Ecology in the 20th century Book

Interesting and frustrating in almost equal measure. This book is very much an academic view of the topic, and if it is missing things or lacks polish, a lot of that may be down to being one of the first, or the only, books on the subject.

This is a book about political ecology, not the science - although the former has roots in the latter. It covers the UK, Germany and US, though without much about the US, and being published in 1989, only really goes up to the end of the 70s or very early 80s.

Bramwell makes the case that ecology is a distinct political ideology that cannot be defined clearly on a left-right axis or as part of other political ideologies. It's worth going through her definition of the ecology, that it:

 - is a normative philosophy   
- is a total world-view which does not allow for piece-meal reform
 - believes truth to be attainable, and its attainability to be desirable  
 - fears the dissipation of energy and resources
 - is not anthropocentric.

Second order characteristics are the desire to reform man, society and their relation to the world, with reform motivated by scientific knowledge (or theories about man and the world and their fundamental reverence before the beauty and order of nature.

Her view excludes much "environmentalism", though the lines between the two are not explored as much as I would have liked. It needs to be emphasised just how radical ecology is - it can be anti-trade (even the idea of a peasant selling a cow to someone in the next village!), propose dividing the world up into self-sufficient 'bio-regions', depopulating towns and cities...

Four areas stand out for me as most interesting.

The first is the history of attempts to make ecological communities and the tensions inherent in these ideas. Ecologists are ideologically anti-urban, anti-large-scale agriculture and pro-peasant. The general belief is that while peasant agriculture is more labour-intensive, this is not the main limiting factor we face - land and other resources are the limit. This is an argument you can see persisting today in places.

However their attempts to show the greater productivity of peasant and organic agriculture have never exactly been conclusive, and attempts to protect or promote small-scale farming limited in their success. Attempts to take urban dwellers 'back to the land' have been even less successful, with people unable to survive on much larger areas of land than conventional small farmers require. Most of these communities required steady injections of cash; the longest surviving ones tended to be religious ones.

There's also a political-social problem in the implementation of an ecological vision of radical change. While the ideology emphasises the small-scale, getting from here to there seems to involve top-down planning and compulsion. In cases this is explicit - particularly in early ecologists who had visions of societies run by enlightened industrialists and scientists. This is another challenge you can quite clearly see continuing today.

The second interesting area is the status of ecology in the inter-war years. These are the main focus of the book. The inter-war years are weird politically, with lots of people searching for political alternatives. This period is key to Bramwell's argument that ecology is not a left- or right-wing ideology. Lots of ecologists ended up associated with fascism, but not all, and many seem like they could easily have gone different ways, to any political movement that would accommodate them. The idea of a link between people, land and tradition has an obvious connection to fascism. The tendency in ecology towards pacifism and anti-modernity not so much. Nazi Germany was, at least ideologically, pro-peasant, and there was a vigorous political contest within the leadership about the merits of biodynamic agriculture.

This connection with fascism and Nazism unsurprisingly gave ecology a problem after the war. Many of its proponents in the UK narrowly avoided being interred, and after 1945 tended to retreat into personal spiritualism. That wasn't always the case though. The Soil Association was founded in the UK in 1946, with the support of Lady Eve Balfour (niece of the former Prime Minister). Among its founder members was Jorian Jenks, an ecologist associated with the British Union of Fascists, and the Association retained links to the far right in the 40s and 50s.

The resurgence of ecology came when it merged with left-wing politics in the late 60s and early 70s. This is one of the most disappointing parts of the book for me, even though it has some interesting observations. Bramwell is pretty dismissive of Green politics, for mostly promoting left-wing ideas and losing the more distinctive and radical ecological ideas, viewing it as a new vessel for middle class activism and guilt. She doesn't include any discussion of ecological elements in more radical 60s & 70s groups - perhaps these don't fit into her intellectual & political genealogy. Perhaps the effective end of peasantry in the countries she focuses on leaves ecology with no foundation. Frustratingly there's no clear discussion of the relationship and differences between ecology and the larger domain of environmentalism.

In the end, though, Bramwell can hardly be disappointed at the decline of contemporary ecology, which she describes as "a death-wish", "their hope of regeneration [presupposing] a return to primitivism, and thus ... concomitant anarchy ... an utter rejection of all that is, and for at least three millennia all that was." It sounds exaggerated, but maybe it's not, if we think about the number of people in the world and how they live, and then think about some of the proposals of ecologists - ideas you still hear occasionally today.