"Embodied Values
and the Environment"
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Workshops and Context In April, 2007, an interdisciplinary symposium afforded an open discussion upon the concepts of 'Environmental and Human Values' by the Embodied Values Steering committee and two visiting Professors - the Chair of Social Anthropology at University of Aberdeen, Tim Ingold, and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Catherine Wilson, City University of New York Graduate Centre. This preliminary meeting outlined common research areas and possible interdisciplinary methods between various academic and praxis based approaches that could critically examine what has been conceived as the reciprocal transfer of values (spiritual, ethical and aesthetic) between environments and humans. Within the context of the IASH research theme, 'The Humanities in the Twenty-first Century University', the symposium discovered the importance of university interaction with public policy, and the need to bring theory and praxis together. As a forum brokered by IASH, the focus of this committee read the human sciences as an interdisciplinary forum where the idea of the humanities as liberal arts is not ignored but viewed as a site that enables the interface between disciplines that are uncovering the larger context of cultural studies, particularly common research areas across the following domains: (i) ethics and aesthetics; (ii) history of philosophy; and (iii) cultural geography. Two key areas of overlap and concern were clarified as: (a) agency within the environment (encompassing human and non-human); (b) direction and extension of values, i.e. from human to environment and vice-versa. From here, discussion developed from the perspective that ethics come from community and arise from deep cultural memory derived from the environment, furthermore that values are created by and derived from interactions and sites of human making/ modifications within the environment. This agreement further suggested that the ontological complexity of the (modified) environment demands a method beyond simple cognitive accounts of causality. This method is one that not only emphasises inter-relationships and temporal (processual) relations over paradigms of parts and wholes, but is one that is committed to interdisciplinary input and to the reflection upon the creation and nurturing of values. With all of this in mind, the steering committee proposed three two-day workshops that would lead from an understanding of embodied values via philosophy of the environment and move towards a view upon these values and the environment in practice - an arc supported by a middle workshop centred on the critical interplay between ethics and aesthetics. Methods and Summative Account Twenty-one academics and practitioners from across the UK were invited to present their research and respond to the workshop title and the larger project as a whole. These sessions were open to the fellows of IASH and to the wider academic community in Edinburgh. This extension outwards was an integral part of each workshop: following each final session there would be an open forum designed to provide feedback on the workshop in totality. This creative and dynamic space allowed delegates to suggest both points of synthesis and incongruity found in the presentations, and to motion thoughts for further research. Thus, the workshops were not programmed to reach the singular objective of shifting from theory to praxis, but were designed to encourage a cumulative approach. This approach developed each workshop that had specific individual points of focus into part of a multi-session development of the concepts and critical tools deployed throughout the entirety of the project. An internet based discussion board and research depository was created to support discussion and to encourage dissemination of research during the project. This facilitated access to papers, minutes of meetings, and points for future thinking and development. As a simple resource providing a level of input to the workshops determined by each delegate, this promoted neither a strict evolution nor a simple circular tracing of ideas, but more accurately and interestingly it could be seen as an example of the project's interdisciplinary accumulation of methods with checks, balances and feedback loops. The findings of the workshops are both complex and provisional; furthermore, the interdisciplinary framework did not provide a singular, common methodology, but a dynamic, qualitative and cross-pollinating critique of a shared set of keywords and conceptual vocabulary. The value-space which formed the core of the project was explored by project participants from different disciplinary perspectives and modes of value-exchange. All approaches shared the common goal of critically advancing knowledge of how human/environment dualism can be broken down and crossed. The environments in question ranged from the natural to those modified by humans. The first key question which the research answered was: How are we to understand this value-space and what are its metaphysical foundations? Participants argued that this value-space, rather than being marked by separation and dichotomy, is characterised by relationality, fluidity and embodiment. These ideas led to key critical reflections about the very nature of talk about 'value'. In order to move beyond what many see as an impasse in environmental ethics, it was argued that we ought to speak of meaningful relations between humans and nature instead of the 'intrinsic value of nature'. A second key question which the research answered was: How do aesthetic, poetic, spiritual and ethical experiences open up, rather than close down, relations between humans and environment? Participants argued that aesthetic experiences ought not to be limited to those which establish easy relationships between humans and environment, e.g., beauty, but rather that we ought to recognise more troubled relationships such as those marked by the sublime. Poetry and poetic relations open up space in a rich, dynamic direction away from 'owning nature' and merely using technology as a solution to environmental concerns. Embodiment featured as an important tool for re-conceiving the role of self in relation to environment. For example, philosophical ideas from Merleau-Ponty and a Pauline account of the Church as a body of Christ as a metaphor of human agency contribute new ideas to our understanding of human-nonhuman relations. A third key question which the research answered was: How might we concretise relationality and continuity between humans and the rest of the natural environment? Gardens can be understood as significant places of co-dependence between nature and humans, where each supports the other. In gardens, individuals and communities shape and nurture nature and working with nature can contribute to well-being. Moving to the context of art, artists play a role in breaking down artefact/nature and human/nature dualisms through ecological, restorative and biogenic creative engagement with trees and other natural things. Working environments are also important places for dissolving these dualisms. In the neglected area of marine environments, the project showed how the emotional lives of fishermen and women reveal continuities rather than boundaries between humans and other creatures. Provisional Conclusions and Platform for Development The workshops have generated an interdisciplinary UK-wide research forum which can be leveraged to support larger research funding bids and to develop a new project at IASH. At present a series of collaborative seminars at IASH are being formulated as a development of some of the project's findings. These aim to further interdisciplinary relations and feed into new developments in research streams across three schools at the university: literatures, languages and cultures; arts, culture and environment; geosciences. Publications based on the project include journal papers under review by various participants and an edited collection to be submitted next year.
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