Respectful Use: The Ecological Ethics of Eating Nonhuman Persons
What follows is a scholarly article I prepared in 2015 with a view to publishing in an academic journal. Unfortunately after being told the article could be accepted after making changes, when I submitted a revised vision I was told the journal would not publish the paper. I lost the energy at that point to pursue other journals. However, I looked over the draft again recently and felt I have some important things to say here that, as far as I can tell, are not being told in the academic literature. For that reason, I’m putting it out there. You can find a pdf version at academia.edu, or read it below.
Respectful Use: The Ecological Ethics of Eating Nonhuman Persons
Russell Edwards — @ecoparticipant
2019 July 24
Abstract
Although animal advocacy and environmentalism have had a long association as social and political movements, the relationship has not been without conflict, both in theory and in practice. An opportunity to defuse such conflict is to be found in the ecological feminist analysis of Val Plumwood. The foundation of Plumwood’s position is an ecological outlook which, consistent both with indigenous worldviews and with the modern scientific understanding of the natural world, sees nature in terms of a community of interdependent self-willed agents, who are owed ethical consideration along with the communities they form and the ecological processes and places they depend upon. Plumwood strongly opposed other theoretical approaches that led to universal duties to veganism, articulating a series of ways in which normative veganism is in conflict with a non-anthropocentric ecological outlook that ‘situates humans ecologically, and nonhumans ethically.’ A recent attempt by Esther Alloun to integrate Plumwood’s insights into uncritically universalist veganism is therefore fundamentally ill-conceived. In this paper, I reiterate why an ecological outlook precludes any universal duty to veganism, and refute some of the counter-claims that have been made against Plumwood’s repudiation of universalist veganism. I then outline how ecological nonanthropocentrism casts the eating of nonhuman persons (including animals) as potentially respectful use within an ecological network of gift exchange, and in fact restrains human interference with the more-than-human world — including with individual nonhuman animals — differently but even more strongly than veganism. In the longer term, we must move towards food production methods that can co-exist with intact, healthy wild ecosystems, upon which all wild organisms depend. To motivate such a shift will take radical cultural change, which begins with each of us correcting our worldview. Key to this process is embracing our ecological situatedness, which is best done experientially, by direct, visceral participation in the wild food web: by hunting, fishing or foraging.
Introduction
When I became vegan, I maintained that if I was ever to eat animals again, I would take up hunting. At the time, I could not foresee wanting to eat animals again, or of course the reasons why I would change my position, but I vowed that should this occur, I would hunt, both to minimise any opportunities to deny how animal bodies become meat and to avoid the lifelong subordination to human interests that all farm animals endure and which often involves inflicting extended suffering.
It was with some surprise that, years later, when I did quit being vegan and took up hunting, I found that the very legality of hunting was under attack by activists associated with abolitionist veganism. Were these people really so sure of their normative position that they were seeking to enforce it, universally, by the appeal to the state’s absolute powers of coercion, beginning in fact with the most ethically defensible means of obtaining meat, hunting?
Like my move towards veganism, my move away from it was sudden, and more akin to a leap of intuition than a reasoned deliberation. Essentially, I became vegan the moment I realised that nonhuman animals are persons — of their own kind, different to human persons, but persons nonetheless — and I stopped being vegan the moment I realised that human persons are animals. Bringing a cat into our household prompted the former shift. Sharing in the bringing of a human into the world, the latter.
In both instances, only later, through extended reflection, would I find ways to elaborate on my position by appeal to reason. Eventually, after years of conscientious hunting and making relatively fruitless forays into the literature of hunting ethics, I found out that two people had already encapsulated my position in words, and in fact broached vaster vistas of related thought. The first was Richard Nelson (The Island Within), writing of his experience of Alaskan forests as informed by the worldview of the indigenous Koyukon people. The second was Val Plumwood (Feminism and the Mastery of Nature; ‘Integrating Ethical Frameworks’; Environmental Culture).
In a recent article (‘Ecofeminism and Animal Advocacy in Australia’), Esther Alloun made an argument for the compatibility of Val Plumwood’s ecofeminist critique with universalist normative veganism, which Plumwood rejected explicitly and at length. The purpose of this article is to explain why the rejection of universalist veganism is not an optional part of Val Plumwood’s environmental philosophy. I will begin by outlining some of the key aspects of Plumwood’s position as I see them. Next, I discuss Alloun’s proposed alignment of veganism with Plumwood’s ecofeminism. Finally, by examining some of the ways in which we may or may not choose to engage with the other-than-human world, I show how the ecological outlook underpinning Plumwood’s philosophy yields a set of ethical considerations centred around the respectful use of nonhuman organisms, that are different but certainly not necessarily weaker than those espoused by proponents of veganism.
Val Plumwood’s ecological ontology
To me, the central insight of Val Plumwood’s ecological feminism is that the commonality between the many forms of oppression committed by Western civilisation is their basis in flawed ontology. In most cases, the privileged ‘Master’ subject sees the ‘Other’ as a mere object, and therefore as inferior and exploitable (Feminism and the Mastery of Nature). The way out of this broken mindset is, most fundamentally, to correct the ontology. In all cases this involves recognising the subjectivity of the Other, but with each form of oppression comes a particular set of blind spots to be rectified.
