ES2218
Week 10: The Road to Ecotopia
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Last updated 01.12.11..
Some Comments on green utopias and utopias in general
Utopianism involves projecting representations of possible alternative worlds, aiming to realise the best possible forms of social, technological, emotional, rational, or other forms of relations. Unsurprisingly, most Utopian reflection includes portrayals of relations between human and nature, and of natural elements one with another – ecological relations – as a central motif. To a greater or lesser extent, many of our writers can be viewed as utopians of one kind or another. ‘Future-Primitivism’ (as propounded by Zerzan), for instance, is certainly a utopian model.
Ernst Bloch drew on Marx’s and Engels’ critique of nineteenth century utopianism (based on inaccurate or inadequate analyses of current conditions), to make the distinction between:
· Abstract utopias – those borne of dreams or fantasies, worlds which don’t and could not exist;
· Concrete utopias – those based on critical social theory and an understanding of social processes and the possibilities arising from the realisation of those processes. (Pepper, 2005, p.4)
Concrete utopianism allows us to “carry out thought and practical experiments, working out the effects of enacting our utopian principles’ (Pepper, 2005, p.4). Callenbach borrows from Marxist theory as well as from many other sources in developing a utopian model which has been regarded by many readers as the concretization of an ideal, a basis for precisely such real-world experimentation. Whilst questions of nature and the environment have always been of interest to utopians and, more recently, utopianism has been put to use by environmentalists, the key fictional work which defined the new genre of utopianism based explicitly in forms of ecologism was Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975).
Whilst postmodern utopians might emphasize the transgressive possibilities inherent in the multiplicity of current relations, and thereby describe a utopia of process, rather than one of form (Pepper, 2005, p.8), Callenbach’s is a decidedly modernist vision of the form of a new society. Traditional utopias tend to focus on one of two positions in relation to each of these three dichotomies: 1) country vs. city; 2)“relationship to technology and a corresponding diminishing nostalgia for nature” vs. “ecological commitment to the prehistory of the earth and ever-feebler pride in the Promethean triumph over the non-human” (Jameson, 2004, http://www.newleftreview.net/Issue25.asp?Article=02); 3) planning vs. organic growth. It should be fairly obvious which side Ecotopia falls on in relation to each of these!
“Everything that today seems outmoded in traditional utopias seeks… to strengthen versions of Nature that are no longer persuasive, in an age when lawns and landscapes and other archetypes of natural beauty have become commodities systematically manufactured.” (Jameson, 2004, http://www.newleftreview.net/Issue25.asp?Article=02)
In Ecotopia, uncommodified wilderness, and ancient and untouched forests in particular, are sacred. We see tree worship and a love of natural forms expressed often in Ecotopia – surely a model or Orr’s biophilia (Remember that Orr too emphasised the centrality of forests in the psyche of a members of a sustainable society).
The question for educators, as for politicians, green economists and tacticians of all kinds remains, how do we get from here to there? The clues are always in the present. Callenbach, like other utopian writers draws upon what he sees as nascent social forms within the society of his day which highlight the internal contradictions which might open the way to a new society. Writing in California of the early 1970’s, a hippie ideology of free love and free expression pervades the relations which we see carried through in his novel, embodying the continuity with ‘pre-ecotopian conditions’ he imagined were necessary in presaging a concrete utopia. Experiments in new forms of ‘eco-friendly’ communal living were springing up all over the developed world (see, for instance Hartzell, H. (1987) for an account of the Hoedads who operated in the geographical region which was the location for Callenbach’s novel, and who are mentioned in its prequel, Ecotopia Emerging). Ecotopia is very much a product of a wave of ‘Aquarian’ utopianism seen in Europe and the USA in the 1960’s. Fredric Jameson helpfully contextualises this work, suggesting that, as with other periods which have produced fervent utopian speculation, the 1960’s (and early 70’s) were characterized by “great social ferment but seemingly rudderless, without any agency or direction: [in such periods] reality seems malleable, but not the system; and it is that very distance of the unchangeable system from the turbulent restlessness of the real world that seems to open up a moment of ideational and utopian-creative free play in the mind itself and in the political imagination.” (Jameson, 2004, http://www.newleftreview.net/Issue25.asp?Article=02) It is evident that Callenbach also found among the current educational practices emerging amidst this ‘turbulent restlessness’, examples of what he imagined might be the forerunners of ecotopian pedagogical types – the experiments of Neill (still alive and writing, and at the peak of his popularity during this period) and anarchist educators, the theories of Illich, etc..
