Publications

Proctor, James D., ed. 2006. New visions of nature, science, and religion. In preparation.

This forthcoming volume features the results of a novel two-year collaboration by an international group of scholars, exploring connections between five concepts or "visions" of biophysical and human nature, and considering implications for how we understand science and religion. Click here for a fuller description of the New Visions program, including information on the core participants contributing to this volume.

Proctor, James D., ed. 2005. Science, religion, and the human experience. New York: Oxford University Press.

This volume features fifteen scholarly essays exploring science and religion as arising from, yet seeking to transcend, the manifold human experience in all its historical, political, cultural, and psychological contexts. Contributors participated in UC Santa Barbara's three-year distinguished lecture series by the same name. Click here for a fuller description of the volume and contributors, and here for my introductory essay in manuscript form; I have another essay in the volume accessible below.

Proctor, James D., and David M. Smith, eds. 1999. Geography and ethics: Journeys in a moral terrain. London: Routledge Press.

The intent of this volume was to reach out to academics and the broader community interested in what geographers have to say about some of the profound ethical issues of our time. Its immediate antecedent was an initiative I organized called the Geography/Ethics Project (GEP), whose participants exchanged essays and ideas during 1996 and 1997. We subsequently appealed both to GEP participants and other geographers to contribute original essays exploring the place of ethics in geography, of geography in ethics, and/or the ways in which ethics mattered to them intellectually and personally. Click here for my introductory essay in manuscript form; I have another essay in the volume accessible below.

Proctor, James D. 2005. In ____ we trust: Science, religion, and authority. To appear in Science, religion, and the human experience, edited by J. D. Proctor. New York: Oxford University Press.

Here I consider science and religion, alongside nature and the state, as major institutions of epistemic and moral authority, and discuss my nationwide empirical study of trust in these authorities. Results suggest two primary models of authority: theocracy, with God (religion) as the ultimate authority and the state as the mediating human authority, and ecology, with nature as the ultimate authority and science as the mediating human authority. Though problems exist with both of these models, some measure of trust in authority is unavoidable, and given its sense of commitment to living life, good. I ultimately argue that both commitment and critique must be present if trust in authority is to lead to meaningful epistemological and moral guidance in our lives.

Proctor, James D. 2005. Introduction: Rethinking science and religion. To appear in Science, religion, and the human experience, edited by J. D. Proctor. New York: Oxford University Press.

The essay proceeds with a cautionary note regarding implicit definitions of science and of religion, then discusses how positions on science and religion often assume that they belong to one or two domains. Bringing the human experience into any consideration of science and religion upsets these simple monistic and dualistic schema, but does it hopelessly muddy the waters? After reviewing contributors' essays in the four volume sections (Theory, Cosmos, Life, Mind), I invoke Whitehead to argue for a solution between one and two. In short, emphasis on experience over things avoids problems (especially the subject-object dichotomy) associated with these schema, though it does introduce the inevitability of paradox in reconciling science, religion, and the human experience.

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Proctor, James D., and Evan Berry. 2005. Religion and environmental concern: The challenge for social science. To appear in Encyclopedia of religion and nature, edited by B. Taylor. New York: Continuum International.

We use Lynn White's famous condemnation of Judeo-Christian religion as the root of environmental problems to examine how—or whether—White's thesis may be empirically tested by social scientists. Though White's argument is much broader than the world in which social science operates, there have been ingenious attempts to quantify the relationship between religion and environmental concern. Yet this social science research entails questionable assumptions as to how to bound, and delineate the cause-and-effect relationship between, these two entities. One promising alternative is to consider that religion and environmental concern may not be two separable entities: we discuss results of our own empirical work, which suggests that American environmentalism is more closely tied to attitudes of sacredness in nature than other typical indicators. Ultimately, we argue for social science to take an active but more reflexive role.

Kobayashi, Audrey, and James D. Proctor. 2004. How far have we cared? Recent developments in the geography of values, justice and ethics. In Geography in America, ed. Gary Gaile and Cort Willmott, 723-731. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

We present an overview of recent geographical research on the normative realm of values, justice, and ethics, an area which is often neglected in the discipline's drive toward objective science, but made increasingly important by the events of our contemporary world, set against this general reluctance of the academy to engage in a meaningful scholarly way with normative issues. Thankfully, geography has a long heritage of interest in values, justice, and ethics, and has witnessed a resurgence of research in the 1990s, which bodes well for a more engaged geography in the future.