In terms of the oppression of nature1, the solution is to break down human/nature dualism2 and replace it with a new view of humans and nature. Central to Plumwood’s work is the correction of the distortions of the old views by taking up the contemporary factual understanding of humans and nature, which sees humans as animals, living in ecosystems, which are communities of intentional agents — organisms — connected by webs of interdependence. Plumwood pointed out that this ecological-evolutionary understanding has only been absorbed at ‘a very superficial, mainly intellectual level’ and remains at odds with the human/nature dualism of our anthropocentric culture (Eye of the Crocodile 14–15). The first step for breaking down anthropocentrism is ‘seeing yourself in ecological terms, in historical–evolutionary terms’ (16) : taking on an ecological outlook as your worldview, and adopting a corresponding ethical stance that that suits its ontological features. In many ways Plumwood’s position is summarised by the following widely quoted (but seldom heeded) passage from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, though to my knowledge she never quoted it herself:
In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members and also respect for the community as such. (240)
Recognising organisms (including ourselves) as self-willed agents living in a multi-species community leads without difficulty to an ethical outlook that breaks down human/nature, subject/object, person/property and use/respect dualism. No longer can nonhuman organisms — who ought properly to be considered persons3, and addressed using personal pronouns when possible4 — or nonhuman communities be seen as radically different to humans or be reduced to nothing more than objects, commodities, resources or property. As Sylvan & Bennett put it, ‘the ecological community forms the ethical community’ (91). Instead of setting particular criteria for demarcating the set of ethical subjects, such as the capacity for reason (Kant) or ‘sentience’ (taken after Singer to mean the capacity to feel pleasure and pain and usually considered to exclude nonanimals), Plumwood emphasised inclusiveness, and pointed to the denial of agency, teleology, intentionality and autonomy as the primary device used for the illegitimate oppression of those she referred to — with vagueness I suspect was calculated to avoid limiting its scope — as ‘Earth others’5. Advocating ethical openness in place of exclusivity, Plumwood argued:
Intentional recognition is important ethically not as evidence of ‘qualifications’ for moral status but primarily because it is part of providing a counter-hegemonic alternative to the hegemonic stance of reductionism and closure, and because preparedness to adopt the intentional recognition stance reveals much about our own ability to develop ethical relationships. (Environmental Culture 181)
The ontological structure of the ecological outlook dictates certain characteristics of any theory of ecological ethics: the fact the ecological community is made up of agents with clear intentionality demands a radical egalitarianism, but the fact that each depends wholly for his/her/its existence upon relationships with others means that the liberal-individualist tradition of Western ethical thought is inapplicable (Feminism ch. 6). Plumwood articulated these requirements early in her career (‘Social Theories, Self Management, and Environmental Problems’), cautioning against entirely reducing either social or ecological wholes to their parts (individualism, or ‘partism’) or parts to components of wholes (holism). The alternative, no-reductionism, recognises the relational context in which individuals live, giving rise to the insight that, contrary to the claims of the individualist Egoist tradition, ‘care, concern, responsibility’ and similar notions are the foundation of human communities of interdependence, and can also form the basis of ethical human participation in the ecological community (317):
The no-reduction position leads to an ecological outlook or worldview, in which man6 is seen part of a natural community, part of natural systems seen as integrated wholes and with welfare and interest bound up in the whole, and not as, in the typical Western view, a separate, self-contained actor standing outside the system and manipulating it in pursuit of his self-contained interests. (319)7
A significant difference between human communities and ecological communities is that the variety of forms taken by ecological relationships of interdependence necessarily includes the bodily appropriation of other beings. It is only through such processes of recycling that the dynamic vitality of the biosphere is maintained indefinitely in a materially finite world. Recognising as such that life is appropriation8 has radical implications for the ways in which we approach the ethics of human participation in nature. All ecologically situated beings are available to each other as food. To dispel human/nature dualism is to recognise that humans are ecologically situated, and that nonhumans are owed ethical consideration. Therefore, we are available to other species as food, and persons of other species, whom nonanthropocentrism dictates we treat with respect, are available to us as food. Contrary to the dualist traditions of Western ethical thought, under ecological nonanthropocentrism, respect and instrumental use are not mutually exclusive. In Plumwood’s terms, part of the task of dispelling human/nature dualism is avoiding use/respect dualism (Environmental Culture, 153–166), also known as the Exclusion Assumption (‘Integrating’).
Refusal to relinquish use/respect dualism has some troubling consequences that are the focus of much of Plumwood’s work on food ethics. A stance which views instrumental use as ethically bad is bound to take issue with predation, casting wild ecosystems as sites of moral evil on a vast scale. Moreover, if every organism deserves respect but eating an organism is inherently disrespectful, we are left with no way to eat that is not morally wrong.
There are three options for responding to this: 1) re-think the mutual exclusivity of respect and use, replacing it with a concept of respectful use; 2) keep the dualisms intact and limit the privilege of respect to a subset of species, ensuring some class of morally inconsiderable and therefore edible beings remains in the class of usable objects; or 3) accept the conclusion as-is, complete with its condemnation of ecosystems and its impossible moral demands, resorting on the latter front to secondary methods to choose the least wrong way to act9.
The first option is Plumwood’s ecofeminist position, and is the only one to accept that all beings are subjects worthy of respect (both as individuals and as communities), without demonising the natural world or human involvement in it. The second, which Plumwood terms ‘moral extensionism’ (after Rodman), is the approach taken by ethical vegetarian and vegan theorists such as Peter Singer, Tom Regan and Carol Adams. The third, essentially maximal extensionism, is the approach taken by Paul Taylor (Respect for Nature), to the best of my knowledge not critiqued in these terms by Plumwood, but thoroughly dissected by J. Claude Evans (77–129). (Notions of nonharming derived from Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism which appear to have gained currency in contemporary thought around environmentalism and animal ethics fall under 2 or 3, depending on who is to be protected from instrumental use and whether or not corporeal, appropriative existence itself is deprecated.)
In essence, the moral extensionists recognise the subjectivity of nonhuman animals without acknowledging the appropriative interdependence that is the context of all ecologically embodied lives. Another group of theorists — including the deep ecology movement and J. Baird Callicott, with his holist interpretation of Leopold’s land ethic — argue for the ethical considerability of ecological wholes, at times with little or no regard for individual organisms. A contentious debate ensued in the 1980s between these competing schools of egalitarian nonanthropocentrism10, which might have been avoided had Plumwood’s points on no-reductionism reached wider appreciation, or indeed if Leopold’s prescription for respecting the members of the ecological community and the community itself had been taken more seriously. The purpose of Plumwood’s landmark paper, ‘Integrating Ethical Frameworks for Animals, Humans and Nature’ was to mark out a middle way between these individualist and holist accounts of nature (286; 317–18), which she spelled out in a later re-working of the paper as follows:
The ecology movement has been situating humans as animals, embodied inside ecological systems of mutual use, of food and energy exchange, just as the animal defence movement has been trying to expand an extension to animals of the (dualistic) human privilege of being conceived as outside these systems. Many animal defence activists seem to believe that ecology can be ignored and that talk of the food web is an invention of hamburger companies, while the ecological side often retains the human-centred resource view of animals and scientistic resistance to seeing animals as individuals with life stories of attachment, struggle and tragedy not unlike our own, refusing to apply ethical thinking to the non-human sphere. (Eye of the Crocodile 79–80)
In short, Val Plumwood’s position is distinguished from others by operating from a nondualistic, fully ecological outlook that is sensitive both to the ethical considerability of nonhuman organisms and to the actual structure of interdependence within ecological communities. With that in mind, I will now to turn to Esther Alloun’s recent attempt to incorporate ideas drawn from Plumwood into ethical veganism.
Esther Alloun’s ‘Ecofeminism and animal advocacy in Australia’
In her article, Esther Alloun articulates some concerns about certain tendencies within the vegan movement, with the aim of fostering a ‘new, more inclusive and more ecologically aware version of animal advocacy and veganism’ (165). Alloun complains that many vegans seem exclusively fixated on animal abuse, to the detriment of other important issues of environmental and social justice. By way of remedy, she points to ecofeminism, particularly as formulated by Val Plumwood, as means of ethical analysis and political action designed to recognise not only various forms of oppression but also their intersections and the common structures of thought and culture that drive them.
In response to Plumwood’s complaint that extensionist animal advocacy is mute on the matter of so-called non-sentient beings — in the words of Richard Sylvan (Plumwood’s ex-husband) and David Bennett, trading ‘human chauvinism for sentient chauvinism’ (87) — Alloun calls for vegans to ‘expand our ability to care and take actions for trees, forests, mountains, ecosystems and other earth Others.’ (164) This is a welcome suggestion, undoubtedly reflecting what many vegans already do. If done with a genuine attitude of respect for nonanimals and their communities as subjects, it has the potential to soften the subject/object dualism of the dominant culture, and reduce the associated problems of use/respect dualism inherent to moral extensionism.
