Environmental Argument and Cultural Difference: Locations, Fractures and Deliberations

ISBN-13: 9783039110629 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 390 str.

Edmondson, Ricca

Opis

Environmental argument is about far more than meets the eye. How people (mis)understand each other during environmental debates is affected by conflicts between values and ways of life which may not be directly connected with the environment at all. This book offers sociological evidence from three contrasting societies Ireland, Germany and China to explore how diversity of cultural context affects deliberation about the physical world. What can we discover by examining environmental debates through the lens of interculturality? When people disagree about flood management, building motorways or extracting gas, what difference does it make if they have diverse experiences of neighbourly relations, how to use time or how to imagine a good life? What is going on at intersections between cultures to influence the trajectories of environmental debates? The book disinters taken-for-granted practices, feelings and social relationships which affect environmental arguments, in scientific and artistic debate as well as in politics and policy-making. Importantly, the book makes visible the effects of cultural difference on people s approaches to arguing itself. If public arguing is shaped by specific habits of feeling or imagination, how does that impact on theories of democracy? Do we need new kinds of arguing to cope with environmental crises? What elements of arguing are decisive in the ways people come to see environmental decisions as wise choices?"

Spis treści

Contents: Ricca Edmondson/Henrike Rau: Introduction: Arguing about the Environment - What Difference Does Culture Make? - Sylvia Kruse: Structuring Multiple Perspectives in Environmental Decision-Making: Flood Protection in the Middle-Elbe Region - Mark Garavan: Problems in Achieving Dialogue: Cultural Misunderstandings in the Corrib Gas Dispute - Henrike Rau: Environmental Arguing at a Crossroads? Cultural Diversity in Irish Transport Planning - Lisa Moran: Local Knowledge and Conceptions of Neighbourliness in Environmental Disputes: Evidence from Connemara - Liu Wei: Environmental Argumentation and Political Sensibility: The Case of China - Frances Fahy: Dwelling on Waste: Participatory Action Research and Managing Household Waste in Galway - Perry Share/Oliver Moore: Bringing Outside Environmental Knowledge In: Food and Eating - Walter Wortberg: Environmental Medicine and Health in Industrialised Nations: Cases from Germany - Ruairí O'Brien: Intercultural Interpretations: Not Wasting Wasteland - Chen Hong: Species Conflict as Cultural and Moral Conflict: Reflections on Chinese Readers' Responses to The Wolf Totem - Kevin Ryan: Environmental Conflict and Democracy: Between Reason and Hegemony - Ricca Edmondson: Intercultural Rhetoric, Environmental Reasoning and Wise Argument - Renate Künast: Postscript: Ecological Debate and Interculturality.

O autorze

The Editors: Ricca Edmondson studied at the universities of Lancaster and Oxford and is now senior lecturer in the School of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She has previously worked in universities in Berlin and at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Her specialisms include theories of rhetoric, argumentation and wisdom; ageing and life-course development; links between methodology and theory; and interculturality.
Henrike Rau is a lecturer in Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her doctoral research work focused on the comparative study of German and Irish time perspectives and temporal practices. Her current research interests include time-related aspects of environmental change and sustainability, and the study of socio-temporal and cultural consequences of car-dependency and high mobility.