Proctor, James D. 2001. Concepts of nature, environmental/ecological. International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences, volume 15, ed. Neil Smelser and Paul Bates, 10400-10406. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.

Concepts of nature are ideas about the physical world that accompany actual or potential sets of practices. The essay presents realist and constructivist views on concepts of nature, discusses implications of increased scientific and popular awareness of environmental change, and considers mechanistic and non-mechanistic metaphors for nature in the natural sciences. These sections suggest that concepts of nature and their analysis have suffered from persistent bifurcations of subject and object, nature and culture, and necessity and chance in western thought, themselves emanating in large part from positions claiming human distinctiveness from (and, to a lesser extent, human unity with) nature.

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Proctor, James D. 2001. Solid rock and shifting sands: The moral paradox of saving a socially-constructed nature. Social nature: theory, practice, and politics, ed. Noel Castree and Bruce Braun, 225-239. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

This essay considers implications of social constructivism for environmental ethics. Most popular formulations of environmental ethics rest on the solid rock of realism, whereby facts (coupled with implied values) are invoked to demonstrate that nature is clearly imperiled by human action, necessitating immediate action. The constructivist perspective, however, argues that knowledge of nature is never some direct reflection of reality. Does not this epistemological position simply replace solid rock with shifting sands, further imperiling nature? This has been a big concern among detractors of constructivism. But I suggest that the impasse between realist and constructivist approaches, and associated universalist and particularist schemes of ethics, can be resolved by embracing both in a paradoxical manner that blends confidence and humility in our moral proclamations on nature.

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Proctor, James D. 1999. Introduction: Overlapping terrains. In Geography and ethics: Journeys in a moral terrain, ed. James D. Proctor and David M. Smith, 1-16. London: Routledge Press.

This introductory essay proceeds by clarifying ethics as practical reflection on morality (versus speculative reflection, or moralizing rather than reflecting), and argues that there is a good deal of overlap between ethics and geography such that both fields would benefit from fuller mutual engagement. I present a rubric for considering this engagement by means of a division of geography into its ontological project—based on three major geographical metaphors of space, place, and nature—and its epistemological process of knowledge-building. I then provide background for the four resultant sections of the book, namely Space, Place, Nature, and Knowledge. Some overarching themes run through all sections, such as the tension between universalist and particularist schemes of ethics, and the relation between description and prescription. As but one limited contribution to a very large topic, the essays in this volume nonetheless suggest the rich work to be done in this emerging field.

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Proctor, James D. 1999. A moral earth: Facts and values in global environmental change. In Geography and ethics: Journeys in a moral terrain, ed. James D. Proctor and David M. Smith, 149-162. London: Routledge Press.

In this essay, I argue that understanding the ethical implications of global environmental change necessitates more fundamental rethinking of the entwinement of facts and values. After reviewing a wide range of fact- and value-driven moral positions on global environmental change, and comparing them with an interests-based escape from both, I discuss the work of notable geographers to suggest that we think of ourselves as inhabitants of a moral earth, a world already endowed by its inhabitants with moral meanings as they make sense of its realities. The task is thus not to add ethics to global environmental change, but rather to interpret and critique the existing moralities that have accompanied global environmental change.

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Proctor, James D. 1999. The spotted owl and the contested moral landscape of the Pacific Northwest. In Animal geographies, ed. Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel, 191-217. London: Verso Press.

I offer an interpretation the infamous spotted owl debate in the US Pacific Northwest as one arising not merely from conflicting material interests, but more fundamentally from differing geographical senses of the good as embodied in what I call a moral landscape. Moral landscapes are a result of creating and interpreting place-based meaning; thus understanding this debate necessitates understanding the process by which divergent meanings concerning the owl and its old-growth habitat were produced, largely by timber and environmental interest groups, and consumed by the region's inhabitants. I focus on three phases: intent, mechanism, and outcome, suggesting limitations in the production and consumption of meaning on both sides of the debate, and noting how this debate has continued on other fronts.

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Proctor, James D. 1995. Whose nature? The contested moral terrain of ancient forests. In Uncommon ground: Toward reinventing nature, ed. William Cronon, 269-297. New York: W.W. Norton.

