Chapter 2: Deconstructing “Global Environment”

Thinking Green

What does it mean to deconstruct “global environment?” Chapter 1 offered a particular normative perspective on the general issue of global environmental degradation. That perspective included several foundational assumptions regarding the social worlds that humans have organized. For example, in discussing hunter-gatherer groups, we came to recognize that production of the material base and reproduction of the social structure are fundamental to all societies, even as the particular methods of production and reproduction may be very different. In speaking of the Navajo cosmology of life and the world, we saw that meaning is central to the institutional organization and activities of any society. Finally, in describing the George W. Bush administration's approach to energy policy, we were made aware ...