So, to what extent is Ecotopia more a reflection of a countercultural society which has been and gone (in the 1960’s/70’s) than anything which feels like the future for humanity?
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Education in Ecotopia
What do we learn about education in ecotopia? How does this relate to the kinds of educational models propounded by Orr, Illich, Bonnett, the critical ecopedagogues (Kahn, Mclaren)?
How could an educational system help get us from here to there? (This relates directly to your second assignment.)
Although formal education is not central to the narrative of Ecotopia, Weston’s conversion to an Ecotopian outlook is certainly a transformational, indeed an educational adventure. Tchachler (1984) argues that a central theme of Ecotopia is not education but regression – a kind of educational process in reverse. As we saw with Zerzan, and, of course Rousseau before him, the stripping away of layers of damage done by years of miseducation and mis-socialisation is conceived as revealing a truer, more natural, more ‘primitive’ human, in touch with their place in nature. Alongside this, Tchachler (1984, p.306) argues, Ecotopians are also returned to a child-like state (as in classical regression) – expressing their emotional needs honestly and uncomplicatedly. Can you think of examples of ‘childlike’ relations among the inhabitants of Ecotopia?
Tchachler (1984) also cites the example of Ecotopian schools as evidence of Callenbach’s attempt to develop a vision of a utopia which is not or has yet to become totalitarian as these allow free encounters between teachers, students and parents. In this respect it does not reflect the classic static utopian locus, even if the characters of Ecotopia are uniform and flat. Schooling in Ecotopia is one of the most dynamic forces within society. As with the Party (the Survivalists) and the law, education in Ecotopia is a site of contestation and debate. In a sense this is somewhat un-utopian, the static nature of utopian visions deriving from the claim that the society has attained something like perfection, and sustainability – and totalitarianism. Mathisen (2001) suggests that this openness is a particular feature of specifically green utopias, and identifies ecological consciousness and ecological education as the most important factors in maintaining openness and democracy, rather than totalitarian state institutions:
The green utopian alternative to the protection of the environment and future generations through strong formal political institutions, is an ecologically educated and responsible people, permeated by feelings of identification and solidarity with both present and future human beings and other living creatures. This ecological consciousness is strongly internalised by the inhabitants of…green utopias, and deviation from ecopolitical correctness is sanctioned by a high degree of informal social control. (Mathisen, 2001, p.67)
Unlike some other utopians, Callenbach is keen to explain how the structures of education operate in his imagined land. Buhle (2001) suggests of education in Ecotopia that it “offers one of the best cases for the replacement of compulsion by learning-by-doing with lots of fields trips, and universities are reduced to people who really want to study rather than get a career advancement.” (Buhle, 2001, p.151)
What do we learn about the Ecotopian system of education?
· We discover that after secession, schools, like other productive enterprises were broken up and reconfigured under worker (teacher) control (Callenbach, 2004, p.62).
· Looser scheduling gives children more time outdoors than in our type of schooling. School groups go on expeditions including hikes for several days, and children are taught fishing, hunting and survival skills “at the expense of basic educational skills.” (Callenbach, 2004, p.32) Reading, writing and arithmetic we are told, are taught in “concrete contexts” (Callenbach, 2004, p.120).The experience of children is also centred on the study of plants, animals and landscape. Even young children have much knowledge about “ecological niches” and the qualities of plants. School children also carry out construction projects with timbers, masonry and other heavy equipment. We thus get a sense of some very different educational priorities – literacy and numeracy are not prized above other types of knowing in Ecotopia – though it is assumed that most will become literate and numerate enough to pass end of school testing.
· Behaviour-changing drugs for children are banned, thus “unable to make difficult children adapt to the schools, they had to adapt the schools to the children!”(Callenbach, 2004, p.96) Again, this would appear to refer to the change in emphases to a more practical and outdoor education which would attempt to meet the needs of children with a variety of psychological and educational approaches and preferences (of the kind which we might identify as ‘special needs’).
