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The present paper considers the implications of the postulate that the activities of scientists constitute complex phenomena in the sense associated with the methodological writings of the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian economist, methodologist, and political philosopher, F.A. Hayek. Although Hayek wrote extensively on the methodology of sciences that investigate systems of complex phenomena, he never addressed the possibility that science itself is such a system. The application of Hayek's method ology of sciences of complex phenomena to science itself implies some minimal criteria for explanations of scientific rationality. If science is complex in Hayek's sense, then scientific belief may be rational in more than one way. It is argued that a failure to recognize the possibility of multiple kinds of scientific rationality contributes to an error theory of certain unsuccessful accounts of scientific belief in the history of philosophy of science. It is further argued that, where ecological rationality is operative, rational belief requires an element of methodological liberty. It is shown that acceptance of the possibility of ecologically-rational scientific outcomes–a view here dubbed methodological liberalism–is closely related to Hayek's denial of the possibility of a successful scientism, a denial crucial to his arguments against socialism and Keynesian macroeconomics.

In a small rural village in the mountains of Northeastern China, a transnational assemblage is building an internationally lauded eco-city. Examining the global dreams for a green "sustainable community" in Huangbaiyu Village opens up a window on to the science of global warming and the ecological rationality to which it gives rise. Taking the site of Huangbaiyu not as a bounded physical location, but a nodal point through which multiple logics, values, and persons converge, I ask: What type of self and society do the structures of the eco-city shape through its spaces of inhabitance and systems of survival? The construction of an eco-city is itself more than a built environment; it is a physical manifestation of a system of values and a record of power. In the name of a shared community of fate, new assemblages of authority and practices of governance are emerging. As scientific models ground political discourse, the name through which authority to act upon a population is invoked is no longer only the state, but also the planet, in which every person has a vested interest and for which every person is responsible. Under these terms, everyday practices of living become subject to judgment, transformation and discipline by persons never met in the name of protecting the planet. In China, the uncertainties of global climate change align with national anxieties over the "three rural problems": agriculture, farmers, and the countryside. In the name of sustainable development, the villagers of Huangbaiyu are again becoming the object of alien ends. This time it is market consolidation, not Communist collectivization that is re-ordering value in the countryside. In the name of protecting a "planet in peril," the villagers of Huangbaiyu would be dispossessed of their access to the natural resources of their valleys. In the name of improving their quality of life, they would be forced into either wage labor or abject poverty.What is at stake in Huangbaiyu is not only of consequence to the persons who have inhabited its spaces, but to all those who are encountering the ethical claims operationalized by ecological citizenship, or are thinking of making such claims on others. Unless attention is focused on what - and who - a new hierarchy of ecological value devalues, an ecological age may prove to be little different from the present industrial age.

We discuss the recent emergence of 'deliberative ecological economics', a field that highlights the potential of deliberation for improving environmental governance. We locate the emergence of this literature in the long concern in ecological economics over the policy implications of limited views of human action and its encounter with deliberative democracy scholarship and the model of communicative rationality as an alternative to utilitarianism. Considering criticisms over methods used and the focus of research in deliberative decision-making, we put forward a research agenda for deliberative ecological economics. Given the promising potential of deliberative processes for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of environmental decision-making, work in this area could help advance both theory and practice in environmental governance.

We discuss the recent emergence of "deliberative ecological economics", a field that highlights the potential of deliberation for improving environmental governance. We locate the emergence of this literature in the long concern in ecological economics over the policy mplications of limited views of human action and its encounter with deliberative democracy scholarship and the model of communicative rationality as an alternative to utilitarianism. Considering criticisms over methods used and the focus of research in deliberative decision-making, we put orward a research agenda for deliberative ecological economics. Given the promising potential of deliberative processes for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of environmental decision-making, work in this area could help advance both theory and practice in environmental governance.

Starting from an epistemological approach implicit in Rachel Carson's scientific practice, this book presents the creative restructuring resources of ecology for a theory of knowledge. It critiques the instrumental rationality, abstract individualism and exploitation of people and places legitimated by western epistemologies

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Human Place in the Natural World -- Creation, Creativity, and Creatureliness: The Wisdom of Finite Existence -- Rowan Williams and Ecological Rationality -- The Art of Creaturely Life: A Question of Human Propriety -- Face of Nature, Gift of Creation: Thoughts Toward a Phenomenology of Ktisis -- Creativity as Call to Care for Creation? John Zizioulas and Jean-Louis Chrétien -- Creature Discomforts: Levinas's Interpretation of Creation Ex Nihilo -- Refl ections from Thoreau's Concord -- Creation and the Glory of Creatures -- Care of the Soil, Care of the Self: Creation and Creativity in the American Suburbs -- Dream Writing Beyond a Wounded World: Topographies of the Eco-Divine -- Notes -- List of Contributors -- Index -- Forrest Clingerman and Brian Treanor, series editors

