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The Green Horizon: An (Environmental) Hermeneutics of Identification with Nature through Literature

Description: This thesis is an examination of transformative effects of literature on environmental identity. The work begins by examining and expanding the Deep Ecology concept of identification-with-nature. The potential problems with identification through direct encounters are used to argue for the relevance of the possibility of identification-through-literature. Identification-through-literature is then argued for using the hermeneutic and narrative theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, as … more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Bell, Nathan M.
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Corridors in Conservation and Philosophy

Description: My thesis focuses on philosophical themes implicit in corridor conservation, using the Big Thicket National Preserve as an example. The way in which corridors, boundaries and communities are ambiguous, as both limits and connections, is dealt with. Corridor-patch matrices assemble ecological and human groups into temporary communities, often with conflicting interests. Such constellations foreground how a foreigner's boundary crossing is a notion important to both conservation and a philosophic… more
Date: August 2003
Creator: Benton, Christine S.
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The Turn from Reactive to Responsive Environmentalism: The Wilderness Debate, Relational Metaphors, and the Eco-Phenomenology of Response

Description: A shift is occurring in environmentalism to a post-metaphysical understanding of the human relationship to nature. Stemming from developments within the wilderness debate, ecofeminism, and eco-phenomenology, the old dichotomy between John Muir's tradition of privileging nature and Gifford Pinchot's tradition of privileging society is giving way to a relational paradigm that privileges neither. The starting point for this involves articulating the ontology of relationship anew. Insofar as the do… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Christion, Timothy C.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Redacted Dominionism: An Evangelical, Environmentally Sympathetic Reading of the Early Genesis Narrative

Description: Critiques of the environmental ramifications of the early Genesis narrative by environmental thinkers such as Aldo Leopold, Ian McHarg, and Lynn White underscore a longstanding tension between the environmental movement and Western Christianity. The evangelical community (EC) especially, has been at odds with the environmental movement, as the EC grounds its theology regarding human relations to nature on the Genesis narrative—and especially the Genesis 1:26-28 dominion mandate— interpreted wit… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Cone, Christopher
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Process environmental philosophy

Description: A process-information approach is examined as a foundation for an environmental philosophy that is dynamic and elastic, with particular emphasis on value, beauty, integrity and stability supporting Aldo Leopold's vision. I challenge one of the basic assumptions of Western philosophy, namely the metaphysical primacy of substance. The classical, medieval and modern metaphysics of substance is presented with particular attention given the paradoxes of substance. Starting from the philosophy of Her… more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Corbeil, Marc J.V.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Wilderness Women: Embodiment in Nature

Description: Virginia Woolf makes clear in her book A Room of One's Own that "[A] woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…." This statement extends to all endeavors by women, including sport. The gap between men and women's sports is not bridged by monetary compensation. The domination of women exists in conceptual ideals and how those are expressed through our roles in this world. I use Val Plumwood's ecological feminist theory to expose the blatant masculinity imposed upon sport. I… more
Date: August 2000
Creator: Cordell, Tami
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Environmental Imagination: the Constitution and Projection of a Sustainable Ethos

Description: This dissertation provides a theoretical analysis and examination of the role of imagination in the formation of an environmental ethos. The majority of ethical theories in environmental thought largely neglect the role that imagination plays in both the relationships that humans form with their environment, and the subsequent role that imagination plays in constituting the way that those relationships are understood ethically. To explore the role of imagination in constituting and subsequently… more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Day, Philip Garrett
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

Ranges of consideration: crossing the fields of ecology, philosophy and science studies.

