Environmental Change and Bounded Cultures :: Essays Papers

Environmental Change and Bounded Cultures Viewing cultures as shared, bounded wholes, relating to single, static environments is a deceptive perspective in globular environmental science today. As world(a) environmental problems have local anesthetic environmental impacts, the way that scientists think of local natural communities affects the relevancy of each global aid a global scientific community lot offer (209). Ultimately, environmentally benign beliefs translate into environmentally benign practice, and unless scientists keep d proclaim predispositions about the inertness of culture, any valuable international relationship towards a third estate future will be lost (215, 222).As with other indigenous manner of speakings around the world, local West African languages entail policy-making import in terms of relationship between land and farmer. Such political terms do not translate easily into those of Western environmental science, and appreciation for their meaning r equires an authentic globalization of environmental discourse (211, 222). Because orthogonal scientists have no knowledge of the West African cultural embeddedness of language and land, they are often unaware of the enduring links between coeval West African farmers and their ancestors who once worked the same plot of earth. Invariably, contemporary global sciences evaluate indigenous environmental practices only on their own Western terms, and do not allow for reinterpretation of ideas that could inform care of the earth (224).A express mail understanding of indigenous practices also promotes the repackaging of local knowledges as romanticized notions, allowing Westerners to invent their own interpretations of what is traditional and ultimately suppress local creativity (211). In the fabrication of global orthodoxies and analysis upon environmental values and notions of sustainability in Non-Western cultures, Western scientists negate not only on local livelihoods but also on cultural freedom of fellow human beings (224). The scientific power of a dominant culture in defining the environmental practices of other cultures limits our international potential for environmental sustainability, as it limits the voices and legitimate contributions of indigenous societies.The political naive realism of globally defined environmental agendas simply does not reflect the agendas of any community around the globe, rather, it reflects the priorities of those in positions of power (Leach and Fairhead 210).