- Email: [email protected]
Cultures and Crises: Understanding Risk and Resolution
Emotion, Space and Society 16 (2015) 9e10
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Emotion, Space and Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/emospa
Book review Cultures and Crises: Understanding Risk and Resolution Mary Douglas, , in: Richard Fardon (Ed.). Sage (2013). £30.99, paperback, (ISBN 9781446254677) Reviewed by Jennifer L. Lawrence, Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, 24061, USA. Thanks to the meticulous efforts of Richard Fardon, of SOAS's Department of Anthropology and Society, Cultures and Crises anthologizes some of the most critical scholarship of Mary Douglas' career in a contemporary moment of ecological crisis whereby a history of institutionalized and asymmetrical power relations are being articulated through climate change and its attendant vulnerabilities. This edited volume encompasses much of the work that Mary Douglas undertook during the last two decades of her life, tackling contemporary questions of climate change, terrorism, and institutionalized risk. As such, it offers readers a comprehensive, and perhaps revisionist view of Douglas' life's work, including the development of ‘grid and group theory’ and ‘cultural theory’ as schools of thought that sought to “find predictable relations between ways of organizing socially and the cultural bias of those organized” (pg. vii). The anthology brings notable scholars from across the social sciences into a conversation about the role culture plays into the complexities of addressing climate change, institutionalized deviance, and the manner in which terrorism can be understood as a positive feedback loop. Throughout the volume, though, Douglas' voice and ideas remain prominent. Overall, the book tackles foundational issues within Cultural Theory and stakes a claim for the “indispensability of social and cultural context for understanding human activity” (pg 6). In this way, Douglas and her collaborators push back against institutionalized and instrumentalist approaches to understanding and addressing risk, all while recognizing that these approaches are culturally produced and that they are regularly emotionally constrained. Cultures and Crises is a much-needed reminder that lived experience holds sway over of one's worldview. Indeed, Douglas' life experiences, including the devoutly religious ideology of her family, were influential in the development of her theories, and perhaps more obviously her critiques, of institutions such as government and religion. Although such standpoint epistemology arguments have endured critiques of essentialism, Douglas strongly maintains the familiar argument that the structure of social organizations constructs the way that individuals perceive the world and, in so doing, individuals reify those very structures in favor of alternatives. In this way, structure and agency cannot be extracted from one another. One strong illustration of this familiar, yet often problematic, pattern can be found throughout Douglas' analyses of environmental risks that are produced as a consequence of climate change. It is increasingly clear that institutionalized responses to climate change science rely on a neoliberal logic of nature as a http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2015.05.002 1755-4586
source of commodity production, and these responses reify selfsame risky practices that have precipitated the phenomenon. The Yale Center for Climate Change Communication has indicated that it is emotiondnot rationality, objectivity, and factualitydthat is most influential in climate change redressement (Ropeik, 2015). As such, individual emotion informs, and is inextricably linked to institutional governance, including the institutional failures to sufficiently address climate change. Culture and Crises is presented in a typical Douglas waydlots of ideas, lots of classifications and typologies to help sort through those ideas, and lots of questions left in the wake of all of that. Outwardly, the anthology is primarily concerned with societal risks, and to be sure, Douglas wants to distinguish her approach from ontological social science and political science debates about what influences behavior moredself-interest or social norms. She contends that rather than taking a side on this, her perspective in cultural theory is “an effort to outline which combinations of interests, norms, perceptions, time horizons, strategies and emotions prevail in particular social settings” (pg. 166). But, to compose this outline requires the imposition of a somewhat rigid framework on top of individual agency, and biases, which are flexible, fluid, and are difficult, if not impossible, to fit into the sort of classifications that Douglas wants to construct. Although the sort of objectivity that would be required for institutions to more effectively address wicked problemsdclimate change, the construction of terrorism, environmental hazards and vulnerabilities, cultural perspectives on women, etc.dseems unobtainable, society must continue to struggle through the clumsiness of organizations and the individuals who make up those organizations in order to see how cultural theory might offer practical relevance “to resolve pressing