· We are told (Callenbach, 2004, p.116) that schools look more like farms than traditional schools – foretelling Orr’s architectural concerns with the importance of landscape in the educational experience. Why are schools “scattered in a set of small wooden buildings” (Callenbach, 2004, p.116)?
· Why too is there no record keeping? Perhaps because the school on a ‘human scale’ requires no more than face to face communication over assessment – the Ecotopian government obviously don’t require any additional paperwork, although, we learn later some tests or exams are taken.
· The term “happy savages” is provocatively used in relation to Ecotopia’s schoolchildren. Callenbach’s imagery is reminiscent of Summerhill – of a great deal of freedom, with organisation built around children’s developing requirements rather than the State’s. However, children’s freedom has not prevented them from learning scientific terminology or understanding (whether they can read or write is a different matter).
· The inclusion of agricultural or factory work as part of the school day (presumably this is directed rather than optional?) is more reminiscent of Soviet educational thinking (e.g., Makarenko), and Marx’s idea of polytechnic education; the workshop without bosses and the projects underway suggest something like the Reggio model (see Callenbach, 2004, pp. 116-7).
· As with good early years practice now, weather is no bar to outside activity – children are not forbidden from going out in the wet (Callenbach, 2004, p.118).
· Teachers are generalists but also have specialisms in such areas as biology and “design and repair” (Callenbach, 2004, p.118).
· The school system is entirely marketized – it is free from state control, rather as we saw Illich would have wanted. However, there is a requirement to test at 12 & 18 which must to an extent dictate a curriculum. Given that the system Callenbach describes is a market-driven model, the consciousness of parents is assumed to have already reached the point where they would want and demand a much freer education than, for instance in our own society.
· There is not a competitiveness with regard to teaching to the test, suggesting that these are not as ‘high stakes’ as ours, or that parents simply don’t care much about them. Callenbach’s idea of “excellence” hints at a multiple intelligence kind of model, where varying skills and aptitudes are equally valued.
Callenbach also tells us something about higher education in Ecotopia
· Universities are still partially state funded but largely autonomous. University teachers are dedicated to teaching rather than research for the time they are employed to do so (Callenbach, 2004, p.130). By removing research from the universities, the curriculum is prevented from being in hock to agribusiness, pharmaceuticals or the defence industry (Callenbach, 2004, p.132).
· Because qualifications such as degrees are seen as less important, fewer people go to university – only those who genuinely enjoy the life rather than those seeking credentials for further employment (Callenbach, 2004, pp.130-31).
· The democratization of college courses via video recalls Illich’s amiable institutions and a kind of open university model (Callenbach, 2004, p.131).
· The higher education curriculum tries to maintain the non-subject-specific integrated approach characteristic of most ecological models of education (such as Orr’s). Every student in residence at a University studies a general education, including intellectual and creative skills in the humanities, biological and physical sciences and political thought (Callenbach, 2004, p.131).
· We learn (Callenbach, 2004, p. 159) that students must alternate years of study with years of work in production. The intellectual presence of students in the factories had been a catalyst for the development of workers’ control. In this respect Callenbach constructs an interesting parallel with some classical Marxist (-Leninist) approaches to the building of workplace soviets.
Learning towards Ecotopia: transforming consciousness
To what extent do the worldviews of the characters reflect the kind of consciousness propounded by Mathews and Bonnett?
Does Callenbach’s description of Ecotopian schooling offer a convincing explanation of the formation of the Ecotopian people’s consciousness?
Ecotopia, like other utopias must be at once hugely appealing, and also fearful, because it demands of us that we confront our fear that we want to transform ourselves (Jameson, 2004, http://www.newleftreview.net/Issue25.asp?Article=02). In utopia we will be different people. In this sense utopia is an educational device, and the utopian imagination is a form of learning – educational and potentially transformative. It is important for us to consider the ways in which Ecotopia fulfils the requirement of any Utopia to present the transformed consciousness of its inhabitants.
