The Trouble with Anthropocentric Hubris, with Examples from Conservation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is a worthy summary and analysis of anthropocentrism in Western society. It is impressively researched, with a great breadth and depth of sources cited (however, many of the sources are not engaged with directly, and it would improve the article is there was a higher quality of engagement with a smaller quantity of sources). Also, due to the journal formatting, block quotes have no special indentation or quotation marks, making it harder to discern when they are being used. This is compounded by the disproportionately high number of block quotes, relative to the article length.

The article is a good introductory offering for the intended audience as per the journal title of ‘conservation.’ Where this for a different journal, e.g. one on environmental values or environmental ethics, I would recommend a far more rigorously argued and less ‘shopping list’ like article. However, I sense that the authors have deliberately fashioned their material for this journal’s readership, and believe that this is one of the strengths of the article.

If the above, very minor, recommendations can be addressed then this will make a very fine article for the journal.

Author Response

The article is a worthy summary and analysis of anthropocentrism in Western society. It is impressively researched, with a great breadth and depth of sources cited (however, many of the sources are not engaged with directly, and it would improve the article is there was a higher quality of engagement with a smaller quantity of sources). Also, due to the journal formatting, block quotes have no special indentation or quotation marks, making it harder to discern when they are being used. This is compounded by the disproportionately high number of block quotes, relative to the article length.

We agree, and have again indented quotes, as in the MS we submitted, though the Journal may of course return this to previous layout (this is not under our control).

The article is a good introductory offering for the intended audience as per the journal title of ‘conservation.’ Where this for a different journal, e.g. one on environmental values or environmental ethics, I would recommend a far more rigorously argued and less ‘shopping list’ like article. However, I sense that the authors have deliberately fashioned their material for this journal’s readership, and believe that this is one of the strengths of the article.

We thank the reviewer for this observation, and indeed our article seeks to summarise into one introductory article the troubles with anthropocentrism, and provides the reader with many references to read further on the various issues involved.

If the above, very minor, recommendations can be addressed then this will make a very fine article for the journal.

We thank Reviewer 1 for her/his conclusion.

Reviewer 2 Report

The aim of this paper is to claim the necessity of an intrinsic value based framework for conservation policy to escape the traps and pitfalls of  "Western anthropocentrism" and the wanton destruction of Nature it entails.

The paper is both very interesting and extremely problematic in some of its assumptions. Assumptions which may be widespread among conservation scholars but at the same time are also highly debatable. On one hand, what the paper argue for is something everyone would like to agree to because it sounds nice, fair and beautiful; on the other hand, its rather idealist stances is at risk of appearing more like a rallying cry for a specific intellectual community than really something out of which substantial improvement of concrete social-political-natural intertwined problems could be provided. 

It's difficult to give a detailed list of all the ideas contained in the paper in relation to which contradictory arguments could be raised. Some below.