environmental and social ills” (p.191). Recognizing the theory-praxis messiness, Douglas’ attempt to construct a framework for analysis that can help explain behavior, assess risk more holistically, and push for certainty in an uncertain world might produce more clumsiness. The overarching argument of the volume is that social and cultural context should not be lost in the many complex, and seemingly intractable issues, of the contemporary world. In other words, imposing simplistic solutions onto complex problems will be no more effective in managing risk-laden issues such as climate change or terrorism, than trying to assess the way that complex human emotion impacts behavior and decision-making. Each of these things are intertwined. However, this argument remains implicit in many ways and perhaps gets lost in the multiple efforts of constructing an objective operationalization of cultural theory. Indeed, one of the strengths of cultural theorydits breadthdmight also be viewed by some as a weakness resulting in the difficulty of such scholarship to fall in a strict methodological order that enables replication. For many critical scholars of cultural theory, critiquing the underlying conditions that produce risk and disaster is favorable to creating typologies and frameworks that imbue replication,
10
Book review / Emotion, Space and Society 16 (2015) 9e10
thus, Douglas’ preoccupation with such schemas may be frustrating. Nonetheless, the volume is jam-packed with important discussions on issues ranging from the delineation between human needs and wants, to poverty, and the persistence of an aesthetic view of nature, as well as deviance, risk-taking, and the harmful impacts of individualistic decision-making on collective global society. These stories will remind many, and introduce others, as to why Douglas remains an imminent figure in cultural and social theory. Throughout her life, Douglas was especially concerned with how individual perceptions play into environmental harm and Cultures and Crises addresses this concern in a variety of ways. Although the global dialogue around climate change and risk is well documented in scholarly literature as well as in popular culture, including accounts that might deny this association, Douglas unambiguously tackles this topic by addressing the role of both the individual and the collective in a system of slow/chronic environmental degradation. Part 2: “Culture and Climate” provides a thorough inquiry into the complex relationship between risk and climate change that not only addresses historically contingent risks that have resulted in climate change, but also risks that are produced as a result of climate change. Of course, perception is essential here because it is a biased accounting of how present decisions will be projected as future consequences that are unevenly distributed (p. 217). Although the authors deliver a dizzying array of ways in which cultures create, and try to resolve, environmental crises, they are also perceptions that have biases, which cannot be meted out by rubrics, and perhaps this is the fundamental incompatibility that underlies varying shades of green within the broader environmental movement. Despite this, readers might be optimistic that Douglas and her compatriots distinguish the rational subject, and that this rationality enables an understanding of crises and risks that progresses climate governance beyond emotional arguments and into, perhaps more effective, political and economic arguments.
Cultures and Crises culminates with a story by Oscar Wilde entitled “The Selfish Giant.” The story is one that elucidates many of the issues that Mary Douglas also brought to light throughout her career, and a story that demonstrates the complexity of the human condition, and the possibilities of the human imagination. The story, also, highlights many of the themes that are found in the preceding pages: elements of emotion and culture that are fundamental to justice; human desires and false needs; the aestheticization of nature; clumsy solutions to complicated problems; and perhaps most compelling, the question of time. Indeed, the question of time is, perhaps, the question that readers should walk away with e is time running out for us to adequately respond to climate change? Will we recognize the impact of our selfishness, as the Giant did, before all hope of forgiveness is lost? And if we so choose to turn a blind eye to the self-destructive yet resilient perpetrators of environmental degradation, what will be the moral consequences of this risk? While this volume is comprehensive in many ways, it raises more questions that it responds to… which is, perhaps, what Douglas would have intended. Jennifer L. Lawrence is a doctoral candidate in the ASPECT (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought) program at Virginia Tech. Her research interests are interdisciplinary in nature and are focused on the intersection of economic systems, environmental concerns, and social justice considerations. Jennifer L. Lawrence* Department of Political Science, 523 Major Williams Hall (0130), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA * Tel.: þ1 540 231 6571; fax: þ1 540 231 6078. E-mail addresses: http://www.jenniferleighlawrence.com, [email protected].