Whilst such a move would improve and enrich veganism as a movement, as we will see below it leaves intact in normative veganism the fundamental difficulty that Plumwood’s ecological feminism finds with the dominant culture: human/nature dualism. Alloun asserts that a new enactment of veganism could correct the flaws she thinks Plumwood wrongly associates with veganism itself, disqualifying it as an ethical and political position (163). In support of this, she offers:
On the contrary, I think a form of veganism reframed around less dualistic terms and that recognises our interconnectedness with nonhuman Others (sentient or non-sentient) can be part of the big rethink Plumwood invites us to do. That is, finding approaches ‘that maximise our sensitivity to other members of our ecological communities and openness to them as ethically considerable beings’ (Plumwood, ‘Integrating Ethical Frameworks’ 301). Veganism as a practice and CAS as a body of literature (weaving theory and praxis) are well placed to do just that because people in these movements have already jumped the species barrier and demonstrated care and compassion for devalued Others/animals, challenging their anthropocentric and ‘carnist’ socialisation (164).
In fact, I think Val Plumwood, who described herself as a context-sensitive semi-vegetarian (Eye of the Crocodile 78) would have agreed with much what Esther Alloun is saying here. Indeed, every piece of writing of Plumwood’s that criticised normative veganism also included praise for the achievements of the movement and for the welcome challenge it presented to the dominant culture of the oppression of nonhuman animals. The fact remains that none of that addresses the fatal difficulties Plumwood identified with veganism as a universal normative stance. Alloun never describes how veganism, a position Plumwood shows is founded on human/nature dualism and use/respect dualism, can be made ‘less dualistic’.
Veganism, especially as expanded by Alloun, can be seen as a call to challenge the dominant culture in order to resituate (some) nonhumans in ethical terms, but the other half of Plumwood’s ‘historic task of cultural change’ is to ‘situate humans ecologically,’ (Environmental Culture 239) and this is where universal normative veganism runs afoul of Plumwood’s ecological philosophy. From an ecological outlook that eschews human/nature dualism, subsistence hunting (if not other means of producing food from animals) is ontologically equivalent to nonhuman predation. Plumwood made the point that, by problematising the killing and eating of one animal by another animal, vegan universalism ‘is committed to a rejection of the ecological world,’ on account of the fact that ‘it contains predation, necessarily and not only contingently’ (Eye of the Crocodile 89; emphasis added).
The only option available to vegans who are against the human use of animals for food but are nominally not against predation (Alloun 166) is to appeal to a sharp ontological break between humans and the nonhuman world, again violating the ecological outlook that is the foundation of Plumwood’s philosophy, and courting racism at the same time:
any attempt to separate predation completely from human identity will also serve to reinforce once again the Western tradition’s hyper-separation of our nature from that of animals, and its treatment of Indigenous cultures as animal-like. (Eye of the Crocodile 84)
Such an appeal to human/nature dualism surely runs counter to the ontological manoeuvre that lies at the very heart of ecological feminism, which is to avoid human/nature dualism. Plumwood rightly notes:
Embracing the claim that humans ‘don’t live in nature’ in order to block the disquieting and problem-creating parallel between human hunting and animal predation introduces a cure which is worse than the disease and which is basically incompatible with any form of ecological consciousness (Eye of the Crocodile 85).
The persistence of human/nature and human/animal dualism within narratives of vegan advocacy that are nominally designed to dissolve them is frequently revealed in the choices of words used to denigrate meat-eating and eulogise its absence: brutal (i.e. of animals), savage (of the forest), barbaric (foreign), humane (of humans, as distinct from non-human animals) (see e.g. Alloun 148; Singer 152, 210, 222; Adams The Sexual Politics of Meat 34, 73, 166; Adams ‘”Redneck, Barbaric, Cashed up Bogan? I Don’t Think So”’).
The common ground between veganism and Plumwood’s position is their opposition to the reductive view of animals as nothing more than living pieces of meat. Plumwood’s ecofeminist critique and veganism alike call for the recognition of nonhuman animals as more than meat: as subjects with ethical considerability. Where the two philosophies disagree is over the issue of whether or not a position that permits killing and eating nonhuman animals necessarily reduces them, as vegans argue, to nothing more than meat.
Such a conclusion is incompatible with Plumwood’s ecological outlook firstly because it forces us to choose, as described above, between two unsatisfactory options: the rejection of the ecological world or the conceptual exclusion of humans from it. Secondly, the use/respect dualism inherent to veganism brings us to another conclusion that also takes us further from, not closer to, an ecological outlook on nonhuman nature, as Plumwood writes:
One of its worst consequences is that the refusal to allow anything morally considerable to be ontologised as edible or useful results in a deep rejection of ecological embodiment for those beings, since all ecologically embodied beings are food for some other beings (Environmental Culture 156).
Esther Alloun’s attempt to bring normative veganism and Plumwood’s stance together is bound to fail, because these are not peripheral complaints, amenable to the type of peripheral adjustments to veganism she is advocating. The central point of normative veganism — that humans should not eat animals — is not compatible with Plumwood’s central task: to replace human/nature dualism with an ecological worldview, which sees humans as part of ecosystems and appreciates that death and bodily appropriation are vital, generative aspects of the natural order.
The problem is indeed with (universal, normative) veganism itself, contrary to Alloun’s wish to show otherwise. Her offerings don’t address the complaints made by Plumwood, which she confirms are beyond the scope of her work (158). A few sentences of rebuttal are offered in an endnote, beginning with the accusation that Plumwood’s argument ‘revolves around a misrepresentation of some animal ecofeminists’ work, on the basis of ethnocentrism and universalism’ (166). It is true that Plumwood’s critique applies specifically to universalist veganism, but a stance of universal veganism is just what Alloun advocates when she asserts that among our moral duties to animals is that ‘we should never make use of them or eat them’ (164). Universalism is undeniably prominent in vegan advocacy. Most of the ethical arguments are couched in universal terms11, and vegan activists seek to have their moral rules enforced, by weight of law (an inherently universal instrument of coercion), and see veganism as a compulsory component of any movement to end oppression: veganism is ‘where the struggle must start’ says Bob Torres, quoted approvingly by Alloun (161).
Related to this, Alloun questions Plumwood’s assertion that ‘vegans are against predation or to any animals being ontologised as food’ (166). Undoubtedly some vegans accept nonhuman predation, usually justifying the contradiction with veganism by appeal to human/nature dualism, as discussed above (e.g. Moriarty & Woods). Other vegans are indeed opposed to predation, explicitly advocating intervening in ecosystems to reduce the prevalence of predation (e.g. Sapontzis; M. Torres). Likewise, although it is normative universalism in general that brings veganism into conflict with Plumwood’s position, not the use of specifically ontological arguments, Plumwood’s construction of ‘ontological veganism’ derives straightforwardly from Carol J. Adams’ argumentation in ontological terms, as the quotes below serve to demonstrate.
