• Participation rates at town meetings and volunteer civic activities have been
declining significantly for the last 6 years.
• There is little knowledge or appreciation for the environmental problems in
the watershed. There is high concern about social problems.
• There are numerous organizations and groups, including a watershed pro-
tection group. Many environmental groups are represented at the college
campus.
Ecology:
Endangered species: 3 MA listing, 1 Federal listing
• One endangered flowering plant that grows in habitat along one of the
tributaries. It is endangered by agricultural practices along a few miles
of the tributaries.
• Two amphibians are endangered as a result of water pollution in ponds
from faulty septic systems from poor second home construction.
• Depleted native fish stocks in rivers and many ponds and lakes are com-
mon due to water pollution, overfishing, and dams.
Webler and Tuler
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 33
Table 2. Q statements and factor arrays.
Statements Factors
The process should... ABCD
1 Allow people to talk with one another 1-4 0 2
2 Attempt to build trust and respect among the different participants. 0022
3 Be consistent in how information is evaluated. -2311
4 Be cost efficient. -2 -2 -3 0
5 Be designed so that all groups and individuals have equal status regardless of how affected they believe they are. 2 -4 -1 -1
6 Be designed so that if someone makes a compelling case for something it should change the course of the outcome. -4 0 5 -2
7 Be totally open at every single step. 4-3 4-4
8 Build credibility for the Watershed Community Council. 4 -4 -1 -2
9 Defuse future conflict which might prohibit future planning processes. -2 -2 -1 -4
10 Develop a spirit of cooperation. 3-1 3 1
11 Educate people about the range of issues confronting the watershed. 5423
12 Enable citizens to feel they are part of the project. 2131
13 Enable long-term collaboration. 4 0 -2 -2
14 Encourage participants to speak in professional, friendly, and courteous ways. -3 -1 2 -1
15 Engage participants with information so that they make more informed decisions. 2504
16 Ensure that all of the different view points are represented in the process. 0450
17 Ensure that all points of view have an equal opportunity to be expressed. 0342
18 Ensure that every decision made in the process is justified with evidence. -5 5 0 -1
19 Ensure that everyone involved has an equal chance to put his/her concerns on the agenda. -3 2 5 2
20 Ensure that local knowledge used in decision-making is critically evaluated. 0020
21 Ensure that opportunity isn’t an empty shell; there need to be opportunities to be heard but there also has
to be some way for the public to see that the decision-makers are listening. 0 3 -2 4
22 Ensure that there is peer review of expert knowledge used to make decisions. -2 -2 -5 0
23 Give land owners special representation. -5 -5 -5 -5
24 Guarantee full disclosure of information at all times. -1 -1 3 -5
25 Have a clear plan for public involvement. -1234
26 Have meetings at times and locations convenient for working people. 2123
27 Have skilled facilitators to keep a constant flow and to keep things on center. -1 1 -1 1
28 Have strictly enforced rules about what are acceptable behaviors at meetings. -5 -2 0 -5
29 Involve as many members of the general public as possible in all stages of the process. -1 2 4 -3
30 Involve mainly stakeholders and scientists in defining the problems and designing action plans. 0 -1 -4 -4
31 Involve the publics in deciding what technical information should be gathered and how it should be gathered. -1 -3 -4 -3
32 Leave people with a better understanding of each other’s languages, approaches, viewpoints, and so forth. -2 -4 -2 3
33 Limit topics that can be discussed to avoid quagmires. -4 -5 -4 -1
34 Not tilt toward any one interest group. 20-20
35 Overcome apathy by educating the general public about the problem. 1 -3 -4 -2
36 Produce an action plan that is politically feasible. 1 1 0 -1
37 Produce an action plan that is technically competent. 3 5 1 -3
38 Promote a constructive discussion about the problem. 0015
39 Promote a regional awareness and a regional sense of place. 5 -3 -1 1
40 Reach out in a number of different ways through different mechanisms to different communities on
different issue points throughout the process. 14-35
41 Rely mainly on consensus to make important decisions. -1 -1 -5 0
42 See the problem through the eyes of the public before drafting action plans. 3000
43 Seek approval from the publics for its action plan. 3 4 -2 -1
44 Seek out and value expert/scientific knowledge. 1 3 -3 3
45 Seek out and value local knowledge and experiences. 5205
46 Select Watershed Community Council members partly on the basis of their personalities and willingness
to work with others. -3 -2 -4 -2
47 Set up a situation that encourages people to listen and reflect on what they hear. 1114
48 Stick to the timetable and produce the goods on time. -4 -1 1 1
49 Strengthen democracy and rebuild people’s faith in government. -3 -5 1 -4
50 Substantiate its assumptions. -4 1 -2 -3
51 Treat the publics with respect. 4242
The names listed in Table 3 are pseudonyms. As the
reordered factor matrix in Table 3 shows, only one person did
not load significantly on any factor. Only one person loaded
on more than one factor. This is a very clean factor matrix
which suggests that people had well-formed and distinct
opinions about how the public should be involved in water-
shed planning. Now we turn to a description of each per-
spective. In the descriptions, the numbered statements from
Table 2 appear as numbers in parentheses.
Factor A: A good process is credible and legitimate
At the heart of this perspective lies a deep concern for
ensuring the process is widely seen as credible and legitimate
(8).
5
Policies are more implementable if they are popularly
accepted and only a credible and legitimate process can
acquire this level of support. In this perspective, a credible
and legitimate process validates itself through process fea-
tures such as being respectful to the publics (51) and open at
every step (7). It shows respect and an authentic willingness
to learn from the public by seeking out and valuing local
knowledge and experiences (45). And, the WCC should see
the problem through the eyes of the public before drafting the
action plan (42) and it should not be biased toward any one
group (5). This may take time and effort, and the process
should be flexible enough to meet these needs even if it
means abandoning the original timetable (48). Finally, the
WCC should seek public approval for the final action plan
(43) before it moves into the implementation stage.
In addition to these process design features, a good
process acquires public support for watershed planning
through education and outreach. Of foremost importance is
that people have an awareness of the watershed, its problems,
and the policies being implemented (11). Watershed plan-
ning is greatly furthered when publics have a sense of aware-
ness of the watershed (39) and a good process takes care to
establish this perception. According to this perspective, these
are two important ends that a good process should strive to
achieve.
An appropriate process is also one in which the official
decision-making authority does not shirk from its obliga-
tions. It is important to elicit public input, but it would be
irresponsible for the WCC to turn over the decision to the
parties who are participating in the process. In other words,
decision-makers should not give up control over the agenda
(19). Decision-making requires a good degree of judgment
and discretion. Consequently, decision-makers must reach
beyond the immediacy of the process in order to make deci-
sions that are socially and environmentally responsible for
the long-term. Compelling arguments from the public, for
example, only oblige the decision-makers to consider the
speaker’s point, not to react with specific decisions (6).
Moreover, it is not wise to require that every decision be jus-
tified with evidence (18) or that every assumption be sub-
stantiated (50). As one participant who loaded high on this
factor remarked, “Lack of data should not delay action on
very important problems.”
6
Sometimes, when the problems
are serious enough it is necessary to take action even though
data are not conclusive. Clearly, decisions cannot merely be
information-driven. They must involve a great amount of
judgment and consideration.
Factor B: A good process is competent and information-
driven
From this perspective, the role of quality information in
the process is central. The focus is on producing an action
plan that is technically competent (37). For this to happen,
not only does every decision need to be justified with evi-
dence (18), but also the process needs to engage its partici-
pants with information so that people are making better deci-
sions (15). This necessarily involves educating people about
the watershed and its problems (11). One way that a good
process engages people is by seeking out local knowledge
(45). Of course, scientific knowledge is also sought out (44)
Webler and Tuler
34 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Table 3. Reordered factor matrix.
Factors / Name A B C D
Factor A
Wigham .62 .60 -.90 .61
Stacy .61 .80 .30 .27
Clinton .61 -.70 .25 .80
Faurague .48 .80 .40 .37
Listof .48 .00 .10 .36
Jannson .46 .16 .15 .80
Hughes .43 .80 .50 .14
Factor B
Pickels .15 .67 .40 .20
Sontag .13 .67 .14 .31
Austin -.40 .48 .10 -.10
Reno -.28 .47 .38 .38
Minau .22 .49 .26 .21
Factor C
Kinsey .50 .18 .62 .00
Garcia .21 .70 .48 .16
Vaughan .41 .16 .42 .30
Factor D
Smith .15 .26 .19 .59
Christianson .18 .50 .14 .52
McGough .32 .39 .10 .46
West .90 .20 -.80 .45
Moore .21 .11 .12 .45
Non-loaders
Stern .29 .21 .15 .29
All highlighted numbers are significant at p < 0.001, two-tailed, critical value
= 0.429.
Webler and Tuler
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 35
and all information brought into consideration is evaluated in
consistent ways (3). Substantiating assumptions is also con-
sidered important; it was ranked higher on this factor than
any other (50).
Information cannot by itself, however, drive a decision.
Information needs to be interpreted by people. Competent
decisions are aided by democratic and fair processes. Thus,
it is critical for all people to have a fair and just opportunity
to participate and be heard (16, 17, 21, 19) and for the public
to endorse the final action plan (43). For all these reasons
there needs to be a clear plan for doing public participation
(25) which includes a substantial outreach effort (40) that
involves as many people as possible (29).
According to this perspective, the WCC needs to pay
utmost attention to how the publics inform and communicate
with the watershed planning project. Of lesser importance is
the communication that goes on among participants (1), the
consequences the experience has for people’s understandings
of each other (32), or the effects that this process has on
macro issues such as reinforcing values of civil society (49).
This factor differs strongly from Factor A in its de-emphasis
on public acceptability, as illustrated by its low rankings for
the credibility for the WCC (8) and promoting regional
awareness of the watershed (39). Instead, the emphasis is on
producing an action plan that is justified by evidence (18),
something Factor A ranked as least important.
Factor C: A good process fosters fair democratic
deliberation.
The two previous perspectives emphasized process legit-
imacy and competence. Factor C emphasizes the theme of
fair democratic deliberation. According to this view, fair
democratic deliberation is related to issues of power and
equity in the process. These issues are reflected in three of
the most highly ranked statements on this factor (16, 19, 6).
Accordingly, giving people representation in the process
(16), influence in agenda-setting (19), and influence over out-
comes (6) are all key to understanding the meaning of equal
power in this perspective.
As with the first perspective, the publics’sense that they
feel part of the project matters (12). However, the reason for
why this matters could not be more different. In Factor A, the
motivation for including the public was strategic — to gain
legitimacy so that policies will be implementable. Here, par-
ticipation should be meaningful because it is morally right to
give people affected by decisions a chance to participate in
shaping them. The publics should be involved in the process
(29), not just stakeholders (30).
In contrast to Factor B, the role of information and evi-
dence in the process is not emphasized (44, 45, 50). It is
striking to see that this factor gave the lowest ranking to the
idea of having peer review of expert knowledge drive deci-
sions (22). This reflects the intersection of two beliefs: a
resistance toward the idea of an elitist process and a de-
emphasis of the role information should play in the process.
According to this perspective, discussions that take place
inside the process are not primarily about information or sci-
entific reports. People are engaging in democratic delibera-
tion and strengthening democratic values (49).
7
Toward this
end, relating in a civil manner is important (51,14). Open-
ness is essential for this kind of talk to prosper. Therefore,
the process must be open at every single step (7) and it must
fully disclose all information at all times (24).
Despite the endorsement of a democratic approach this
perspective does not believe in turning the process over to the
public will. There is a strong resistance to relying on con-
sensus in decision-making (41) and to letting the publics par-
ticipate in defining what technical information is gathered
(31). Still, a compelling case made by someone should
change the course of the outcome (6). This represents a real-
istic view of how the public should be involved in watershed
planning. Supporters of this perspective know that consensus
can become an excuse for stalling. They clearly differentiate
the roles of the experts and the publics in the process. Still,
they argue that outcomes should be rational and based on the
best argumentation available.
Factor D: A good process emphasizes constructive
dialogue and education
More than any other, this perspective highlights the need
for decision-makers to pay attention to educating people and
creating constructive dialogue (38, 15, 11). Outreach is of
primary importance (40, 45). Interestingly, the number of
participants is a poor indicator for these conditions (29). In
other words, the goal of the outreach is to involve people who
really can participate meaningfully and constructively (38),
not to merely create large turnouts.
In the public participation process envisioned by this
perspective, the WCC listens and reflects on what is said
(47). Creating opportunities for people to speak is not
enough; they need to be heard by the decision-makers (21).
Yet, the decision-making power clearly resides with the WCC
and not the public according to this view. As with Factor A,
promoting quality interaction should not undermine the
authority of the decision-makers. The decision-making body
is presumed to retain responsibility and authority for the final
outcomes. Unlike factor C, just because someone makes a
compelling case for something the WCC is not obliged to
adopt it into the action plan (6). Furthermore, the final action
plan should not focus only on being technically competent
(37) or having substantiated assumptions (50). Both of these
items point to the need for leadership to be free to exercise
judgment in decision-making under uncertainty. Leaders
should not rely on public approval for the action plan (43).
This is a perspective that visualizes an enlightened lead-
ership that does its best to draw people into an informed con-
structive dialogue. It engages participants with information
(15), although the focus here is clearly on more than just
information. A quality experience is one in which talk is rich
with local knowledge and experiences (45) and people talk
with one another directly (1). Skilled facilitators can be use-
ful to move things along (27). The goal is a constructive dis-
cussion (38) which leaves people with better understandings
of each other’s viewpoints and about issues (32, 11) and
which builds trust and respect among the participants (2).
WCC decision-makers should focus on creating a rich
dialogue and not be dragged down by pie-in-the-sky goals
like fostering long-term collaboration (13), avoiding long-
term conflict (9), or strengthening civil society (49). While
these are not necessarily unimportant, they are simply less
important than fostering a learning, reflective deliberative
process.
According to this view, decision-makers have a respon-
sibility to listen to the public and take their concerns into
consideration. However, they ought not turn over responsi-
bility to those people who participate. Guaranteeing full dis-
closure of information (24) or having a process open at every
step (7) is not consistent with this goal. Furthermore, if the
quality of the interaction is excellent and the decision-makers
are listening then there would no need for the public to con-
firm that the decision-makers have acted appropriately (43).
It is also interesting to note that having strictly enforced
ground rules for behavior is not seen as the appropriate way
to realize the important principle of quality talk (28).
Consensus Items
We found consensus on several of the statements across
all factors. That landowners should not receive any special
representation in watershed management processes (23) was
strongly emphasized in all four factors. This violated some
peoples’ democratic principles of equity and was viewed as a
threat to the policy-making process. The idea that publics
should be involved in deciding what technical information to
be gathered (31) was ranked low in each of the factors.
Paradoxically, involving lay publics in designing the parame-
ters and direction for technical studies is strongly advocated
by the National Research Council in their recent report on
America’s watersheds (National Research Council 1999b).
Another point of consensus across factors was a low ranking
for the suggestion that WCC members be selected in part on
the basis of their personalities and willingness to work with
others (46). The people who participated in this research felt
that the process has to be able to accommodate all types of
people. Those implementing the process should not be selec-
tive about who participates. Finally, the lack of enthusiasm
for consensual based decision-making is worth noting (41).
Many public participation theorists and practitioners endorse
consensus because it is assumed to protect all interests equal-
ly. This population, however, focused more on the possibili-
ty that consensus would be misused for strategic ends at the
expense of protecting the environment.
Implications for Practice
This study relied on participants that were watershed
planners and activists in Massachusetts. Missing are the
points of view from many other stakeholders whose partici-
pation in watershed planning matters. Thus, caution is nec-
essary lest the results be over-interpreted. For example, we
expect that individuals with strong opinions about the protec-
tion of private property rights will have a different view about
what constitutes a good process. Similarly, other stakehold-
ers might believe that consensus is important in order to over-
come the possibility that decisions will be contested in court.
However, this study does capture perspectives from a wide
variety of individuals who are normally leading watershed
protection efforts in Massachusetts. The views of these peo-
ple are important to consider when designing a participatory
planning process.
What should organizers and participants of watershed
planning processes take from these results? First, experi-
enced and knowledgeable people in watershed planning have
different expectations about what a public participation
process should look like and what it should achieve. Clearly,
different people highlight different attributes of a public par-
ticipation process. For some, the process’s legitimacy and
ability to implement the plan it produces were paramount.
Others focused their attention on the role information plays in
informing the discussion and driving the outcomes. A third
group concentrated more on issues of fairness and equity.
They were aware that different people wield different
amounts of power and influence and that these amounts are
not always compatible with the degree of affectedness.
Finally, some people felt that it was most important to con-
sider the quality of the deliberative experience.
Second, the differences among these perspectives may
reflect differences in deeply held values. For example, the
motivation for including the public was a strategy to gain
legitimacy for the implementation of policies in Factor A. If
public involvement becomes a hindrance to gaining legitima-
cy, then involving the public may not continue to be a priori-
ty for those holding this perspective. However, in Factor C
participation was viewed as a moral right because people
affected by decisions should have a chance to shape them.
Webler and Tuler
36 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Webler and Tuler
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 37
The need for the public to be involved arises from a different
set of values about democracy. Similarly strong, and poten-
tially contentious, differences arise in regard to the role of
information and evidence in the process and the importance
of creating an informed public (through education and out-
reach). However, it is important to note that not every differ-
ence may be deep or irreconcilable.
Thus, our third point is that organizers of public partici-
pation processes should strive to understand the differences
and what underlies them. While some differences may pose
difficult challenges planners should strive to meet them.
They should seek to implement processes that are credible
and legitimate while also being technically competent, demo-
cratically fair, and experientially pleasing and efficacious.
Planners should not sacrifice one goal for another. If com-
promises are not possible because irresolvable differences do
exist, planners should know why and carefully consider the
implications of alternative process designs. The literature on
public participation suggests that a good process is adaptive
and responsive to the will of its participants. Planners should
take the time to inquire about what participants want the
process to achieve or manifest. They should not rely on
assumptions about what they think that participants want.
For example, while we found consensus against consensus
this belief might not be held in all cases.
Conclusions
A persistent problem for planners and activists involved
in watershed planning is how to construct a process that
meets the needs and goals of planners, affected stakeholders,
and the general public while producing implementable and
effective policy outcomes in a cost efficient manner. Recent
literature is full of advice for how to conduct a participatory
policy making process in environmental planning contexts.
Without challenging this advice, we suggest that conflicts can
emerge about the goals of a participatory planning process.
Our findings indicate that some may reflect differences in
deeply held beliefs and values. Moreover, the differences can
be used strategically (e.g., to disempower other participants
or raise questions about the legitimacy of a process that pro-
motes undesirable outcomes). If the conflicts over process go
unaddressed (e.g., about lack of adequate opportunities to
participate and the role of technical information in decision-
making) they can exacerbate existing tensions.
Some of the research and evaluation literature on public
participation focuses on identifying models or techniques for
public participation and evaluating how well these techniques
work for different decision arenas. This refers to the question
of how best to match method with purpose. The results from
this study suggest that the answer to this question will be
complicated by the existence of multiple perspectives about
“good” process within a particular decision-making arena.
Chess and Purcell (1999) argue, moreover, that methods (e.g.,
use of advisory boards, public hearings) are frequently adapt-
ed and that the way a method is applied may have a substan-
tial, even determining effect on the performance of the
process. Planners, then, have both challenges and opportuni-
ties as they seek to meet the needs of participants with dif-
ferent views about “good” process and as they seek to design
a process that meets shared needs.
An important question is the degree to which our results
in this study are dependent on the context of the watershed
planning process or are universally held. We asked people to
base their replies as if they were designing a process for the
hypothetical watershed outlined in Table 1. A cursory com-
parison of the results of this study with the earlier study of
forest planning suggests some important similarities and dif-
ferences among the discourses about process. A more sys-
tematic comparison of the discourses is beyond the scope of
this article. These two studies provide useful fodder for gen-
erating hypotheses for further work on developing theory of
public participation. For example, our understanding of pub-
lic participation will be furthered by more research that
uncovers perspectives about process both within specific pol-
icy domains and across policy domains. The ways that con-
textual features of a decision arena are related to beliefs about
process is also an important need for future research.
Endnotes
1. For example, the Human Ecology Review has been a forum for arti-
cles about public participation in a variety of policy arenas. A 1998
Forum on public participation in environmental decision-making
highlights many of the complexities of defining “good” process (see,
for example, Raffensperger 1998, Bradbury 1998, Chess et al. 1998,
Pritikin 1998, Stern 1998, Webler 1998).
2. In the forest project statements were extracted from interviews with
participants of the policy making process.
3. This program is available on the web at http://www.rz.unibw-
muenchen.de/~p41bsmk/qmethod/index.htm.
