Ecological Himanities

We are a group of scholars who have been meeting regularly over the past few years. Most of us have had a connection with the Australian National University. In 2001 Deborah Bird Rose convened a group of leading scholars to discuss the role of the humanities in ecological and environmental thought in the 21st century. Together, Libby Robin, Val Plu... mwood and Deborah Rose began to form the group that is leading the ecological humanities in Australia. Our highlights include an on-line publication, our own separate publications, an on-going series of intellectual events, and many vivid and challenging conversations amongst ourselves, with colleagues from the bush, and with colleagues from around the world, some of whom we have been able to host at the ANU. Philosopher Val Plumwood articulated two necessary and vital projects that face us today: to re-situate humans within ecological systems, and to re-situate non-humans in ethical terms. Importantly, Indigenous people in many parts of the world, and most certainly in Australia, have for millennia held humans within ecological systems and practice an ethic of connectivity that includes sentient beings of all kinds, animal, vegetable and mineral. Cross-cultural dialogue is one of the most important arenas for enhancing contemporary western knowledge. The ecological humanities is a cross-paradigm, cross-cultural endeavour dedicated to bridging the great chasms of knowledge that have arisen during the course of the west's long-term commitment to extreme binaries. The most seriously damaging chasm is that which puts humans in a position outside of and in some senses superior to the natural world. Along with this chasm, there is an accompanying binary which attributes all mind in humanity and would see the rest of the universe as effectively mindless. Erroneous understanding of our situation on earth, and desensitising understandings of the capacity of living beings empathetically to respond to each other, are rendered more intractable by the fact that within the ...Read More