30 April 2015
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Emotion, Space and Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/emospa
Book review Cultures and Crises: Understanding Risk and Resolution Mary Douglas, , in: Richard Fardon (Ed.). Sage (2013). £30.99, paperback, (ISBN 9781446254677) Reviewed by Jennifer L. Lawrence, Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, 24061, USA. Thanks to the meticulous efforts of Richard Fardon, of SOAS's Department of Anthropology and Society, Cultures and Crises anthologizes some of the most critical scholarship of Mary Douglas' career in a contemporary moment of ecological crisis whereby a history of institutionalized and asymmetrical power relations are being articulated through climate change and its attendant vulnerabilities. This edited volume encompasses much of the work that Mary Douglas undertook during the last two decades of her life, tackling contemporary questions of climate change, terrorism, and institutionalized risk. As such, it offers readers a comprehensive, and perhaps revisionist view of Douglas' life's work, including the development of ‘grid and group theory’ and ‘cultural theory’ as schools of thought that sought to “find predictable relations between ways of organizing socially and the cultural bias of those organized” (pg. vii). The anthology brings notable scholars from across the social sciences into a conversation about the role culture plays into the complexities of addressing climate change, institutionalized deviance, and the manner in which terrorism can be understood as a positive feedback loop. Throughout the volume, though, Douglas' voice and ideas remain prominent. Overall, the book tackles foundational issues within Cultural Theory and stakes a claim for the “indispensability of social and cultural context for understanding human activity” (pg 6). In this way, Douglas and her collaborators push back against institutionalized and instrumentalist approaches to understanding and addressing risk, all while recognizing that these approaches are culturally produced and that they are regularly emotionally constrained. Cultures and Crises is a much-needed reminder that lived experience holds sway over of one's worldview. Indeed, Douglas' life experiences, including the devoutly religious ideology of her family, were influential in the development of her theories, and perhaps more obviously her critiques, of institutions such as government and religion. Although such standpoint epistemology arguments have endured critiques of essentialism, Douglas strongly maintains the familiar argument that the structure of social organizations constructs the way that individuals perceive the world and, in so doing, individuals reify those very structures in favor of alternatives. In this way, structure and agency cannot be extracted from one another. One strong illustration of this familiar, yet often problematic, pattern can be found throughout Douglas' analyses of environmental risks that are produced as a consequence of climate change. It is increasingly clear that institutionalized responses to climate change science rely on a neoliberal logic of nature as a http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2015.05.002 1755-4586
source of commodity production, and these responses reify selfsame risky practices that have precipitated the phenomenon. The Yale Center for Climate Change Communication has indicated that it is emotiondnot rationality, objectivity, and factualitydthat is most influential in climate change redressement (Ropeik, 2015). As such, individual emotion informs, and is inextricably linked to institutional governance, including the institutional failures to sufficiently address climate change. Culture and Crises is presented in a typical Douglas waydlots of ideas, lots of classifications and typologies to help sort through those ideas, and lots of questions left in the wake of all of that. Outwardly, the anthology is primarily concerned with societal risks, and to be sure, Douglas wants to distinguish her approach from ontological social science and political science debates about what influences behavior moredself-interest or social norms. She contends that rather than taking a side on this, her perspective in cultural theory is “an effort to outline which combinations of interests, norms, perceptions, time horizons, strategies and emotions prevail in particular social settings” (pg. 166). But, to compose this outline requires the imposition of a somewhat rigid framework on top of individual agency, and biases, which are flexible, fluid, and are difficult, if not impossible, to fit into the sort of classifications that Douglas wants to construct. Although the sort of objectivity that would be required for institutions to more effectively address wicked problemsdclimate change, the construction of terrorism, environmental hazards and vulnerabilities, cultural perspectives on women, etc.dseems unobtainable, society must continue to struggle through the clumsiness of organizations and the individuals who make up those organizations in order to see how cultural theory might offer practical relevance “to resolve pressing environmental and social ills” (p.191). Recognizing the