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<address class="post-author"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://s-usih.org/2020/08/whither-the-center-roundtable-on-the-ecocentrists-pt-4/">https://s-usih.org/2020/08/whither-the-center-roundtable-on-the-ecocentrists-pt-4/</a><br>
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<p class="post-author"><a
href="https://s-usih.org/2020/08/whither-the-center-roundtable-on-the-ecocentrists-pt-4/">Daniel
Wayne Rinn</a></p>
<p class="post-date">August 14, 2020</p>
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<h1>“Whither the Center?”: Roundtable on *The Ecocentrists* Pt 4</h1>
<div class="editors-note">
<h4>Editor's Note</h4>
<p>Daniel Wayne Rinn’s essay is the fourth installment of a
roundtable on <em>The Ecocentrists</em> by Keith Makoto
Woodhouse (Columbia UP), the 2019 winner of the Society for US
Intellectual History’s award for best book of intellectual
history. An introduction to the roundtable can be found <a
href="https://s-usih.org/2020/08/the-ecocentrists-by-keith-makoto-woodhouse-roundtable-introduction/">here</a>.
Roy Scranton’s essay can be found <a
href="https://s-usih.org/2020/08/is-ecohumanism-possible-roundtable-on-the-ecocentrists-pt-1/">here</a>.
Natasha Zaretsky’s essay can be found <a
href="https://s-usih.org/2020/08/against-holism-roundtable-on-the-ecocentrists-pt-2/">here</a>.
Paul Murphy’s essay can be found <a
href="https://s-usih.org/2020/08/ecocentrism-humanism-and-the-wilderness-roundtable-on-the-ecocentrists-pt-3/">here</a>.
A response from Woodhouse will be posted tomorrow.</p>
<p>Daniel Wayne Rinn is a historian of ideas and the environment.
He completed his PhD at the University of Rochester in May 2020.</p>
<p>— Anthony Chaney</p>
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<p>We are in the midst of a pandemic. Covid19 is killing people,
destroying jobs, and exacerbating a long list of social problems.
Yet “nature” seems to be enjoying something of a respite. As we
engage in social distancing practices, seismic activity has
declined, whales have become less depressed, and carbon emissions
have dropped. I have no doubt that we will make up for these small
environmental victories once our economy fully reopens; still, I
can’t help but think “the whales are happy.” And I mean it. No
sarcasm intended.</p>
<p><em>Does this make me an ecocentrist? <br>
</em></p>
<p><br>
<em>As Keith Woodhouse illustrates quite clearly in his book, the
ecocentrists tended to identify as the more radical wing of the
postwar environmental movement. Theirs was a philosophy anchored
in deep ecology and predicated on the belief that the tenets of
liberal democracy and reform environmentalism were flawed. Faith
in human reason, individualism, and democratic institutions
proved misguided when confronted with the severe environmental
destruction wrought by the industrialized world. Thus, American
environmentalism suffered a “radical break” as organizations
such as Greenpeace and Earth First! turned away from litigation,
lobbying, and policymaking—the modes of conventional reform
central to the professionalized, mainstream movement—in favor of
direct action. </em></p>
<p>Enter figures such as Dave Foreman and Edward Abbey, both of whom
advocated civil disobedience, monkeywrenching, industrial
sabotage, and sometimes violence in the fight to protect nature.
They represented a departure from the anthropocentrism that
defined both the environmental mainstream and postwar society more
generally.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><em>[...]<br>
</em></p>
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