Eurograd message

                Nature Strikes Back!
<br>Thinking the asymmetry of the Human Relationship to Planet Earth
<br>
<br>Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Journal of Agricultural and
<br>Environmental Ethics
<br>
<br>Guest Editors:
<br>Vincent Blok (Wageningen University)
<br>Guido Ruivenkamp (Wageningen University)
<br>Pieter Lemmens (Radboud University)
<br>Jochem Zwier (Radboud University)
<br>
<br>
<br>Context and Aims
<br>Agriculture is one of the major forces behind many environmental threats,
<br>including biodiversity loss and degradation of land and freshwater, while it
<br>is to a large extent responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions. Human
<br>society is quickly approaching a planetary threshold associated with the
<br>paradoxes of the globalised industrial food system; plenty of food is grown
<br>while still 70% of those who grow the food remain undernourished and another
<br>part of the population is obese. At the same time, a third of the total food
<br>production ends up in the garbage, enough to feed 600 million hungry people.
<br>If we extrapolate these paradoxes of the globalised industrial food system to
<br>the future, humanity will need three Earths by 2050. These expectations,
<br>together with the experience of floods, storms and droughts (i.e., global
<br>warming), make us increasingly aware of the significance of the earth system
<br>on which humans entirely depend. This calls for human stewardship of nature in
<br>order to ensure the sustainability of earth as our life support system.
<br>Over the years, many versions of such stewardship emerged in agricultural and
<br>environmental ethics, ranging from the acknowledgement that both the earths
<br>ecosystems and human agents are stakeholders of planet earth (Waddock,
<br>2002), to fundamental reflections on a non-anthropocentric concept of human
<br>agency (cf. Plumwood, 2002). Since the acknowledgement of the agency of
<br>things, it is no longer even necessary that stakes of nature are represented
<br>and served by human agency - i.e., by Non-Governmental Oranisations (NGOs),
<br>Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) or environmental organizations; natural
<br>eco-systems and their inhabitants can represent themselves in a parliament of
<br>things (Latour, 1993).
<br>            At the same time, earth sciences make increasingly clear that the
<br>earth systems themselves are inherently instable and characterized by
<br>transformation, change and volatility. Environmental scientists like Nigel
<br>Clark for instance argue: Whatever we do, ice cores and other proxies of
<br>past climate profess to us, our planet is capable of taking us by surprise.
<br>With or without the destabilizing surcharge of human activities, the
<br>conditions most of us take for granted could be taken away, quite suddenly,
<br>and with very little warning (Clark, 2011: xi). Deep geological time points
<br>at a fundamental asymmetry of the human relationship to planet earth. Also
<br>contemporary philosophers like Question Meillassoux acknowledge the earth as
<br>being and going beyond human agency (Meillassoux, 2008; Morton, 2013; Thacker,
<br>2011). Or as Ray Brassier argues: We are surrounded by processes going on
<br>quite independently of any relationship we may happen to have with them
<br>(Brassier, 2007: 59). In fact, planet earth can be seen as the unstable
<br>condition for the emergence of human agency (Blok, 2016). For some, this even
<br>implies that that planet earth is the condition for the emergence of the
<br>environmental crisis we face today (Blok, 2015).
<br>            This asymmetry of the human relationship to planet earth
<br>challenges current conceptualizations of human stewardship in general, and in
<br>agricultural and environmental ethics in particular. How to think human
<br>stewardship of nature in order to ensure the sustainability of earth as our
<br>life support system, if we have to acknowledge that the earth has agency
<br>herself and that we are entirely dependent on her agency? At the same time,
<br>the asymmetry of the human relationship to planet earth may also provide a
<br>fundamentally different starting point for our conceptualization of human
<br>agency beyond stewardship, care etc. Contemporary philosophers like Jean-Luc
<br>Nancy for instance acknowledge the fundamental role of asymmetry  which he
<br>calls a void or nothing  as possibility for the creation of the world
<br>(Nancy, 2007). The confrontation with asymmetry urges us to reconsider and
<br>reinvent the human relationship to nature, to give up the idea of one ideal
<br>world and to acknowledge a multiplicity of different worlds. Furthermore, it
<br>questions the dominancy of reciprocity-based economic exchanges in the current
<br>conceptualizations of the human relationship to nature, and may inspire a
<br>non-reciprocal concept of nature (cf. Bataille, 1991), exchange (cf. Derrida,
<br>1992; 1995), ethics (cf. Levinas, 1969) and politics (Hardt & Negri, 2004).
