Ethnocentrism at the core of Western views of nature

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. – Walt Whitman

For the better part of two millennia, the dichotomy which exists between humans and nature has become increasingly prevalent and stratified. In David Barnhill's "Major Western Views of Nature," it clearly insinuates that anthropocentric ideologies have been the guiding forces in shaping Western views of nature—that is, essentially, for humans to "extend…dominion over the universe." However, the anthropocentric view of nature evolved into an ethnocentric dogma during the scientific and industrial revolutions. The Western ethnocentric view has led to a distorted view of the natural world and has directly contributed to the exploitation of non-Indo-Europeans.

James Proctor of the University of California, Santa Barbara, states that the Western view of "nature is far less universal and extrahuman than generally assumed." Moreover, the very idea of nature and wilderness—in the epistemological sense—is a unique feature of Euro-American cultures. (Proctor 356) There is a vast amount of cultural relativism even within the many modern Western views of nature (i.e. conservationism, preservationism, postmodernism, decontructive-postmodernists, et al.). While some degree of relativism is to be expected in any ideology, the postmodernism philosophy has emerged as a particularly virulent school of thought.

Not only has postmodernism completely disassociated humankind with nature/wilderness, it is trying to justify tinkering with the very last bits of pristine wilderness. (355) It is the postmodernist movement which is spearheading and justifying offshore drilling, slash and burn farming, and third world garbage dumping. The postmodernist construction of nature is simply neo-colonialism by another name. The people of the Third World have become the "noble savages" of the modern era. The "Western" world has completely disassociated itself from its southern-hemisphere brothers and sisters. Western corporations engage in immoral business practices from South America to Africa.

Anthropocentric and ethnocentric ideologies have been the leading causes to the destruction of the natural world. It began with the simple ideas of "dominion" and "stewardship" over the land. And it eventually led to the exploitation of resources and our fellow man.

Works Cited

Title: The Social Construction of Nature: Relativist Accusations, Pragmatist and Critical Realist Responses
Author(s): James D. Proctor
Source: Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 88, No. 3 (Sep., 1998), pp. 352-376
Publisher(s): Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of American Geographers
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2564234