1. The Ideology of Environmental
Domination
Ch. 6
John Bradford, Ph.D.

2. Ideology and Environmental Harm
Questions in this chapter:
• What are the ideological origins of
environmental domination?
• Where do ideas that sanction environmental
domination come from?
• Do ideas actually matter, i.e. affect our
behavior?

3. Moral parallels of Protestantism and
Capitalism
• Summary: Max Weber argues that
there is an ‘elective affinity’ (or
compatibility) between early forms of
Protestantism (which emphasized hard
work, denial of pleasure, and self
sacrifice) and capitalism, broadly
defined.
• Thus, Weber argues that today’s secular
treadmill of production (which
imprisons us all) has religious roots.
• Note: No one argues that the Soviet
Union was any more environmentally
friendly! Thus, ‘capitalism’ really is
better translated as ‘industrialism.’

4. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
• Capitalism is defined by Weber as
the pursuit of forever renewed
profit by means of rational
(calculating) capitalistic
enterprise.
• ‘Spirit of Capitalism’ = the calling
to make more money as an end in
itself, and to work hard for its own
sake as a sign of salvation. This is
a new psychological disposition.

5. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
• The Protestant Ethic is the ‘Spirit of
Capitalism’! The Protestant Ethic
(aka Puritan Ethic, Work Ethic)
means:
1. sacrificing and saving for the
future and
2. adopting a rational (=
calculating) attitude towards
life.
• Spirit of (early) modern capitalism
distinguished by hard work and
asceticism (frugality); not by greed
or self-indulgence

6. Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation
• Protestants more likely than
Catholics to have business
occupations, WHY?
• Martin Luther inaugurated
(began) the Protestant
Reformation in 1517, which
rejected the hierarchical
authority structure and doctrines
Martin Luther
of the Catholic Church (1483-1546)

7. Calvinism
Tenets of Calvinism:
1. the doctrine of predestination- the idea that
one’s salvation is already decided/pre-
ordained by God;
2. God’s will can not be known or interpreted
(e.g. by a priest)
3. Purpose of this-world activities is to serve
God diligently
• To convince others (and themselves) that
they were already chosen, Calvinists
would work hard and sacrifice for the John Calvin
future because God would only select (1509-1564)
the industrious…
• “Calvinism was a competitive cult of
work, denial, and rationalization”-
(Bell, p. 151)

8. Calvinism and ‘the calling’ to work
really, really, hard…
• What should the individual God-fearing
believer do?
• Idea of the calling: Labor in a calling/a
vocation; dedicated this-worldly activity
to glorify God.
• Success in this world is a sign of salvation
in the next world!
• The Calvinist took it as his duty to
demonstrate proof of his salvation.
John Calvin
• This was accomplished through (1509-1564)
rational, methodical self-control, self-
discipline. Avoid spontaneous
enjoyment; avoid anything that would
distract from work
• “Every hour lost is lost to labor for the
glory of God”

9. How Calvinism Created Capitalism
• Hard work, combined with asceticism, produces
money/profit accumulation
• Expansion of capitalism is an unintended consequence
of Calvinists’ religious beliefs and their rationalization
of those beliefs
1. Anxiety over 2. Hard Work +
after-life Frugality (as sign
of salvation)
3. Accumulate
4. Capitalism! Savings and
Investments

10. Christianity and Environmental
Domination
• Lynn White argues in his essay
“The Historical Roots of Our
Ecological Crisis” (1967) that
our environmental problems
are rooted in Western science
and technology, which in turn
derive from Christian ideas
about nature.
• Christian beliefs  Science
and Tech.  Environmental
Problems

11. Christianity and Environmental
Domination
• White focused on the development
of powered machines: e.g. weight-
driven clock, wind-mills, water-
powered sawmills, etc.
• In particular, he argues that the
moldboard plow profoundly
changed ‘man’s relation to the soil’:
“Formerly man had been part of
nature; now he was the exploiter of
nature.”
• These developments coincided with
(or were ‘caused by’?) the
replacement of paganism for
Christianity in much of
Europe, White argues.

12. Christianity and Environmental
Domination
Problems
• The link between these
technological developments
and Christianity are weak;
indeed, the poor quality of the
soil in the North seems to be a
strong incentive for developing
the plow!
• Christianity had already
replaced paganism, at least
officially, well before this time.