Callenbach’s characters might be criticised for their lack of light and shade, and of heroism. They are rather two dimensional embodiments of the new utopia. As one commentator noted, they “don’t so much interact as role-play. It’s life as group therapy.” (Joseph, 2005 http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/05/12/joseph-ecotopia/index.html ) However, to an extent this is of course, the point. Consciousness in the new society is as different from our own as are the houses and modes of transport. And further, as Fredric Jameson suggests, this flatness of the utopian text is not
a literary drawback nor a serious objection, but a very central strength of the utopian process in general. It reinforces what is sometimes called today democratization or egalitarianism, but that I prefer to call plebianization: our desubjectification in the utopian political process, the loss of psychic privileges and spiritual private property, the reduction of all of us to that psychic gap or lack in which we all as subjects consist, but that we all spend a good deal of energy on trying to conceal form our selves. (Jameson, 2004, http://www.newleftreview.net/Issue25.asp?Article=02)
That is to say, Ecotopians are curiously uniform, no matter how unconventional they may appear from our perspective. This uniformity reflects a collectivism (and accompanying ‘desubjectification’) which is crucial to the success of the utopian ideal. In this respect, a benign totalitarianism does indeed reign.
What does this new Ecotopian consciousness consist in? We receive hints about the Ecotopians’ cosmology and belief system throughout the text, for instance in their reverence for forests. Tchachler argues that tree-worship acts as the vehicle whereby humanity is mystically reconciled with nature. Tchachler’s presentation of Callenbach’s Ecotopian theology is of a monistic vision: “[t]his aspect of Ecotopia is clearly a nostalgia for a reversal of the “schizophrenic catastrophe” of the “separation of Ego and cosmos” (to borrow a phrase from the German philosopher Gottfried Benn)” (Tchachler, 1984, p.307) On page 81 one of the characters comments “There’s no such thing as a thing – there are only systems”, revealing a worldview rather similar to that expounded by Freya Mathews or Gregory Bateson (and, to some extent, to earlier thinks such as Haeckel, inventor of the term ‘ecology’). William Weston continues: “I am part of systems; no one, not even myself, can separate me off as an individual thing.” (Callenbach, 2004, p.81) Ecotopian ecological consciousness has supposedly gone so far as to affect attitudes towards death (Callenbach, 2004, pp.143-4) – lending Ecotopians a more fatalistic take on the matter, enabling them to choose the time of their death and encouraging them to regard this as an opportunity for their own recycling!
We witness the transformation of Weston’s consciousness during the course of the novel. This process necessarily involves both mind and body as a wholly integrated unity and is associated with physical as well as psychological processes – in particular, in the later stages he is described as “sweating”, ridding himself of old ideas, expelling past lives; he also bathes, cleansing himself of the dirt of American anti-ecological thought (Callenbach, 2004, p.156-7.) The theme continues with the psychosomatic headache which sees the contradictions embodied in his consciousness manifested in his physical pain (Callenbach, 2004, p.158).
It is also worth picking up another theme we introduced in week one – that of consumption, production & desire. A convincing ecological utopia must address the issue of human consciousness in relation to the desire to consume. The most obvious way of doing this shifts society’s focus from consumption to production. Regulation in this area will require either authoritarianism (forms of ecofascism) or worker control of production (forms of ecosocialism). Callenbach’s society tries to avoid either. In Ecotopia, the weight of blame and responsibility for environmental damage is placed firmly on producers rather than consumers (Callenbach, 2004, p.21). At the same time, part ownership of the means of production allows workers to treat their labour and their labour-time as their own, to give it or withhold it almost at will, and to feel at home in their work and their workplace (Callenbach, 2004, p.159). Workplace organisation is democratically controlled with elected supervisors and shopfloor decision-making. However, most codes regulating production are adhered to on a voluntaristic basis, rather that requiring state diktats. They rely on consumer-driven market pressures to bring about results: “choice” is restricted (Callenbach, 2004, p.40), but by consent – many varieties of electrical goods are not present, and towels, for instance are manufactured in one colour only. Market pressure itself demands ecological production. This strange mix of communism and capitalism assumes that Ecotopian consciousness has already transcended the desire to overconsume, and to possess. Instead, pre-capitalist approaches have re-emerged in relation to individual possessions (such as knives, for instance), which are unique and treasured. The revolution which saw the overthrowing of the old social order and the supersession of the protestant work ethic upon which American capitalism was built (Callenbach, 2004, p.43) obviously radically reorientated human desires and consciousness too.