1. The paper did not provide enough counter-analysis to his main narrative; the paper appears more like a chorus of converging voices than as a debate between competitive claims - except chapter 10
2.   The paper appears at times more like a synthesis of previous claims than providing an original claim. If there is an original claim made the author, it should be expressed much clearer.
3. According to us, one the most problematic of the paper comes from his over-reifying and hyper-culturalist claim about "anthropocentrism" being the prerogative and distinctive feature of the "West". As if something like the West has never existed, as if the multiple, multilayered, deeply influenced by other "non-Western" cultures range of complex ideas and beliefs that emerged in the Western part of Eurasia could be subsumed, totalized and unified (while at the same time easily and lazily vilified) as "the West". In terms of contemporary cultural anthropology, such statements about "the West" are so essentialist that they are carefully avoided. Becker 1995: “there is no such thing as ‘the’ Western values which would neatly define human practices from the Urals to the Rocky Mountains. The ‘West’ too is not a monolithic entity but embraces a variety of value-laden cultures and traditions.”
4. It thus seems that for the writer the world can be divided in two domains: the domain of the arch-evil West, the culprit of the downfall of mankind from the golden age of pure ecocentric primitive life; and the domain of naturally harmonizing with their environment indigenous people regarding nature only for itself and never for the material and energetic advantage its community can bring from it. Sorry for the irony and this is not to deny the value of indigenous knowledge regarding nature-stewardship and the value of its relation to the commons. But we think this kind of narrative is so blatantly romantic that we are not sure it really serves its purpose. What anthropology told us is more that human have always used and managed nature in a way that is deeply transformative of its natural mode of existence. Erle C. Ellis & al., PNAS, Apr 2021, 118 (17): "maps of human habitation over the last 12,000 years show that almost three-quarters of Earth's land had been sustainably shaped and managed by Indigenous or traditional societies during that time:." The opposition is not between an instrumental/anthropocentric West and an intrinsic/ecocentric Indigenous Knowledge. The opposition is between different modes of relation to nature.
5. Moreover on this point, by stressing the malignity of Western's vision of Nature supposed to have always been driven by anthropocentrism, the authors seemed to forgot that conversationism originated in the West. Leopold (1949): “Conservation is getting nowhere because of our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong we may begin to use it with love and respect”. Leopold is also a Westerner. And btw what is the difference between his views and the authors' one?
6. Moreover, the notion of an intrinsic value of Nature and its grounding on Leopold raised deep problems and anthropological issues. Precisely such conservationist views have been criticized as being too "Western" and "colonialist". Why? Because in stressing the value of pristine nature, Leopold and affiliated conservationist forgot the indigenous people living in the so-called natural parks they aimed to conserve. See Decolonising Conservation Policy: How Colonial Land and Conservation Ideologies Persist and Perpetuate Indigenous Injustices at the Expense of the Environment Lara Domínguez 1,* and Colin Luoma  LAND
7. Moreover, even the over fixation and idealization of Nature is in itself deeply "Western". To focus on the "Westernity" of anthropocentrism is to forgot the whole romantic/transcendantalist/conservationist tradition that emerged in the West and attempted to re-evaluate "Nature". As Descola brilliantly showed in indigenous thinking the notion of "Nature" did not exist - what exists were communities of souls with different boundaries etc.  Eco-centrism is not non-Western. This notion still depends on the Nature/society so-called Western dichotomy. Relational value may be closer to indigenous knowledge than the notion of intrinsic value (which doesn't imply the latter notion should be discarded either).
8. Another strange effect of this assumption about Western anthropocentrism is that it seems to forget than many non-Western traditions were as anthropocentric as the Western one. Consider the core value of the notion of Ren Human in Confucian ethics. The idea that Man harmonize Sky & Earth is even more anthropocentric. Here the paper is on the verge of succumbing to the Green Orientalism fallacy. No civilization more than the Chinese one equated civilization with the taming of Nature and of Raw Barbarians via the cultivation of lands and the practice of rites. Cf Elvin, M. The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China. Cf. Heurtebise Sustainability and Ecological Civilization in the Age of Anthropocene: An Epistemological Analysis of the Psychosocial and “Culturalist” Interpretations of Global Environmental Risks. 
9. The lumping together of "Ancient Greek philosophy• The Judeo-Christian tradition 124 • The mechanistic thought of the Renaissance/ Reformation 125 • Neoclassical economics  and neoliberalism 126 • Modernism and postmodernism " is dead road meaning to nowhere. Especially because it seems to forget that the Anthropocene (a concept strangely absent) is not purely "Western" but Modern (i.e. 19th century) and very modern at that - see the concept of Great Acceleration. Erle C. Ellis & al., PNAS, Apr 2021, 118 (17): The global spread of populations and increasingly intensive land use appears largely gradual over the past 12,000 y, although a global acceleration is evident in the late 19th century. This acceleration, which levels off by the middle of the 20th century … is best explained by the use of green revolution technologies to increase agricultural production on lands already in use, a trend that continues today" See Hibbard & al. Sustainability or Collapse?, MIT Press 2007 “Acceleration occurred partially because prior constraints on economic growth, population growth, and technological change were removed. In the three decades prior to 1945, the world economy struggled as a result of two world wars (and a host of smaller ones) and the Great Depression (1929–1939), which diverted or stymied investment in technological change.” Such a totally de-historicized narrative is not very helpful even if it sounds nice and neat.
10. Other many smaller issues could be raised. Like "In the Renaissance, Descartes" - Renaissance, really? 17th. century?
11. Finally there is a problem with ideas giving a nice theoretical sound but whose practicality seems at best difficult to assess: "that Nature should - first and foremost - be conserved for its intrinsic value." Ok, and then? What does it mean? What the intrinsic value thing is about to change in terms of conservation policy? That's not so clear but that could be a good point to make. Of the course the critic is right in terms of Ecological Services instrumentalism but then it seems difficult to propose something else readily available without a complete disruption of human social-economic activities. There need to be a contingency plan not only a claim to nature holiness.
12. Ultimately, perhaps the authors should also have a more dialectical view of today situation. Perhaps the reading of Pinker's Enlightenment Now could remind the writers of the valuable aspects of "progress" and "Western values". Even if the opposition between so-called Western  (actually Modern-Industrial) anthropocentrism and Indigenous ecocentrism were theoretically sounding, practically the shift from a mode of life shared by 95% of the population to a mode of life shared by 5% of it is a challenge that could not be underestimated. Or the authors believe idealistically that we can change "worldviews" without the whole political/social/cultural apparatus of habitus linked to either an anthropocentric or an eco-centric worldview to be also changed? 
13. We could go on ever and ever so we will just stop.
14. Conclusion: the paper is interesting, insightful and provocative but its originality is not so apparent, it does not engage enough in contradictory references, it over-generalize the West, de-historicize social evolution, de-socialize the different social groups responsible for environmental degradation (the notion of Capitalocene seems more helpful than just "Western anthropocentrism"), etc. We guess it will appeal to many readers' goodwill and imagination but its effectiveness in addressing concrete about conservation - problems of relationships between local communities, indigenous people, tourism and sustainable resource management in natural areas is not so clear.
15. We understand that there may be too many things to change but at least trying to avoid the West-as-the-source-of-all-evils narrative will be really helpful - perhaps by speaking a little more about Modernity, Anthropocene, Great Acceleration, Capitalism, etc.