Alloun’s endnote cites works by Eaton and Twine for rebuttals of Plumwood on the basis of her ‘misrepresentation’ of Adams’ position as universalist, but neither author provides a convincing case. Twine’s criticism is limited to labelling Plumwood’s argument, without significant justification, a ‘straw man’ (203) that ‘fell short in several ways’ (205). He claims there is a ‘paucity of evidence’ for universalism, before going on himself to characterise the position of ‘most ecofeminists’ as ‘near universalism’ (205). Twine, like Eaton, whom he also cites, barely engages at all with the ecological arguments at the core of Plumwood’s critique and summarised above.
Eaton argues that Adams’ work should be seen not as a universal moral theory but instead as ‘a culturally situated tactic to overthrow the western conceptual view of animals that has led us to a particularly abusive set of relationships with them’ (155).12 According to Eaton, Adams’ clearly universalist normative claim that ‘I see the problem as the ontologizing of animals as edible, not any single practice of producing flesh foods’ (Neither Man Nor Beast 163) is somehow to be seen only as criticism of Western ontology. It is difficult to understand why this should be the case. If this is true, why would Adams say the problem is ontologising animals as edible, which nearly all human cultures do?
In developing his claims that ‘Adams’s theory limits its scope to the western context’ (175) and that Adams doesn’t censure ‘humans that [sic] cannot survive without animal food’ (171), Eaton ignores the fact that Adams’ writing does discuss and indeed censure indigenous hunting (Neither Man Nor Beast 102–106). Adams coins the term ‘relational hunt’ to describe ‘ecofeminists’ understanding of some Native American hunting practices and beliefs’ whereby ‘killing animals in a respectful act of appreciation for their sacrifice […] does not create animals as instrumentalities.’ (No reference is given for this way of understanding indigenous hunting; my best guess is that it refers to Karen Warren’s eulogizing of Sioux teachings at the close of her influential paper, ‘The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism.’)
Adams’ first response is to simply reject this interpretation of indigenous hunting on the grounds that it defies her universal claim that ‘the ontologizing of animals as edible bodies creates them as instruments of human beings’. She then goes on to outline, again in universal terms, the reasons why she thinks indigenous hunting cannot be seen in terms of the ‘relational hunt’13. The only concession Adams is willing to make is the admission of contingency: hunting to eat is ‘sometimes necessary’ but nevertheless ‘morally repugnant’: another universal judgement and, contrary to Eaton’s claim, certainly a form of censure, as is her likening of practitioners of the ‘respectful hunt’ to rapists. In light of this, it is difficult to see how Plumwood’s treatment of Adams’ position as a universal, normative one could be a ‘misrepresentation’, as Alloun asserts, after Eaton and Twine.
The broader point is that Plumwood’s criticism is aimed not just at Carol Adams, but at all claims of a normative vegan imperative. To be clear, it is not the universalism itself that presents the problem — my characterisation of Plumwood’s position is also made in universal terms — but the conclusion reached, of a universal moral duty to veganism. Nor is veganism itself problematic, if seen as a personal choice, rather than as a moral imperative. Indeed, vegetarianism (if not veganism) was a choice made by Plumwood herself:
I can imagine the possibility of dining on the juicy water monitor, unlike some modern urban intellectuals, but mine is not a hunting life. I do not universally condemn such a life, which under some conditions has been able to express the condition of the human as a top predator without arrogance and with integrity and honesty. The ethics of eating others is complex and contextual, I believe. But it is the terrible injuries that modern capitalism’s interpretation of predation inflicts on its category of economic animals that have made me into a vegetarian, rather than any ascetic distaste for the flesh. (Eye of the Crocodile 25–6).
The conclusion to Alloun’s endnote finally touches on the ecological reasoning that lies at the core of Plumwood’s rejection of universal veganism, but unfortunately mischaracterises it as claiming that ‘vegans deny their embeddedness in nature and the web of life by not eating animal products’ (166). It is easy to see why vegans would take offence to Plumwood’s work, if that is their understanding of it!
A better characterisation of Plumwood’s position would be that universalist vegans avoid eating animal products because they deny their embeddedness in nature. Here, ‘nature’ refers to the wild14 community of self-willed organisms as it actually is, not a fanciful ideal of nature as a harmonious community of peaceful beings in which animals never die and their bodies never become food for other organisms. A vegan who came to accept (or better, to affirm), with the humility demanded by nonanthropocentrism, both the structure of the ecological food web and their own embeddedness in it, may remain vegan, but could no longer accept veganism as a universal moral duty.
Accepting the actual structure of ecosystems and our embeddedness in them is not an optional feature of Plumwood’s feminist philosophy of ecological nonanthropocentrism. To dismiss the ecological outlook as a particular ‘indigenous-based approach’ that is ‘not practical or conceivable with Western societies’ (Alloun 167) is to undermine the very foundation of Plumwood’s body of work — the distortion-correcting, dualism-dissolving ecological outlook — and to resist its radical agenda of cultural change. Vegans will not be able to make any significant progress in reconciling veganism with Plumwood’s ecofeminism, as an ethical theory and a political movement, unless they are willing to adopt an ecological outlook.
To avoid irreconcilable conflict with an ecological ontology, the vegan movement would need to begin to see veganism as context-sensitive personal choice rather than a universal moral imperative. As a political movement, it would need to distinguish between oppressive and respectful use of nonhuman animals, and desist from attacking those who practice the latter. Philosophically, it would need to shift away from demonising all human predation through its insistence that veganism is the moral ideal to which everyone must aspire.
In contemporary ecofeminism, there is at least some recognition that a different approach is needed, as Lori Gruen writes:
[Ecofeminists] forgo top-down absolute universalizing judgements that everyone, everywhere should see “veganism as a moral baseline.” Instead, most ecofeminists argue for “contextual moral veganism” that recognizes both the moral centrality of a vegan diet and contextual exigencies that impede one’s ability to live without directly killing or using others. (Gruen 129, citing Curtin)
However, seeing ‘veganism as a moral baseline’ is surely present in Gruen’s assertion of the ‘moral centrality of a vegan diet’. Like Carol Adams, Gruen only accepts deviation from veganism in lamentable cases of pressing necessity. (Incidentally, this passage also exhibits the exclusionary approach typical of vegan stances, in its implication that no being who counts ethically is directly killed or used when a vegan diet is followed.) Likewise, Curtin, who coined the term ‘contextual moral vegetarianism’, still makes the universalising ontological demand that ‘animals should no longer count as food’, and asserts that the case for moral vegetarianism is ‘completely compelling’ in any context where eating animals is avoidable (Curtin 70), rendering the position ‘not far from universalistic’ (Twine 198). To be reconciled with an ecological outlook, veganism as a movement would need a much more through-going retreat from universal moral judgement than this. It would need to acknowledge the existence of affirmatively ethical foodways other than veganism, in a wide variety of contexts.
Eating from an ethical ecological outlook
As a former vegan, I understand that any attempt to question what is taken as a non-negotiable moral stance will be seen as an ethical retreat, an attempt to water down egalitarian principles to make way for selfishness and anthropocentrism, which is clearly opposite to the direction of cultural change that is needed. But the reality is that the philosophical considerations outlined above, which led Val Plumwood to reject veganism as a universal moral stance, are thoroughly nonanthropocentric and egalitarian. Like veganism, animal ethics from an ecological outlook recognises and affirms the self-willed agency of nonhuman animals, but an ecological perspective insists that the context of all autonomy is the relationality of the ecosystem.
