Political ecology asks us to recognize the ways in which politics and the philosophies informing our politics, informs our understanding of environmentalism. It engages us to reflect on the evolution of our politics, and in that, we are explicitly coming face to face with white supremacy. Commonly these white supremacy ideologies surface in the pattern of individualism. I argue this to be a counterpart to reductionism (or atomism), which is a popular approach taken to identifying and solving the issues expressed throughout our environment and related fields such as our food system (ex. inverted quarantine). This approach is informed by western philosophies and sciences. It assumes that we may break down complex systems and their issues into smaller parts, tackling them one by one, as a solution. This is based in speculating that a system is no more than the interaction of these parts, and fails to considering the role they play in a system’s whole (which includes both their inputs and outputs). Holism is a shift away from this approach. This philosophy asks us to recognize that the sum of a whole system can not be reduced down to individual parts because they are constantly in relation to one another.
For this course, my group’s action project worked with the NGO Landesa to help develop social media material that would increase the awareness of women’s land rights. To do this in the most efficient manner, we decided to connect this topic to COVID19 by exploring the ways women’s land rights may help to combat the effects of pandemic diseases in underdeveloped communities. Through this research we found that in increasing women’s access to land, a community can find greater success in building resiliency to health crises via various avenues. This project was a first hand experience in discovering the interdependence of what may seem to be an ‘individual’ piece of the puzzle. This discovery uncovered that inhibiting a woman’s access to own land is not only a disservice to her own prosperity, but a disservice to the community as a whole. This is a framework that can be reflected in our own developed country when we consider how racism, sexism, classism, ableism, etc. is expressed within our society. Excluding groups of people not only limits abilities to fulfill their own capacity, but limits the fulfilment of our society as a whole.
Considering our current time, as communities come together to rise up and work towards dismantling white supremacy – it is our duty to recognize all of the ways our white supremacist society informs our decision making and daily actions. Taking the time and effort to adopt a holistic world view not only opens us to the realization that the liberation of black americans (and other marginalized groups) is the liberation for us all, but it is also an action we can take to unlearn deeply ingrained white supremacist ideologies and values.