4. Interfactor correlations below 0.5 are considered acceptable in Q
studies. Our interfactor correlation matrix was:
BCD
A 0.2726 0.2196 0.4001
B 0.3392 0.4586
C 0.1836
5. Numbers in parentheses refer to statements listed in Table 2.
6. McGinnis and Woolley (2000) report finding this same result in their
recent study of watershed activists in California.
7. This statement ranked near the bottom for all other perspectives, but
ranked 19th for this factor.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Scott Jackson and Gisela Walker from
University of Massachusetts Extension and the twenty-one participants of
the workshop who took the time to complete the Q sort exercise. We also
thank the three anonymous reviewers whose comments helped improve this
article.
This material is in part based on work supported by the National
Science Foundation under grant number SBR 9613626, as well as funding
from University of Massachusetts Extension Service. Any opinions, find-
ings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are
those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the funders.
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Abstract
A theory of neighborhood civic activity is proposed, and
a telephone sample of 2,517 residents of the Philadelphia
metropolitan region gathered for the Pew Research Center
for the People and the Press was used to test the theory. Two
dimensions of neighborhood civic engagement were found,
one with government and the political process, and the sec-
ond with schools, hospitals, and other non-government orga-
nizations. Both forms of engagement were associated with a
family history of public involvement, a strong sense of per-
sonal efficacy, relatively high socioeconomic status, and
financial and long-term investments in the neighborhood.
Beyond those similarities, those that engaged in government-
related civic activities tended to be older, Black, cognizant of
crime and blight problems in their area and not trust govern-
ment and many people in their neighborhood. Non-govern-
mental civic activism was most strongly correlated with
younger women with strong religious ties who trust the peo-
ple with whom they interact. Implications of these observa-
tions for building a broader theory of civic engagement and
enhancing government policy are discussed.
Keywords: trust, neighborhoods, civic engagement,
social capital, efficacy, environment
The objective of this paper is to contribute toward build-
ing theory about people who volunteer in schools and hospi-
tals in their own neighborhoods, vote in local elections, call
the police, argue with elected officials, and are involved in
other civic activities in their neighborhoods without receiving
remuneration. Neighborhood activism is important because
of the continued deterioration of many neighborhoods and
the lack of a strong federal and state financial commitment
and policy direction, despite recent record levels of budgetary
surplus (Moynihan 1996; Rusk 1999; Keating and Krumholz
1999). Not only are youth and hospital patients neglected
when there is no civic participation, but also many neighbor-
hoods literally depend on activism for survival. Without local
civic engagement, some neighborhoods are attacked by
developers and turned into parking lots, sports complexes,
divided by highways and gentrified for more affluent people.
Others are neglected and deteriorate until they become ripe
for redevelopment (Keating and Krumholz 1999; Metzger
2000).
A theory to explain neighborhood civic activities begins
with a review of environmental activism, because factors that
drive people to protect the physical and social environments
of their neighborhood should be among the motivations for
people demonstrating about global warming, writing letters
in support of state programs to protect wetlands, and pressur-
ing the mayor to set up a city-wide recycling program.
Values are a cornerstone of these theories. For example,
Spring and Spring (1974) have argued that some religions are
much more supportive than others of protecting the physical
environment (see also Eckberg and Blocker 1996; Dietz,
Stern and Guagnano 1998). In other words, religious-based
values would lead some people to focus on protecting their
neighborhood. Douglas and Wildavsky (1982) classified cul-
tural views and proposed that those who fit into the “egalitar-
ian” group are most likely to support environmental protec-
tion (see also Dake 1991; Peters and Slovic 1995). Inglehart
(1977, 1995) argued that affluent and secure people have
“post-materialistic” values that emphasize quality of life and
self-expression rather than materialism (see also Dunlap and
Mertig 1997; Dietz, Stern and Guagnano 1998). These post-
materialistic people are the likely candidates to be social and
environmental activists.
Human Ecology Review published a paper by Stern et al.
(1999) that explicitly incorporates environmental and indi-
vidual characteristics, including psychological ones, into a
theory of environmental activism. The moral norm-activation
(MNA) theory focuses on social movements, such as civil
rights, environmental justice, and conservation (Schwartz
1973; 1977; Stern et al. 1999). The authors assert that peo-
ple who support environmental values, believe those values to
be threatened and perceive that they can take actions that will
make a difference are the people who act.
Research in Human Ecology
40 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
© Society for Human Ecology
Elements and Test of a Theory of Neighborhood Civic
Participation
Michael R. Greenberg
Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment
Bloustein School
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1958
USA
1
Greenberg
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 41
Despite the breadth of factors included in MNA, surveys
and case studies by this author show that MNA does not fit
easily with the reality of inner city neighborhoods. For
example, in one small sample of 102 residents living in a for-
mer public housing project (now demolished) and in others
done in economically stressed neighborhoods, I found that
altruistic values do not necessarily lead to action (Greenberg
1997, 1998). Some people who held the strongest values in
support of school lunch programs and protecting the streets
against crime did not act, whereas others who did not express
strong altruistic values did. The people who did act focused
on protecting their life savings and their family and neigh-
bors; they did not trust the school system or the police to pro-
tect their children, and expressed other concerns directly tied
to self-interest. In conversations with some of these people,
I often found altruism, but not at the surface and usually
based on family history; self-interest clearly dominated.
Also, compared to MNA, the theory presented here is heavi-
ly dependent on personal propensity to engage in many kinds
of activities, civic or otherwise. In other words, efficacious
and high-energy people are more likely to participate than are
those with the most altruistic of values but low energy and lit-
tle sense of efficacy. After describing the elements of a the-
ory of civic participation, a large data set collected for met-
ropolitan Philadelphia is used to test the theory.
A Theory of Neighborhood Civic Participation
I propose that family history, self-interest, and personal
efficacy are foundations of neighborhood civic participation.
I briefly sketch the theory, initially without referring to the
literature. This is done in order to avoid numerous breaks in
the presentation. After describing the theory, I review sup-
porting literature for it.
I postulate that neighborhood civic participation is kin-
dled long before adulthood. A parent, uncle, grandparent,
other family members, and very close family friends were
volunteers and hence served as participant role models.
These role models built civic activity as an important value.
Family history also is at least partly responsible for teaching
people how to perceive stress as an opportunity rather than as
a dread to be avoided. In addition, most leaders are more
educated and affluent than followers, feel that they can have
an effect on their surroundings, and tend to engage in many
different kinds of self-help activities. In other words, they are
confident that they can have an impact and have the energy
and time to engage. Family history is central to molding
these socioeconomic status and personality characteristics.
Motivation for neighborhood civic engagement is based
on self-interest. Those who are older, homeowners, and long-
term residents of the neighborhood have a critical vested
interest in the neighborhood. In a distressed inner city envi-
ronment, their motivation is fear that their investment in their
neighborhood, perhaps their safety, is threatened by crime
and physical decay. In a suburban setting, a proposed devel-
opment (e.g., mall, factory, highway) will be the motivating
threat. Threatened people, whatever their location, distrust
government and many of the people in their neighborhood
who they perceive as threatening their investment. As part of
this self-interest expectation, I postulate that older and more
educated African and Latino Americans will be dispropor-
tionately engaged with local government because dispropor-
tionately they are likely to be in neighborhoods stressed by
crime and physical decay and have an investment in those
neighborhoods. They are also likely to remember behaviors
by the local government that they perceive as incompetent
and/or hostile, and it is their lack of trust in government to
protect their interests that motivates them to monitor and
engage.
Volunteering to help in schools, hospitals, and other for
profit and not-for-profit organizations is, I believe, a different
form of neighborhood civic activism, although some highly
active people doubtless engage in government and volunteer
for other activities. In fact, I expect some overlap between
engaging with local government and volunteering as a coach,
part-time teacher, and for other neighborhood civic activities.
Like their counterparts involved with government, I propose
they will have a family history of activism, a high level of
activity in general, possess a strong personal efficacy, and
more likely be women than men. But if their investment in
their neighborhood is not threatened (in other words, they do
not need to engage with local government) then their stage in
life and family background will likely govern their activism.
Those with young children will be motivated toward schools,
sports, and other youth-oriented activities; and those who
belong to an active religious or non-religious institution will
volunteer to feed the homeless, help out in the local health
clinic, and engage in volunteers in ways that are consistent
with organizations they belong to.
People who do not engage in civic activity, I propose, are
markedly different from those who do. Those who are inac-
tive will have no family history of engagement, nor have a
sense that they can impact the neighborhood or be heavily
involved in self-improvement activities. They will not be
invested in the area. They are likely to be young, male, rent,
and be less aware of any local problems. In other words, they
have neither the family history, personality, nor current self-
interest and motivation to be involved in the local civic activ-
ities.
The literature supporting this theory ranges from a lim-
ited number of case histories to quantitative surveys of sam-
ple populations. Beginning with family history, the author
reviews each of the elements of the theory. In a country that
has a history of distrusting government, the U.S. prides itself
on local activism (Wills 1999). Some exceptional people
send letters to and call mayors, attend planning board meet-
ings, tutor children, and serve dinners to the homeless. For
example,Yvonne Carrington, a resident of a notorious public
housing project in Chester, Pennsylvania, became a grass-
roots leader after her daughter was killed a few feet from her
home by youths. Carrington coped with her grief by organiz-
ing the residents of her decaying housing project and winning
a lawsuit against U.S. HUD. Carrington took over manage-
ment of the housing project, raised funds to rebuild the hous-
ing project into what now looks like garden apartments, orga-
nized after-school activities, programs for the elderly, and
obtained funds to train local residents to safely remove
asbestos and engage in other building-related work. In addi-
tion, Carrington organized a food drive and with her neigh-
bors delivered food to the residents of a Southern communi-
ty who had been the victim of a flood (Greenberg 1999; see
also Stack 1974).
Other grassroots leaders interviewed as part of the same
research shared many of the same attributes, that is, they
almost always were introduced to the idea of civic service by
relatives who were heavily committed to community service.
In addition, nearly all of them had suffered traumatic events
in their early lives, such as death of a loved one, parental
divorce, other forms of irreconcilable separations; some were
told that they would never be qualified to be a doctor, lawyer
or some other high status occupation. They were motivated
and had developed strong coping skills. While not always
highly educated measured by years in school, these civic par-
ticipants were educated about the issues of importance to
them. Carrington had altruistic values but they were dormant
until a brutal tragedy occurred. She then seized upon neigh-
borhood activism as a way of protecting the rest of her fami-
ly and her neighbors, and respond to her anger.
With a few exceptions, most of the civic engagement lit-
erature about family history comes from studies of Presi-
dents, governors, mayors, and military commanders (Barber
1992; Burns 1978; Gardner 1995; Holli 1999; Jones 1989;
Halberstam 1969; Miller, Rein and Levitt 1990; Leavitt and
Saegert 1988; Freudenberg and Steinsapir 1991). These reit-
erate the importance of family history in building motivation
for service and a strong personality capable of coping with
stress.
Personality is a strong correlate of civic activity. Some
people are dispositional optimists, others are pessimists;
some have a sense of mastery and others feel helpless; some
cope with stress by reaching out to many people, including
their neighbors, others cope silently; and some want control
of their environment, while others do not. The reasons for
these personality traits are many and complex, relating both
to family history and to current place in life. Regarding the
theory suggested here, the most important evidence shows
that efficacious people tend to adopt personal protective
health habits, and also engage in activities to protect their
neighborhoods. They tend to rebound faster from surgery,
from alcoholism, and at the neighborhood scale try to get
local officials to help their neighborhoods more than do their
counterparts who are pessimists, and do not consider them-
selves to have much control over their environments
(Folkman and Lazarus 1988; Lazarus 1991; Pearlin et al.
1981; Scheier and Carver 1985; Greenberg 1997; Lin and
Peterson 1990; Furnham and Steele 1993; Stone and Neale
1984).
Regarding environmental conditions that precipitate
activism, people want good schools, nearby shopping, sound
and attractive housing, and other amenities. Even more
essential is that there be no crime and no physical decay
(Greenberg and Schneider 1996; Greenberg 1999; Clay and
Hollister 1983; Sanoff 1975; Gallagher 1993; Lewis,
Lowenthal and Tuan 1973; Ross and Mirowsky 1999).
People who are afraid to walk in the street and live in fear of
having their homes burglarized, or live near a decaying pol-
luted factory and at the same time feel efficacious are going
to be motivated to engage with government to stabilize and
improve the neighborhood.
The most uncertain evidence from the literature was
about demographic characteristics and trust. The preponder-
ance of people in leadership positions in the U.S. leaders are
older, white males who are highly educated and affluent
(Flynn, Slovic and Mertz 1994; Barber 1992; Burns 1978;
Gardner 1995; Hollis 1999; Jones 1989; Halberstam 1969).
But grassroots leadership and participation do not have the
same monetary and power rewards as business and elected
office (W. K. Kellogg 1999). Furthermore, African Ameri-
cans and Latino Americans disproportionately live in stressed
neighborhoods and will have the motivation to protect their
investment. Accordingly, as noted above in the theory
description, I expect neighborhood engagement with govern-
ment to disproportionately be among older people, African
and Latino Americans, and females, although survey data
generally show low government-related participation rates
among Latino Americans (Pew 1999a). In addition, educa-
tion may be measured by length of residence in the neigh-
borhood rather than in formal school-based education
(Leavitt and Saegert 1988).
Regarding trust and civic engagement, mistrust of
sources of authority has been receiving considerable attention
in the United States. Many Americans mistrust and are cyn-
ical about elected officials, attorneys, business leaders, and
even physicians, scientists, and educators who were once
Greenberg
42 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Greenberg
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 43
viewed as more trustworthy (Pew 1998, 1999b). Unfor-
tunately, during the last two decades, there has been no short-
age of highly publicized scandals, other ethical violations,
and environmental incidents, along with a perceived lack of
responsiveness of government and business to public inter-
ests, to engender mistrust (Miller, Rein and Levitt 1990;
Edelstein 1988; Flynn et al. 1992; Freudenberg and
Steinsapir 1991; Piller 1991).
Putnam (1996; 1998) has argued that people are less
engaged in civic activities than the previous generation and
those that are most engaged are trusting. Others have chal-
lenged his findings (Ladd 1996). Using the same data
employed in this study, Pew researchers (1999b) found an
inconsistent relationship of civic engagement and trust. They
concluded that a moderate degree of mistrust may engender
civic activity; that is, some people may mistrust but they do
not necessarily disengage, whereas others who mistrust lack
personal efficacy and do not engage. In this paper, these Pew
data are re-examined to test the proposed theory that family
history, self-interest, and efficacy are key elements that
explain neighborhood civic engagement.
Data and Methods
Study Area
Random digit dialing was used to obtain a data set from
residents of the City of Philadelphia and adjacent Bucks,
Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties, Pennsylvania
(Pew 1999b). The Philadelphia region is an excellent place
for such a study because of its demographic characteristics,
and economic diversity. More specifically, this theory of
neighborhood civic participation should be tested in a place
with many old neighborhoods, some of which are highly
stressed and some of which are quite affluent and have been
so for many years; in a place where the population character-
istics vary a great deal, including many different racial, eth-
nic groups, and many opportunities for participation in reli-
gious and other organizations that date back for many
decades and generations. The Philadelphia region certainly
fits these criteria along with Boston, Chicago, Cleveland,
Detroit, New York, and many of the large metropolitan areas
of the Northeast and Midwest. As noted in the discussion,
evaluations should also be done in the newer metropolitan
areas such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta, Miami, and
Houston.
The population of the five Philadelphia metropolitan
counties was estimated by the U.S. Bureau of the Census at
3.7 million in 1995. In 1994, the region as a whole was
ranked 29th in per capita income among metropolitan areas
in the U.S. in 1994. However, this overall affluence masks
places of substantial impoverishment within the City of
Philadelphia, adjacent Chester City, and several other loca-
tions in the region. The Philadelphia region also had more
than its share of political controversies. Recent ratings of the
best and worst mayors of large U.S. cities by academics and
other knowledgeable political people were done for the peri-
od 1820 to 1985 (Holli 1999). None of Philadelphia’s recent
mayors were near the top of the list. Frank Rizzo, mayor dur-
ing the period 1972-1980, was rated the worst mayor. Wilson
Goode, his successor, ranked 12th worst. Many of the respon-
dents to this survey were residents of Philadelphia during the
tenure of these controversial mayors. In short, it is reason-
able to expect that respondents might disproportionately rate
government in Philadelphia as less than trustworthy. In other
words, this study area is a good place to look for the expect-
ed association between government engagement and mistrust
by people who live in stressed neighborhoods.
Survey Questions
Pew’s survey instrument was developed after a confer-
ence of experts about social capital and trust and following
up on focus groups for questionnaire development (Pew
1999b). The instrument consisted of over 100 closed- and
open-ended items, and all the questions in this study are in
the above report. Pew was exploring many dimensions of the
relationship of citizen engagement and trust. The objectives
of this study led to the selection of 52 of the items from the
survey. Thirteen were used to measure civic activities. The
remaining 39 were used to construct indicators that relate to
the proposed theory: (1) 4 indicators of personal efficacy and
empowerment, (2) 8 demographic measures, (3) 6 measures
of neighborhood problems, (4) 8 activity indicators, (5) 10
indicators of trust, and (6) 3 family history measures.
Civic Engagement. The 13 indicators of engagement
include a broad spectrum of activities such as contacting an
elected official, voting in local elections, volunteering in
schools and hospitals, joining a recreational league, and 8
others (Table 1). Some questions asked about activity during
the last year and the others asked if the respondent had ever
engaged in the activity. The key is that the range is broad
enough to encompass what we would normally consider gov-
ernment-oriented and other forms of civic activity.
Efficacy. The four measures of efficacy asked if a respon-
dent had tried to get local government and neighbors to work
on a problem, and their perception of their effectiveness.
Demographic Characteristics. Given the expectation
about the importance of neighborhood investment and stand-
ing in the community, it was important to have data on age,
ethnicity/race, length of residence in the neighborhood, home
ownership, gender, education and income.
Neighborhood Problems. Regarding neighborhood envi-
ronmental conditions, the author chose six indicators. One
asked respondents to rate the quality of their neighborhood
on a five point scale (1 = excellent to 5 = poor). Respondents
are also asked to indicate whether crime and blight problems
exist in their neighborhood and if they feel safe.
Activities. The essence of the expectation is that those
who are heavily engaged in many activities will also be
engaged in civic ones. Hence, it was important to have reli-
gious attendance, participation in self-improvement through
continuing education and exercise. The availability of mea-
sures of television watching, and Internet and e-mail use were
valuable indicators of how people spend their time and inter-
act with one another.
Trust. Testing the theory required information about
trust in people and authority. Nine of the questions asked
respondents to indicate whether they feel that they can trust
others “a lot,” “some,” “only a little,” or “not at all.” A “don’t
know” option was also available. The tenth question asked if
people who come into contact with the respondent trust them.
Family History. Questions about family history of civic
engagement and family status at an early age allowed the
evaluation of the proposal that those early experiences would
influence civic engagement.
Results
Response
During the period November 13, 1996 to December 11,
1996, a total of over 10,000 phone numbers were obtained for
the survey. Sixty percent of the 10,078 were found not to be
eligible (30% were no longer in service or were business
numbers, 8% were not eligible to be surveyed, and no
response could be obtained from 22% after repeated con-
tacts). Of the 4,003 who were successfully contacted, 2,517
(63%) yielded completed interviews. The surveyors are 95%
confident that errors attributable to sampling is ± 2 percent-
age points.
Table 1 summarizes respondents’ participation rates.
Over 60 percent have joined or contributed money to an orga-
nization supporting a cause and almost always vote in local
elections. About 45 percent have attended a town meeting, a
public health or public affairs discussion, and have sent a let-
ter to an elected official. During the last year, about one-
fourth volunteered for a religious-related activity and volun-
teered for an organization that helps the needy. Less than 20
percent volunteered for activities that aid youth, the ill, the
environment and political organizations or candidates.
Question 1: Dimensions of Participation
Government engagement was more prevalent than non-
government. Regarding government engagement, 9 percent
of respondents participated in none of the six activities and
19 percent in only one. Forty-three percent engaged in two
or three, and 29 percent in four or more. In comparison, 37
percent of respondents had not engaged in any of the seven
non-government activities and 27 percent had participated in
one. Twenty-nine percent had engaged in two or three and
only 7 percent in four or more of the seven. The combination
of heavy government and non-government activity was rare.
Only 111 people (4.5%) were active in four or more govern-
ment and four or more non-government related civic activi-
ties. In contrast, 16 percent engaged in zero or only a single
activity.