13. Christianity and Environmental
Domination
Paganism Christianity
Nature is alive, organic, magical, Environment as dead and
and full of spirits inanimate
Time is cyclical Time is linear and has an ending
God, the saints, etc. are God, the saints, etc. are
immanent (within or inside) transcendent- above or outside
Nature of Nature
And God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, over the creepy thing that creepeth upon the earth-
Genesis 1:26

14. Christianity and Environmental
Domination
• We cannot conclude that
Christianity unambiguously
promotes science and technology at
the expense of the environment!
• Here are some additional problems
with White’s argument:
i. White’s connections are based on
the Old Testament, shared by Jews
and Muslims. Yet, White does not
argue that all of these traditions also
developed a ‘biblical license of
domination’

15. Christianity and Environmental
Domination
• Problems with White’s argument:
– ii) Christianity itself is very diverse!
Eastern Christianity of Constantinople
was not linked by White to the
promotion of science and technology.
Moreover, White himself cites Saint
Francis of Assisi as a counter-current
within the Christian tradition. Why
didn’t his view become dominant?
– iii) Moreover, Christianity has often
been opposed to science- Galileo was
accused of heresy!

16. Christianity and Environmental
Domination
Problems with White’s argument:
• iv) Many passages within the Bible
emphasize ecology and care for
nature.
– And God said: This is the token of the
covenant which I make between Me
and you and every living creature that is
with you, for perpetual generations: I
have set my bow in the cloud, and it
shall be a token of a covenant between
Me and the earth”- (Genesis 9:12-13)
• v) Dominion as used in the Bible does
not mean ‘domination’ but rather
responsibility for one’s home.
• vi) Other cultures are just as
domineering of the environment!

17. Individualism, the Body, and
Environmental Domination
• Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian social theorist (1895 –
1975), analyzing early French Renaissance writer
Francois Rabelais (1494 – 1553), notices that our
attitudes toward the body, and our sense of humor
about the body, have changed dramatically since this
time.
• Today (or for much of the 20th century) we considered
Rabelais’s style of humor as gross, rather than funny.
Why?

18. Individualism, the Body, and
Environmental Domination
• Mikhail Bakhtin distinguishes between the
carnivalesque body and the classical body.
– Carnivalesque body = body of interconnections, openings
and exchanges with the environment and others.
– Classical Body = body of separation from society and
nature.

19. Individualism, the Body, and
Environmental Domination
• Carnivalesque humor is egalitarian, not degrading, because it
unites everyone (including the wealthy and powerful) on the same
earthly, bodily plane.
• The term ‘classical body’ expresses an ascetic attitude about the
body that hides the body; food is eaten with utensils, mouth is kept
closed; the nose is blown with a kleenex, etc.
– ‘Asceticism’ = denial of bodily existence.
• All bodily reminders of our ‘animality’ are restricted to the twin
temples of bathroom and bedroom.

20. Etiquette and Manners
• Erasmus wrote “On Civility in
Children” in 1530, instructing
people to:
– Not to blow their noses or spit at
the table
– Not share each others soup
bowls, knives, and spoons (forks
weren’t used) Desiderius Erasmus
– How to sit Roterodamus
– How to say hello (1466 – 1536)
– To not pass gas around others:
boys should “retain the wind by
compressing the belly”

21. Etiquette and Manners
There were no Mirrors
– Mirrors allow ‘seeing oneself
from without’ or from the
outside.
– Modern forms of self-
awareness and etiquette
would not have arisen without
the widespread use of mirrors
beginning during the
Renaissance.

22. Etiquette and Manners
Bathing
– People had a much less
inhibited- one might say
‘childish’- attitude towards the
body and its functions
– Knights were waited on in their
baths by women
– It was commonplace for families
to run through the streets naked
on their way to the bathhouses.

23. The Body and Hierarchy
• In anthropology, the idea of a carnivalesque
and classical body is expressed differently as a
distinction between joking relations and
relations of avoidance:
– Joking relations = relations of playful
aggression, compulsory disrespect and
informality; equality. Equal exchange of abuse.
The joking body is seen as continuous with the
world around it.
– Avoidance Relations = a relation of formal
deference, setting apart and treated as special
(Durkheim’s notion of the ‘sacred’); avoidance
is ultimately hierarchical.
• HIERARCHY CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT
‘AVOIDANCE RELATIONS’ – David
Graeber, anthropologist.

24. The Body and Hierarchy
• The sociologist norbert Elias shows how
Medieval courtesy books like those of
Erasmus represented bodily functions as
shameful only when done in the presence
of superiors.
• Eventually, however, they became
shameful even in the presence of
equals! The relations of avoidance
became generalized and internalized.
• Graeber argues that there is a correlation
between societies dominated principally
by exchange relations and those societies
marked by the rules of avoidance.

25. Gender and Environmental Issues
• Consider these phrases:
– “virgin land”; “virgin forest”; “fertility of the soil”;
“Mother Nature”; ….
• Our culture often associates women with
‘nature’, the realm of reproduction –
childrearing, the home, etc. and men with
‘culture’, the realm of production- the public
sphere.
• Ecofeminism – explores the links between
domination of women and domination of
nature.