Description: Environmental issues are often complex with many different constituents operating according to a broad range of communication techniques. In order to foster negotiations, different perspectives need to be articulated in lucid ways sensitive to various viewpoints and circumstances. In my thesis I investigate how certain approaches to environmental discourse effect dialogue and negotiation. My first two chapters focus on environmental problems surrounding rangeland ecology along the U.S./Mexico b… more
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Date: December 2002
Creator: Dinneen, Nathan
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Tracing the Path of Sustainable Development through Major International Conferences: A Brief History and Overview of Sustainable Development 1964-2002

Description: Starting with the idea that unsustainable practices contribute to issues of social justice and poverty as much as to ecological issues. Chapter 1 traces the origins of the terms sustainable and development individually to see how it is that they came together. Chapter 2 traces the major international conferences and documents and their use of the terms sustainable development. Chapter 3 takes a phenomenology approach to get a bit deeper into sustainable development. I examine the most commonly … more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Dunn, Benjamin P.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Environmental Philosophy and the Ethics of Terraforming Mars: Adding the Voices of Environmental Justice and Ecofeminism to the Ongoing Debate

Description: Questions concerning the ethics of terraforming Mars have received some attention from both philosophers and scientists during recent decades. A variety of theoretical approaches have been supplied by a number of authors, however research pursuant to this thesis has indicated at least two major blindspots in the published literature on the topic. First, a broad category of human considerations involving risks, dangers, and social, political, and economic inequalities that would likely be associ… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: French, Robert Heath
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Wilderness and Everyday Life.

Description: I challenge the dualistic view of wilderness that has influenced wilderness philosophy, politics and experience in recent years. In its place, I offer an alternative vision that recognizes wilderness areas and working landscapes as complementary elements of a larger, inhabited landscape characterized by a heterogeneous mixture of human-land relational patterns representing various points along an urban-wilderness continuum. In chapters 2 through 4, I explore the philosophical, political and ex… more
Date: August 2011
Creator: Friskics, Scott
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The Beauty of Nature As a Foundation for Environmental Ethics: China and the West

Description: My dissertation aims at constructing an environmental ethics theory based on environmental aesthetics in order to advocate and promote environmentally sustainable practices, policies, and lifestyles. I attempt to construct an integrated environmental aesthetics in order to inspire people’s feelings of love towards nature and motivate them to protect it.  In order to achieve this goal, I first examine the philosophical understanding and aesthetic appreciation of nature from philosophical traditi… more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Gao, Shan
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Private Property in America: Land Use and the Ethics of Owning Land

Description: Private property in the United States arose out of a tradition that emphasized the individual freedom to control holdings without interference from governmental influences. A sharp distinction between society as a whole and individual rights isolated ownership of private property from a notion of the common good. This dualistic framework excludes the possibility for forms of property that do not fall completely into either category. Property ownership attitudes are central to issues that ofte… more
Date: December 2005
Creator: Grant, Elizabeth Michelle
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Biodiversity Loss, the Motivation Problem, and the Future of Conservation Education in the United States

Description: The purpose of this dissertation is to make sense of two sets of reactions. On the one hand, Americans can barely lift a finger to help threatened and endangered species while on the other, they routinely come to the aid of human victims of disaster. I argue that in contrast to cases of human tragedy, for the biodiversity crisis conservationists are faced not only with the familiar yet arduous task of motivating the American public to care for living other-than-humans, but they are also saddl… more
Date: December 2011
Creator: Grove-Fanning, William
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Cultivating the Ecological Conscience: Smith, Orr, and Bowers on Ecological Education

Description: During the past two decades, one of the positive developments in academia has been the emergence of a sizable literature pertaining to ecological education-the theory and practice of preparing children and adults alike for ecologically responsible citizenship. Gregory A. Smith, David W. Orr, and C. A. Bowers are three of the more prolific writers in the field. Smith critiques modern primary and secondary education and argues for, and paints a picture of, an alternative "green pedagogy" that s… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Hoelscher, David W.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Discursive Horizons of Human Identity and Wilderness in Postmodern Environmental Ethics: A Case Study of the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas

Description: Using a genealogy of the narratives of the Guadalupes, I explore three moral identities. The Mescalero Apache exist as caretakers of sacred space. Spanish and Anglo settlers exist as conquerors of a hostile land. The park service exists as captives, imprisoned in the belief that economic justifications can protect the intrinsic value of wilderness. The narrative shift from oral to abstract text-based culture entails a shift from intrinsic to instrumental valuation. I conclude that interpretatio… more
Date: May 1993
Creator: Hood, Robert L. (Robert Leroy)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Ye Si Ye Jong: a Martial Arts Approach to Business Ethics

