Eco-Criticism

This post is a consequence of a call for papers on eco-criticism (green criticism) of children's literature. It has wider relevance as a critique of many other aspects of society and politics. I am drawing this discussion by reviewing Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin, Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment, Routledge 2010. The title gives the order of interest - Postcolonial critique predominates, focusing primarily of ecocritical concerns, using the three subtitles as case studies. Colonialism regarded the environment as natural resources to be exploited, assuming that land's value lies only in what can be exploited. Exploitation takes from the land rather than enriches it - mines are dug, forests are cut down - and other assumptions about the land have had little voice, assumptions about preserving the environment sustainably to hand it on to our children and our grandchildren undiminished. Where environment and habitat have been lost, this implies that some efforts are made to restore it. Although colonies are ended, colonial attitudes linger as former colonists or neocolonialists pull strings and hold influence through multi-national companies, at worst producing atrocities such as at Bhopal in India, and more generally depriving local people of land and livelihood. Regarding animals as a resource has its extreme form in the killing of elephants for ivory.

I am concerning myself in this post with Ecocriticism rather than postcolonial and neocolonial aspects. This is not to deny the latter, for which there is more than enough evidence globally that these are real issues, and that it is closely linked to issues of poverty and the unfair distribution of wealth and resources. I will return to neocolonialism in a later blog. Ecocriticism involves how we critique human environmental usage, and what attitudes to land we build up in our broad education programmes.

I start my critique with social critique which involves issues of equity, democratic collaboration and fair distribution of the world's resources. The population of the world need sufficient water and food for their needs, which has to be the start of economic and political planning. If some people have less than sufficient, and others more than sufficient, this presents an ethical problem. Waste is also an issue, especially in circumstances where others desperately need the equivalent of what is wasted. To achieve global equity, most of the assumptions of the developed world need overturning. The 'right' to have plenty, and luxuries besides, has to be set against the 'need' of others to survive. Colonialism has left a legacy of exploited land, perhaps with an over-reliance on colonial crops such as chocolate, coffee, tea or rubber which multinationals can exploit in the name of competition to keep western prices low (and in so doing keep the producers' incomes low). In short, considering all aspects of life globally through the lens of social equity will be the main thrust of ecocriticism. Land ownership, even, becomes unclear where land was unfairly taken in the past. All this is mighty unsettling to current landowners in former colonies.

Education can address issues of social equity through history, geography and science (if the science syllabus allows time to be devoted to the use of science). Children might question priorities - why are billions of pounds or dollars spent globally on luxuries for the rich rather than on resources for the poor? On the space race rather than food race, or the race for green energy? Literature might also play a part, with children's stories about the lives of the poor and disadvantaged told with a political edge rather than a patronising one. Environmental education concerns itself (at the curriculum margins, it has to be said) with sustainability, habitat, biodiversity and so on. Without wishing to play these down, it is a neocolonial agenda, seeking to ensure that we who have do not lose pleasures in the future generations. Environmental education does also emphasise global resources at the radical end, but the political agenda of redistribution of resources from rich to poor does not dominate in schools. It takes a disaster to encourage rich people to 'help', forgetting that our wealth is part of the reason for their poverty.