Our Future Environment

In Malinowski’s ethnographic study of a coral garden population some miles from New Guinea he writes this about his field work:

“The principles of social organization, of legal constitution, of economics and religion have to be constructed by the observer out of a multitude of manifestations of varying significance and relevance. It is these invisible realities…which are scientifically important in the study of culture. Land tenure is typical of such ‘invisible facts’…It would not be an exaggeration to say that mistakes in land policy have caused the greater part of colonial and imperial difficulties….questions of land, of arbitrary expropriation or unwise apportionment, of sheer unncessary chicanery or even of well meant but revolutionary reform, take a prominent place in racial and national conflicts.” (318)

Uncovering and analyzing “invisible facts” is what us as social scientists strive to do. It is not just important to understand how these ” invisible facts”/”invisible hand”/systems operate around us but we should also understand how those systems can change. What I mean by systems is, for example, how a government or a people appropriate land and consider the environmental impact on both citizens and their natural environment. As I was reading I realized that it is often difficult to argue for both human rights and protection and conservation of our natural environment because land is a prized commodity among people and “nature” alike. Advocates for environmental justice and environmental activists are both arguing for what they see as inalienable rights but I want to examine when these two concepts of justice are in conflict.

Filed under: environmental planning, goals on February 20th, 2008