Description: The purpose of this dissertation is to offer a new approach to business ethics grounded in the martial arts. This dissertation argues that traditional rules and regulations approaches to business ethics, though important, are inadequate. Such “top down” approaches must be complimented with corporate reform that comes “from the inside out.” The dissertation consults the martial arts to develop a core, multifaceted virtue – Ye Si Ye Jong – that ought to form the foundation for creating a corpo… more
Date: December 2013
Creator: House, Shaun D.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Taoism and Contemporary Environmental Literature

Description: This thesis encompasses a survey of contemporary environmental literature (1970s to the present) as it relates to the tenets of Taoist literature, specifically the Chuang Tzu and the Tao te Ching. The thesis also presents and evaluates pertinent criticisms concerning the practice of relating modern environmental problems to ancient Chinese philosophy. The thesis contains a preface that describes the historic roots of Taoism as well as an explanation of the Chinese terminology in the paper. The … more
Date: December 2001
Creator: Kane, Virginia M.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

Ethics Naturally: An Environmental Ethic Based on Naturalness

Description: In this thesis I attempt to base an environmental ethic on a quality called naturalness. I examine it in terms of quantification, namely, as to whether it can quantified? I then apply the concept to specific areas such as restoration and conservation to create an environmental ethic and to show how such an ethic would be beneficial in general, and especially to policy issues concerning the environment. The thesis consists of three chapters: (1) the definition of nature and natural by way of a h… more
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Date: May 2004
Creator: Leard, Jason
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Embedded Within Landscapes: Agrarian Philosophy and Sustainable Agriculture

Description: Small-scale, conservation-based agrarianism provides a model for sustainable human habitation within heterogeneous landscapes. Thoreau's Transcendentalism and the historical roots of American Agrarianism are explored as influences for wilderness preservation and the New Agrarian movement. Idealizing a distant wilderness too often means overlooking the ecological and socio-economic environment where people live. Middle landscapes between nature and culture, or between wilderness and cities, can … more
Date: August 2005
Creator: Leonard, Evan
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The Character of Environmental Citizenship: Virtue Education for Raising Morally Responsible Individuals

Description: Surely, moral education is not merely intended to result in theoretical knowledge, but instead attempts to change people's behavior. However, when examining and evaluating current trends in moral education, it appears that hitherto moral education has fallen short of its goal to make people better. In this paper, I try to determine what has caused this perceived failure of moral education and conclude that approaches that focus on teaching moral reasoning skills rather than on teaching actual m… more
Date: May 2013
Creator: Lindemann, Monica A.
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Environmental Virtue Education: Ancient Wisdom Applied

Description: The focus of environmental philosophy has thus far heavily depended on the extension of rights to nonhuman nature. Due to inherent difficulties with this approach to environmental problems, I propose a shift from the contemporary language of rights and duties to the concept of character development. I claim that a theory of environmental virtue ethics can circumvent many of the difficulties arising from the language of rights, duties, and moral claims by emphasizing the cultivation of certain d… more
Date: August 2005
Creator: Lindemann, Monica A.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Wild Practices: Teaching the Value of Wildness

Description: The notion of wildness as a concept that is essentially intractable to definition has profound linguistic and ethical implications for wilderness preservation and environmental education. A survey of the ways in which wilderness value is expressed through language reveals much confusion and repression regarding our understanding of the autonomy of nature. By framing discussions of wilderness through fact-driven language games, the value of the wild autonomy in nature becomes ineffable. In remo… more
Date: May 2004
Creator: Lindquist, Christopher R.
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The Contribution of Mira Behn and Sarala Behn to Social and Environmental Transformation in the Indian State of Uttarakhand

Description: The influence of Mohandas K. Gandhi on social and environmental movements in post-colonial India has been widely acknowledged. Yet, the contributions of two European associates of Gandhi, Madeleine Slade and Catherine Mary Heilemann, better known in India as Mira Behn and Sarala Behn, have not received the due attention of the academic community. This dissertation is an examination of the philosophy and social activism of Mira Behn and Sarala Behn and their roles in the evolution of Gandhian ph… more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Mallik, Bidisha
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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