The author had anticipated at least two different types of
civic participation. Depending on the method of analysis,
two to four dimensions were found. Factor analysis and
Cronbach’s Alpha statistics were used to assess these dimen-
sions. Table 2 shows the results of a varimax rotated factor
analysis of the 13 civic engagement dimensions. The first
factor (government and politics) shows that respondents who
participate in any one of the six government-engagement
activities often engage in many of them, such as contacting
an elected official (r = .689), attending town and other public
meetings (r = .658), voting in local elections (r = .609), join-
ing a group in favor of a cause (r = .488), volunteering for a
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44 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Table 1. Participation rates of respondents in the Philadelphia
metropolitan area.
Participation Rates (n = 2,517) %
Ever joined or contributed money to an organization
in support of a particular cause 66
Always or almost nearly always vote in elections for
mayor or council 60
Ever attended a town meeting, public hearing or public
affairs discussion group 47
Ever called or sent a letter to any elected official 44
During last year volunteered for any church or religious
group activity 27
During last year volunteered for any organization to help
the poor, elderly or homeless 22
Ever participated in organized recreational leagues, such as
softball or bowling leagues 21
During last year volunteered for any child or youth develop-
ment programs, such as day care centers, scouts or Little League 18
During last year volunteered for any school or tutoring program 16
During last year volunteered for any local government,
neighborhood, civic or community group, such as block
association or neighborhood watch 16
During last year volunteered for any hospital or health
organization, including those that fight particular diseases 11
During last year volunteered for any political organizations
or candidates 7
During last year volunteered for any environmental organization 5
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Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 45
political organization (r = .437), and volunteering for a local
government, neighborhood, or civic group activity (r = .407).
In other words, there is a clear government engagement
dimension. Cronbach’s Alpha was used to further estimate
the reliability of the six government engagement variables as
a single government encasement dimension. They demon-
strated good reliability as a single scale. Cronbach’s Alpha
for the six was .65, where ≥ .4 to < .6 is considered fair reli-
ability, ≥ .6 to < .8 is considered good reliability and ≥ .8 is
considered excellent.
The second, third and fourth factors focused on three
non-government civic engagement activities. The second of
four was youth-oriented, including volunteering for child or
youth development (r = .726), school or tutoring programs
(r = .525), and participating in organized recreational leagues
(r = .699). The third paired volunteering for a religious activ-
ity (r = .767) with helping the needy (r = .563). The fourth
grouped individuals who volunteered to support public health
(r = .729), environmental protection (r = .553), and any orga-
nization to help the needy (r = .495).
Further investigation with oblique factor analysis and the
Cronbach’s Alpha statistic showed that the seven non-gov-
ernment activities could be collapsed into a single dimension.
That is, the three non-government dimensions had slightly
correlated factors in the oblique rotation, and the seven non-
government civic engagements had a Cronbach’s Alpha of
.58, which is fair reliability. The cause of that lower reliabil-
ity among the non-government indicators was the low corre-
lations between those who during the last year participated in
activities that are youth oriented (organized recreational
leagues; tutoring; youth development) and those whose vol-
unteering tended to be oriented to needy populations (poor,
elderly, homeless, ill), and the environment. The average
correlation coefficient between the youth-related activities
and others was only r = 0.092 (all were statistically signifi-
cant at p < .01 primarily because of the large number of
respondents).
Question 2: Correlates of Neighborhood Civic
Engagement
Thirty-nine indicators about demography, activity, family
history, neighborhood problems, feelings of efficacy, and trust
produced 78 simple bivariate correlations with the two civic
engagement measures. The results showed many statistically
significant relationships. By chance, only four should have
been statistically significant (.05 x 39 x 2 = 3.9). Regarding
government engagement, 19 of the 39 were statistically sig-
nificant, and 19 of the 39 correlations with non-government
engagement were also statistically significant (p < .05).
Four methods were used to assess the results at the mul-
tivariate level. Each method has advantages and disadvan-
tages, which will be briefly reviewed in the context of the
data set. The simplest method is to test the entire model at
once, that is, put in all 39 variables. The advantage is that
every correlation can be studied. The disadvantage is that
many of the 39 variables in this data set are co-linear, which
Table 2. Factor analysis of respondent participation groupings.*
Type of Participation F1: F2: F3: F4:
Govt. & Youth Church- Help
politics oriented related people
outreach
Have ever called or sent a letter to any elected official .689
Have ever attended a town meeting, public hearing or public affairs discussion group .658
Always or nearly always vote in elections for mayor or council members .609
Joined or contributed money to an organization in support of a particular cause .488
During last year volunteered for any political organizations or candidates .437
During last year volunteered for any local government, neighborhood, civic or community group,
such as block association or neighborhood watch .407
During last year volunteered for any child or youth development programs, such as day care centers,
scouts or Little League .726
Have ever participated in organized recreational leagues, such as softball or bowling leagues .699
During last year volunteered for any school or tutoring program .525
During last year volunteered for any church or religious group activity .767
During last year volunteered for any organization to help the poor, elderly or homeless .563 .495
During last year volunteered for any hospital or health organization, including those that fight
particular diseases .729
During last year volunteered for any environmental organization .553
*The numbers in the table are correlation coefficients. The four factors accounted for 58% of the covariance.
means that a single equation with 39 variables is tedious, if
not infeasible, to assess and explain in a single paper. An
alternative used here was to enter together all of the variables
that are part of the same element group (e.g., efficacy, demo-
graphic, neighborhood problems, activity level of person,
trust level of person, and family history), and interpret the
results by group of characteristics.
Table 3 summarizes these results. Efficacy (multiple r =
0.469) and demographic characteristics (multiple r = 0.439)
are the strongest correlates of government engagement,
whereas activity level of person (multiple r = 0.411) and effi-
cacy of person (multiple r = 0.287) are the strongest corre-
lates of other forms of civic engagement.
A limitation of assessment by groups of variables rather
than by individual variable is that one obviously wants to
know the key variables from within each group. An efficient
way of identifying the most important indicators is through
stepwise regression. The advantage of stepwise regression is
that the strongest correlates are entered into the equation. The
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46 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Table 3. Correlates of two types of public engagement: All vari-
ables entered.*
Characteristic (number of variables) Government Other Civic
Engagement Engagement
Feelings of efficacy (8 variables) .469 .287
Demographic characteristics (8 variables) .439 .233
Neighborhood problems (6 variables) .249 .130
Activity level of person (8 variables) .283 .411
Trust level of person (10 variables) .052 .222
Family history (3 variables) .290 .210
All variable (39 variables) .636 .542
*Multiple r values shown.
Table 4. Multiple Stepwise Regression of Engagement and Correlates.
Characteristic Government Other Civic
Engagement Engagement
Standardized Beta Standardized Beta
Coefficients (rank) Coefficients (rank)
(Efficacy) Have tried to get local government to pay attention to something that concerned you .218*** (1) .092*** (6)
(Demographic) Respondent age, in years .254*** (2) - .079** (16)
(Demographic) Education completed .128*** (3) .090*** (10)
(Efficacy) People like you can have an impact on your community .109*** (4) .084*** (5)
(Family history) As a child someone in your family worked as a volunteer for a local organization or hospital .132*** (5) .108*** (3)
(Efficacy) Would take up problem directly with local government officials .120*** (6)
(Efficacy) Tried to get neighbors to work together to fix or improve neighborhood .100*** (7) .093*** (9)
(Demographic) Family income, in dollars .079*** (8) .047* (21)
(Activities) Attended a church or religious service during last year .070*** (9) .112*** (2)
(Activities) During last year took continuing or adult education classes .067*** (10) .103*** (4)
(Demographic) Length of residence in Philadelphia region .066*** (11)
(Activities) During last year exercised or worked out .069*** (12) .070*** (11)
(Family history) As a child, parents were divorced .056*** (13) .058** (14)
(Trust) Trust the federal government in Washington - .053** (14)
(Demographic) Respondent identifies as Black .055** (15)
(Trust) Trust people in the neighborhood - .046** (16)
(Activities) Use computer for e-mail and Internet .047** (17)
(Activities) Wishes could volunteer more .045** (18) - .064** (15)
(Demographic) Home owner .047* (19) .056** (17)
(Neighborhood Problems) Illegal drug use or drug dealing a neighborhood problem .044* (20)
(Neighborhood Problems) Neighborhood quality is high .071* (21)
(Neighborhood Problems) During last 12 months someone from the family has been a victim of a crime .036* (22)
(Neighborhood Problems) Run down or abandoned buildings and empty lots are neighborhood problem .042** (23) .062*** (19)
(Activities) Participated in a reading group, religious study group or other study group during the last year .229*** (1)
(Activities) During last year played cards or board games with a usual group of friends .085*** (8)
(Trust) Trust people in the same clubs or activities as you .083*** (7)
(Trust) Trust people in your church or place of worship .085*** (13)
(Trust) Trust people in immediate family .060** (18)
(Trust) Trust fire department in your area .041* (20)
(Demographic) Respondent is female .083*** (12)
***Statistically significant at p < .001
**Statistically significant at p < .01
*Statistically significant at p < .05
disadvantage is that sometimes the strongest correlates are
highly correlated with other variables (e.g., trust people in
family and trust people in clubs). With this caveat noted, the
stepwise results are summarized in Table 4.
The standardized beta coefficients for the statistically
significant (p < .05) indicators are presented along with the
order in which the correlate was brought into the statistical
model for the governmental engagement model. Standard-
ized beta coefficients are the result of multiplying the regres-
sion coefficients by the ratio of the standard deviation of the
independent variable to the standard deviation of the depen-
dent variable. This results in coefficients that indicate the rel-
ative importance of variables. Alternatives would have been
to provide the zero-order correlation coefficients, unstandard-
ized regression coefficients, and the partial correlation coef-
ficients. The author prefers the standardized coefficients be-
cause they allow direct comparison among all the indicators.
The specific variables contributing to the overall results
presented in Table 3 are clear in Table 4. Four of the first
eight strongest correlates of government engagement mea-
sure efficacy and three of the remaining four are demograph-
ic. The overall pattern is that those who engage with govern-
ment tend to have a strong personal sense of efficacy, they are
older and more educated and have higher incomes than their
counterparts who do not engage. Lastly, but quite notable, is
that they have a family history of volunteering in local orga-
nizations.
Four of the eight strongest correlates of non-government
civic engagement point to active people. They participate in
a reading group, religious study group or other study group,
attend a church or religious service, take continuing adult or
continuing education classes, and play cards or board games
with a usual group of friends. In other words, these people
are engaged in activities outside the home. Two of the
remaining four strongest variables measure efficacy. The
respondents feel like they can have an impact on their com-
munity, and have tried to get local government to pay atten-
tion to something that concerned them. Those engaged in
non-government civic engagement also trust people who are
part of their clubs and activities and they have a family histo-
ry of volunteering.
Overall, there are four indicators that are predictive of
both forms of civic engagement: feeling that they can have an
impact on their community, having the experience of trying
to get local government to pay attention to something that
concerned them, trying to get neighbors to work together, and
having a family history of volunteering.
Drawing from both Tables 3 and 4, neighborhood prob-
lems are more associated with government activism (multiple
r = .249) than non-governmental (multiple r = .130). Both
regressions identified run down or abandoned buildings and
empty lots as significant correlates of activity. But those who
engage in government-related civic activity are more dis-
tressed by illegal drug use and are more likely than the norm
to have had a family member been a crime victim in the
recent past. Notably, they also rate their neighborhoods as
high quality despite these problems, an observation consis-
tent with an optimistic personality. These results had been
anticipated with one exception. The author had not expected
engagement in non-government activities to be associated
with concern about neighborhood blight.
Activities are stronger correlates of the non-governmen-
tal activity (multiple r = .411) than the governmental (multi-
ple r = .283). The two strongest correlates of the propensity
to engage in non-governmental civic activities are having
participated in a reading group, religious or other study group
and having attended a church or religious service during the
last year. Activism was also associated with physical exer-
cise, and in the case of government engagement with using
the computer for e-mail and Internet. Notably, those engaged
in government-related civic activity wished they could volun-
teer more, their counterparts who engage in non-governmen-
tal civic activities do not wish to engage more. The direction
of the results had been expected, but the fact that the set of
activity variables were the strongest predictors of non-gov-
ernment-related activities was surprising. I had anticipated
efficacy and family history would be even stronger correlates.
As expected, trust indicators show a marked contrast
between the two types of engagement. Those who engage in
non-governmental activity trust people in the same clubs or
activities (B = .083), people in their church or place of wor-
ship (B =.085), people in their immediate family (B = .060)
and the local fire department (B = .041). Those who engage
in governmental-related activities are notable by their lack of
trust in people in their neighborhoods (B = - .046) and the
federal government in Washington, D.C. (B = -.053).
The last group of potential correlates was family history.
In both cases, those who engaged came from a family where
the parents disproportionately were divorced as children and
where the family had a history of civic engagement. In long
face-to-face interviews, the author had previously found that
a history of family distress seemed to be associated with later
civic engagement. The finding of an association of family
divorce with civic engagement in a sample of 2,500 people
elevates this to an association clearly deserving follow-up.
The limitations of the general linear and stepwise mod-
els led the author to try an approach that avoids co-linearity
problems. The 39 correlates were converted into uncorrelat-
ed dimensions with principal components analysis and the
component scores were used as variables in the analysis. In
addition, an advantage of this approach is that it can produce
components that are different from the analyst’s construct.
Greenberg
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 47
There are disadvantages. First, the new variables produced
are linear combinations of the original variables, which
means that each component can contain a great detail of sta-
tistical noise caused by the reality that every indicator plays
a role in the component score. In this case, this analysis
reduced the 39 variables to eight components that tended to
replicate the activities, family history, neighborhood prob-
lems, feelings of efficacy and trust dimensions, rather than
intertwine them. The only obvious exceptions were the
demographic characteristics. Length of residence and home
ownership were part of the feelings of efficacy component
that was found, and Black respondents were part of the dis-
tressed neighborhood component. In addition to not con-
tributing as much as had been expected, the components
obscured the role of some variables, most notably gender, and
so are not presented here.
The fourth statistical method was discriminant analysis.
The regression linear regression analyses showed that there
were some underlying variables that strongly contributed to
both forms of civic participation. Furthermore, the bivariate
correlation between government and non-government forms
of engagement was r = 0.319. Consequently, a test was made
to determine if there are strong patterns among both forms of
participation. Using cutoffs in participation, respondents
were grouped into four categories: (1) strong government and
strong non-government engagement, (2) little engagement in
either, (3) strong government and weak non-government
engagement, and (4) weak government and strong non-gov-
ernment engagement. The 39 correlates were used to deter-
mine which were the strongest discriminators among the four
engagement categories. Unfortunately, sensitivity analysis of
the results showed that the results were unstable. That is, the
definition of what constituted “strong” and “weak” engage-
ment substantially impacted the four categories and the over-
all results. Since the analysis did not produce stable results,
it is not presented.
Discussion
The three major findings of the empirical tests can be
summarized as follows:
1. There are at least two forms of neighborhood
activism, one is with government and the political process
and the second form of volunteering is with schools, hospi-
tals, and other non-government-related activities.
2. With regard to government-related actions, those who
engage tend to have a strong personal sense of efficacy, they
are older and more educated and have higher incomes than
their counterparts. Lastly, but quite notable, is that they have
a family history of volunteering in local organizations. They
are active people and do not trust people who live in the
neighborhood or officials who represent it, and they perceive
drug and blight problems in their neighborhoods. In other
words, they have the self-interest, the efficacy, the mistrust,
and the family background to deal with the considerable
stresses that go along with dealing with (often figuratively
and literally, battling) elected officials and civil service.
3. People who volunteer in hospitals, schools, and for
other forms of non-government civic activism are dispropor-
tionately active in and outside their neighborhood. They par-
ticipate in a reading group, religious study group or other
study groups, attend religious services, take continuing adult
or continuing education classes, and play cards or board
games with a usual group of friends. Two of the remaining
four strongest variables measure efficacy. The respondents
feel like they can have an impact on their community, and
have tried to get local government to pay attention to some-
thing that concerned them. Unlike their government-engaged
counterparts, those active in non-government civic activities
trust people who are part of their clubs and activities and they
have a family history of volunteering.
Before placing these findings in the context of the social
capital literature, it is essential that the limitations of the
study be reviewed. While this survey has the largest number
of subjects of any study known to the author focusing on the
correlates of civic engagement at the time it was made, the
data were collected just before the December 1996 winter
holidays. Snow et al. (1986) point out that people move
between passive support and activism. Would the results be
the same if the survey were done in 2001? Only a repeat sur-
vey can provide the answer. Second, the Philadelphia region
is large and populous, but Northeastern. Would these same
findings be made in a Southern, Midwestern, and Western
metropolitan region of the same or even greater size? Would
they be made in smaller cities, old industrial suburbs, and
new growing metropolises? I wonder for example, how fam-
ily history might be changed in a relatively new metropolis,
such as Las Vegas, where family identity with the region for
the overwhelming majority is short-lived. Philadelphia does
not have a large Latino or Asian American population, so not
much could be learned about these rapidly growing popula-
tions in this study. More studies across the spectrum of geo-
graphies represented in metropolitan regions are essential to
test and refine the theory presented here.
The author was offered these data because of his interest
in testing this theory. However, the survey data were not
ideal for a full test. In particular, the family history questions
were too few, and although they were significant predictors, I
view these family history results as teasers of the intricate
relationships of family history and current civic engagement.
Frankly, I doubt that a fully labeled, quantitative survey can
accurately disentangle the nuances of personality, family his-
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48 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
tory and activism. The findings of this research call for
ethnographic work to clarify these relationships. The efficacy
results were strong. Yet I would have been more satisfied had
some standard optimism and locus of control questions been
included. The results could then have been compared with
the considerable literature about personality in the public
health literature. Use of at least a few standard indicators of
health status is the best way of directly tying the massive per-
sonal health outcome literature to the much smaller neigh-
borhood health one. This author firmly believes that person-
al health protective activities are related to civic neighbor-
hood protecting activities, but that hypothesis awaits testing.
The survey would have benefited from more questions about
personal values that would have permitted a better assess-
ment of the association of environmental and social values.
Finally, I think self-interest and altruistic motivations lie
along a continuum, and I suspect the geographical scale of
the issue (ranging from global to block) is key in determining
whether self-interest or altruism dominate. An experiment to
test this expectation would be useful. Summarizing, despite
the large size of this survey, this data set has generalizability
and limitations because it was not designed to help test a pre-
conceived theory of neighborhood activism.
There is no mystery why a theory of local civic activity
is worth building. Civic activists build social capital. Social
capital is the stock of behaviors, interrelationships, and trust
that neighborhoods use to solve problems and improve neigh-
borhood quality by working with not-for-profit and for-prof-
it partners, and government (Putnam 1998; Galster, Metzger
and Waite 1999; Temkin and Rohe 1998; Sampson,
Raudenbush and Earls 1997; Nyden, Maly and Lukehart
1997; Keyes et al. 1996; Clay and Hollister 1983; Powell
1990; Shlay 1999).
Putnam (1998) presented four challenges for social cap-
ital theorists: (1) demonstrating the utility of the concept to
housing, environment, and other public policy areas; (2)
determining how social capital leads to improvement in
neighborhoods; (3) determining the different forms of social
capital (in this regard, he asserts that we have only a crude
comprehension of it); and (4) how social capital is built and
lost. This study contributes to the third and fourth of these
challenges. It shows at least two different and only slightly
correlated forms of civic engagement in the neighborhoods of
one of the largest regions in the U.S. and provides a theory
and empirical evidence to support major parts of the theory.
In addition, the theory suggested here links different research
disciplines, most notably anthropology, geography, public
health, social psychology, sociology, and urban planning.
The theory proposed here and the MNA theory offer an
opportunity for researchers to find the intersections of a con-
tinuum from self-interest to altruism, and from global to
block-scale concerns. Directing our collective critical eye
and analytical skills to explaining and boosting civic engage-
ment is not only a fascinating intellectual challenge but also
means a lot to all Americans who believe in stabilizing and
improving neighborhood quality.
Endnote
1. E-mail: mrg@rci.rutgers.edu
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professor Cliff Zukin of Rutgers University for
making these data available to me. I thank my colleagues Dona Schneider,
Frank Popper, Henry Mayer, and Karen Lowrie for their helpful comments
on an earlier draft of this manuscript. The observations, conclusions, and
interpretations are solely the responsibility of the author and should not in
any way be interpreted as representing the views of the Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press.
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Estação Ecológica is a Brazilian official term defining a
category of protected areas solely devoted to the preservation
of natural ecosystems. The goals of the Estação Ecológica
are to protect integrally 90% of the area, and to dispose 10%
to scientific, basic investigation and to environmental educa-
tion (Nogueira-Neto 1991; Por and Imperatriz-Fonseca
1984). Human settlement is not allowed inside this protected
area (Brito 1998), however, 120 Caiçara families live within
the Estação Ecológica de Juréia-Itatins. The government
decree creating the reserve stipulates that the entire area
should eventually be public (São Paulo 1995), and presently
less than 20% of the area under protection has been expro-
priated by the São Paulo State government.
