[Taylor & Francis Ltd]
Kategoria: Książki / Literatura obcojęzyczna
'"Vital signs" are, of course, the basic physiological
measures of functioning which health practitioners use to assess
the gravity of a patient's predicament. This anthology focuses not
so m...
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'"Vital signs" are, of course, the basic physiological measures of
functioning which health practitioners use to assess the gravity of
a patient's predicament. This anthology focuses not so much on our
physical predicament, with so many of the Earth's systems severely
stressed and beginning to fail - there are plenty of other places
to read about this Instead we focus on our psychological
predicament, as news of the situation slowly penetrates our
defences and we struggle as individuals and as a society to find an
adequate response. By "vital signs" we also mean signs that such a
response is beginning to take shape: signs of hope, signs of
healing.We feel that ecopsychology in Britain has a distinctive
voice and unique contributions to make. In doing so, we hope to
facilitate debate and dialogue within the field, in the hope that
this will lead eventually to more developed theory and practice.
Things are still at quite an early stage in the construction of
ecopsychology as a discipline, and the articulation of
relationships of compatibility or incompatibility between various
approaches.It will take time for the field to reach maturity, to
agree on terminology (or agree to use different terminologies), and
to develop organisational forms. This is a familiar process for any
new way of looking at things.At the same time as recognising this
slow maturation, we are of course equally aware of the
extraordinary urgency of the external situation which it is one of
the missions of ecopsychologists to address. While there would in
theory still be an important role for ecopsychology if we were not
facing environmental meltdown - exploring the complex relationships
between human and other-than-human, and the therapeutic value of
bringing the two together - in practice ecopsychology has been
completely shaped by a sense of catastrophic loss, of the
irreversible destruction of complexity and the impending threat to
the systems which sustain life on this planet.From this point of
view, ecopsychology is part of a much larger movement seeking to
develop awareness of climate change together with all the other
developing ecological crises (pollution, over-consumption of
resources, destruction of habitats, etc).What distinguishes
ecopsychology from many of the other players in this larger
movement, however - apart from the psychological focus itself - is
a very widespread perception of human beings as just one element in
the global ecosystem; and an agreement, both ethical and practical,
that humanity cannot save itself by throwing other species out of
the sledge. The ecosystem stands or falls as a whole, human,
other-than-human, and more-than-human; and a failure to recognise
this is itself a symptom of our culture's dissociation from its
place in the larger whole, which is one of the causal factors
leading to our current situation.Among people who have been working
in this area for some time, there is a growing question: what if we
fail? What if our society does not manage a transition to a
carbon-free economy - and all of the other transformations of
culture and practice which are required alongside this? In all
probability time is getting extremely short; considerable damage to
global ecosystems is already certain, and runaway "tipping point"
effects are predicted by many scientists.Although awareness of this
crisis is far greater than it was a decade ago, there is still
little sign of a serious shift in public attitudes.Indeed in the
UK, and elsewhere, ecological concerns have been eclipsed by the
recent economic crisis with seemingly little recognition that of
course ecological, social and economic crisis are completely
interwoven. While the future can never be predicted with certainty,
there is not much concrete basis for optimism. What then?'- From
the Introduction