The aim of this document is to explore the construct of ecological rationality, highlighting the role of animals and plants in religious and organizational animist traits, in the traditional celebrations of the yoreme mayo ethnic group in southern Sonora. The eminently qualitative method examines such a construct in its expression as tropes, which are used in the communicative interaction that takes place in celebrations of this ethnic group. In this qualitative approach, a series of interviews were conducted with the main actors of such ceremonies. The results indicate that rationality, which emerged as sustenance in the ancestral vision of this social group, was intertwined between nature and religious mysticism, to the point of considering it as its own. The animals, plants, the river and its built utensils are used for their communicative interaction, revealed in the form of tropes in their stories and the lyrics of their songs, which serve as scaffolding in their ceremonial acts. Thus, the animist manifestations between prayers, musicians, dancers, and the entire brotherhood, expose an ecological rationality that brings them together, transcending even everyday rationality.

We discuss the recent emergence of "deliberative ecological economics", a field that highlights the potential of deliberation for improving environmental governance. We locate the emergence of this literature in the long concern in ecological economics over the policy implications of limited views of human action and its encounter with deliberative democracy scholarship and the model of communicative rationality as an alternative to utilitarianism. Considering criticisms over methods used and the focus of research in deliberative decision-making, we put forward a research agenda for deliberative ecological economics. Given the promising potential of deliberative processes for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of environmental decision-making, work in this area could help advance both theory and practice in environmental governance.

It is argued that mainstream economics, with its present methodological approach, is limited in its ability to analyze and develop adequate public policy to deal with current environmental problems and sustainable development. This book provides an alternative approach. Building on the strengths and insights of Post Keynesian and ecological economics and incorporating cutting edge work in such areas as economic complexity, bounded rationality and socio-economic dynamics, the contributors to this book provide a trans-disciplinary approach to deal with a broad range of environmental concerns

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- PART ONE The Intensification of Rationalization and Its Alternatives -- 1 Rationalization Under the Premise of Plasticity -- 2 Rationalization and Ecological Irrationality -- 3 Rationalization Under the Premise of Greenness -- 4 Rerationalization -- 5 Derationalization -- PART TWO The Sociology of Environmental Degradation -- 6 The Political Economy of Waste -- 7 Accounting for Waste and Accountability for Waste -- 8 Environmental Classes and Environmental Conflict -- PART THREE Toward a Symbiotic Relationship with Nature -- 9 Science and Applied Science as Partial Knowledge -- 10 Parasitism: A "Light Cloak" or an "Iron Cage"? -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Book and Author

The Bear River is driven by a highly variable, snow-driven montane ecosystem and flows through a drought-prone arid region of the western United States. It traverses three states, is diverted to store water in an ecologically unique natural lake, Bear Lake, and empties into the Great Salt Lake at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. People in the Bear River Basin have come to anticipate droughts, building a legal, institutional, and engineered infrastructure to adapt to the watershed's hydrologic realities and historical legacies. Their ways of understanding linked vulnerabilities has led to what might appear as paradoxical outcomes: farmers with the most legally secure water rights are the most vulnerable to severe drought; managers at the federal Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge engage in wetland farming and make unlikely political alliances; and, increased agricultural irrigation efficiency in the Basin actually threatens the water supply of some wetlands. The rationality of locality is the key to understanding how people in the Bear River Basin have increased their adaptive capacity to droughts by recognizing their interdependencies. As the effects of climate change unfold, understanding social-ecological system linkages will be important for guiding future adaptations and enhancing resilience in ways that appropriately integrate localized ecosystem capacity and human needs.

The hope that policy-making is a rational process lies at the heart of policy science and democratic practice. However, what constitutes rationality is not clear. In policy deliberations, scientific, democratic, moral, and ecological concerns are often at odds. Harold Lasswell, in instituting the contemporary policy sciences, found that John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy provided an integrative foundation that took into account all these considerations. As the policy sciences developed with a predominantly empirical focus on discrete aspects of policy-making, this holistic perspective was lost for a while. Contemporary theorists are reclaiming pragmatist philosophy as a framework for public policy and administration. In this article, key postulates of pragmatist philosophy are transposed to policy science by developing a new theoretical model of transactive rationality. This model is developed in light of current policy analyses, and against the backdrop of three classical policy science theories of rationality: linear and bounded rationalism; incrementalism; and mixed-scanning. Transactive rationality is a "fourth approach" that, by integrating scientific, democratic, moral, and ecological considerations, serves as a more holistic, explanatory, and normative guide for public policy and democratic practice.