Adrian Ivakhiv, York University, Canada ECOCULTURAL CRITICAL THEORY and ECOCULTURAL STUDIES: CONTEXTS AND RESEARCH DIRECTIONS A paper prepared for and presented at Cultures and Environments: On Cultural Environmental Studies, an On-Line Conference hosted by the American Studies Program, Washington State University, June 20-22, 1997. Introduction Responding to recent calls for a "cultural environmental studies," "environmental cultural studies," or "green cultural theory," this paper sets out to map out a direction for this field, one which follows in the tradition of critical social theory, but complements it with recent work in environmental thought and radical ecology. Among the distinctive traits of such an ecocultural critical theory (and the ecocultural studies which ensue from it) are: (1) a simultaneous critical focus on human- nonhuman or human-environment relations, human intra-social and political relations, and the interaction between these two categories, and (2) an emphasis on the cultural dimensions of these relations. In this paper, I articulate the socio-ecological and institutional contexts for the emergence of an ecocultural critical theory, outline a set of goals and research directions for ecocultural studies, discuss some theoretical controversies, focusing especially on the debate between social- constructionism and ecological realism, and argue for the relevance and distinctive contribution of ecocultural critical theory to scholarly as well as activist work in the areas of cultural and environmental politics. 1. Contexts: environmental thought, cultural studies, and the ecological crisis The emergence of the field of environmental studies has taken place, in part, as a result of a growing recognition of a deeply rooted, global ecological crisis. Whole ecosystems are imperilled; species are going extinct at a faster rate than ever before in the history of humanity; the global climate is changing, with results no one can securely predict; the human population continues to grow, exacerbating gross inequities in living conditions, health, and wealth; and the potentiality for widescale genetic mutations is increasing rapidly, both from environmental pollutants and toxic chemical mixes and from a rapidly evolving and poorly controlled multinational genetic engineering industry. Though the scientific basis behind some of these phenomena is much debated, taken as a whole they suggest that human-caused environmental change has taken on enormous proportions, and it can be doubted whether humanity is well equipped to deal with the ramifications of such changes. Many environmental activists and theorists believe that these conditions cannot be effectively addressed through strictly technical measures, because they are intertwined within a crisis of politics, of values, and of worldview. From an anthropological and cultural perspective, the ecological crisis is not merely a scientific fact, but it is more importantly a cultural fact: it is conceived, imagined, discussed, and acted upon through the diverse cultural expressions of humanity. It is "made sense of" culturally, and our responses to the crisis are enabled as well as constrained by our imagination and interpretation of the crisis. The development of the field of cultural studies in the last few decades has provided a number of theoretical and analytical tools useful in understanding the ways "culture" in its many forms is implicated within the perpetuation and contestation of relations of power. The emancipatory focus within cultural studies regarding questions of class, race, gender, identity and difference, is