Winter 1999 339 339 Nature can be understood as socially constructed in two senses: in different cultures’ interpretations of the nonhuman world and in the physical ways that humans have shaped even areas that they think of as “natural.” Both understand- ings are important for environmental ethics insofar as they highlight the diversity of ways of viewing and living in nature. However, strong versions of the social constructionist argument contend that there is no “nature” apart from human discourse and practices. This claim is problematic both logically, insofar as it fails to deconstruct the notion of culture, and ethically, insofar as it categorically privileges human activities and traits. Environmental Ethics and the Social Construction of Nature Anna Peterson* The Great Blue Heron is not a symbol. . . . it is a bird, Ardea herodias, whose form, dimensions, and habits have been described by ornithologists, yet whose intan- gible ways of being and knowing remain beyond my—or anyone’s—reach. If I spoke to it, it was because I needed to acknowledge in words the rarity and signifying power of its appearance, not because I thought it had come to me. The tall, foot-poised creature had a life, a place of its own in the manifold, fragile system that is this coastline; a place of its own in the universe. Its place, and mine, I believe, are equal and interdependent. Neither of us—woman or bird—is a symbol, despite efforts to make us that. But I needed to acknowledge the heron with speech, and by confirming its name. To it I brought the kind of thing my kind of creature does. —ADRIENNE RICH 1 INTRODUCTION The naming that Rich has in mind—the kind of thing that our kind of creature does—encompasses not just labeling, but giving meaning and value. When humans put a name on something, they usually endow it with a host of other characteristics as well. Many scholars see this process as the core of the social construction of identity: the ways that people constitute elements of their world in and through language, convention, and practice. In this light, human knowl- * Department of Religion, Wesleyan University, 171 Church St., Middletown, CT, 06459. Peterson’s main research interests are political and environmental ethics. She is the author of Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997) and numerous journal articles. She thanks Manuel Vasquez, Kim Emery, and two anonymous reviewers, Tom Birch and Simon Glynn, for their thoughtful comments on different versions of this essay. 1 Adrienne Rich, “Woman and Bird,” in What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1994), p. 7 (emphasis added).