In human ethics, our recognition of the autonomous agency of other humans means that our ethical duties to other humans go well beyond the avoidance of inflicting bodily harm. We go further, insisting that every human enjoys self-determination: the opportunity to live a self-willed life, limited (and enriched) by social context but free from gratuitous interference by others. The task of progress is to construct a social context that fosters the well-being and autonomy of all humans and communities. But the ecological context is a realm we inhabit but do not control. Unlike the social context, it is not ours to change, and any attempt or wish to do so represents the hubris of anthropocentrism.
The well-being and autonomy of each organism relies utterly on the availability of all to be eaten by others. Death and bodily recycling are fundamental to the ongoing creation and indefinite maintenance of the dynamic vitality of our materially finite biosphere. The appropriative relationality of ecosystems contributes in equal measure with organisms’ autonomous pursuit of their own good, to generate and nourish wild communities and their members. The task of ecological ethics is not to wish those crucially generative processes of material reincarnation were unnecessary, or to attempt to distance ourselves from them, but instead to embrace and affirm them, along with the self-willed agency of organisms. An attitude of respect in the ecological context therefore asks not that we never impact the autonomy of other organisms, but instead that we limit the extent of that impact to that which is necessary for our nurturance, through our own participation in appropriative relations. That is, all organisms are available in principle for respectful use. When it comes to animals, for the most part, this means we should allow them lives free of excessive human interference with their autonomy, except by being the agent of the end of their autonomous embodied existence, i.e., killing them to meet essential needs, such as food, clothing or shelter.
To those habituated to Western thought patterns including use/respect dualism and the fear and denial of death and decomposition (Plumwood Eye of the Crocodile 9–21, 91–96), killing might seem to represent the grossest possible form of interference, and its permissibility alongside the ethic of non-interference suggested above may well be viewed as preposterous. It is certainly true that appreciating the ethics of an ecological outlook demands a radical shift in our attitudes towards instrumental use, death and decomposition, including the fact that no affront to our own dignity is to be found in our own eventual death, or in the consumption of our corpse by other organisms. Indeed, ethical reciprocity demands that if we affirm our consumption of nonhuman organisms, we also affirm the consumption of ourselves by nonhuman animals. Although it is now rare for humans to be killed and eaten by nonhuman animals, our attitude towards it is an important reflection of how we conceptualise our position in, or in relation to, the natural world. There is a difference between having a strong preference not to be killed, which is a straightforward expression of our wish to continue to pursue our interests, and feeling affronted by the prospect of being killed and eaten by a nonhuman animal, which reflects a conceited anthropocentric worldview. There is also a difference — as made clear by Val Plumwood’s captivating account of the shifts in her own conceptions in the wake of surviving a crocodile attack (Eye of the Crocodile 9–45) — between taking up a position in principle, and actually adopting it as a worldview.
Although very few of us will be killed by animals, many will be killed by microorganisms or viruses, and after death, all of us will be eaten and the materials that temporarily formed our body will continue their endless cycling through the beings that make up ecological communities. The rise of ‘green burial’ practices that embrace decomposition (e.g. Kelly) is a promising sign that Westerners are beginning to reconnect with their ecological embeddedness — although I worry that the incompleteness of this connection might be reflected in the continued exclusion of above-ground scavengers. (I would like to be recycled on the surface, as in the Tibetan Buddhist practice of jhator. As thrilling as I find the thought of being liquefied by bacteria and drawn up through the vascular systems of plants, small and large, I am equally exhilarated, if not more so, by the thought of being materially reincarnated through bodily incorporation by Australian Ravens, Wedge-tailed Eagles and a host of other animal species. But this is neither legal nor practical on any scale: the vast increase in human biomass that has come about through the intensive agricultural re-engineering of the ecological systems that nourish us demands, for now, an equally intensively engineered replacement for the ecological systems of decomposition that return biomass to the carbon and nitrogen cycles.)
In an ecological setting, autonomy must be understood in the context of the web of interdependence, that necessarily includes appropriation as the end of the life of every being. The autonomy of an ecological being is respected not by ensuring she/he/it lives forever, which is impossible, but by ensuring that while alive, an organism is not subject to excessive or unnecessary interference. The question of what counts as excessive should be approached within the context of finding a humble, respectful middle way between the dualistic alternatives of dominion over the nonhuman world or apartheid from it. Ned Hettinger’s ‘Respecting Nature’s Autonomy in Relationship with Humanity’ makes some useful distinctions in this regard: ‘For humans to have something other than a purely negative and harmful role with respect to nature, we must distinguish between human involvement with nature and human domination of nature. Modification and alteration of nature must be distinguished from mastery and control of nature’ (Hettinger 90; emphasis in original).
Taking the notion of respectful use seriously means a level of restraint that goes well beyond what many Western animal advocates consider necessary, as the following example from Richard Nelson shows:
When I lived with Koyukon people, they sometimes mentioned wildlife researchers who had worked near their villages, capturing animals and tagging them, putting radio transmitters on them, or relocating them to start new populations. [Koyukon elder] Sarah Stevens once told me, ‘We never fool around like that with animals, because they have a spirit, and if we treat them wrong we might suffer just like they did.’ At first this seemed inconsistent, given that Koyukon people live mainly by hunting and fishing. But later, as I learned more about the code of respect governing their relationships with animals, I realised how carefully they seek to protect the dignity and integrity of every living creature. My Koyukon teachers held a spiritually based covenant with all members of their natural community. According to this covenant, animals give themselves to feed and clothe people, but with few exceptions it is not appropriate to manipulate them, control them or confine them, or entertain the illusion of understanding them (The Island Within 59).
The perception of wildlife research practices as harmful interference is startling. I’m not sure many vegans would be willing to condemn such actions as squarely as the Koyukon people do. Nevertheless, apart from the issue of hunting for food, there is undoubtedly much common ground between abolitionist veganism and animal ethics as seen from any ecological outlook. Operating from a stance of ecological nonanthropocentrism myself, I stand along with many vegans opposed in principle to zoos, to the enclosure of animals in cages or tanks, to animal experimentation of any kind, to catch-and-release fishing and to hunting that is driven purely by the pursuit of trophies or the acting out of conceited power relationships.
The conclusion of the preceding quote emphasises the striking humility that underpins an ecological outlook. Nelson notes elsewhere that Koyukon elders consistently taught him that ‘each animal knows way more than you do’ (Make Prayers to the Raven 227). One wonders what Koyukon culture would make of contemporary wildlife rescue practices. It is not unreasonable to think that Western anthropocentric conceit and thanatophobia might be attributed to those who presume to know that an injured animal would prefer the stress of rehabilitation in a strange, artificial environment by creatures it is genetically predisposed to view as potential predators, over natural death or mercy killing. Possibly no clear-cut, universal answer can be given about these choices. Plumwood’s insistence that nonanthropocentrism is about kinship with other-than-human beings, not identity, and that ‘solidarity and respect cannot be understood as processes of overcoming or eliminating otherness or difference’ (Environmental Culture 209) resonate here. Nelson offers this touching reflection on his encounter with a dying, spent salmon:
If I forget everything else about her, I will remember the longing in those eyes, as she gazed down toward the lost, shimming water, begging for return. Before this, I had thought of finishing her doomed life, thought it would be a mercy to do so. But now I lean down, hold her in the water for a moment, and release her, apologizing for my inconsideration (The Island Within 253).