Author Response

As the comments were extensive we upload below a Word doc with out responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I thank the authors to have taken their time to write a long response to the rather provocative comments I made about their paper.

I think it's an interesting discussion and perhaps it will need another paper to discuss the paper's assumptions and not an attempt to reframe its own narrative via peer-review comments.

So indeed it's good if the paper got published.

I still think regrettable that despite the qualification of the term "Western society" in "industrial modernity" in the beginning of the paper, the authors still conclude by this sentence: "Anthropocentrism in Western society represents a form of ‘hubris’, and expresses an arrogance verging on contempt for the nonhuman world by defining Nature as just resources for human use, without its own moral standing".

So let me restate perhaps even more clearly why I think this kind of claim can be counterproductive in our common goal towards environmental protection. Simply said: China accounts today for 28% of CO2 world emission and as far as I know it's not part of "Western society". Leaders in China vehemently claimed that their development is made according to "Chinese characteristics" (whatever there are). So in this, the paper fails to make a good explanatory framework to explain why some post-colonial, independent, non-Western States are today the main leaders in CO2 emissions, coal production and ecological harming. Conversely, this paper could enhance their own narrative to free-ride on their ecological obligations on the "pretext" of Western historical responsibility. 

So this is why I think the division of the world between Indigenous society and Western society is misleading. I didn't deny Indigenous society are more ecological friendly to say it quickly. But the difference in handling natural environment started with Empires (predatory modes of relation to human and non-human either by Roman Empire, Chinese empires, Aztec Empire, Ottoman Empire, etc.) and then accelerated with industrial revolution. It's not so much Western values as such that are responsible for this Great Acceleration but the denial of some of them. Greek ones: human should avoid hubris at all cost. And Christian ones: frugality and humility are good, greed is bad, etc. All these are very eco-friendly values. Anyway... 

And last point here when saying that: "What anthropology told us is more that human have always used and managed nature in a way that is deeply transformative …’. " I was referring to Erle C. Ellis & al., PNAS, Apr 2021, 118 (17). So it's not only "personal opinion".

Author Response

We thank Reviewer 2 for her/his thoughtful reply. We take his point regarding China not actually being part of ‘Western society’ yet certainly is now part of modern industrial society. As such, except for 3 instances (often where others refer to Western society) we have changed Western society to modern industrial society. We thank Reviewer 2 for again pointing out that this was something that needed to be tweaked. We also accept the point that some ‘Western’ values are positive in regard to Nature. However this point is now rendered somewhat moot as we use ‘modern industrial society’ now. We are very happy that (with the above modifications) Reviewer 2 is happy for the article to be published.