Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 15:56:16 -0800 (PST) From: Milton Takei *Please forward to other possibly interested people* INTRODUCTION TO THE ECOPOLITICS DISCUSSION LIST Ecological politics is not a specific "sector" or "type" of politics but politics itself in the "Age of Ecology." It is politics after the breakdown of the nature-culture boundary. It encompasses the impacts of ecological crisis on traditional politics as well as new sites of debate and conflict precipitated or made more urgent by ecological crisis. Traditional politics has been altered in numerous ways, from the formation of powerful environmental interest groups that cross economic lines to the addition of demands for environmental justice to the lexicon of civil rights and social justice. Beyond this, science's role in contributing to ecological degradation, in investigating and documenting the effects of pollution and habitat destruction, and in solving ecological problems have brought it deeply into the political realm. The nation state system, already weakened by a century of unprecedented warfare and by the growth of a global economic system, is being further eroded by the compelling need for global protection of ecological integrity. Capitalism is faced with challenges to the economic growth imperative in the name of ecological sustainability. And doubt about, if not rejection of, current institutional arrangements has hastened the breakdown of Eurocentric modernism's hierarchy of cultures. Indigenous cultures traditionally reviled or patronized are now more likely to be looked upon as exemplars of sustainable livelihood. A moderated, academic electronic mailing list is useful, because busy people need to minimize the number of messages they receive that are irrelevant to their needs (noise). The object is not to make judgments about academic merit or to censor ideas with which the editors do not agree. The kind of material you might post would include (1) ideas part of a work in progress on which you would like feedback (2) Comments such as you might make on a draft you are reading for someone (3) Something you might say in class discussion (4) Reflections such as might be contained in a personal communication to an author (5) Remarks such as you might make to someone at a conference, or in a conversation with a professor or graduate student. The ecopolitics list welcomes discussion of all facets of ecological politics. We hope to include all scholars interested in the subject, including anthropologists and geographers who study the relationships local communities have with both their immediate ecosystem and the broader forces of political economy. The ecopolitics discussion list comes out of the Ecopolitics Discussion Group organized by faculty and graduate students in the Political Science Department at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA, but is not sponsored by any university department. Besides English, the editors can read Spanish and French. They will make an attempt to find someone who can approve messages in other languages, even if only a small portion of the subscribers to the list would be able to understand what is posted. In addition to discussion, we would welcome academic inquires, and announcements of conferences, job openings, recent publications, interesting websites, etc. To subscribe to the mailing list, send an e-mail message to: with the following in the body of the message: subscribe ecopolitics Your Real Name To unsubscribe from the list, put the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe ecopolitics To send messages to the entire list, send the message to: The list owner is Milton Takei, e-mail: . The list was started in April, 1998.