Contrary to the logic of anthropocentric domination, an ecological outlook grants humans no special authority to interfere with beings of a different species, or even to imagine oneself capable of understanding them. A secular re-framing of the Koyukon ‘spiritually based covenant’ might proceed by recognising that one of the few things we can know about beings of another species is that they are subject to the same binding condition of membership of the ecological community that we are: to be available as food — or as Deborah Bird Rose articulated Plumwood’s views, ‘mutual life giving is the basis of ecological emplacement’ (‘Val Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism’ 106). As such, killing and eating them, in a respectful manner, is one of the very few ways in which we may interfere with them.
Here again is a notion — respectful killing — that surely seems absurd to those who do not hold an ecological outlook, in response to which, again, I can only point out that it is necessary to dispense with use/respect dualism and the anthropocentric worldview before the ethics of an ecological outlook can be seen as intuitively consonant. In fact, from an ecological outlook, the provision of one’s bodily materials to the ecological community should be seen as a gift we are all bound to offer, and should be pleased to give, even though we might prefer to control or postpone the time of giving. When we are the recipients of such a gift, from an animal or a plant, a respectful attitude should therefore entail elements of both gratitude and apology, and a commitment to reciprocate by eventually giving oneself to the community, as food.
Such a demeanour of respect seems ubiquitous in indigenous cultures that are in possession of an ecological worldview — though of course, the ecological outlook originates in acceptance of the factual structure of ecological communities and is not particular to any indigenous metaphysical system. For an elaboration from (largely) a Western secular perspective, see Gary Snyder’s extraordinary essay, ‘Survival and Sacrament’ (Snyder 187–197). Situated as they are in a culture lacking any tradition of ecological, relational cosmology, Westerners who wish to practice the respectful killing of animals for food need to develop their own conceptual and emotional framework for negotiating the exchange in all of its stages from first contact to eating. In my personal experience, doing so flows without difficulty from the holding of an ecological outlook, indeed, to avoid it in the face of the gravity of such a visceral encounter would require a strong commitment to denial: a topic I return to later. An example of indigenous teachings exemplifying all of these elements of respectful killing is given by Karen Warren, quoting a Sioux elder:
shoot your four-legged brother in his hind area, slowing it down but not killing it. Then take the four-legged’s head in your hands, and look into his eyes. The eyes are where all the suffering is. Look into your brother’s eyes and feel his pain. Then, take your knife and cut the four-legged under his chin, here, on his neck, so that he dies quickly. And as you do, ask your brother, the four-legged, for forgiveness for what you do. Offer also a prayer of thanks to your four-legged kin for offering his body to you just now, when you need food to eat and clothing to wear. And promise the four-legged that you will put yourself back into the earth when you die, to become nourishment of the earth, and for the sister flowers, and for the brother deer. It is appropriate that you should offer this blessing for the four-legged, and, in due time, reciprocate in turn with your body in this way, as the four-legged gives life to you for your survival (145–6).
Indeed, from an ecological outlook that venerates participation in the food web, far from being disrespectful, making appreciative instrumental use of an animal is an affirmation of one’s respect, in much the same way that a guest’s respect for her host is affirmed by accepting the hospitality of the host. As such, Koyukon teachings demand that ‘even if a diseased or starving animal is killed for humane reasons, it is still butchered and cached,’ even if the meat is not usable (Make Prayers to the Raven 220). The act of preparing the carcase for consumption — which, under Koyukon metaphysics, the dead animal is capable of witnessing — is a display of respectful appreciation of the animal’s instrumental value. Plumwood’s complaint, quoted earlier, that ‘the refusal to allow anything morally considerable to be ontologised as edible or useful results in a deep rejection of ecological embodiment for those beings’ (Environmental Culture 156) is clearly applicable here.
The path of change
So far, I have argued that, under an ecological outlook, not only is the eating of wild animals (and plants) compatible with respect for the autonomy of nonhumans, it represents an affirmation of the ecological relationality that underpins the vitality of ecological communities and the life of each individual. Does this confirm Esther Alloun’s complaint that this is an ‘indigenous-based approach’ that is ‘not practical or conceivable with Western societies’ (167)?
As argued earlier, the ecological outlook follows straightforwardly from the combination of a factual understanding of the structure and functioning of ecosystems with an egalitarian value system. Indigenous examples feature prominently this work and in others examining the consequences of an ecological outlook, because many indigenous cultures exemplify such an outlook. Ecological nonanthropocentrism, like veganism and critical animal studies, is indeed a radical departure from the Western anthropocentric convention. It is difficult, but not impossible, to challenge and change the conceptions of the worldview that drives the oppression and destruction of the nonhuman world. Indeed, it is essential: the point of all radical environmental philosophy is to identify the need for change and provoke its undertaking.
Yes, it would be impractical to immediately start feeding ourselves through the sustainable approaches used by pre-colonial indigenous cultures, harvesting and hunting from wild landscapes carefully managed for food production and ecological health (or, as Bruce Pascoe calls it, the ‘epic integrity of the land’ (138); see also Rose Nourishing Terrains; Anderson). Compromise is necessary, making incremental change towards the ideal of undertaking our nourishment with humility and respect, in a way that maximises the self-willed relational agency — the wildness — of nonhuman organisms and their ecological communities and which situates us as part of those communities.
In consequentialist terms, some elements of our food system already match this ideal: in my locale, these include mussel farming and commercial kangaroo hunting. Positive change motivated by biodiversity conservation and by animal advocacy are also making gains towards this ideal: habitat restoration is taking place on many agricultural properties, sometimes to the extent of ending agricultural use and returning the entire property wild nature; and reform is under way in the animal agriculture sector towards practices that minimise suffering (in many instances to the point of providing a more comfortable existence than could be expected in a truly wild life) and maximise the freedom of farm animals to express their ‘natural’ behaviours. As reform advocate and figurehead Joel Salatin points out, well-cared for farm animals just have ‘one bad day, which they don’t even know is coming.’ Initiatives under the banners of permaculture, restorative agriculture and agroecology generally incorporate these improvements while addressing a range of other issues of sustainability.
To be sure, problems still remain, especially in non-consequentialist terms. Plant and animal agriculture begins with the suppression or (particularly for plant agriculture) complete extirpation of wild communities, on a landscape scale, and proceeds by monopolising land with agricultural systems built around domestic organisms whose autonomy is in some sense illusory. Their very genotypes and phenotypes are subordinated to the human end of exploitation, and through their socialisation by human farm workers, nonhuman animals are tricked into inactivating the predator avoidance instincts that ought to protect them from being so easily made prey. The distribution of food through a market system inevitably objectifies the bodies of the organisms we eat, reducing what ought to be a personal encounter of gift exchange to a chain of impersonal economic transactions.