The Atlantic Rain Forest was the first Brazilian ecosys-
tem to be settled by European colonists, just after the discov-
ery of Brazil (Mussolini 1980). Before 1500, the Atlantic
Rain Forest was continuously distributed along the Brazilian
coast from Rio Grande do Norte to Rio Grande do Sul States,
covering 1.1 millions km
2
(Capobianco and Lima 1997).
Presently, Atlantic Rain Forest is still found in only 8.8% of
its original area. Most remnant forested areas are under pres-
sure and are still destroyed at elevated rates (Dean 1996).
The development of Caiçara culture is closely tied to the
history of occupation of the Brazilian southeastern Atlantic
Rain Forest. From the contact between Atlantic Rain Forest
Indian and the European cultures (during expeditions to
seize Tupinambá Indians for slave labor) a new culture has
emerged. The first descendants from European, Indian, and
later, African populations, were called “mestizo” by Portu-
guese colonists (Mussolini 1980; Ribeiro 1995; Willems and
Mussolini 1966). The Caiçara culture has its origins in those
“mestizo” populations (Cunha 1998; Queiroz 1969).
Today, the Caiçara concept is linked to a social group
composed of people living close to the Rain Forest, with sub-
sistence strategies tied not only to ecological factors (Begossi
and Richerson 1992), but also to political-economic con-
straints (Marcílio 1986; Mussolini 1980). For instance, some
Abstract
This paper addresses the traditional resource use by
Caiçara communities, their means of subsistence and the
critical aspects related to their survival within a restrictive
protected area — the Estação Ecológica de Juréia-Itatins
(EEJI). This study is based on historical and social data and
its approach is ethnographic and ethnoecological. Caiçara
communities descend from the intermarriage of Portuguese
colonists, Indian populations and African slaves. Traditional
activities linked to the ecological calendars are analyzed
within economic and environmental policy contexts. The
response of Caiçara subsistence economy to external changes
is also appraised. The EEJI is located on the southeastern
coast of São Paulo State and is covered by the Atlantic Rain
Forest. This forest is a severely endangered tropical and sub-
tropical ecosystem, due to 500 years of demographic and
urban growth. Knowledge of the historical background and
the comprehension of the Caiçara resource and land use
practices should be integrated to policies of preservation of
the Atlantic Rain Forest and, particularly to EEJI manage-
ment plans.
Keywords: Caiçara, Atlantic Rain Forest, ethnoecology,
traditional communities, Juréia-Itatins
Introduction
This study was carried out on Caiçara communities liv-
ing in a protected area — the Estação Ecológica de Juréia-
Itatins (Juréia-Itatins Ecological Reserve, EEJI) — situated
on the southeastern coast of São Paulo State, Brazil. The
term Caiçara is commonly used to describe artisanal fisher-
men or agriculturists of mixed African, European and Native
South American descent (Diegues 1983; Mussolini 1980;
Ribeiro and Neto 1992), living within the Atlantic Rain
Forest ecosystem.
Research in Human Ecology
52 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
© Society for Human Ecology
Caiçara Communities of the Southeastern Coast of
São Paulo State (Brazil): Traditional Activities and
Conservation Policy for the Atlantic Rain Forest
Rosely Alvim Sanches
Departamento de Ecologia- IB/Universidade de Sao Paulo
C.P. 11461, CEP: 05422-970
Sao Paulo, SP
Brazil
1
Adams (1998) shows that from the 30s to the 60s most of
the research about Caiçara were sociological and social an-
thropological. Human ecology research on Caiçara grew only
after the 80s, motivated by political debates and conflicts.
Some of these studies revealed the rational aspects of natural
resource use by Caiçara, through incorporation of microeco-
nomic models (Begossi 1992, 1993, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c).
The relationship between Caiçara and the Atlantic Rain
Forest ecosystem will always be complex. First, since colo-
nial times, increasing exploitation and human settlement have
destroyed the Atlantic Rain Forest. Second, despite the main-
tenance of their traditions, Caiçara have always been part of
a broader economic scenario (Vale do Ribeira). While the
validity of the first argument is well established, the second
one is supported by this study. Final considerations deal with
cultural and environmental issues for the conservation of the
Atlantic Rain Forest.
Methods
Study Area
The Estação Ecológica de Juréia-Itatins (EEJI) is locat-
ed on the southern coast of São Paulo State (24˚30’S,
47˚15’W) on Vale do Ribeira region. It has an area of 798.30
km
2
comprising Iguape, Peruíbe, Itariri and Miracatu munic-
ipalities (Figure 1). The Estação Ecológica da Juréia was
created in 1980 by the federal government to produce a buffer
zone for a planned nuclear power plant (that has never been
built), embracing 230.00 km
2
of flood plain areas (Nogueira-
Neto 1991). In 1986, after strong lobbying by environmental-
ists, those areas and the Itatins Mountains were incorporated
into the Estação Ecológica de Juréia-Itatins.
The EEJI encompasses a portion of the Atlantic Rain
Forest ecosystem enclosed between two mountainous massifs
(Catharino and Olaio 1990; Martuscelli et al. 1994): the Serra
da Juréia on the southern coast, reaching altitudes of 800m,
and the Serra dos Itatins, where the highest peak reaches
1,350 m. These massifs are separated by 40 km of lowland
(Por 1986; Por and Imperatriz-Fonseca 1984). An association
of sand dune, mangroves, swamp forest, slope forest, and
mountain top vegetation formations characterizes the Atlantic
Rain Forest. Together they form an ecological continuum of
great importance to the maintenance of this ecosystem equi-
librium (Rizzini 1979; Viana 1995).
Almost 50% (364.00 km
2
) of EEJI area is covered by the
flood plain of the Una do Prelado River. This river belongs
to Ribeira de Iguape Basin, considered the last remaining
area covered by swamp forest in São Paulo State (Por 1996).
The coastal flood plain areas have been the most strongly
affected habitat by human occupation, since the first settle-
ments 8,000 years ago (Dean 1996).
Sanches
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 53
of their main activities, such as shifting cultivation or swid-
den agriculture, are an Indian heritage representing adap-
tations to household mobility and a subsistence economy
(Candido 1964).
This broad characterization reflects a great social diver-
sity on a regional level and, as is, it could include other tra-
ditional communities in Brazil. However, the term Caiçara
has been strictly employed to describe coastal communities
of São Paulo State and Lower Vale do Ribeira region (Brito
and Vianna 1992; Diegues 1983), while inland inhabitants
are referred to as Caipira (Cândido 1964; Queiroz 1983).
Additionally, both Caiçara and Caipira peoples are also gen-
erally designated as “peasants” or “traditional populations”
(Adams 1998; Martins 1981; Queiroz 1973; Wolf 1970).
Caiçara communities in EEJI are herein referred to as a
defined social group whose related families live close togeth-
er in household units, a central element of the social organi-
zation system (cf., Candido 1964; Mussolini 1980). Other
attributes that characterize Caiçara are: 1) kinship or com-
padrio cooperation (cf. Moran 1974, 142) in economic activ-
ities; 2) slash and burn agriculture or shifting cultivation
(coivara) as the main subsistence activity; 3) unlike Indian
communities, the influence of regional political-economical
context and the external trade in the Caiçara social dynamic
and subsistence systems (Begossi 1997a, 1997b, 1997c).
The São Paulo State government has considered the
Caiçara population within EEJI as “traditional” (São Paulo
1991). This term refers to those inhabitants with social and
historical ties to the region, who depend mainly on the use of
the ecosystem as means of subsistence (Orlove and Brush
1996; Vianna 1996). It is employed politically to mean that
human presence is compatible with preservation goals
(Vianna 1996).
In Brazil, there is the tendency to dichotomize discus-
sions (Adams 1998, 299) on permanence and the compatibil-
ity of traditional inhabitants’ activities with conservation
goals of protected areas (cf., Diegues 1994; Hogan 1995;
Oldfield and Alcorn 1987). In the case of EEJI, the contro-
versial issue concerns Caiçara practices such as hunting,
slash and burn agriculture and artisanal fishing. Hunting, for
instance, has been considered incompatible with restricted
protected areas (e.g., Peres 1994; Redford 1993; Redford and
Robinson 1987), particularly in the Atlantic Forest
(Martuscelli et al. 1994). On the other hand, the Caiçara’s
presumed knowledge of and balanced relationship with the
Atlantic Rain Forest have both been used as an argument for
legalizing settlements of these traditional populations within
restrictive protected areas (Diegues 1994; Orlove and Brush
1996). However, empirical evidence of the way Caiçara sub-
sistence strategies affect the Atlantic Rain Forest is still
scarce (Adams 1998).
Compared to the immediate past, when only native
Indians inhabited the Atlantic Rain Forest, an intense destruc-
tion took place in a short period of time after European colo-
nization. In São Paulo State, great deforestation took place in
favor of cattle ranching, coffee plantations and immigrants’
settlements (Capobianco and Lima 1997; Martins 1981).
The Atlantic Rain Forest ecosystem is considered a hot
spot for biodiversity conservation (Primack 1995; Hanazaki
et al.1996) and local extinction is documented (Brooks and
Balmford 1996). In São Paulo State, the remnant natural
areas (almost 17,000 km
2
) represent only 5% of the original
forest cover (Brasil 1996; Capobianco and Lima 1997; SOS
Mata Atlântica and INPE 1993). Nowadays, the largest tracts
of relatively undisturbed habitat are found along the Serra do
Mar slopes on Vale do Ribeira region, where the EEJI is
located.
Until 1992, there were approximately 1207 people (365
families) living inside the EEJI. Out of these, policy makers
classified 120 Caiçara families as “traditional inhabitants”
(São Paulo 1991). It is on the Una do Prelado flood plain
areas that most of the Caiçara people are distributed in fam-
ily units. Population densities in those areas reach 0.32
inhabitants per km
2
, forming small aggregations known as
“communities” or “bairros”. Figure 1 shows localization of
these communities, where Despraiado and Vila Barra do Una
include other non-traditional families. These came from other
areas of the country and were not
included in this study.
“Communities” or “bairros”are
usually employed by policy makers
as designations for artificial social
aggregations, in order to identify
those groupings. However, Caiçara
recognize themselves as belonging
to apovoados (small communities)
when they refer to their past history
of social and geographical organiza-
tion. Thus, both communities and
apovoados are terms herein consid-
ered synonyms.
Data Collection
This paper is based on historical
and social data collected between
1989 and 1996, using an ethnograph-
ic and ethnoecological approach. I
investigated changes in subsistence
activities under different economic
and historical contexts. The analysis
is derived from information recorded
from Caiçara informants, some of
them still living in EEJI, and from direct observations.
Historical data were obtained from oral tradition and,
when possible, compared to official documents and publica-
tions. This method allowed me to reconstruct the history of
current inhabitants’ predecessors and the historic and eco-
nomic past of Vale do Ribeira. Caiçara recognize five major
historical milestones (as presented in Table I). However,
memory should always be considered selective, and the infor-
mant establishes his or her own shortcuts (Cunha and
Rougeulle 1989; Peoples and Bailey 1988; Vansina 1985).
The examination of official documents provided a chronolog-
ical sequence for the facts reported by informants.
I assessed the Caiçara pattern of social organization
through interviews and direct observation. The ethnoecologi-
cal data consisted of descriptive records of animal and plant
species names and of main labor tasks, such as farming, gath-
ering, hunting and fishing, with respect to the ecological cal-
endars.
After interviewing dozens of Caiçara, I selected twenty-
one individuals as key informants. Then I conducted semi-
structured, formal and informal interviews, through open-
ended questions, followed by participant observation and
sometimes by group interviews. I also accompanied infor-
mants on some of their forest incursions, whenever possible.
The selection of key informants and the accuracy of ethno-
graphic data based on oral traditions are based on the meth-
Sanches
54 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Figure 1. EEJI localization and Caiçara communities. Praia da Juréia (1), Rio Verde (2), Praia do Una
(3), Vila Barra do Una (4), Parnapuã and Praia Brava (5), Guarauzinho (6), Rio Comprido (7), Cachoeira
do Guilherme (8), Aguapeú (9), Rio das Pedras (10) and Despraiado (11). Some old settlements: Vila
Cachoeira do Guilherme (a), Pogoçá (b), Descalvado (c), Palhal and Pimenteira (d).
odologies of Bernard et al. (1984), Goward (1984), Holy
(1984), and Vansina (1985).
The ethnoecological interviews and surveys were con-
ducted under the assumption that a system of cognitive cate-
gories reflects a shared folk culture of utilitarian behavior
(Madi and Begossi 1997; Netting et al. 1995, 56; Paz and
Begossi 1996). This approach has been criticized as an over-
simplification of the folk system (Hunn 1982; Toledo 1992).
However, I decided to employ it in this research because it
was never my intention to go beyond the understanding of
ecological resource and land use by the Caiçara. Here I
emphasize the analysis on Caiçara representation of nature in
relation to their subsistence needs (c.f., Ellen 1989) and some
conflictive points to conservation goals.
Results and Discussion
Caiçara Culture and Origins of the Juréia-Itatins
Settlement
Some events — like historic, politic and social mile-
stones — have great influence on the different strategies
adopted by the Caiçara, as summarized in Table 1. This table
provides a chronological framework to position practices,
social organization and their changes. These events are relat-
ed to the past of the Vale do Ribeira, where Juréia history is
embedded.
The Caiçara origins in EEJI date back to the 16th cen-
tury, when Ribeira de Iguape River became the main route for
inland incursions aimed at the recruitment of Indian work-
men, especially for gold mining activities. Iguape was one of
the first villages founded along the Brazilian coast at this
time, soon becoming a very rich village through gold mining
activities and later through the advent of rice trade (Petrone
1966; Teleginski 1993).
The Iguape port was the central place through which
products were bought in bulk and sent to Santos and Rio de
Janeiro to be exported to Europe. Between the 17th and 18th
centuries, colonists seeking gold and other precious metals
are believed to have explored the coastal plain forest of EEJI.
During the first half of the 19th century, it also became attrac-
tive to settlement because of the suitability of lands for rice
culture and facility for goods transport through the Una do
Prelado (or Comprido) River. Remnants of this period can be
seen in the ruins of old rice mills, formerly operated through
slave labor, which are numerous in EEJI.
Before the late 19th century, dispersed settlements are
believed to have begun along the Serra dos Itatins valley, and
chiefly on the Una do Prelado flood plain. During the “Time
of the Ancients,” those settlements were initiated by single
nuclear families, through forest clearing areas known today
as Palhal, Pimenteira, Descalvado and Pogoçá (Figure 1).
The flood plain has allowed short-term subsistence crops
such as manioc, beans, maize, and rice farming. With the
intensification of rice farming to supply Iguape regional mar-
ket, the flood plain areas attracted more families. Income
resulting from agricultural surplus allowed exchange, mainly
to obtain salt, sugar, coffee, kerosene, and clothes (Candido
1964; Marcilio 1986; Willems and Mussolini 1966).
Most Juréia inhabitants’ predecessors were born in
Juréia region or came from bordering localities; thus, all 120
Caiçara families are indigenous to Vale do Ribeira. The first
apovoados in Juréia were initially based on one main family.
They were composed of relatives, living in different areas,
presently known as communities or bairros — Praia da
Juréia, Praia do Rio Verde, Praia do Una, Vila Barra do Una,
Praia do Parnapuã, Praia Brava, Guarauzinho, Rio Comprido
(or Rio Una do Prelado), Cachoeira do Guilherme, Aguapeú,
Rio das Pedras and Despraiado (Figure 1). As can be seen in
Table 1, the changes in the politics and in the regional econ-
omy have greatly influenced the community dynamics
(mobility of households, decrease in land access, individual-
ization of activities and interests, etc.) and subsistence activ-
ities based on ecological calendars (prohibition and restric-
tion on hunting, farming and fishing).
Social Organization and Land Tenure
The old apovoados, presently known as communities or
bairros, consisted of several related households linked by
kinship relations. The central core of the apovoados’ organi-
zation was the household, which was characterized by the
nuclear family (the parents and their children) or the extend-
ed family. Within these apovoados, social relationship took
place at the neighborhood level, where households were clus-
tered. Higher social organization levels occurred between
apovoados, and between these and the external environment.
These relationships took place through goods-sharing, agri-
cultural mutirões and exchange among relatives, and also
during religious and local festivals. In the past, the apovoad-
os relationship with the external environment was based on
the sale of agricultural surplus.
Because of the high land availability and the surplus of
rice farming, the practice of agricultural mutirões was very
common until the beginning of 20th century (Table 1).
Mutirão is a large-scale mutual help organization, where all
“neighbors” participate, and it is one of the most expressive
social activities in Caiçara culture (Willems and Mussolini
1966, 59). It comprises group activities for cutting, cleaning
and cropping, associated with local festivals like fandango. It
allows intensive relationship within and between households
and communities, through which information exchange and
marriages occur (Marcílio 1986; Mendonca et al. 1993;
Mourão 1971; Mussolini 1980).
Sanches
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 55
Figure 2 summarizes social relationships, showing a
general model for the EEJI Caiçara communities (Figure 2a).
One illustrative example is that of Cachoeira do Guilherme
community (Figure 2b), where most social and ritual events
used to occur.
2
Until 1995, there were 11 families inhabiting
it. Some of its members, represented in Figure 2b by differ-
ent circle patterns, originated from other communities such
as Aguapeú, Rio Comprido, and Praia do Una. These com-
munities still maintain strong connections today. Despite liv-
ing in different and distant areas, families move for partici-
pation on local festivities, religious commemorations, mar-
riages or agricultural mutirões. Nevertheless, despite the fact
that the entire regional Caiçara population is encompassed
within EEJI limits, the boundary of social and economic rela-
tionships go beyond them and also comprehend broader net-
works than the ones that can be initially assessed.
The main household characteristics are autonomy
(Candido 1964) and production returned to the subsistence of
the family (Wolf 1970). If the land is available and population
density is low, autonomy allows familiar units mobility and
under this condition shifting cultivation takes place (Netting
1993). This means that the household can migrate to any
available area, as far from its original place as possible, with-
out abandoning it completely or losing contact with neigh-
boring households. Such mobility has also evolved histori-
cally as a response to market demands (Netting 1993) and
conservation policies.
In EEJI, no traditional family owns the land, as has been
reported for other Caiçara communities (Marcilio 1986;
Willems and Mussolini 1966). About 70% of the traditional
inhabitants are squatters, or posseiros, born in the area or
having lived there for a long time, but not possessing legal
ownership. The remaining 30% are caretakers,
or caseiros, who live in the area but work for
another posseiro or for a legal owner (São
Paulo 1991; Sanches 1997).
This land tenure condition can be better
understood considering Caiçara history. At a
time defined as the “Time of the Ancients”
(Table 1), the virgin forest belonged to no one,
and all subsistence activities (farming, hunting,
fishing) were practiced concomitantly. Because
resources and land were easily available in the
past, it was possible for them to explore the
environment, as well as to move across differ-
ent open areas. This is supported by Candido’s
(1964) and Netting’s (1993) discussion about
household mobility.
This way of life changed in response to
five events: a) the end of rice trade in Iguape at
the end of the 19th century, b) the emergence of
palm heart (palmito, Euterpe edulis) and the
timber called caxeta (Tabebuia cassinoides)
exploitation since 1950 in the Vale do Ribeira
region, c) increasing land speculation from the
1970’s on, d) the threat of the construction of a
nuclear power-plant, and e) the creation of EEJI
in 1986.
One of the main consequences of these
changes, summarized in Table 1, was on land
use. From the end of the 19th century on, land
purchase and appropriation by large landown-
ers took place in Vale do Ribeira. There was a
decrease of land availability for farming and
crop rotation, and no more surplus seeds were
produced for sale. In EEJI, there was an
increase of Caiçara population, caused by the
Sanches
56 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Figure 2. Spatial model of the Caiçara social organization (a), focusing on the social network
between Cachoeira do Guilherme and three other communities (b). a) In the center of this sys-
tem is the household (H) and the network is represented by the ring-shaped line. The house-
hold can be also related to others forming the “neighborhood”. All of them form the apovoa-
do or community. b) Each household is herein represented by the parents (e.g., OO). The larg-
er household represents the head-leader. Each pattern of circle is associated with the origin of
the members from Cachoeira do Guilherme community. They are Aguapéu, Rio Comprido,
and Praia do Una, respectively represented by gray, black and striped circles. The relationships
occur within (overlapping circles) and out EEJI limits (dotted line).
displacement of settlers from bordering localities. Families of
relatives from old apovoados, which were living in these
localities, migrated mainly to Una do Prelado flood plain.
Since the 1950’s, in the “Caxeta and Palmito industry”
period, private enterprises (such as the Johann Faber pencil
industry) bought large areas on Una do Prelado River flood
Sanches
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 57
Table 1. Changes in subsistence activities, and social and economical related issues through time in Caiçara communities of EEJI, Sao
Paulo State, Brazil.