<br>            This special issue of Journal of Agricultural and Environmental
<br>Ethics aims to explore the question how agricultural and environmental ethics
<br>should respond to the asymmetry of the human relationship to planet earth. We
<br>look for both fundamental reflections on the nature of human agency and its
<br>ethos in relation to planet earth, and for contributions that discuss these
<br>issues in the context of agricultural and environmental ethics. Possible
<br>questions to be addressed may include:
<br>
<br>-        What are the fundamental presuppositions of a symmetric
<br>conceptualization of the human relationship to planet earth, and what are the
<br>consequences for agricultural and environmental ethics?
<br>
<br>-        Does the experience of an asymmetric human relationship to planet
<br>earth enable us to criticize the dominancy of reciprocity-based capitalist
<br>practices, for instance the double internality as double movement of how
<br>capitalism works through nature and how nature works through capitalism
<br>(Moore, 2015)?
<br>
<br>-        To what extent do concepts like multiplicity of worlds (Nancy),
<br>moral economies of commons (Federici) and differential cosmo-poiesis of
<br>localities (Sloterdijk) help to conceptualize an asymmetric human
<br>relationship to planet earth, for instance as being-in-common with the
<br>different other?
<br>
<br>-        How can an asymmetric earth be conceptualized in the context of
<br>agricultural and environmental ethics, and what is the role of nature as
<br>agent?
<br>
<br>-        How can, given the asymmetric human relationship to planet earth,
<br>ethics be conceptualized in agricultural and environmental practices?
<br>
<br>-        Is asymmetric stewardship possible in practice, or dependent on a
<br>conceptualization of planet earth as stakeholder?
<br>
<br>Contributions are invited to reflect on these and other issues from various
<br>perspectives (e.g. empirical research, critical-theoretical approach,
<br>ontology, epistemology, ethics, applied ethics) and in particular to ponder
<br>the question of what the asymmetry of the human relation to planet earth means
<br>for agricultural and environmental ethics.
<br>
<br>Submission Process and Deadlines
<br>Papers will be reviewed following the JAGE double-blind review process.
<br>Papers should be submitted by the December 1, 2018 deadline
<br>(https://www.editorialmanager.com/jage/default.aspx) with clear reference to
<br>the special issue Nature Strikes Back! Thinking the asymmetry of the Human
<br>Relationship to Planet Earth.  Papers should be prepared using the JAGE
<br>Guidelines. As soon as the papers are accepted for publication, they will be
<br>published and accessible online. The publication of the complete special
<br>volume is scheduled for June 2019. The editors welcome informal enquiries
<br>related to proposed topics. For this, please contact Vincent Blok
<br>(vincent.blok@wur.nl).
<br>
<br>
<br>Contact Email:
<br>Corresponding Gues Editor: Vincent Blok, Wageningen University, The
<br>Netherlands (vincent.blok@wur.nl)
<br>
<br>References:
<br>
<br>Blok, V. 2015 The human glanze, the experience of environmental distress and
<br>the Affordance of nature: Toward a phenomenology of the ecological crisis,
<br>Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 28(5): 925-938 (DOI
<br>10.1007/s10806-015-9565-8).
