Polar
2009-06-16
How to live. Ecology and freedom
Polar ice is melting. Hurricanes destroy landscapes. Scenarios of a climate catastrophe are omnipresent. Yet it is unclear which human activities have lead to climate change, and which to nature responding with climate control. Whereas some believe in technological solutions, others demand a profound cultural transformation. Thus, when talking about the climate, not only nature is at stake. "Ecology" exposes our social relation to "nature". But what does "nature" or "natural" mean? Is it an empirical description, a normative standard or a cultural construction? Certainly an external nature does not need humans to survive. But what is "nature" without us? Questions of ecology should as a social question liberate from the natural. Ecological policy should defend freedom and social justice instead of limiting both. The ecological question has to be reformulated as a social question: how to live?
Main contents in this issue:
As normative statement the former German Secretary of State for ecological questions Jürgen Trittin advocates an "ecological materialism" in which humans identify their interests with an intact nature. More sceptical about universal accounts, Anton Leist favours a local democratization of ecological questions. Claus Leggewie and Harald Welzer analyse the cultural change which follows the change of the climate. Mike Davis questions our relation to cars. Vera Tollmann shows how the Californian lifestyle of health and sustainability (LOHAS) spreads in China. Christine Heidemann and Raimar Stange outline positions in contemporary art dealing with climate change. The reportage by Anja Wenzel captures the atmosphere of the biggest dam project in Romania, and Michaela Vieser describes forgotten natural wonders in Germany. The question of which status "nature" might play in human life is considered by Bruno Latour and Émile Hache, John Dupré, Oliver Müller and the chief of the Mapuche tribe Chacho Liempe. Thomas Schramme recalls the fundamentally different technological dream of Italian futurism some 100 years ago. This understanding of a "cultural nature" revived paradigmatically in Donna Haraway´s manifesto of a cyborg. Correspondingly, Arnd Pollmann analyses how culture shapes our bodies and Franck Hoffmann how culture forms landscapes. Sigrid Schmitz deconstructs naturalist explanations of gender given by neuroscientists. French writer Alban Lefranc expounds in a series of literal fragments the artificial nature of radical artistic biographies.