Events Time of the Caxeta and Speculation on NUCLEBRAS EEJI
Ancients Palmito industry property 1980-1986 1987
Activities and ? - 1930/1940 1950-1970 development
general issues 1970-1980
land tenure no no no no no
land high low and low and low and low and
availability expropriation expropriation expropriation threat expropriation threat
threat threat
Resources yes less less less less
availability
land conflicts start high high high related to legal
permanence
settlement first nuclear more dispersed dispersed dispersed or
family units concentrated communities smaller
and than before; low
dispersed; densities
small
communities
or apovoados
social household isolated isolated isolated household household; the
organization + household household apovoados are called
apovoados “community” or
“bairro”
household yes less intense; yes some leave the area; some leave the area;
mobility sometimes only some return to it some return to it
men leaving
social intense incipient household tense relationships; tense relationships;
relationships interrelation; relationships dependent on hierarchies created hierarchies created
household, new land owner due to the hiring due to the hiring
neighbors and acquisition of some acquisition of some
apovoados persons as forest persons as forest
rangers rangers
hunting yes yes yes yes but prohibited yes but prohibited
fishing artisan; artisan; artisan; artisan; artisan, but limited
semi- semi-industrial semi-industrial semi-industries and
industrial in and industrial in and industrial in industrial in other
other regions other regions other regions regions
slash and burn yes partially partially yes but limited by yes but limited by
agriculture abandoned abandoned law law
fallow periods yes decrease decrease decrease decrease
mutirão yes temporary resumed but reduced or reduced or
abandonment limited interrupted interrupted
agricultural yes; sold and less than before less than before reduced none
surplus exchanged on and exhanged and exchanged
regional within within
market community level community level
ecological yes yes ? only for agriculture, only for agriculture,
calendars exploitation and exploitation and
fishing fishing
plain to exploit those
plant species. Caiçara
families began to work
for these companies,
abandoning agriculture
for about 20 years, due
to the intensive activity
related to cutting and
transportation of palmi-
to and caxeta. Since the
1970’s, tourism was
vigorously promoted
besides the increasing
land speculation in
EEJI. Land conflicts
became more intense
(Mourão 1971; Paz and
Begossi 1996) and also
violent (Siqueira 1984),
due to the displace-
ment of Caiçara set-
tlers. The palmito and
caxeta exploitation and
land conflicts were only interrupted with the plans for the
construction of the nuclear power plant and the creation of
the Estação Ecológica da Juréia in 1980, later called Estação
Ecológica de Juréia-Itatins (EEJI). There-after, some
Caiçara people managed to stay in the EEJI as squatters or
caretakers. But, their old traditional activities (hunting, shift-
ing cultivation and artisanal fishing) became further limited
by law, affecting their previous pattern as well as their social
relationships. One of the greatest implications of this situa-
tion is associated with farming (see below).
Subsistence Activities and Ecological Calendars
Through ethnobiological inquiries, I recorded almost
300 avian and 40 mammalian species (except small rodents
and bats), 65 fishes and 130 tree species (Sanches 1997) asso-
ciated with subsistence activities. The knowledge of repro-
ductive behavior of many animals and the location of their
habitats is important in order to optimize labor tasks. Fishing,
timber extraction, gathering (mainly fiber, fruits, and medic-
inal plants) and farming activities are allowed and still occur
in the EEJI, but the way these have been performed have
changed considerably over time. Below I present a descrip-
tion of Caiçara subsistence activities against their respective
ecological calendars, as performed in the “Time of the
Ancients.” I conclude this section with a description of
changes in Caiçara practices related to historical events.
Regular subsistence activities involved: a) the deep
knowledge of the environment as well as ecological and bio-
logical aspects of each species and their management (this
knowledge was orally transmitted), b) cost-benefit evaluation
in decision making (which has varied through time and space
as well as decisions on time allocation for these activities), c)
the recognition of ecological calendars, with their appropriate
months to perform those activities, allowing adequate caloric
and protein intakes (Figure 3 and Figure 4), d) employment of
available technology (traps and other labor equipment), and e)
symbolic aspects such as food taboos, beliefs and myths.
Informants reported farming as the main subsistence
activity. Through farming, the Caiçara could ensure calories
in their diet; they grew annual and perennial food crops,
using the slash and burn technique or swidden-fallow agro-
forestry (coivara) system. This system is still widespread
throughout tropical forest habitats in the world (Boserup
1987), among different societies as Caboclos in Amazonia
(McGrath 1987; Moran 1974; Murrieta et al. 1989). Farming
was reported by the Caicara as the most labor demanding
activity year-round. To maximize chances of good crops, the
Caiçara followed the agricultural calendar (Figure 3). After
choosing a suitable place, small forested areas were cleared
(mainly from April to June) for swidden plots (less than 0.5
hectare per household). Then, the forest was burned in the dry
season (July and August) and cropping took place with a con-
sortium of different species.
3
As it can be seen in Figure 3,
each crop had its best time to plant and harvest. After plant-
ing, the tasks were reduced to garden keeping (i.e., grass cut-
ting and weeding) and, after harvest, manufacturing of cer-
Sanches
58 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Figure 3. Agricultural calendar. a) Annual calendar; b) and c) moon calendar for planting and harvest; d) moon calendar
for timber exploitation.
tain goods like the manioc flour and rice threshing. With the
end of the harvest, gardens were abandoned to fallow, and the
cutting began in a new area or in old gardens.
The fallow period (pousio) refers to the time the area is
left to rest (descanso) after the harvest. The length of the fal-
low is fundamental in the slash-and-burn system, because it
allows the forest and soil nutrients to recover,
4
through vege-
tation succession in tropical areas (Boserup 1987). The
Caiçara realized the need for a fallow period when produc-
tion decreased. The period of rest varied from 5 to 10 or more
years, according to land characteristics and crop production
(for Caboclo and Indian farming in the Amazon, see Balée
1989; Brondízio and Siqueira 1997; Brondízio et al. 1994;
Meggers 1954; Moran 1974, 1990; for Caiçara agriculture,
see Jovchelevich and Canelada 1992; Hanazaki et al. 1996;
for different regions of the world, see Conklin 1969; Geertz
1969; Johnson and Earle 1987; Rappaport 1968).
Physical and historical conditions were considered when it
was time to choose an area to crop. Physical conditions were
based on indicators like forest age (stage of succession) and
soil properties. In a general way, Caiçara recognized the best
area for planting as the “virgin” forest. The man who per-
formed felling in order to till the plot acquired the genuine right
to the land (Willems and Mussolini 1966, 25). Thus, for the
Caiçara, the area belonged to the one who first farmed it.
According to the kinship level, this “owner” could assign plant-
ing rights to relatives from the same or other apovoados.
5
The agricultural calendar was also based on the moon
phases. They were crucial for farmers in order to guarantee
the crop at the best time. Figures 3b and 3c show the moon
calendar for crop and harvest of rice and bean (Phaseolus
spp.) and sweet manioc and bitter manioc (Manihot spp.).
Black and high-stippled patterns represent the moon phases
considered by Caiçara as ideal to perform each task accord-
ing to the crop. The moon calendar for timber exploitation
(Figure 3d) can be associated with the agricultural calendar.
Once the forest was cleared, the timber could be used else-
where, and according to the moon phase, it would have a spe-
cific domestic use. For example, the waxing moon was con-
sidered ideal for cutting timber to build houses and paddled
canoes. Thus, considering physical and historical land con-
ditions, land availability to swidden, the length of the fallow
and the agricultural calendar, labor allocation was optimized
and provided for surplus production.
Other subsistence activities were hunting and fishing.
They used to provide the most important protein source.
Hunting was freely conducted until the 70s (Table 1), and
was typically a male individual activity, besides being occa-
sional and opportunistic. The technology employed was
mainly firearms with the help of dogs, in addition to traps like
trepeiro, ceva, mundéu and laço.
6
Trepeiro is a kind of lad-
der manufactured with large tree branches, where the hunter
can sit and wait for the prey. Ceva is a place where food is left
as bait to attract animals. Mundéu is a small cage trap for
smaller species of mammals. Laço is a rope set as a loop, and
employed to capture the collared peccary (Pecari tajacu) or
other large game.
Hunting occurred in two situations, during forest incur-
sions (hunting trips) and in the form of “peeking” (espia),
that is, periodically visiting the bait stations (cevas) during
labor intervals. Hunting trips were infrequent. However, in
both modalities, hunting depended on the best time to plant
(Figure 3a), since the main interest was in agricultural pro-
duction. Another factor influencing this activity was the high
responsibility laid upon men to bring meat back to the house-
hold every time they left agricultural labor to women’s care.
The animal harvest was rigorously considered and limit-
ed relatively to spatial and temporal factors. The best places
for hunting were considered to be either hilly terrain or sea-
sonally inundated flood plain, both difficult to access. These
considerations had implications for the number of possible
prey (Table 2).
Hunting could also occur during any intervals between
agricultural tasks. Men and women would head to the place
where the cevas were left, normally near the household, or
where the trepeiros were set. The cevas were usually pre-
pared according to the animal’s diet, which could indicate an
attempt of pre-selection of prey, related to Caiçara taste pref-
erences (Table 2). The most desirable preys were: agouti
(Agouti paca), armadillos (Dasypus spp., Cabassous tatouay,
Euphractus sexcinctus), coati (Nasua nasua), capybara
(Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris), collared peccary (Pecari
tajacu) and white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari). Preferred
birds were tinamou (Tinamus solitarius), black-fronted pip-
ing-guan (Pipile jacutinga) and toucans (Ramphastus spp.).
The ecological calendars associated with hunting activi-
ties are represented in Figures 4a and 4b. Figure 4a shows the
months when hunting occurred more frequently throughout
the year, and Figure 4b considers the moon phases, classified
as “ideal,” “good” or “bad” for harvest and for trap manufac-
turing. These calendars incorporated factors such as the
inherent seasonal nature of habits and breeding cycles of all
involved species known to the Caiçara. According to Figure
4a, the period from July to September was not proper for hunt-
ing, especially for mammals, because of the birth season. The
traps were disarmed and the hunting trips were reduced. This
could also be due to the low probability of capturing any ani-
mal during wintertime. The reduction of the activity would
significantly optimize hunting, or it could represent the need
for increased attention to prepare the land for agriculture.
The gardens had a role as baits to attract wild animals for
harvest. The manioc gardens were invaded by collared pecca-
Sanches
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 59
Sanches
60 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
ries (Pecari tajacu) and by tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) where
they could be killed. This “hunting garden” allowed the
acquisition of animal protein during the performance of agri-
cultural tasks. The term “hunting garden” was proposed by
Linares (1976) as a stock of protein and carbohydrate.
According to her study, these gardens could have been used
by the first horticulturist societies that inhabited coastal areas
covered by tropical forests.
Almost all coastal Caiçara communities fish in the open
sea. Fishing has been a very widespread activity along São
Paulo coast since the farming market began to decline in the
beginning of the 20th century (Diegues 1983; Mussolini
1980; Silva 1993), but this discussion is beyond the scope of
the present study. However, in contrast to neighboring coastal
regions, sea fishing does not occur in Juréia (Table 1). There
is no manufacture of sea-going canoes, nor is there evidence
of such activity in the past.
Paddled canoes suited to
riverine environments are
prevalent. In Juréia there
was not an active fishing
market,
7
as observed in
other places (Mourão
1971), and the use of tech-
nologies has been limited
to subsistence needs (i.e.,
fishing rods and fishing
traps (covo, pari) for fish-
ing in rivers). The great
majority of families inhab-
iting the coastal areas
employed mainly gillnet
(rede de espera), cast nets
(tarrafas) and beach seines
(picarés).
As was shown for
hunting and farming, the
annual calendars also indi-
Figure 4. Hunting and fishing calendar. a) Annual calendar; b) and c) moon calendar.
Table 2. Main harvested animal species and technologies for hunting.
Common Species Harvest n m (kg) M(kg) Technology
name time
agouti Agouti paca Mar-Jul 1 - 4 5 to 13 3 to 20 firearm/dog/mundéu
armadillos Dasypus spp., except Jul 1 - 3 2,7 to 6,3a 5 to 15 firearm/dog/mundéu
Cabassous tatouay, 3,2 to 6,5b
and Euphractus sexcinctus
coati Nasua nasua Mar-Jul 2 - 4 3 to 7,2 10 to 20 firearm/dog/mundéu
capybara Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris Sep-Feb 1 35 to 60 40 to 60 firearm/dog
red brocket deer Mazama americana Mar-Jul 1 24 to 50 30 to 40 firearm/dog
gray brocket deer Mazama gouazubira Mar-Jul 1-2 20 to 30 15 to 20 firearm/dog
white-lipped peccary Tayassu pecari any 1-3 25 to 40 40 to 50 firearm/dog/mundéu
collared peccary Pecari tajacu any 1 - 3 17 to 30 80 firearm/laço
tinamou Tinamus solitarius Mar-Jul 6 - 10 - 12 firearm
a Dasypus novemcinctus; b Euphractus sexcinctus
n = number of specimens taken per hunting trip
m = average weight of adults (Emmons, 1997)
M = amount of butchered meat
“n” and “M” are averages of the values estimated by the informants
Sanches
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 61
cated the best periods for fishing and the kind of technology
to be used (Figure 4a and 4c). Figure 4a shows the months
when fishing happened more frequently. The Caiçara infor-
mants refer to the “cold months” (July to August) as the ones
providing best quality fishes, despite the fact that the warmer
months provide higher productivity to the industrial fishing
sector. Caiçara fishing activity also increased in these
months because of the mullet (Mugil spp.), which migrates to
the region from May to August.
The employment of different fishing technologies
(Figure 4c) followed the lunar calendar. For example, any
fishing during full moon was jeopardized by moon bright-
ness. The waxing and the waning moon phases were consid-
ered to be bad for fishing, especially with cast nets and beach
seines, because both the ebb and full tides during these moon
phases are not high enough to allow fish capture on the sea
shore (as opposed to what happens during new and full
moons). The informants call the former moon phases’ tides
“seven tides.” The new moon was considered the most appro-
priate or “ideal” period for the use of all technologies in any
environment. Like hunting, fishing could also be integrated to
farming. For example, fishing traps left on riverbanks were
usually visited before lunch and in the late afternoon, and the
beach seine was used in the early morning, in late afternoon,
or occasionally at night. These periods were not devoted to
agricultural labor tasks.
The Historical Events and Changes in Subsistence
Activities
As can be seen in Table 1, Caiçara subsistence activities
have changed since the “Time of the Ancients,” due to reduc-
tion of the land availability marked by the summarized
events. But the most affected activity was farming. While in
the past land use and tenure were not limiting factors, the
itinerant character of slash-and-burn system was adequate to
household mobility. This condition, allied to an intense mutu-
al help organization and a broader network of social relation-
ships inherent to apovoados or communities, allowed a sur-
plus production.
After the 1950s, farming and collective activities were
partially abandoned in favor of working for private enterpris-
es, and the household economy became dependent on the
legal landowners. This situation persisted until the creation
of EEJI, when farming and some collective activities were
recovered, even with legal restrictions imposed by environ-
mental conservation policies and land tenure conditions. The
main problem is the instability of legal permanence within
the EEJI.
Despite this, both fishing and farming may be performed
under special authorizations that are issued by technicians
according to specific governmental decrees. Caiçara are
allowed only to cut down the managed forest, usually early
second growth (capoeira), and to fish in areas delimited by
technicians. They still maintain their ecological calendars to
perform the tasks and the agricultural mutirão still occurs,
but less frequently than before. The last one I documented
occurred in Juréia six years ago. The need for special autho-
rization, particularly in the case of farming, has led to inten-
sification of cropping over the same area, with the reduction
of the fallow period and crop rotation.
On the other hand, hunting has been prohibited since
1967, according to the Brazilian Constitution, and has been
reinforced after the creation of the Estação Ecológica da
Juréia in 1980. In the past the ecological calendar provided
control of subsistence hunting, but this probably does not
occur now. Although there was an increase in game law
enforcement, this does not imply that the local population has
abandoned the practice. If hunting still happens — as it prob-
ably does — it is a discreet and opportunistic activity under-
taken without consideration for any calendar.
Many of the Caiçara relatives living outside EEJI have
looked for jobs in urban centers, hoping to improve the edu-
cation of their children. Even so, they still maintain their gar-
dens of rice, maize or manioc inside the EEJI and whenever
possible participate in local festivities, as in the case of
Cachoeira do Guilherme community. Technicians have
sought to find technical arguments and cooperative solutions
with the EEJI inhabitants, despite criticism from the scientif-
ic community and from the environmental policy makers,
both emphasizing the conservation goals of the EEJI.
Final Considerations
The Caiçara culture continues an important Indian her-
itage, and its origins can be traced back to the time of the first
European contacts. It has evolved over the past five centuries
in response to environmental changes associated with the use
of the Atlantic Rain Forest. The EEJI region, mainly the Una
do Prelado flood plain, is a testimony of the numerous forms
of management that have been carried out by different inhab-
itants since pre-colonial times.
The relationship among all subsistence activities —
hunting, fishing, farming — has been modified by events
such as land conflicts and legal prohibitions, and the creation
of EEJI. These events also led to changes in traditional coop-
erative activities, within and between households. It seems
that, on the basis of the long history of Caiçara use of the
Juréia region and the apparent lack of noticeable biological
extinction there, the employment of ecological calendars, as
in the “Time of the Ancients,” would actually lead to a sus-
tainable condition.
Farming has always been a Caiçara core activity, struc-
Sanches
62 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
turing household organization and its network of social rela-
tionships. Environmental policies have influenced Caiçara
farming practices mostly by restricting fallow length and land
availability. How are the new conditions affecting household
adaptation and the land use by Caiçara? Only monitoring pro-
duction levels and their effect on household form and social
relationships will allow us to answer this question. In EEJI it
would be necessary to collect quantitative data on human ecol-
ogy, such as household form changes (composition and size)
associated with subsistence activity changes, and considering
time allocation techniques (Netting et al. 1995).
Regulation of agricultural activities should allow the
continuity of traditional Caiçara practices, such as fallow and
crop rotation. Emphasis on alternative economic activities
with high valued indigenous species such as palm heart
(Euterpe edulis) and caxeta trees (Tabebuia cassinoides)
could be an interesting strategy. Legislation ruling their
exploitation has already been enforced and scientific research
on their management has been undertaken, adding to folk
knowledge, which may lead to feasible production of goods
from these species without compromising their preservation.
It is important to establish ruling strategies pertaining to the
use of EEJI, taking into consideration both scientific and folk
knowledge. In the last two decades, policies creating protect-
ed areas without the participation of local populations have
generated conflicts and further obstacles for the management
of these areas, causing detrimental effects to conservation
objectives.
The conservation of the Atlantic Rain Forest also
involves an ethical question. Considering that the existence
of Caiçara communities long predates the creation of EEJI,
and that the only areas in São Paulo State where some
Caiçara families are still found are exactly within the
Atlantic Rain Forest remnants areas, conservation policies for
this ecosystem should also allow the survival and reproduc-
tion of these communities. If, on the one hand, science bene-
fits through new discoveries and challenges posed by the
diverse organisms from the tropical forest, on the other hand
there are people — the Caiçara — who still depend cultural-
ly and materially on it.
Endnotes
1. e-mail: rosanches@zipmail.com.br
2. It is supposed to have been founded in the 30’s and its origin has also
a religious purpose influenced by Sátiro da Silva Tavares’s father. He
and his son were leaders and shamans and have stimulated many fam-
ilies to migrate to Jureia region.
3. For example, raising together bean, maize and manioc, or varieties
from one same species, all of them in the same garden.
4. But not necessarily to the original conditions.
5. The Caiçaras usually refer to them by the last name of the family that
has first farmed at that place.
6. In many situations the Caiçaras preferred to set the traps in places
used by animals as shelter or passages (carrero).
7. According to communities from Praia do Una, sometimes fresh or
smoked fishes could be sold but this activity always suffered with the
high competition from semi-industrial or industrial fishing.
Acknowledgments
I thank W. A. Neves (Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São
Paulo), D. T. Gallois and A. P. Felipim (Centro de Trabalho Indigenista) for
guiding the dissertation; R. L. Moura and M. de Vivo (Museu de Zoologia,
Universidade de São Paulo) for critically reading the manuscript and revis-
ing the English grammar; M. C. Zanini, C. Adams, E. S. Brondízio, and E.
A. C. Nobre for valuable suggestions on the manuscript and for additional
revisions of the English version; three anonymous referees for their criti-
cisms and constructive advice on the final manuscript; Cris Koch for the
drawing of the calendars graphs; the Estação Ecológica de Juréia-Itatins
and Instituto Florestal (F. P. de Campos, C. A. M. Reis, J. M. Neto, C. D.
