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This article places the study of rural environmental activism in the wider context of the Chinese government's promotion of Ecological Civilization (shengtai wenming 生态文明). Ecological Civilization is, we argue, a top-down imaginary of China's future that opens up space for environmental agency while setting authoritative standards for how to frame protests in a logic of science and social stability. The article compares how residents in a small cluster of villages in Zhejiang province dealt with different sources of air pollution over a span of ten years: how, when and why they chose to negotiate with local officials and industrial managers to prevent or reduce air pollution, and what the outcome was. We found that in addition to a consciousness of the right to protest, villagers had come to regard the ability to evoke science in negotiations with officials and industrial managers as crucial for success. We suggest that the forms of environmental activism we observed were in effect " containable protests " that befit the state-initiated national imaginary of an ecologically civilized world.
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Environmental Winds challenges the notion that globalized social formations emerged solely in the Global North prior to impacting the Global South. Instead, such formations have been constituted, transformed, and propelled through diverse, site-specific social interactions that complicate and defy divisions between 'global' and 'local.' The book brings the reader into the lives of Chinese scientists, officials, villagers, and expatriate conservationists who were caught up in environmental trends over the past 25 years. Hathaway reveals how global environmentalism has been enacted and altered in China, often with unanticipated effects, such as the rise of indigenous rights, or the reconfiguration of human/animal relationships, fostering what rural villagers refer to as “the revenge of wild elephants.”
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Over the last decade, ecocriticism – broadly defined, the study of the relationship between language or art and the physical environment1 – has come to the fore in China, particularly in humanities departments, leading to an outpouring of critical articles, books, and specialized studies. Possible reasons for why ecocriticism has gained traction within the university are the increasing hybridization and cross-disciplinarity within literature departments, where media/film, social science, literature, and philosophy increasingly interact, and increased anxiety over environmental issues as amplified in the media. By cutting across several disciplines and media platforms, in only a few short years, ecocriticism has developed into a legitimate, and powerful, school of thought. The first section of this paper provides a brief overview of the recent history of the ecocritical “movement” in China – focusing on ways in which literary critics have developed ecocriticisminto a vibrant discourse. The second half addresses social ecology, a specific branch of ecocriticism, and its relevance to themes of alienation and modernization active in the work of avant-garde directors and ecological activists. While Chinese academics have been reluctant to address social and political themes through an ecocritical lens, in the coming years, we should find greater attention paid, both on the left and on the right, to issues of environmental justice and ecological community.
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Discussions of human partiality—anthropocentrism—in the literature in environmental ethics have sought to locate reasons for unnecessary and thoughtless degradation of the earth’s environment. Many of the debates have focused on metaethical issues, attempting to set out the values appropriate for an environmental ethic not constrained within an anthropocentric framework. In this essay, I propose that the fundamental problem with anthropocentrism arises when it is assumed that that is the only meaningful evaluative perspective. I draw on ideas in the Zhuangzi, a classical Chinese philosophical text of the Daoist tradition. The Zhuangzi scrutinises the debates of its day, focusing on the attitudes of the thinkers who sought to trump others in the debates. Through many images expressed in stories, the Zhuangzi asserts the irreducibility of individual perspectives, challenging its readers to examine the insularity of their own views. I suggest that the epistemological awareness in the Zhuangzi helps in our understanding of anthropocentrism.
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