It will be impractical to bring an end to the domineering colonial forms of agriculture for so long as our population so vastly exceeds the carrying capacity of wild ecosystems. Nevertheless, as a step in the right direction, we should offer conditional support to reforms that make agriculture kinder towards wild communities and domestic animals.
What needs to change is not only the practices through which we engage with the nonhuman world, but also our conceptualisation of it. To change a culture’s conceptions, we can begin with our own. We can critically reflect on our own view of nonhuman others, continually challenging ourselves to think of plants, animals, fungi and others as centres of striving- — as persons — and of ecosystems as relational communities that include ourselves, and encourage this outlook in our children.
We can cement that view with practice, bypassing the intermediation that allows for the conceptual separation of humans and nature and which commodifies the plants and animals who feed us. Home gardening, such as the ‘veganic gardening’ advocated by Esther Alloun, is a fine way to disintermediate a portion of our nourishment, to connect with plants as persons, to render the impersonal personal, to be mindfully involved in the appropriation of the gifts of plant bodies. As a further step than gardening, we can become involved in foraging wild plants and fungi, moving closer to the ideal of leaving organisms and landscapes wild, in possession of their autonomy, although here, more so than vegetable gardening, the opportunity for significant caloric yield is very limited, due to the loss of traditional ecological knowledge and the degradation of native ecosystems.
Subsistence hunting is another option, which shares with gardening and foraging the benefits of disintermediation. Like foraging, hunting avoids the ethical problems of land monopolisation and domestication, and with hunting comes the opportunity to provide substantial nourishment in energy terms. (Indeed, the nutritional importance of animal foods in any shift away from monopolistic land use is highlighted by the fact that veganism in history and in contemporary practice appears to be invariably associated with broadacre agriculture; Spencer.) Arguably, hunting also offers a steeper learning curve in terms of the disruption of use/respect dualism. As Richard Sylvan and David Bennett point out, ‘it is easier to empathize with a deer in a field, than the field the deer is in’ (85), explaining the relative popularity of animal advocacy over more through-going ecological ethics. The upside of this, when it comes to hunting, is that the meat eater who hunts and kills animals herself is strongly and viscerally confronted with the origin of her food in the taking of the life of another living being, in a way that the forager or gardener is not, unless she is already operating from an ecological outlook that affirms the agency and personhood of plants.
But in raising hunting once more, am I again inviting Alloun’s charge that this is ‘not practical or conceivable with Western societies’?
The first point to make in response to that claim is that, in some locales, it is practical to live in Western society while participating directly in wild ecosystems through obtaining food by hunting (despite the efforts of some vegans to ban it). My personal knowledge of this is limited to the context of Australia and North America, where there certainly are a significant number of people who obtain all of the meat they eat through ecologically sustainable hunting. A far greater number, myself included, lack the time or opportunity to do this, but still hunt for food on a regular basis. In the Australian state of Victoria, where I live, there are around 25,000 licensed deer hunters, who kill an average of 2.2 deer per person per year (Game Management Authority), most of whom are eaten, as required by the codes of ethics of the major hunting associations. Since the predominant deer species in Victoria is the large-bodied sambar deer (Cervus unicolor), this yields a considerable quantity of nutritious food15.
The second point is that to conceive of the world in ecological terms is achievable while living in a Western context, although it helps if direct, visceral participation in ecosystems is your lived experience16. To be sure, mainstream culture is thoroughly anthropocentric. In Australia, a particularly oppressive, aggressive hyper-masculine demeanour is prominent in most demographics, and some hunters fit this description. Mirroring elite culture, the vernacular culture of colonial Australia strongly incorporates what Plumwood termed the master model, a ‘model of domination’ valuing ‘control over, and distance from, the sphere of nature, necessity and the feminine’ (Feminism 23). Men, especially, are encouraged to make conspicuous displays of power, which are undertaken by various means, sometimes including hunting (Fig 1).
F
igure 1: The Facebook cover image of Australian parliamentarian Daniel Young (Shooters & Fishers Party).
But society is not homogeneous. Contrary to Alloun’s assertion that an ecological outlook is not conceivable, we are indeed free to construct our own worldview, and to work to change the culture for the better, even while we are forced to live with a broken culture, and the broken lifeways it creates. Indeed, for the sake of the Earth, we must. The existence of dominionistic hunting is no reason to avoid hunting, just as the existence of patriarchal family structures is no reason to disband families. Plumwood argued:
[I]t is not predation as such that is the problem but what certain social systems make of predation. Thus I would agree that hunting is a harmful, unnecessary and highly gendered practice within some social contexts, but reject any general demonisation of hunting or predation, which would raise serious problems about Indigenous cultures and about flow-on from humans to animals. (Eye of the Crocodile 84)
Although Plumwood and I might differ on the relevance of hunting being ‘unnecessary’ — a skilled hunter with a vegetable garden might also find purchasing the commodified products of extensive, unsustainable, land-monopolistic cereal monoculture unnecessary — I agree with her prescription for virtuous ecological relations:
In a good human life we must gain our food in such a way as to acknowledge our kinship with those whom we make our food, which does not forget the more than food that every one of us is, and which positions us reciprocally as food for others. (Eye of the Crocodile 18)
I am far from the only person who tries to achieve this in a way that includes mindfully practised subsistence hunting, of the kind Plumwood argues ‘is compatible with a basically egalitarian framework of honesty, nonranking, gratitude, and reciprocal benefit’ (‘Integrating’ 300). Tovar Cerulli reports that the majority of newcomers to hunting he interviewed in the United States see it as ‘a deeply meaningful pursuit practiced for the feelings of connection, engagement, and right relationship that it fosters, and as a physically and spiritually healthful remedy for the negative effects of modern living and of industrial food systems’ (Meat and Meanings). Particularly articulate writing reflecting on the authors’ own experiences of hunting conceived through an ecological outlook, in both cases with intense and intimate sensitivity to the self-willed agency and individuated personhood of nonhuman animals, are offered by Ted Kerasote (Bloodties) and Richard Nelson (The Island Within; Heart and Blood). A thoughtful contribution on the Australian context of hunting as nondualistic ecosystem participation is offered by Michael Adams (‘”Redneck, Barbaric, Cashed up Bogan? I Don’t Think So”’). Contemporary contributions from Australians Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman (The Art of Free Travel) and Rohan Anderson (Whole Larder Love; A Year of Practiculture) outline their own experiences with living a more sustainable lifestyle, incorporating hunting, fishing and foraging as food sources.