Prado, M. M. Santos and L. R. Domingues) for logistical facilities and sup-
port to research; the EEJI inhabitants for all guiding field work; and CNPq
for financial support of this project.
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64 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Abstract
At first glance, present literary theory (poststructural-
ism) and ecology seem to be going in opposite directions.
Roland Barthes, for example, used the words “to naturalize”
to describe the falsification of historically motivated conven-
tional truth. For Barthes, culture is always a semiological
system. Forget nature. Ecology, on the other hand advocates
a return to nature. The looming catastrophe that awaits us is
due to anthropocentrism. Our relation to nature is bogus; we
must get back to a more genuine relationship with nature by
paying attention to nature’s requirements. Each position
opposed in their use of nature seeks emancipation from the
bondage of a misperception. However, it does not take long
for a postmodern literary theorist to feel comfortable in the
“natural” abode of the ecologist. Both seek emancipation
from an inadequate cultural habitation inherited from the
past. Both agree that a naive “objectivity” or absolute is not
available. But the literary theorist has to solve the problem
of proliferating points of view and trivialization of stand-
points. Ecology has to solve the essentializing of the new
holistic paradigm as promoted by the deep ecologists. Using
the lessons learned from feminist literary theory — a
progress from essentialism (C. Spretnak and C. Wolf) to
deconstruction (J. Butler) to dialogism (L. Alcoff and T.
Lauretis) — ecology can also embrace dialogism as illustrat-
ed by William Cronon, Michael Pollan, and Carolyn
Merchant. That ecology could also replace worn out patri-
archal religions is a needed and hoped for prospect though
still only speculation. F. Capra’s The Web of Life (1996)
embodies that prospect in an appealing non-idolatrous way.
Keywords: dialogism, feminism, social construction of
reality, jumping the culture/nature gap, grand narratives,
contingency
At first glance, literary theorizing and ecological theory
seem to be heading in opposite directions. When Roland
Barthes “demythologized” the accepted “truths” of contem-
porary culture by showing how intentions become “facts,” the
word he used to label this falsification was to “naturalize.”
For Barthes, all culture is myth or historical convention.
When cultural discourses hide their historical motivation,
they transform “history into nature” (1972, 129). They trans-
form value into facts. The aim of the literary critic is to undo
this essentializing of cultural discourses, to demystify the
bogus “natural” back into historically motivated discourses.
For Barthes, this demythologizing is a process of not con-
suming the discourse (myth) for its content but in revealing
how its particular meaning was created. This is now referred
to as discourse analysis. Culture is always a semiological
system. Forget nature.
Ecology, on the other hand, by its very name, advocates
a return to nature. The looming catastrophe that awaits us is
due to anthropocentrism. We ignore nature except as a mate-
rial resource to serve human ends and, as we continue to
exploit nature — arguably our most basic relationship — we
take on a bogus position with it, harming both nature and our-
selves. Somehow, we must get back to a more genuine rela-
tionship with nature.
2
Simplifying this opposition, we could
describe literary poststructuralism as claiming that human
subjectivity is always present and inescapable, while the
ecologist proclaims that only by escaping human self-
interest, by returning to nature, to the “objectivity” of paying
attention to nature’s requirements, can we be saved. Each
position, opposed in their use of nature, seeks emancipation
from the bondage of a misperception.
However, it does not take long for a postmodern literary
theorist to feel quite comfortable in the “natural” abode pre-
pared by the ecologists. Gone is the determinism, the uni-
versal laws of cause and effect, so typical of mechanistic sci-
ence based on Newtonian physics. Since the revolution of
quantum physics in the 1920s, Heisenberg’s uncertainty prin-
ciple, and Thomas Kuhn’s transformations of scientific laws
to historical paradigms, science also has been accepted more
as an historical and social construct than as privileged to
reveal nature in itself. Thus, literary theory and ecological
theory play in the same ballpark even though at first they
seem to have incompatible orientations. The aims of both run
remarkably parallel and, as we will find out, so do their prob-
lems. Both theoretical fields share the postmodern stance
that reality is more constructed than found. Both are suspi-
Human Ecology Forum
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 65
© Society for Human Ecology
Literary Theory and Ecology:
Some Common Problems and a Solution
Vernon Gras
1339 Massachusetts Ave., SE
Washington, D.C. 20003
USA
1
cious of naïve empiricism, of an unmediated access to an
innocent and untouched nature impressing itself upon a
human consciousness resembling a tabula rasa. Both see
their purpose to be educational. They desire to demolish an
inadequate cultural habitation inherited from the past and to
redecorate the mental living rooms of the young, bringing
about a more just society in the present and a more sustain-
able relationship with the environment in the future.
This common aim of emancipation made possible by
postmodern self-awareness unites the literary critic and the
ecologist. What makes emancipation possible is the loss of
all foundations, of any transhistorical authority that had been
offered in the Western tradition. It is this “loss of center” that
fuels the political orientation and rhetoric of what has now
become ever proliferating and competing points of view. In
the absence of universals and absolutes of any kind, decisions
have to be made in terms of historical frameworks. Another
way of putting it is that there can be no knowledge without a
perspective from which it is gained. There is no absolute or
God’s point of view, only partial historical ones.
3
Here is J.
F. Lyotard (1984, 482 ) on the paradigm shift from modern to
postmodern: “I will use the term modern to designate any
science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadis-
course . . . making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative,
such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning,
the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the
creation of wealth. . . . Simplifying to the extreme, I define
postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.” Thus, any
reference to some natural order to support human progress
seems out of the question. Rather, emancipation derives from
a greater awareness of the contingent, historical, and ever
changing nature of the models used for representing the
world.
Of course, this paradigm shift is quite evident in ecolog-
ical theory, too. Nature, admittedly and openly, now becomes
a social construct. Here is the ecological physicist, Fritjof
Capra, embracing the changeover in physics from Newton-
ian, atomic, and mechanistic to Bohr’s quantum, holistic, and
organically interrelated paradigm: “The major problems of
our time . . . are all different facets of one single crisis, which
is essentially a crisis of perception. Most of us and our insti-
tutions subscribe to an outdated world view, inadequate for
dealing with the problems of our overpopulated, globally
interconnected world” (1988, 334-41). The shift from the
inadequate mechanical elementary building blocks model to
the new holistic or ecological worldview, according to Capra,
is accompanied by the realization that scientific descriptions
aren’t objective and independent of the human observer and
the process of knowing. “What we observe is not nature
itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning”
(337). Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has as its conse-
quence that self-reflexivity will be an integral part of every
scientific theory. We will never successfully jump the cul-
ture/nature gap; absolutes are gone. What we have left is
approximate knowledge. Though science can’t provide a
complete and definitive understanding of nature, and truth is
not a precise correspondence between description and the
described phenomena, approximate knowledge will still have
to undergo the test of adequacy. Ironically, the discovery that
science is merely a social paradigm gives imaginative wings
to nature’s deep ecologists. Instead of retrenching like
Lyotard into local and limited decision-making, deep ecolo-
gists like Arne Naess, George Sessions, and Bill Devall agree
with Capra’s assessment that we need a new paradigm.
4
Reform movements won’t cut it. To be effective, the new par-
adigm has to be ecocentric, not anthropocentric. We need a
holistic totalized vision that subordinates man to nature.
Nature viewed as a diverse living network functioning like a
huge global organism becomes the ultimate value. Its sur-
vival is more important than the species chauvinism ex-
pressed by our scientific progress and ever increasing indus-
trial production. Rather than the personal God of traditional
theisms, deep ecologists turn God into an impersonal imma-
nent force expressing itself via non-living and living forms. A
belief in a divine Unity with which humans can identify
becomes the basis for a more inclusive ethic or way of life
that extends to non-human and non-living things.
Personally, I believe that this re-enchantment of nature is
a good thing.
5
The old patriarchal world religions are
exhausted, intellectually and story-wise. Humans do need to
embed their individual existences into some overarching nar-
rative. But that narrative has to be believable and empower-
ing. The extant world with its privileged religions, (i.e.
revealed by God) and their anthropomorphic deities, super-
naturalisms, body/soul, matter/spirit, heaven/hell bifurcations
are survivals from a simpler past. As the world grows small-
er and these either/or Absolutes confront each other more fre-
quently, the increasing massacres, holy wars, and political
ethnic cleansings reveal the bankruptcy of these “privileged”
dogmas.
6
That we are in need of a new paradigm that incorporates
the religious dimension is made explicit by the biologist E.O.
Wilson in his recent book, Consilience: The Unity of
Knowledge (1998, 263). He puts forward his notion of con-
silience as a religious substitute by which the arts and human-
ities could be subsumed under a grand evolutionary narrative
and which would add resonance and awe to our existence —
but, in his case, still operating under the deterministic control
of cause and effect explanation. Here is Wilson waxing elo-
quent on jettisoning religious transcendentalism for evolu-
tionary materialism: “The spirits our ancestors knew inti-
mately first fled the rocks and trees, then the distant moun-
Human Ecology Forum
66 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
tains. Now they are in the stars, where their final extinction
is possible. But we cannot live without them. People need a
sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in
one form or other, however intellectualized. . . . If the sacred
narrative cannot be in the form of a religious cosmology, it
will be taken from the material history of the universe and the
human species. That trend is in no way debasing. The true
evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically
ennobling as any religious epic” (289). Wilson ends his book
with twenty pages in support of ecology while still insisting
on subordinating all phenomena under the aegis of universal
causal laws. However, Wilson’s avowal of the human need
for religion and our own general experience that people do
not respond to statistical tables about environmental crises,
but do respond via emotional and personal ties when coming
to nature’s rescue, indicate the potential range and power of
an ecological paradigm wherein we perform responsible roles
in a much grander narrative than increasing the GNP.
Leaving the advocacy of ecology as a substitute for worn
out patriarchal religions, let us see what some self-reflection
on theory will produce. Because feminism has been influen-
tial in both literary theory and ecology, I would like to
describe its development in literary study and draw some par-
allels with ecological theory.
Feminist theory went through three general stages:
essentialist (metaphysical), nominalist (deconstructive), and
positional (dialogical). While this describes the general
trend, not all of the early stages have been superseded. Both
essentialists and deconstructionists are still very much active
and noisy. Charlene Spretnak’s Lost Goddesses of Early
Greece (1984) and Christa Wolf’s Cassandra (1984) are
excellent examples of essentialistic literary feminism. The
latter is fiction; the former is a feminist reinterpretation of
early Greek myths. Spretnak could be described as a female
Jungian in her general procedure, even though she attacks
Jung and Joseph Campbell for not using the matriarchal
version of goddess myths. Feminists have to take the male/
female dichotomy seriously or else their point of view ceases
to matter. This happens to those feminists who only embrace
deconstruction (see below). Usually, feminine essentialists
tend to group innate gender traits or values around sexual
difference. A female is emotional, intuitive, caring, partici-
patory, we-thinking, desirous of consensus and harmony, life
supporting, egalitarian, and Other directed; a male is intellec-
tual, judgmental, abstract, hierarchical, me-thinking, aggres-
sive, war-like, domineering, and prestige driven.
By going back to the pre-Olympian myths wherein reli-
gion was still ritualized (ritually enacted using the whole
body), humankind and especially women can revivify their
lives. These early pre-Hellenic myths, claims Spretnak (1984,
24), “grew from the collective psyche of our ancestors and
are relevant to our own psyches today.” Jung wasn’t wrong
in seeking out universal images that have existed since
remotest times, it’s just that the patriarchal political displace-
ments of the earlier matriarchies also warped and distorted
the early goddess myths. Jung’s archetypes, thus, are patri-
archal archetypes, which transformed the attributes of the all-
powerful Goddess severely. “The great Hera was made into
a disagreeable, jealous wife; Athena was made into a cold,
masculine daughter; Aphrodite was made into a frivolous
sexual creature; Artemis was made into the quite forgettable
sister of Apollo; and Pandora was made into the troublesome,
treacherous source of human woes” (Spretnak 1984, 18). As
these goddesses are all later derivatives of the Great Goddess,
Gaia, “the supreme deity for millennia in many parts of the
world” (Spretnak 1984, 18), the subordination and demotion
of the Goddess to a male overlord also symbolized a com-
plete inversion of values. Whereas the original Earth God-
dess “was held sacred and associated with order, wisdom,
protection, and the life-giving processes (e.g., seasonal
change, fertility of womb and field)” (Spretnak 1984, 18), the
male Olympian gods were distant, judgmental, more warlike,
and involved in unending bickering and strife. Thus, the fem-
inine psyche, cleansed and informed by the goddess aura of
pre-Olympian myths, could perhaps help in turning our mas-
culine life-threatening culture from its suicidal path. We can
be saved from annihilation by actively making the public
aware of long eras of peace among societies that lived by
holistic values; this precedent shows it is possible. The latent
wisdom in our body/mind can wash out the artificial habits
accrued later. In this changeover, the authentic female mind,
enlarged and supported by pre-Olympian ritual and myth, can
be our salvation.
Christa Wolf’s novel, Cassandra, delivers a very similar
message. According to Wolf, western civilization took a
wrong turn from an earlier egalitarian matriarchy to a hierar-
chical patriarchy. This period of transition she recreates in
her version of the Fall of Troy. Cassandra, as seer and
prophetess, is the self-aware observer through whom this
“historical event” is recorded. The older matriarchy is repre-
sented by Hecuba, Cassandra, Anchises, the rural folk, and
lower classes who gather on the banks of the Scamander
River and worship Cybele. The patriarchy is represented by
the Greeks, and their managerial ethos is represented and
accelerated in Priam’s court through the Greek-thinking
Eumelos, head of the palace guards. We listen in as
Cassandra, waiting before the lion gate of Mycenae and
knowing she will be killed shortly, recounts the loss of Troy
as a much greater loss. She describes the fatal changeover
from matriarchal leadership to masculine dominance in
which women lost their social freedom, voice, and agency to
wartime political expediency or, more accurately, to mascu-
Human Ecology Forum
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 67
line pride and honor. In her own comments on Cassandra,
Wolf talks about the “objectification” of women, turning
them into property, into useful instruments for political
manipulation, given or reassigned in marriage for the sake of
political alliances, like pawns on a chessboard. Truth, which
is what Cassandra speaks, has no value if it does not serve
the political agenda of Priam’s court. We, who are gifted
with hindsight, verify Cassandra’s premonitions about the
“progress” of our civilization under patriarchal manipulation
and deceit, in which official state communications become
calculated disinformation. Masculinity has become the
enemy. At the end of the novel, Wolf (1984, 138) identifies
with Cassandra in a two line addenda as she, too, stands
before the lion gate in Mycenae:
Here is the place. These lions looked at her.
They seem to move in the shifting light.
She confirms that the night of the ravenous beasts prophesied
3000 years ago is still alive and in place.
Deconstructive feminist is almost a contradiction of
terms. One can’t really be both. Most feminists use decon-
structive techniques. It is a method of reading that uncovers
the rhetorical basis of definitions or substantive claims about
women. When Elaine Showalter (1985) divides her literary
criticism into feminist critique and gynocriticism, it is the for-
mer that uses deconstructive techniques to uncover patriar-
chal bias in how women are presented in traditional literature.
Gynocriticism, on the other hand, studies female writers in an
attempt to establish some essential feminine traits (if any) by
empirical inductive methods. The latter has not been too suc-
cessful. But the deconstruction of female stereotypes in
patriarchal literature has been a smashing success. Virtually,
all the voices from the margins — race, class, gender, ethnic,
gays, etc. — use deconstruction to good effect in revealing
the social origin or frame for the classifying and devaluing of
the marginalized. Most discourse analysis or cultural critique
is done in the name of social equality or justice. But, of
course, deconstruction based on “difference” cannot itself
take a stand anywhere. Asserting a privileged position for
your point of view has been subverted by the diacritical and
anti-foundationalist stance toward language that makes possi-
ble the marginal critique against mainline essentialism in the
first place. A rigorous deconstructive feminist ends up not
being one. She has to commit to jouissance (play), which is
all that Derrida leaves her. Judith Butler is a good example
of a feminist deconstructionist who ends up celebrating
unceasing open-ended jouissance.
7
In Gender Trouble, she
can do little besides emancipate women from limiting defin-
itions. She brilliantly deconstructs the gender/sex relation-
ship in which she proves their arbitrary and conventional con-
nection, that what constitutes being a woman or man has no
intrinsic connection with biology or sex at all. In fact, sex
itself doesn’t escape deconstruction. It is mediated by power
relationships like everything else. She, of course, ends where
deconstruction has to take her: sex can’t be a controlling
essence. Remember that for a deconstructionist everything is
created out of rhetoric. A woman is what she does; she has
no inherent bodily limitations that differentiate her from a
man. Masculine and feminine categories are always social
and historical constructs and, when substantialized, in need
of deconstruction. In her version of feminism, Butler dis-
solves the body and makes it disappear. Or rather woman is
liberated into infinite semeosis; she could assume a certain
kind of corporeal style, to live or wear her body a certain way
seemingly unhindered by any intrinsic bodily considerations.
Considering what patriarchal rhetoric had done to women,
Butler’s liberation of feminine possibilities is most admir-
able. But to deny the body so totally seems counterintuitive
somehow. By absolutizing emancipation within the operation
of language itself, the deconstructionists forbid leaping the
gap between culture and nature. The rational progress of the
human animal ends with complete freedom from “objectivi-
ty,” a joyful play that feeds off a total skepticism of any rev-
elatory relationship between culture and nature.
This politically and ethically hapless condition leads us
into our third stage, positionality or the dialogical. Linda
Alcoff in her article, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-struc-
turalism,” offers ‘positionality’ as a further development of
Teresa Lauretis’ dialogical approach to establishing female
identity.
8
In her book, Lauretis (1984) explored “the problem
of conceptualizing woman as subject,” because she under-
stood that changing how women are culturally defined has a
political goal. The standpoint from which to launch the cor-
rective, however, becomes a problem. If “woman” is a social
construct, a product of historical discourses, what counter-
norm is available to mount a critique and legitimate change?
If “woman” is a semiotic product of culture, then one can’t go
to “nature” to reveal the repressed authentic woman under-
neath. Of course, if subjectivity were governed by biology,
then a universal and ahistorical norm would be possible. For
example, the “selfish gene” followers of E.O.Wilson propose
just such a biological universal.
9
Lauretis allows “woman” to
emerge as a product of experience. She describes experience
as a phenomenological in-between position, as “a complex of
habits resulting from the semiotic interaction of ‘outer world’
and ‘inner world,’ the continuous engagement of a self or
subject in social reality” (quoted in Alcoff, 342). Alcoff
expands on this situated experience to define woman’s sub-
jectivity as ‘positionality.’
Human Ecology Forum
68 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
. . . positionality allows for a determinate though
fluid identity of woman that does not fall into essen-
tialism: woman is a position from which a feminist
politics can emerge rather than a set of attributes
that are “objectively identifiable.” Seen in this way,
being a “woman” is to take up a position within a
moving historical context and to be able to choose
what we make of this position and how we alter this
context. From the perspective of that fairly deter-
minate though fluid and mutable position, women
can themselves articulate a set of interests and
ground a feminist politics (Alcoff, 350).
I suggest that what Lauretis and Alcoff do for “woman,” ecol-
ogists should do for “nature.”
Nature, unlike “woman,” is not a subject. Even so, it
shares woman’s fate of being “objectified” in patriarchal dis-
course. The ecofeminists have done a good job in drawing
analogies between the treatments of mother earth and
women. Under patriarchy, still the prevailing social dis-
course in the West, both suffer domination and exploitation.
What has changed in our new attitude to nature is that we no
longer view it as just a material resource. Nature is now con-
sidered alive, very much a living organism. Like an organ-
ism, it seems to be a self-regulating system whose parts can
only be fully understood in their functional relationship and
interdependence to the whole — the earth as biosphere or
ecosystem. Because nature can only be viewed adequately as
a living system, human relationships to the earth undergo a
change. Before, earth as material resource fell under the mar-
ket “laws” of economics. Now human economic interests
must subordinate themselves to the health of the planet.
Sustainability is the new norm based on egalitarianism, on
treating nature in the “just” manner requested by women and
other marginal groups. Its health, well-being, and ultimate
survival is at stake. As we are part of nature, ultimately our
survival is at stake.
10
Thus, while nature is not a subject, i.e.,
it cannot use rhetoric as feminists do on behalf of itself, it has
a language of its own. It has been talking to us and its natur-
al signs portend danger and perhaps catastrophe. Nature, of
course, would accept insects as survivors in our stead with
equanimity. Whatever happens, happens. Nature will go on
without us. We are the ones who value the present living
ecosystem and our position in it; we must act wisely to sus-
tain it.