<br>
<br>Blok, V. (2016), Thinking the Earth after Heidegger: Critical Reflections on
<br>Meillassouxs and Heideggers Concept of the Earth. Environmental Ethics
<br>38(4): 441-462.Clark, N. 2011. Inhuman Nature. Sociable Life on a Dynamic
<br>Planet. Los Angeles: Sage.
<br>
<br>Blok, V. (2017), Earthing Technology: Towards an Eco-centric Concept of
<br>Biomimetic Technologies in the Anthropocene, Techne: Research in Philosophy
<br>and Technology. 21(2-3): 127-149 (DOI: 10.5840/techne201752363).
<br>Derrida, J. 1991. The Gift of Death. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)
<br>Derrida, J. 1992. Given Time: i. Counterfeit Money. (Chicago: University of
<br>Chicago Press)
<br>Federici, S. 2004. Caliban and the witch. New York, Autonomedia.
<br>Hardt, M., Negri, A. 2004. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire.
<br>London: Penquin
<br>Latour, B. 1993. We have never been modern. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
<br>Lemmens, P., Blok, V., Zwier, J. (2017). Toward a Terrestrial Turn in
<br>Philosophy of Technology: Guest Editors Introduction. Techne: Research in
<br>Philosophy and Technology 21(2-3): 114126
<br>Levinas, E. 1969. Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh:
<br>Duquesne UP
<br>Meillassoux, Q. 2013. After Finitude. An Essay on the Necessity of
<br>Contingency. London/New Delhi/New York/Sydney: Bloomsbury
<br>Morton, T. 2013. Hyperobjects. Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the
<br>World. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press
<br>Moore, J. 2015. Capitalism in the web of life. London: Verso
<br>Nancy, J.L. 2007. The Creation of the World, or Globalization. New York: Suny
<br>Press
<br>Plumwood, V. 2002. Environmental Culture: The ecological crisis of reason. New
<br>York: Routledge
<br>Thacker, E., 2011. In The Dust Of This Planet. Horror of Philosophy vol. 1,
<br>Washington: Zero Books
<br>Waddock, S. 2002. We are all stakeholders of gaia: A normative perspective on
<br>stakeholder thinking, Organization & Environment 24(2): 192-212.
<br>Zwier, J., Blok, V., Lemmens, P., Geerts, R.J. (2015) The Ideal of a
<br>Zero-Waste Humanity: Philosophical Reflections on the demand for a Bio-Based
<br>Economy. Journal of Agricultural & Environmental Ethics, 28(2): 353-374 (DOI:
<br>10.1007/s10806-015-9538-y).
<br>Zwier, J., Blok, V. (2017) Saving Earth  Encountering Heideggers Philosophy
<br>of Technology in the Anthropocene. Techne: Research in Philosophy and
<br>Technology , 21(2-3): 222-242
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>Dr. Vincent Blok MBA
<br>Associate Professor in Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Business and Innovation
<br>Ethics, Management Studies Group
<br>Associate Professor in Philosophy of Management, Technology and Innovation,
<br>Philosophy Group
<br>
<br>
<br>Wageningen University
<br>Management Studies and Philosophy Group
<br>Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN, Wageningen (Building 201)
<br>De Leeuwenborch, Room 5060
<br>P.O. Box 8130, 6700 EW, Wageningen
<br>T: +31 (0) 317 483623
<br>F: +31 (0) 317 485454
<br>E-mail: vincent.blok@wur.nl
<br>Website: www.vincentblok.nl
<br>Disclaimer: www.wur.nl/UK/disclaimer.htm
<br>
<br>[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/vnd]
<br>_______________________________________________
<br>EASST's Eurograd mailing list
<br>Eurograd (at) lists.easst.net
<br>Unsubscribe or edit subscription options: http://lists.easst.net/listinfo.cgi/eurograd-easst.net
<br>
<br>Meet us via https://twitter.com/STSeasst
<br>
<br>Report abuses of this list to Eurograd-owner@lists.easst.net