Conclusions
A position of ecological nonanthopocentrism, like veganism, opposes the reductive exploitation and enslavement of animals, but insists that this is part of a broader opposition of such dominionistic subjugation of all organisms, the communities they form as self-willed beings, and the abiotic factors they rely on — in short, the wild landscape. It is not effective to simply graft concern for non-animals on to universalist veganism, because an ecological outlook situates humans as animals in ecosystems, on equal terms to other species, and also recognises the vital generative roles played by predation and bodily appropriation in ecosystems, at odds with the vegan’s supposed moral duty not to kill or eat animals. Unlike veganism, an ecological outlook seeks not to prevent the inevitable death and appropriation of animals, but instead to ensure that all organisms — and ecological communities and processes themselves — enjoy, for the duration of their life, an appropriate level of autonomy, free from overarching manipulation. To achieve this will require a shift to a more sensitive form of agriculture which leaves nonhuman organisms wild and ecological landscapes intact, an outcome which might ultimately render veganism impractical. Underpinning such a transition to ecologically sustainable lifeways is Val Plumwood’s task of radical cultural change, to ‘situate humans ecologically, and nonhumans ethically.’ We must begin by altering our own worldviews to suit, and adopting experiential practices that make our ecological situatedness reality while emphasising ecological humility. Participating in the wild food web, by hunting, fishing and foraging, is among the most effective ways to do this.
Notes
1 It is worth making it clear that Plumwood’s ecological ontology, contrary to to the constructionist critique of nature, asserts the independent existence of nonhuman individuals (organisms), societies (ecosystems) landscapes and processes. Her approach to dealing with culture/nature dualism is to re-work the construction of concepts of nature and the other-than-human world, not to deny their existence altogether and subordinate them as mere artefacts of culture. In other words, deconstruction must be followed by reconstruction, or what is left is anthropocentric nature scepticism, which hinders progress towards the cultural shift necessary to avert the ecological crisis. See: ‘Wilderness Skepticism and Wilderness Dualism’; ‘Nature as Agency and the Prospects for a Progressive Naturalism’; ‘The Concept of a Cultural Landscape’; ‘Nature in the Active Voice’.
2 Dualism, as Pluwmood conceives it, is ‘the process by which contrasting concepts (for example, masculine and feminine gender identities) are formed by domination and subordination and constructed as oppositional and exclusive.’ (Feminism, 31)
3 Whilst Plumwood strongly criticised person/property dualism, she did not apply the label of ‘person’ to nonhuman beings. However, towards the end of her life she began to describe her stance as philosophical animism (‘Nature in the Active Voice’; Rose ‘Val Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism’). Graham Harvey (whose work Plumwood cited approvingly) posits that ‘[a]nimists are people who recognise that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others. Animism is lived out in various ways that are all about learning to act respectfully (carefully and constructively) towards and among other persons.’ (xi) In recognition of the close similarities between Harvey’s and Plumwood’s animisms, in this work I adopt the use of the word ‘persons’ to refer to all intentional beings. Perhaps the most immediate challenge here for many readers will be the recognition of the personhood of plants. Plumwood’s position on plants involved ‘recognising them as organised intentional and goal-directed beings which value their own lives and strive to preserve them in a variety of challenging circumstances,’ and hence approaching them ethically (Environmental Culture 149–50). For a detailed look at plant personhood with extensive reference to Plumwood, see Matthew Hall’s Plants as Persons.
4 The English language is hampered by less than useful gender-neutral personal pronouns. Robyn Wall Kimmerer suggests ‘ki’, with the convenient plural ‘kin’ (‘Nature Needs a New Pronoun’). In fact, many languages use word forms that attribute animacy to nouns other-than-human persons, see for example Harvey, ch. 2.
5 Plumwood’s open-ended class of ‘Earth others’ certainly includes plants and animals — ‘”other nations’ of roots or wings or legs’ (Feminism 137), a reference to Henry Beston — and other ‘intentional beings’ (Environmental Culture 182), and perhaps more yet: Plumwood recommends ‘recognising intentional description as legitimate for a large range of earth beings and processes.’ (183)
6 Such androcentric language is of course absent in Plumwood’s later, single-author ecofeminist works.
7 The relational ontology expressed here was formative to Plumwood’s later ecofeminist critique of human self-conception, especially her criticism of the ‘hyperbolised autonomy’ (e.g. Environmental Culture 4) of the self-concept of the dominant culture and the opposite, but equally problematic ‘denial of difference’ underlying the idea of identifying with nature, espoused by some strands of deep ecology (e.g. Feminism ch. 7). The proper middle way, according to Plumwood, is ‘recognising kinship and recognising difference’ (155) through ‘a richer account of individuals themselves, as well as recognition of their intricate interconnectedness’ (128).
8 This phrase is borrowed from J. Claude Evans: ‘All life, of whatever form, exists and continues to exist only because it appropriates energy in one form or another from its environment. Life is appropriation. Any ethical theory that does not recognize and affirm this fundamental fact is not a serious candidate for an environmental ethic.’ (125; emphasis in original).
9 J. Claude Evans’ incisive summation of those methods is ‘a series of ad hoc attempts to deal with the inevitable consequences of the view that human beings should not, from the moral point of view, be part of nature while recognizing that, as a matter of empirical fact, human beings are part of nature’ (98–99).
10 Some key works include: J. Baird Callicott, ‘Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair’; Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (361–3); J. Baird Callicott , ‘Review of Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights’; Mark Sagoff, ‘Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce’.
11 The theories of animal liberation (Singer; utilitarian), animal rights (Regan; deontologist) and vegan abolitionism (Francione; rights-based) are explicitly universal. Attempts at constructing contextual vegan ethics are discussed later in the present work and argued to consist of disguised universalism.
12 That Plumwood should be seen as damaging aspects of that effective tactic seems to have aroused considerable anger, judging by the tone of Eaton’s abstract.
13 For rebuttals, see Plumwood, ‘Integrating Ethical Frameworks’ and Evans, With Respect for Nature 142–150. Evans (148) also convincingly refutes Adams’ claim that Western environmentalists who appeal to Native American practices are self-interestedly ‘cannnibalizing what is presumed to be their hunting model’ (Neither Man Nor Beast 105).
14 Throughout this work, ‘wild’ is intended in the sense of ‘self-willed,’ and is not intended to refer to anachronistic notions of ‘wilderness’ as a natural landscape that is completely uninfluenced by the activities of human beings.
15 It ought also to be possible to make ecologically sustainable use of native species for food, through carefully regulated hunting. Personally, I would prefer to hunt kangaroos myself than to purchase the commodified product of commercial kangaroo hunting, but the former is illegal and the latter is not. My lack of personal experience of duck hunting renders me unprepared to judge between competing claims concerning the animal welfare and conservation status of this practice, but certainly the yearly take of up to several hundred thousand birds (most of which are eaten) by 25,000 licensed duck hunters in Victoria further illustrates the fact that those who live in our Western society may have opportunities to eat by direct ecosystem participation. Recreational fishing, both for native and exotic species, is a further example from my local context.
16 To this end, it is worth noticing the circumstances in which Val Plumwood co-wrote the pivotal The Fight for The Forests (Mathews), not to mention her personal experience of being prey (‘Being Prey’). Richard Nelson’s writing is likewise informed by extended periods spent living in wild nature, both with the indigenous Koyukon people and in solitude, including crucially the experience of making use of wild animals and plants for food.
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