When we turn to ecology, we find the same ontological,
epistemological, and ethical problems emerging as we uncov-
ered in feminist literary criticism. But the emphasis differs.
The problem to be solved in the human sciences is the prolif-
eration of points of view with its ever-increasing relativism
and trivialization. Ecology has the same culture/nature prob-
lem but what ecologists must escape from is an “objectified”
nature. The movement is from a nature whose processes and
workings remain separate, pure and unsullied by human hand
— nature as wilderness — to a nature open to historical con-
tingencies and human intervention. In solving this problem,
some ecologists end up in a dialogical position similar to
Alcoff’s. We will look at two: William Cronon (ed.) Un-
common Nature (1995) and Michael Pollan’s Second Nature
(1991).
In his book, Cronon (1995, 69-90) states that it is time to
rethink nature as wilderness. He concedes that this will
appear a dangerous heresy to many environmentalists. After
all, the idea of wilderness — pure, uncontaminated, almost
sanctified nature — in contrast to civilization viewed as a dis-
ease or pestilence infecting the earth, has been a refuge for
many, for some a last hope to save the planet. But he doubts
whether “wilderness” can materialize this hope. He points
out that such essentialized “pure nature” never really existed.
Indeed, “we mistake ourselves when we suppose that wilder-
ness can be the solution to our culture’s problematic relation-
ships with the nonhuman world, for wilderness is itself no
small part of the problem” (70). “Wilderness” projects on
nature values that nature does not inherently possess. For
example, wilderness in the Bible was equivalent to “waste-
land,” “desert,” and “barren desolation.” It was a place “to
lose oneself in moral confusion and despair” (70). When
Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden they
entered a wilderness that only “their labor and pain could
redeem” (71). It took the Romantic movement and the
American frontier to change what was wild, worthless, and
terrible, the antithesis of all that was orderly and good, into
landscape beyond price, into Eden itself. Cronon concedes
that “wilderness” ideology did much to establish our many
national parks and wilderness areas. Without the wilderness
concept, much of this conservation wouldn’t have happened.
Wilderness had become sacred.
But in becoming sacred, claims Cronon, nature as
wilderness excluded humans from living in it (except as
tourists). Wilderness is the place where the epic struggle
between malign civilization and benign nature is taking
place, according to Earth First (Cronon 1995, 84). Such “a
perspective is possible only if we accept the wilderness
premise that nature, to be natural, must also be pristine —
remote from humanity and untouched by our common past”
(83). But everything we know about the past suggests, “that
people have been manipulating the natural world on various
scales for as long as we have a record of their passing” (83).
Cronon states that as long as we continue to hold up to our-
selves the mirror of nature as a “wilderness we can’t inhabit,”
we won’t progress very far with our environmental concerns
(83). What we need is a truer picture of the human/non-
human relationship. Most of our serious environmental prob-
Human Ecology Forum
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 69
lems start at home. If we are to solve those problems, “we
need an environmental ethic that will tell us as much about
using nature as about not using it. . . . The wilderness dual-
ism tends to cast any use as ab-use, and thereby denies us a
middle ground in which responsible use and non-use might
attain some kind of balanced sustainable relationship”
(Cronon 1991, 85). By ex-ploring this middle ground, we
will learn how to imagine a better sustainable world for all of
us, human and non-human. When Aldo Leopold and his fam-
ily turned a ravaged and infertile soil into carefully tended
ground, into “home,” they existed with nature side by side in
relative harmony. What wilderness has to contribute to this
new orientation is the possibility of transferring the profound
feelings of humility and respect for the earth as “other” to our
back yard. Wildness is present in our everyday experience,
not just out there in “wilderness.” We should bring culture
and nature together in a home that encompasses both.
Michael Pollan makes a similar plea, except his meta-
phor of choice is not “home” but “garden.” His essay, “The
Idea of a Garden” (1991, 176-201) begins with a tornado
destroying a forty acre site of venerable white pines in
Cornwall, his home town in Connecticut. The controversy
over what to do with the destroyed wooded site showed the
sterility of the man/nature debate that ensued and initiated in
Pollan the new idea of a garden as being more useful to guide
the human/non-human relationship. The site, a national nat-
ural landmark called Cathedral Pines, was under the care of
the Natural Conservancy whose environmentalists viewed the
storm damage as “natural.” Following the wilderness ethic,
they held that nature should be allowed to restore itself with
no outside interference. The wilderness ethic viewed nature
as an ecosystem that obeys its own laws of equilibrium,
which in time would restore Cathedral Pines with a new cli-
max forest. But Pollan quite rightly shows that nature suffers
from accident and contingency so much that any inherent ten-
dencies described by a wilderness ethics won’t control the
future. Indeed, forest succession is a theory that frequently
does not take place; e.g. fires, deer browsing, exotic imports
like Norway maples, or heavy rains all could produce a dif-
ferent and contingent outcome. If nature is open to contin-
gencies, orderly narratives like forest succession, ecosys-
tems, and evolution recede into comforting metaphysical sto-
ries. Their disappearance may trouble some, but actually it is
good news. While discovery of contingency undoubtedly
makes it more difficult to decide what to do with Cathedral
Pines, it allows human hopes and desires to influence the
future just as much as other contingencies. Because the state
of nature fluctuates with historical contingencies as do all
events, restoring Cathedral Pines to wilderness inescapably
forces us to make human choices. Thus, environmental ques-
tions because of their ambiguous outcomes can’t be handled
with the absolutist wilderness ethic. “ ‘All or nothing’ says
the wilderness ethic and in fact we’ve ended up with a land-
scape in America that conforms to the injunction remarkably
well” (Pollan 1991, 188). We did invent the wilderness areas.
They remain pure and untouched. But once a landscape is no
longer “virgin,” it is typically written off as fallen, lost to
nature, irredeemable. Then “you might just as well put up
condos. And so we do” (Pollan 1991, 188). We seem to have
divided the country in two, between the kingdom of wilder-
ness (8%) and the kingdom of the market (92%). The ques-
tion for us who care about nature is what to do or how behave
when we are on the market side (which is most of the time)?
The wilderness with its absolutist ethic won’t be of much
help over here. The metaphor of divine nature admits only
two roles for man: as worshipper (environmentalist) or tem-
ple destroyer (the developer). With 92% of the real estate
“damaged”, the temple’s been destroyed. We need to jettison
the wilderness ethic for one that works better in the everyday
world. Instead of looking to the wilderness, we should look
to the garden for the makings of a new ethic. A gardener’s
ethic gives local answers; accepts contingency and history;
agrees to be anthropocentric but in a broad sense that respects
wildness; accepts nature’s indifference, in fact, has a legiti-
mate quarrel with nature; feels participatory in positive envi-
ronmental change; often borrows methods from nature itself;
and uses culture as feedback while being at ease with the fun-
damental ambiguity of his predicament — while he lives in
nature, he is no longer strictly of nature. “Nature apparently
indifferent to his fate ... obliges him to make his own way
here as best he can” (Pollan 1991, 196). The essentialized
“divine nature” is dead which makes it possible to act differ-
ently and engage in a marriage with her. Turn nature into a
reciprocal partner; treat her soliticiously, like a garden.
What have we discovered in this comparison of literary
and ecological theory? Literary theory in its efforts to legiti-
mate its activity has embraced the dialogical. In the absence
of universals of any kind, critique — which needs a norm or
place to stand — has embraced a consensual historically con-
textualized “truth.” In order for such a historicized rela-
tivized truth to remain authentic, criticism (and literature)
must become self-reflexive, i.e. indicate that it is just an his-
torical construct and not pose as some transcendent Truth. It
must be transparent and up-front about its own non-founda-
tional position, its own point of view.
Not all literary and, more broadly, cultural criticisms do
this. Instead, they foreground the loss of foundations in all
disciplines, whether science, religion, philosophy, or art and,
in this newly emancipated intellectual area, they then erect an
alternative edifice more to their liking. If truth is a precipi-
tate of a point of view, they stand ready to provide the need-
ed refocused salutory “truth.” Thus, we have every imagin-
Human Ecology Forum
70 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
able reinterpretation of literature — feminist, Marxist, ethnic,
racist, colonial, Lacanian, existentialist, gay/lesbian, struc-
turalist, deconstructionist, etc. The result has been the grad-
ual emerging of criticism as more important than literature —
literature becomes an occasion for discourse analysis illus-
trating the essentialized truth of a particular point of view. A
once powerful variant of this insistence on point of view is the
now faded stance of political correctness. Even so, the prolif-
eration of these essentialized alternatives did promote some
needed reforms and restorations that have improved social
justice and egalitarianism. But the continued proliferation of
viewpoints can only lead to increasing relativism with its
attendant trivialization. It is no accident that certain champi-
ons of poststructuralism now seek to resuscitate a pragmatic
form of universal. They desperately need to escape from a
‘difference’ that allows them no place to stand.
11
Many literary theorists, however, have embraced a non-
essentialized, open-ended kind of dialogism. They agree that
universals are not available and accept an eternal schism
between the flux of reality and any interpretive scheme. But
rather than drawing Nietzschean consequences, i.e. debunk-
ing the pursuit of reason and knowledge as a disguised will to
power (e.g., Foucault) — they wish to continue with the stan-
dards of reason and critique. Deduction from universal laws
may have disappeared, but the temporal dimension of history
offers us before and after comparisons on which to make
value judgments. The dialogistic praxis of Bakhtin, Gada-
mer, Ricoeur, and Charles Taylor continue the enlightenment
tradition without its scientism, i.e. that scientific method cou-
pled with technology will bring inevitable progress. What
the dialogisms found in the above thinkers share is an open-
ended freedom to create a new self-world relationship based
on historical awareness of how the present cultural configu-
ration came into being. In the eternal historical present, we
will ceaselessly reinterpret the past out of which will come
the new worlds of the future.
Our two ecologists above share this historical dialogical
stance. In the recent collection of her ecofeminist essays,
Earthcare: Women and the Environment, Carolyn Merchant
echoes the necessity of such a historically oriented dialogical
approach to ecology:
I develop an ethic of earthcare based on the concept
of a partnership between people and nature. . . .
Nature . . . is real, active, and alive. Human beings
. . . are also real, active, autonomous beings. . . .
Nature . . . has the potential to destroy human lives
and to continue to evolve and develop with or with-
out human beings. Humans, who have the power to
destroy non-human nature and potentially them-
selves through science and technology, must exer-
cise care and restraint by allowing nature’s beings
the freedom to continue to exist, while still acting to
fulfill basic human material and spiritual needs. An
earthcare ethic . . . is generated by humans, but is
enacted by listening to, hearing, and responding to
the voice of nature. A partnership ethic then
emerges as a guide to practice. (Merchant 1995,
Introd. xix)
She actually goes so far as to oppose the use of Gaia mythol-
ogy to find metaphysical support in nature for feminist val-
ues. She believes that the emancipation of women made pos-
sible by the social construction of nature (reality) will be bet-
ter served by just viewing nature as an ongoing open-ended
process.
12
The evils attendant on essentializing nature in
whatever form, whether through nature as female, or the deep
ecologists using nature as the symbol for Self-realization, or
Wilson’s nature reduced to the old universal paradigm of
cause and effect, has to be avoided. If postmodern culture in
its repudiation of essentialism demands self-reflexivity and
open-endedness, then any adequate concept of nature must
incorporate this potential in its description. At this moment,
the only ecological theory that successfully incorporates
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle with its consequence that
self-reflexivity must be an integral part of every scientific
theory is Fritjof Capra’s synthesis of autopoiesis, dissipative
structures, and complex mathematics in what he calls the
“web of life” (1996). For him dialogism on the cultural level
finds its predecessor in autopoiesis on the biological level. He
seems to have done the impossible by offering a natural
framework that provides the stabilizing order given in the
past by religious narratives while escaping idolatry in allow-
ing freedom from closure to human imagination. The syn-
thesis of the new scientific theories within this new paradigm
is ambitious. Its exciting potential beckons us to further dia-
logue.
Endnotes
1. E-mail: Greenecho2@aol.com.
2. See the introduction to Zimmerman and Callicott (eds.) 1993.
3. See Cahoone, L. (1996) for a multiple description of the changeover.
4. For Arne Naess and George Sessions, see “Part Two: Deep Ecology”
in Zimmerman and Callicott (eds.) 1993. For Bill Devall, see “The
Deep Ecology Movement” in Natural Resources Journal 20 (April
1980), 299-313.
5. A good sampling of reinvigorated postmodern essentialism can be
found in David Ray Griffin (ed.) (1988); Judith Plant (ed.) (1989);
and David Bohm (1980). See also Luc Ferry (1995) on the perfor-
mative contradiction of deep ecology.
6. On the need to move beyond traditional religions of the revealed vari-
ety, see Don Cupitt (1997).
Human Ecology Forum
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 71
7. J. Butler (1990). This discussion of Judith Butler appeared earlier in
my “How Not to Get Lost in Cultural Studies . . .” in Heinz Antor and
Kevin Cope (eds.) Intercultural Encounters — Studies in English
Literatures (1999) Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag.
8. In Nicholson, L. (ed.) 1997; 330-55
9. See for example, Diamond, J. (1993) and Dawkins, R. (1989).
10. This argument is based on self-interest. That other relationships to
nature might be more influential and fulfilling, I leave the reader to
discover. See for example, Elliot, R. (ed.) 1995.
11. See Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek, (2000). Also “Is
There Life After Identity Politics?,” a special issue of New Literary
History (Autumn, 2000).
12. “My own view is that, however inspirational, the cultural baggage
associated with images of nature as female means that gendering
nature is at present too problematical to be adopted by emancipatory
social movements in Western societies. A view of nature as a
process, one that is more powerful and longer lasting than human
societies and human beings, is a sufficient basis for an ethic of earth-
care” (Ibid., xxii). On the parallel between deep ecology and Self-
realization as forms of metaphysical interconnectedness, see Freya
Mathews, Value in Nature and Meaning in Life, in Elliot, R. (1995,
142-154).
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Human Ecology Forum
72 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Abstract
The intelligibility of certain environmentalist critiques
and animal advocacy positions is underwritten by a realist
ontology of animality (or ‘zoöntology’). Various construc-
tionist commentaries in human ecology and allied fields tend
to undermine this foundation. The present article seeks to
defend an intermediate stance ontologically and epistemo-
logically, so as to preserve the significance of eco-critical
theories while allowing concerns of contextuality due entry
into such analyses. Particular attention is paid to the ontic
and epistemic standing of animate entities.
Keywords: realism, constructionism, zoöntology, ani-
mals, eco-criticism
. . . we may yet learn to perceive animals as we
ought to: as they really are . . . (Russow 1989, 38)
...our spirit protests against the artificiality of out-
ward show; it demands ‘essentials’ instead of
‘facades’ . . . [yet] we shall perceive that the
appearance which meets the eye is something of sig-
nificance and shall not allow it to be degraded to a
mere shell which hides the essential from our glance
(Portmann 1967, 34f.).
Do animals exist for us as meaningful entities only
insofar as each may be thought to manifest or exem-
plify an ideal type constituted within the set of sym-
bolic values making up the ‘folk taxonomy’ specific
to our culture? Or do we perceive animals directly,
by virtue of their immersion in an environment that
is largely ours as well, regardless of the images that
we may hold of them, or of whether we hold such
images at all? (Ingold 1988, 12)
Critiques of various wildlife protection measures, such as the
establishment and maintenance of zoological gardens and
parks, are sometimes mobilized by consideration of authen-
ticity factors. For example, are we really saving the wild in
conditions of captivity or sanctuary? Is the refuge not in
effect a prison that changes the ‘true nature’ or autonomy of
its keep? Framing this kind of query implies a criterion of
judgment, which has been phrased so that “a wild animal
achieves a state of authentic well-being when it survives and
reproduces offspring, based on its own genetic abilities and
behavioral adaptations, in a truly natural (as opposed to
[merely] naturalistic) environment” (Wuichet and Norton
1995, 239ff.). To assess the legitimacy of this type of criteri-
on, ecophilosophers need to deal with the issue of what a
‘real animal’ might be, of whether any such entity exists or is
knowable. At the other end of the ontological spectrum,
social constructionists dispute realist authenticators of animal
nature by making claims like the following: “Once brought to
human attention an animal is no longer an animal in itself —
it can only be that away from human sight, experience and
thought” (Mullan and Marvin 1987, 3). Neo-Kantian re-
marks of this sort raise the specter of what we might call zoo-
logical idealism. Consequently, in this essay, I want to com-
pare the phenomenal and biological notions of animality: Is
it possible to discover that elusive beast — the ‘noumenal
organism’? If not, can we rehabilitate the idea of biotic
authenticity — a notion crucial to the intelligibility of preser-
vation as such — without resting on essentialistic illusions?
1
To begin, let us look at a specific illustration of the prob-
lem. Two sociologists I have already quoted, Mullan and
Marvin, risk confusion when they set out to critique the zoo
while simultaneously maintaining allegiance to a construc-
tionist stance. They say that “the human experience of a [cap-
tive] creature destroys its authenticity (a quality which is
linked to its independence) as a wild animal” and yet insist
that “the notion of a ‘real animal’ makes no sense” because
“animals are human constructions” (Mullan and Marvin 1987,
73, 6, 3). How can their charge of inauthenticity be sustained,
given their eschewal of a realist zoöntology?
2
One way
Mullan and Marvin (1987, 3) attempt to salvage coherence is
to soften their anti-realism into an epistemological position so
as to rule out the implication that animals “are not real physi-
cal entities living in a real physical world, but rather to empha-
size they are also man-made in the sense that they are thought
about by man, and it is the animal as it is thought about rather
than the animal itself which is of significance.” However,
metaphysically, this retreat from hard-core constructionism
flirts with neo-Kantian dualism (with its concomitant dilem-
Human Ecology Forum
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 73
© Society for Human Ecology
Real Animals? An Inquiry on Behalf of Relational Zoöntology
Ralph R. Acampora
Department of Philosophy
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11549
USA
ma between perspectivalism vs. two-world ontology) and,
hermeneutically, it borders on tautology (insofar as signifi-
cance as such must be thought — i.e., to be at all).
The conceptual knots in which these sociologists tie
themselves are emblematic of a larger problem regarding the
ontological status of nature. Metaphysically speaking, many
if not most environmentalists are naive naturalists in the
sense that they believe in the ‘objective outdoors’— an exter-
nal world existing beyond human edifice and mentality, upon
which our buildings and theories are based. Some eco-
philosophers, however, have rejected this mainstream convic-
tion in favor of a constructionist stance. So, for instance,
Roger King (1990, 102) tells us that “nature is not something
in itself, but rather an artifact of human cultural life.” Yet, it
is unclear whether this claim is meant to express an actual
ontology or an epistemology instead, because King (1990,
104) also holds that “our understanding of Nature is a prod-
uct of cultural institutions and the plurality of interpretations
of the natural world which they make available.”
Now the ambiguity between ontological claim and epis-
temological deliverance is a typical feature of constructionist
positions. In a generic study of constructionism, Ian Hacking
(1999, 68) flags just this aspect in asking, “When we say ‘X
is socially constructed’, are we really talking about the idea
of X, or about an object in the world?” It is hard to get, and
no doubt difficult to give, a straight answer to Hacking’s
question. Returning to my example, King (1990, 102) offers
the following clarification: “To say that Nature is an artifact
is to say that we have no access to a Nature in itself; our inter-
pretation of Nature can never be independent of the intellec-
tual, artistic, emotional, and technological resources avail-
able to us.” Here the latter statement may be read as a
reminder that the ineluctable hermeneutic circle binds our
construals of the natural world, but the former statement
seems to imply a rather radical (and notoriously dubious)
species of idealism.
3
Yet, perhaps some ecophilosophers are prepared to bite
the idealist bullet. Steven Vogel (1998, 175), for instance,
comes quite close to embracing a quasi-pragmatist, neo-
Hegelian idealism when he claims that human “practice does-
n’t constitute [just] some social part of the world — it consti-
tutes the environing world as such, the world of real objects
that surround us, a world that is quite literally ‘socially con-
structed’.”
4
What would tempt anyone to adopt such a robust-
ly constructionist stance? I suspect it is the conviction, voiced
by Vogel and others, that there is “no access” to the natural
world that does not involve some human/social practice.
Here my realist compunctions kick in and I part compa-
ny with constructionism: obviously our interaction or dia-
logue with nature is socially constructed (what else could it
be?) — yet recognition of that does not automatically commit
us to believing nature itself is made up by us. Of course, I
cannot express anything about that bare world without dress-
ing it up in language; nonetheless, the assumption that anoth-
er reality — besides myself or us — is subject and party to
(not merely an object in or construction of) my/our discourse
and deeds is more plausible than the idea that I/we make the
world entirely out of words and actions. One reason this is so
is because the latter proposition implies an untenable inter-
pretation of scientific and technological successes and fail-
ures (Sismondo 1996, ch. 5). Thus, if we want to come to
terms with the many instances of common experience in
which people staking a cognitive claim are able (by applying
their knowledge) to gain pragmatic results that we who lack
that knowledge cannot achieve, then we will abandon full-
blown idealism (and its postmodern variant of ‘textualism’)
in favor of some form of realism (however weak).
