Managerial conservation subordinated nature’s own value system to human efficiency

Evidence

Evelyn’s interest in conservation of timber represented a new managerial approach to nature. If exploitation were allowed to continue unabated, nature would decay, and human progress would be curtailed. Managerial conservation was an adaptation of the rationalizing tendencies inherent in mechanism applied to the natural environment. It represented an accommodation of the old organic philosophy to the new mechanism—the sell-out of organicism. Already forming out of the older variants in the organic world view was a new alliance with mechanism, which would become fundamental to the history of both conservation and ecology. The organismic, communal orientation of the naturalists, Paracelsian vitalists, and millenarian utopists was thrust aside to make way for efficiency and production in the sustained use of nature for human benefit. A value system oriented to nature as a teacher whose ways must be followed and respected was giving way to a system of human values as the criteria for decision making. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 884

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the polyad’s law/institutions and environmental management threads and to the course theme that stewardship itself can be a form of domination. — connects to: Separating nature from value stripped humans of intrinsic worth too — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 399; Capitalism subordinates social values to economic value via a rogue value paradigm — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 561; Abstracting value from life processes enables new commodified social relations (+2 more)
• SHARE: For an eco-justice colleague: Merchant’s claim that conservation arose as a sell-out of organicism, not an exception to mechanism, reframes how we teach environmentalist history.

Broader Connections

• Separating nature from value stripped humans of intrinsic worth too #expands (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 399
• Capitalism subordinates social values to economic value via a rogue value paradigm #expands (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 561
• Abstracting value from life processes enables new commodified social relations #expands (0.78)