2
ECOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
wish for a meaningful connection with the rest of nature. But on the other
hand, such ventures echo the myth of the romantic hero strutting off into the
"wilds of nature’, turning away from the society he has left behind.
More and more, questions of desire upstage questions of need within
ecological discussion. Insulated from (and often desensitized to) the immediate
effects of ecological breakdown, people of privilege still have sufficient natural
resources to survive. However, not everyone is protected from immediate
ecological crises. Due to the effects of capitalism, racism, sexism, and state
power, most people on the planet are obliged to design a very different
ecological agenda. While also sharing the desire for quality of life, most of the
world’s people are increasingly under pressure to emphasize questions of need
and survival in their work for ecological justice.
There exists a global ‘division of ecological labor’ in which, while the
poor in the Southern hemisphere are forced to work to sustain the viability of
life, addressing questions of access to food, water, and land, many in the North
are able to work to establish a quality of life, considering what kind of food to
eat, what quality of water to drink, as well as what kind of spiritual or cultural
sensibility to embrace. Again, while all people desire a better quality of life, the
question of who has the freedom to fulfill these desires is largely informed by
global questions of power and privilege.
And yet, this division of privilege cannot be reduced to geography. Due
to the global nature of advanced capitalism, there is a bit of the North in the
South and a bit of the South in the North. Indeed, as the under-class swells
within the U.S. and Europe, a privileged elite continues to grow within the
Southern continents as well. Still, despite these complexities, it makes sense to
point to this global division: it allows us to acknowledge conditions of
inequality under global capitalism that are generally manifested on opposite
sides of the equator.
In
response
to
this
global
division
of
ecological
labor,
many
well-meaning activists suggest that we should eliminate ‘superfluous’ qualitative
questions to focus on issues of survival alone. Concerned with the ecological
bottom line’, they reduce ecology to quantitative issues of demographics and
population, calculating the number of people that may survive in ecosystems
without exceeding a ‘carrying capacity’. Or, romanticizing the predicaments of
indigenous peoples, activists of privilege often reduce these struggles to
questions of need and subsistence, perpetuating the myth of the ‘needy
primitive’ who depends on the benevolent assistance of white men.
When activists focus solely on questions of ecological need and survival,
they fail to recognize the qualitative concerns of poor peoples who also share
desires for a meaningful and pleasurable quality of life. In this way, they ignore
the fact that most poor people cannot access the things they may desire. A vast