5
Why?
Because the realistic notion that pragmatic coping is explain-
able in terms of our epistemic beliefs adequately describing
enough of the actual world to get by (not necessarily enough
to set up a complete correspondence theory of truth). This
notion, I hold, is to be preferred over any of the standard
options open to idealists: confessing ignorance and calling
pragmatic success a miracle, or making appeals to supernat-
ural principles such as pre-established harmony or divine
occasionalism.
With the provisional ontological commitments explicat-
ed above, let us now return to the topic of immediate concern
— nature and animals. The naturalistic realism of Holmes
Rolston III is instructive at this point. Here is a thinker who
reminds us, “There is always some sort of cognitive frame-
work within which nature makes its appearance, but that does
not mean that what appears is only the framework” (Rolston
1997, 43, italics added). What is salutary about Rolston’s
approach is his willingness to forego the polemical pendulum
swing between foundationalism and relativism. “We may not
have noumenal access to absolutes” he admits, and yet “we
do have access to some remarkable [natural] phenomena that
have taken place and continue to take place outside our
minds, outside our cultures” (Rolston 1997, 49). This access
is not pure — neither purely objective nor purely subjective.
It is a transactional dynamic of interrelationship; as such, it is
best understood not as impossible transcendence or as stulti-
fying solipsism but rather as taking place between knower
and known and capable of yielding enough awareness of the
latter by the former to enable a negotiation, or better a navi-
gation of what phenomenologists call the “lifeworld” — a
domain or zone of experience shared with other forms of life
(in both the cultural and biotic senses of the term).
6
So where does this insight leave us with respect to know-
ing other animals? Rolston readily appeals to the life sci-
ences for reliable knowledge, undaunted by sociologies or
Human Ecology Forum
74 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
histories of science that cast suspicion on the scientific enter-
prise as such.
7
In confrontation with contextualist accounts
of science — such as, for example, Donna Haraway’s
Primate Visions (1989) — his reliabilist epistemology can be
defended by pointing out that critics like Haraway are either
uncovering mis-representations (which only makes sense if
some idea of truth or its pursuit is still operative) or else their
critiques are rendered otiose (for want of a critical foil or ful-
crum).
8
Even if all epistemic sites are built (i.e., no knowl-
edge is simply given), not anything can count as a cognitive
structure and some building methods are better than others.
In the case of understanding different animals, then, the
choice to characterize other organisms as say ‘merely
machines’ or as ‘feeling flesh’ does not reduce to rhetorical
strife between metaphors or political struggle among their
arbitrary adherents.
Why not? For instance, Rolston (1997, 60) would have
it that “there is a chimpanzee self out there which can be
known not entirely, not ‘absolutely’, but sufficiently so that
we find that the intrinsic chimpanzee [or any animal?] self-
integrity ought not to be lightly sacrificed.” Now, though
sympathetic to the idea of integrity, I feel compelled to qual-
ify Rolston’s siting of an animal-self “out there.” If this
phrase means “external to me or us,” then fine — I do believe
personal and cultural horizons are often transcended (in com-
munication, for example); but if the term could be construed
to mean “outside the nexus of the knowing process,” then I
must move more toward the constructionist or pragmatist side
of the road: all (at least finite) knowledge is relational,
because cognition itself constitutes a relation(ship). It is
important — as a matter of cognitive conscience, in order to
accept the responsibility of knowledge — neither to under-
play nor to overstate this point. Indeed, as ecopolitical theo-
rist Kate Soper (1995, 173, 133) puts it, “in any understand-
ing we bring to other animals we need to be aware of the lim-
its of our understanding;” nonetheless, we must not deny an
element of zoöntic discovery — otherwise we risk sliding
into species-solipsism, “nor would it make sense to challenge
the effects of the imposition of any specific cultural ‘norm’or
discipline upon their [living bodies’] experience” (as social
critics and animal advocates wont to do).
9
Does this epistemology undermine the notion of onto-
logical authenticity? No, although it does alter our concep-
tion of the authentic’s locus. Even without determinate
knowledge of a ‘real’ animal behind its appearances (which
would ground authenticity-as-origin), it is still possible to
evaluate for honesty within the relational horizon of con-
sciousness (which can float a notion of authenticity-as-
integrity).
10
There is already precedent for the latter
approach in the literature of animal studies: in her endeavor
to develop “A Taxonomy of Knowing: Animals Captive,
Free-Ranging, and at Liberty,” Vicki Hearne (1995, 442, ital-
ics original) emphasizes that “my terms describe not so much
various conditions in which animals in themselves might be
as conditions we are in with the animals, social and gram-
matical conditions and circumstances.” Briefly, captive ani-
mals are those kept under direct control (think of lab speci-
mens), free-ranging ones are those beyond human confine-
ment, and those at liberty are paradigmatically working ani-
mals (dogs and horses, e.g., under conditions of training that
enable the flourishing of species-being and individual excel-
lences).
11
Leaving aside the tricky boundary issue between
the categories of free-ranging and ‘at liberty’, notice never-
theless that judgments of inauthenticity are permissible oper-
ating on the basis of a relational system such as Hearne’s.
Thus, coming around to the contexts cited at this paper’s
outset, the promotion and indulgence of the zoo presents its
keep as wild in the ordinary sense of free-ranging when the
relation of keeping itself falsifies this very representation.
Likewise, the structure of the zoo’s entertainment value plays
off a feeling of closeness to ‘the wild’in the form of dangerous
creatures; yet it generally is not zoo inhabitants’ endogenous
ferocity that makes them risky relations for human contact, but
rather (circularly) their very conditions of captivity. Talk about
constructions! As Mullan and Marvin (1987, 4f.) point out, the
‘danger’ is not so much inherent as it is “a product of the ani-
mal’s predicament in being forced to be in undesired and
unnatural proximity to man.” Inasmuch as zoos trade on the
allure of such danger, while occluding their role in bringing it
about, we can again judge the institution’s portrayal of animal-
ity to be less than genuine. Finally, note that this judgment
does not depend on discovering deviation from an originary
truth of animal essence, but is due rather to a structural set-up
that disallows acknowledgment of its own preconditions.
13
My conclusion, then, is that the notion of a noumenal
organism is not required for authenticity critiques of conser-
vation institutions such as zoos. Beyond environmental crit-
icism, though, am I recommending that ecologists never refer
to ‘animalness’? Well, certainly not in a metaphysically pre-
sumptuous tone of voice; more modestly, however, it may be
possible to limn the contours of constraint on our perception
of animality: as one researcher puts it, “because of their dis-
tinctive properties of transformational growth and non-repet-
itive motion, we see animals as such, irrespective of how we
might come to describe and classify them.”
14
Yet even this
kind of claim is more controversial than any I have sought to
defend above; if true, though, it would enable condemnation
of captivity itself (insofar, that is, as repetitive movement is a
behavioral by-product of zoo-keeping). Obviously, therefore,
I regard zoöntology as a field far from fully harvested and
would encourage its further cultivation within and beyond
human ecology.
Human Ecology Forum
Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001 75
Coda: An epilogue as dialogue
Logos: So that’s it? Seems he just gives up the root
notion of autonomy, and replaces it only with a shadow con-
cept in the idea of relational authenticity. In that case zoos,
for instance, don’t violate the inherent nature of animals
(because there isn’t any intelligible) — they just misrepresent
themselves to us, not really the animals as such.
Hermes: I think there’s more to it than that. His posi-
tion appears also to be a stance against the kind of biotic ide-
alism that could lead to (at least species, if not subjective)
solipsism. I mean if we actually bought into hardline con-
structionism, then wouldn’t we have to regard other animals
as being produced by us — not indeed from nothing, but still
only and entirely from our own cultural resources?
L: I don’t deny the implication, but the way to avoid it
is to posit a really real animal — you know, something ‘out
there’ in the manner of objective realism.
H: Of course, there are the oft-rehearsed constructionist
objections to such a belief. But maybe we don’t need objec-
tivism, after all: might not his emphasis on (inter)relation-
ships be enough to avoid the sort of solipsism at stake here?
L: I’m not sure I follow; please spell it out.
H: Even if your zoological awareness is not of some
essential animal out there, isn’t it still the case that one’s nat-
ural experience occurs with others beside oneself?
L: Maybe, but your articulation is spare and leans heav-
ily on unexplicated connotations of certain phenomenologi-
cally murky prepositional phrases.
H: One could, at this point, have recourse to the
Marxian discourse on the “transindividual.” Would you pre-
fer that?
L: Please no, thank you, not at this time.
15
H: Just let me mention that Marx thematized a felt space
of intersubjectival or better interstitial (and I dare say now
ecological) reality which, were we to rehabilitate it carefully,
could allow us to circumvent the reductionist difficulties both
of monadology and nodal ontology — to thread a path, as it
were, between the shoals of solipsism and the hollows of
holism respectively.
L: Come again? I’m afraid you’ve lost me in your pen-
chant for flowery alliteration.
H: I’m talking about the way traditional metaphysics of
subjectivity never seem to reconnect sufficiently with the
social and the natural, whereas newer process or Gestalt-type
ontologies appear to reduce us to mere points in a weblike
flux of interactivity. Perhaps a doctrine like Marx’s transin-
dividualism could help us get beyond that sort of dilemma —
a happy result, I might add, for bioethical ecosophies caught
up in the debate between individualism and holism.
L: Okay, I’m prepared to say I’d be interested in seeing
something like that develop. But for now, before departing,
I’d like to return to the core issue of autonomy. So far, you’ve
only enhanced the plausibility of the thesis that the world
contains more than one subject or species. That quantitative
result hardly excites. Don’t you have any-thing else to say,
qualitatively, about the independent status of nature or ani-
mality?
H: No and yes: no, because talk about the “independent
status” of reality belies the whole notion of lifeworldly
hermeneutics; yes, because even within the latter horizon of
conversation we can yet say something substantive about the
kind of entities populating our environmental philosophy.
Basically, it comes down to a recognition that the (relative)
dependence of a being’s meaning on something or someone
else does not nullify that being’s existence or autonomy.
Influencing an entity, in other words, is equivalent neither to
extinguishing nor to controlling it.
L: You mean we don’t have to choose between viewing
a natural entity either as absolutely autonomous or else as
completely inert?
H: That’s it! I hope that we can make room in ecophi-
losophy for acknowledging the multiple agencies of natural
and cultural forces — because agency itself does not have to
be conceived on the model of consciously self-produced free-
dom of individual will. It can be thought of instead as occu-
pying permeable centers of power or moving through flexible
vectors of force.
L: And thereby we permit a measure of construction to
coexist with a degree of autonomy?
H: If you want to put it that way. What I’m getting at is
that the authentic need not be sui generis to count as having
an (however impure) identity of its ‘own.’ If it had to be so,
we’d have landed in the odd situation that to escape inau-
thenticity an animal (or any other natural feature of the
world) must be divine. Surely, though, creatures count —
ontologically and axiologically — even if they’re not them-
selves gods!
L: I should hope so, yes indeed.
Endnotes
1. The conceptual dialectic that drives this debate is not unlike that of
the controversy in environmental ethics and ecopolitics surrounding
the issue of ecosystem or habitat restoration. Like advocates of pris-
tine land, biotic purists insist that (only) the truly wild animal is the
‘real’animal (q.v. Paul Shepard, some deep ecologists, et al.); like the
restorationists, on the other hand, zoo directors and wildlife rehabil-
itators are wont to defend the legitimacy of reintroduction and even
‘reconstruction’ schemes. See, e.g., Claude Guintard and Jacek
Rewerski’s (1999) “The Disappearance of the Aurochs (Bos primige-
nius) in Poland during the XVIIth Century and the ‘Reintroduction’
Human Ecology Forum
76 Human Ecology Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001
Project of this Reconstituted Animal in the Mazury Region”: working
on the basis of an ‘inverse’ breeding program to re-establish the
external appearance of the European domestic cattle’s lost ancestor,
“an original project combining tourism, nature and tradition
(‘T.N.T.’) is currently being developed to install the so-called ‘recon-
stituted’ aurochs in the northern part of the country” (abstract, italics
added).
2. There can be no appeal here to biology as arbiter, because “this [sci-
entific] form of seeing and understanding is itself cultural and in a
sense is not more a true picture of the animal than any other” (Mullan
and Marvin 1987, 8).
3. Again, King is not alone in this regard. Similar issues arise in others’
application of constructionism to nature — see, e.g., Evernden
(1992). It is my impression that such thinkers do not want to embrace
full-blooded idealism — I know that King (personal communication),
at least, does not — but my point is that their writings invite if not
entail it. For those unfamiliar with the “hermeneutic circle” men-
tioned in the main text, the reference is to the feature of interpreta-
tion that it has to start somewhere and yet that starting point must
itself be interpreted at a later stage in the process of interpreting; this
reflexivity is ongoing but virtuous, because each circuit of interpre-
tation reveals new angles of a given text or phenomenon (i.e., articu-
lation ‘spirals’ informatively).
4. Cf. Lawrence Hazelrigg’s (1995, 12, original italics) even more
emphatic stance in Cultures of Nature, where he endorses the posi-
tion that “nature is a product of human making. Not merely ‘the idea
of nature’ or ‘nature as we think it is’ or ‘nature experienced’ ...but
the concrete practical materiality, the substance and support, the actu-
al and potential plenitude of the reality of nature — in sum the whole
of the given being and being-givenness of nature as it is — is a con-
crete production in/by human labor in the activity of making life.”
More cautious,Vogel (1998, 177) is careful to recoil from the furthest
extremity of such views — by allowing that “the claim that the envi-
roning world is socially constructed does not mean that somehow we
build it ex nihilo.”
5. Here I concur with Kate Soper’s (1995, 134-145) position that full-
blown constructionism is incoherent. I see myself as supplementing
her political argument on this point with an epistemological rationale.
6. Like Hume and a host of American philosophers, I am convinced that
stable praxes trump the global doubts of Cartesian-type skepticism.
As Rolston (1997, 53) puts it, “One doesn’t have to know it all to
know something.” My own metaphors are those of love- or war-mak-
ing — even if done in the dark, with your partner or enemy out of full
view, there’s pretty little room to think you’re alone. See also David
Abrams’ (2000, 9, italics original) remarks in his “Language and the
Ecology of Sensory Experience: An Essay with an Unconsctructive
Footnote,” for example: “the ‘society’ which constructs this indeter-
minate world is much vaster than any merely human society — it
includes spiders and swallows and subterranean seepages along with
us two-leggeds . . . we humans are by no means the sole, or even the
primary, agents of the world’s construction.”
7. Rolston (1997, 56) sheds scientism by acknowledging that “biologi-
cal claims do not try to get underneath to some noumenal realm”; but
he views science as no worse off for that, because “biology claims
that these [life] phenomena are given in themselves.” In effect he
thus collapses the biological into the phenomenal, trusting with an
almost Husserlian faith that noumena are not necessary for reliable
cognition.
8. Some commentators, in fact, think that postmodern ecosophy may
have already hung itself on the latter horn of this dilemma. E.g., see
John Visvader’s (1998,32) “Environmental Activism in an Age of
Deconstructionist Biology”: “The net effect of ‘demythologizing’
biology and social constructionism is to make environmental values
appear to be subjective and relativistic.”
9. “For if there are, indeed, no ‘natural’ needs, desires, instincts, etc.,
then it is difficult to see how these can be said to be subject to the
‘repressions’ or ‘distortions’ of existing norms” (130). These latter
remarks Soper makes in relation to human sexes, but her comments
apply equally well to the reality of other species (an application in
keeping with the argument she develops throughout the book as a
whole).
10. Even after foundationalism, in the absence of solid ‘grounding,’there
remains an option for ‘flotational’ knowledge: speaking figuratively
of our cognitive condition, we can yet build and sail a water-worthy
ship — even without plumbing the sea’s depths or combing the ocean
floor.
11. Cf. Thomas Sebeok’s (1988, 68ff.) nine-fold relational taxonomy -
which includes categories of predation, partnership, amusement, par-
asitism, conspecificity, reification, taming, and training. “‘Animal’ in
Biological and Semiotic Perspective.” See also Ted Benton’s (1993,
62-68) schema (likewise of nine, albeit different categories) in
Natural Relations: Ecology, Animal Rights, and Social Justice.
12. Interestingly, this example also illuminates the issue of whether the
subjects of life sciences’studies are material objects or social objects.
Hacking (1999, 72) has it that a characteristic property of the latter is
their amenability to feedback loops (whereby the object’s behavior is
reflexively shaped by subjection to a self-fulfilling regimen of study)
— but his dichotomy between physical and human sciences leaves
biology unaccounted for. In this light, then, Mullan and Marvin fur-
nish zoological testimony that captive animals are indeed social
beings.
13. Imagine what would happen if zoos (and their visitors) were honest
about themselves, that what they keep (or see) are captive animals
(who do not necessarily display the attributes of free-ranging ones)
— this would erase one of their quintessential reasons for being/
watching!
14. Edward Reed, as paraphrased by Ingold (1997, 12).
15. See Howard L. Parsons’ Marx and Engels on Ecology (1977, 32,
121).
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publishes peer-reviewed interdisciplinary research on all
aspects of human-environment interactions (Research
in Human Ecology).Human Ecology Review is indexed or
abstracted in Environment Abstracts, Environmental
Knowledgebase,Environmental Periodicals Bibliography,
Linguistic and Language Behavior Abstracts, Social
Planning and Policy Abstracts, and Sociological
Abstracts. The journal also publishes essays, discussion
papers, dialogue, and commentary on special topics
relevant to human ecology (Human Ecology Forum),
book reviews (Contemporary Human Ecology),and let-
ters, announcements, and other items of interest
(Human Ecology Bulletin). See the inside front cover for
submission information to the Forum, Contemporary,
and Bulletin sections.
Submission Guidelines
Four copies of the manuscript must be submitted for
review.Manuscripts should be typed (in English),double-
spaced on one side of 8
1
/2” x 11” white paper, using at
least 1” margins. All manuscripts receive double-blind
peer review. The Editor will make the final decision
whether to accept, not accept, or request revision of
the paper. Manuscripts will be reviewed with the clear
understanding that the paper has not been previously
published and is not under consideration for publication
elsewhere. Any figure, table, or more than 50 running
words of text from previously published material must be
accompanied in the final submission for publication by
a written permission to publish by the copyright holder.
Once the manuscript has been accepted for publica-
tion in Human Ecology Review, a copyright form will be
sent to the corresponding author as the acting agent for
any coauthors. The author must provide three copies of
the accepted manuscript and a copy of the document
on a 3-1/2”pc-compatible disk. Page proofs will be sent
to the corresponding author.
Manuscript Organization
Title page containing the title of the manuscript,
authors’ names, affiliations, and mailing addresses;
Abstract (150 words or less with 3 to 5 key words); text
(free of any information that could identify the author);
Endnotes; Acknowledgments; References; Tables and
Figures. The entire manuscript should be free of any
underlining or boldface type; use italics only for empha-
sis and in references (see below). Headings should be
centered with initial capitalization only, subheadings
should be flush left.
Tables and Figures
Tables should be clear and concise,and should be able
to “stand alone” i.e., complete headings and footnotes
should be used to clarify entries. Figures should be of
professional quality and ready for publication. Figures
that are not available on disk will be scanned electron-
ically for final production. To have clear, precise repro-
duction, all figures should be original proofs.
Photographs must be glossy prints. All tables and figures
should be referred to in the text and notation should be
made in the manuscript indicating approximately
where each should be placed.
References
Citation of references in the text should follow this for-
mat: Henry (1998, 42) or (Henry and Wright 1997) or
(Henry et al. 1996, 22-24) or (Henry 1995, 1998; Wright
1994). The list of references should be arranged alpha-
betically by author.All authors of a work must be listed.
Sample References
Schoenfeld, A. C., R. F. Meier and R. J. Griffin. 1979.
Constructing a social problem: The press and the envi-
ronment.Social Problems 27,38-61.
Cohen, J. 1995. How Many People Can the Earth
Support? New York: W.W.North.
Altman, I. and S. Low (eds.). 1992. Place Attachment.
New York: Plenum.
Varner, G. 1995. Can animal rights activists be environ-
mentalists? In C. Pierce and D. VanDeVeer (eds.),
People,Penguins,and Plastic Trees, 2nd Edition,254-273.
Belmont,CA: Wadsworth.
Send manuscript submissions to:
Dr. Linda Kalof,Editor,Human Ecology Review
Department of Sociology and Anthropology,George Mason University
Fairfax,VA 22030 USA
QUEEN CITY
PRINTERS INC.