theory-praxis messiness, Douglas’ attempt to construct a framework for analysis that can help explain behavior, assess risk more holistically, and push for certainty in an uncertain world might produce more clumsiness. The overarching argument of the volume is that social and cultural context should not be lost in the many complex, and seemingly intractable issues, of the contemporary world. In other words, imposing simplistic solutions onto complex problems will be no more effective in managing risk-laden issues such as climate change or terrorism, than trying to assess the way that complex human emotion impacts behavior and decision-making. Each of these things are intertwined. However, this argument remains implicit in many ways and perhaps gets lost in the multiple efforts of constructing an objective operationalization of cultural theory. Indeed, one of the strengths of cultural theorydits breadthdmight also be viewed by some as a weakness resulting in the difficulty of such scholarship to fall in a strict methodological order that enables replication. For many critical scholars of cultural theory, critiquing the underlying conditions that produce risk and disaster is favorable to creating typologies and frameworks that imbue replication,
10
Book review / Emotion, Space and Society 16 (2015) 9e10
thus, Douglas’ preoccupation with such schemas may be frustrating. Nonetheless, the volume is jam-packed with important discussions on issues ranging from the delineation between human needs and wants, to poverty, and the persistence of an aesthetic view of nature, as well as deviance, risk-taking, and the harmful impacts of individualistic decision-making on collective global society. These stories will remind many, and introduce others, as to why Douglas remains an imminent figure in cultural and social theory. Throughout her life, Douglas was especially concerned with how individual perceptions play into environmental harm and Cultures and Crises addresses this concern in a variety of ways. Although the global dialogue around climate change and risk is well documented in scholarly literature as well as in popular culture, including accounts that might deny this association, Douglas unambiguously tackles this topic by addressing the role of both the individual and the collective in a system of slow/chronic environmental degradation. Part 2: “Culture and Climate” provides a thorough inquiry into the complex relationship between risk and climate change that not only addresses historically contingent risks that have resulted in climate change, but also risks that are produced as a result of climate change. Of course, perception is essential here because it is a biased accounting of how present decisions will be projected as future consequences that are unevenly distributed (p. 217). Although the authors deliver a dizzying array of ways in which cultures create, and try to resolve, environmental crises, they are also perceptions that have biases, which cannot be meted out by rubrics, and perhaps this is the fundamental incompatibility that underlies varying shades of green within the broader environmental movement. Despite this, readers might be optimistic that Douglas and her compatriots distinguish the rational subject, and that this rationality enables an understanding of crises and risks that progresses climate governance beyond emotional arguments and into, perhaps more effective, political and economic arguments.
Cultures and Crises culminates with a story by Oscar Wilde entitled “The Selfish Giant.” The story is one that elucidates many of the issues that Mary Douglas also brought to light throughout her career, and a story that demonstrates the complexity of the human condition, and the possibilities of the human imagination. The story, also, highlights many of the themes that are found in the preceding pages: elements of emotion and culture that are fundamental to justice; human desires and false needs; the aestheticization of nature; clumsy solutions to complicated problems; and perhaps most compelling, the question of time. Indeed, the question of time is, perhaps, the question that readers should walk away with e is time running out for us to adequately respond to climate change? Will we recognize the impact of our selfishness, as the Giant did, before all hope of forgiveness is lost? And if we so choose to turn a blind eye to the self-destructive yet resilient perpetrators of environmental degradation, what will be the moral consequences of this risk? While this volume is comprehensive in many ways, it raises more questions that it responds to… which is, perhaps, what Douglas would have intended. Jennifer L. Lawrence is a doctoral candidate in the ASPECT (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought) program at Virginia Tech. Her research interests are interdisciplinary in nature and are focused on the intersection of economic systems, environmental concerns, and social justice considerations. Jennifer L. Lawrence* Department of Political Science, 523 Major Williams Hall (0130), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA * Tel.: þ1 540 231 6571; fax: þ1 540 231 6078. E-mail addresses: http://www.jenniferleighlawrence.com, [email protected].
30 April 2015