Gaia is comint to town, but how to greet her? A Radical Mapping of Environmental Activist Groups' 'Ecosophies' in and Around the Region of Flanders through the Gaia Perspective

Abstract

Wicked problems require wicked solutions. Part of what makes environmental issues including climate change so difficult to deal with is that nearly every aspect of them is highly contested. These issues touch upon or are even deeply imbedded in the very foundational structures that make up the social and political world as we know it. This makes them interesting as a topic for academic research, but also makes them especially tricky to work on because academic work too is imbedded in these same contested structures. This is a basic observation, but its weight tends to be underestimated. One such case is that of John S. Dryzek whose categorisation of environmental discourse takes an implicit position of scientific neutrality, a position that does not exist in the context of a wicked problem. In this thesis then, I make a desk-based analysis of recent environmental activism in Flanders and surrounding regions from the self-consciously radical and normative perspective of Gaia in search for underlying worldviews. This yields three distinct ‘ecosophies’ based on how each ecosophy understands the human-nature relationship. Interestingly, the lines along which these ecosophies split up differ significantly from the way Dryzek categorises environmental discourses, suggesting that neutrality resulting from academic distance is not a realistic option when it comes to the study of environmental discourses or issues.

— Abstract, taken from the master dissertation.