[M]ankind, the ecotopians assumed, was not meant for production, as the nineteenth and early 20th centuries had believed. Instead, humans were meant to take their modest place in a seamless, stable-state web of living organisms, disturbing that web as little as possible. This would mean sacrifice of present consumption, but it would assure future survival – which became an almost religious objective, perhaps akin to earlier doctrines of “salvation”. (Callenbach, 2004, 43-4)
What does this leave for education to do? Was re-education even a necessary part of the Ecotopian revolution?
‘The primitive’
As we have seen, Ecotopia represents both a revolutionary progression in society and consciousness, but also, necessarily includes a regression to precapitalist ways of being in the world. In relation to regression, Tchachler notes Callenbach’s description of the Ecotopians with their ritual warfare as “tribal animals”, and equates this representation of the “noble savage” as akin to a picture of children. Ecotopians have regressed to a kind of idealised childhood. This is an emotional and sensual world, it is pre-rational. “Callenbach’s vision is thus one of a “future-orientated retrospect”. The utopian horizons of Ecotopia are a variant of 19th-century utopian socialism… and primitivisms of sorts.” (Tchachler, 1984, p.308)
We see plenty of evidence throughout the novel for a primitivist reading of Ecotopia. Whilst culture has certainly not regressed to the extent that Zerzan would feel was necessary, many aspects of social relations reflect idealised ‘tribal’ or ‘primitive’ behaviours. Weston comments, early in Ecotopia on the urban hunters whose activity suggests “stone-age” practices (Callenbach, 2004, p.15). Several references are also made to (First Nation) Indians, but these too remain highly idealised, and we meet no real Indians during the course of the book. We are told (Callenbach, 2004, p.29) that Ecotopians are ‘sentimental’ about Indians, yet, their complete absence from the storyline allows them to be cast as symbolic – they represent here the noble savage, freed, like Zerzan’s primitives, from clock-time (Callenbach, 2004, p.29). The Indian possesses the spiritual mindset to which the Ecotopians aspire.
The most obvious promotion of tribal primitivism in Ecotopia comes, of course with the war games (Callenbach, 2004, p.71). Men paint themselves “with colors, in primitive, fierce designs” (Callenbach, 2004, p.71) and arm themselves with spears for the ritual tribal war games – a classic ‘noble savage’. Implausibly, perhaps, the Ecotopian warriors also harbour a “primitive” dislike for photography and its dark magical freezing of time (Callenbach, 2004, p.74).
To what extent is Ecotopia sympathetic to a primitivist reading? How far can we push the Rousseauean ‘noble savage’ as an Ecotopian ideal? To what extent does this echo what we have read before about the direction of change required to ‘regain’ or ‘retrieve’ an ecological balance with nature?
Bibliography and other useful references to Ecotopia
Buhle, P. (2001) ‘Ecotopia’, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 12 (3) 149-155
Callenbach, E. (2004) Ecotopia (30th Anniversary Edition), Berkeley, CA: Banyan Tree Books
Callenbach, E (2004) Ecotopia Emerging, Berkeley, CA: Banyan Tree Books
De Guis, M. (1999) Ecological Utopias: Envisioning the Sustainable Society, Amsterdam: International Books
Jameson, F. (2004) ‘The Politics of Utopia’ New Left Review 25, available online at http://www.newleftreview.net/Issue25.asp?Article=02
Joseph, P. (2005) ‘Escape from Ecotopia: Revisiting the 1970s eco-cult classic that gripped a nation’, Grist Magazine, available online at http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/05/12/joseph-ecotopia/index.html
Mathisen, W. (2001) ‘The Underestimation of Politics in Green Utopias: The Description of Politics in Huxley’s Island, Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, and Callenbach’s Ecotopia’, Utopian Studies, 12, pp. 56-78
Pepper, D. (2005) ‘Utopianism and Environmentalism’, Environmental Politics, 14 (1) 3-22
Tchachler, H. (1984) ‘Despotic Reason in Arcadia? Ernest Callenbach’s Ecological Utopias’, Science-Fiction Studies, 11, pp. 304-317