Is holistic habitation desirable? Creating space for ‘soft’ dualistic habitation. Andy Scerri Department of Political Science Virginia Tech ajscerri@vt.edu Paper presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Hilton Union Square Conference Center, San Francisco, 3-6 Sept., ‘Habitation, Habitability and Justice 1’, Panel #106.45. Abstract It has long been argued that, at least in the postindustrial West, the prevailing mode of habitation depends upon and perpetuates social and environmental exploitation because it is grounded by a dualistic cultural ideology. The argument is that reconfiguring habitation along holistic lines, constructing a new prevailing cultural ideology that frames society as a participant within the ecosphere, would reduce or abolish social and environmental exploitation. This paper builds on my earlier work to argue that support for a holistic mode of habitation will not necessarily achieve such aims. Based on observation of actions undertaken by urban social and environmental justice campaigners in US cities, I find that major actors within the political economic system actually justify their market practice in terms of a holistic ideology. In particular, state and market resistance to social and environmental justice activism relies upon holistic arguments that industrial and post-industrial processes are derived from natural ecospheric processes. As this mode of ‘neoliberal’ (i.e. market prioritizing) habitation has all too readily assimilated once radical arguments for holism, it may be time for green political theory to revisit some of the emancipatory possibilities of ‘soft’ dualism, in order to support and empower those experiencing the negative consequences of social reproduction. Introduction It has long been argued that, at least in the postindustrial West, the prevailing mode of habitation depends upon and perpetuates social and environmental exploitation because it is grounded by a dualistic cultural ideology. Such arguments are most visible in the work of deep ecologists, but other strands of EPT 1 also share a normative commitment to universally opposing dualist ethics, morality, values, beliefs, ideas and ways of constructing knowledge, and replacing these with holistic versions of the same. 2 I take it that the holistic argument —the critique of (Enlightenment) dualism—has two parts. First, normatively, proponents contend that habitation can and should be reconfigured by eschewing dualism and embracing a holistic ideology that frames society as but one participant within the ecosphere. Second, that this ideological move, once normalized within society, will foster desirable forms of ethics, morality, values, beliefs, ideas and ways of constructing knowledge that will make it difficult or even impossible for those who benefit from social and environmental exploitation—via ‘business as usual (BAU) neoliberal capitalism’—to do so. 1. Some ecofeminists share the deep ecologists’ assumption that holism will bring about a benign social system (for an overview, see, Gabrielson and Parady, 2010). For example, Val Plumwood contends that Enlightenment dualism “is the key to many of the [social and environmental] failings of Western culture” (2006: 61) because it normalizes the “denial of our own embodiment, animality, and inclusion in the natural order … our distancing from and devaluation of that order” (2006: 62, also 1991; 1993; 1999; 2002). Similarly, even though developed in the 1990s as a self-conscious response to the utopian radicalism of deep ecology, many normative theories of green (environmental-ecological) citizenship are also explicitly anchored by the holistic critique of Enlightenment dualism, and by its concomitant, moral voluntarism (see, van Steenbergen, 1994; Dobson, 1999; 2003; 2005; 2007, Dobson and Bell, 2006; Dobson and Valencia Sáiz, 2007. For criticism of these approaches, see Scerri 2009; 2012; 2013; Gabrielson 2008, Gabrielson and Crawley, 2011, MacGregor 2006a, b). 2. The critique of deep ecological holism developed here is not related to the rather intemperate criticisms developed by ecological Marxists (Foster et al., 2010). Whether or not deep ecologists such as Naess derived their views from the work of racists or not is irrelevant to my argument.