The Pacific Northwest old-growth debate turned the forests of the region into contested moral terrain, where inhabitants expressed widely different senses of right and wrong. How should we care about nature, given such divergence of moral viewpoints? I review the human transformation of Pacific Northwest coniferous forests, then focus on the environmentalists' ancient forest campaign. I take seriously the argument of this volume that our concepts of nature reflect ourselves as much as nature, yet argue that this does not necessarily lead to moral relativism or aphasia, suggesting instead an embrace of the paradox that nature is both real and imagined. Ethical implications following from this paradox include moral pluralism, an anthropogenic—though not necessarily anthropocentric—approach, and the need to root—though not limit—ethics in place.

Proctor, James D. 2005. Introduction: Theorizing and studying religion. To appear in Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 (4).

Though religion appears to play a prominent role in the contemporary political and cultural landscape of the U.S. and elsewhere, relatively few geographers are contributing toward a better appreciation of this phenomenon.  A 2001 review of the field countered earlier charges of incoherence by noting particular strengths in geographic research on religion, and more recent publications by geographers have appeared, but the overall picture has not yet matched the strong wave of media treatment and popular interest in religion.  A basic question is whether religion really matters in the world today.  This question has been addressed in a highly prominent recent debate over secularization theory, which raises important implications for the relevance of geography and suggests the need for both theoretical and empirical contributions.  The papers in this theme section thus comprise the contribution of five geographers toward theorizing and studying religion.  Our broad intent is to reinvigorate discourse among geographers on religion, and suggest the important contribution geographers can make to a vibrant and important scholarly conversation.

Proctor, James D. 2005. Religion as trust in authority: Theocracy and ecology in the United States. To appear in Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 (4).

Far from being a universal feature of culture, the concept of religion has distinctly western origins.  What, then, is religion, and how shall it be empirically studied? I suggest, as one of many possible alternatives, an etymologically-based approach to religion, understood as trust in sources of epistemic and moral authority.  Four authorities are considered, including institutional religion, science, nature, and the state.  I present results of a survey-based empirical inquiry of U.S. adults, enriched by means of followup interviews exploring their trust or distrust in these domains of authority. Based on this inquiry, two hybrid forms are at the forefront of religious debate among Americans: theocracy, a linking of trust in institutional religion and government, and ecology, a combined trust in nature and science.  These results are regionally variable in the US, and cross-national data clarify the exceptionalist position of the U.S. with respect to European countries.  Trust in authority thus emerges as a fruitful means to link seemingly disparate realms of social life, and offers an important basis for geographic comparison. Yet whether understood broadly as trust in authority or along other lines, the geography of religion will benefit from greater theoretical precision and methodological pluralism as suggested in this study.

Proctor, James D. 2004. Resolving multiple visions of nature, science, and religion. Zygon 39(3): 637-657.

I argue for the centrality of biophysical and human nature in science and religion studies, consider five different metaphors or “visions” of nature, and explore possibilities and challenges in reconciling these visions of nature. These multiple visions suggest the famous story of the blind men and the elephant, in which each man committed the classic mistake of part-whole substitution in believing that what he grasped (e.g., the tail) represented the elephant as a whole. Indeed, given the inescapability of metaphor we may be forced to admit that the ultimate truth about the “elephant” (nature, or the reality toward which science and religion point) is a mystery, and the best we can hope for is to confess the limitations of any particular vision.

Hurley, James M., James D. Proctor, and Robert E. Ford. 1999. Collaborative inquiry at a distance: Using the Internet in geography education. Journal of Geography 98(3): 128-140.

This article describes how an experimental geography seminar utilized Internet communication tools in conjunction with constructivist strategies to actively engage geographically distant students in the process of collaborative inquiry and comparative analysis. Review of the evidence suggests that the application of constructivist- inspired teaching and learning strategies together with Internet communication tools served to facilitate geographically distant students in a dynamic process of collaborative inquiry and comparative analysis. However, both the application of constructivist- based strategies and the integration of Internet tools require considerable time, effort, and resources that may deter some geography educators from implementing similar Internet-based collaborative learning environments.

Proctor, James D. 1998. The meaning of global environmental change: Rethinking culture in human dimensions research. Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions 8(3): 227-248.

Culture is one of the most complex human dimensions of global environmental change; it is thus perhaps understandably the least well theorized. The objective of this paper is to sketch a conceptual framework for the role of culture in global environmental change in order to support the kinds of research necessary to shed light on this significant though elusive factor. I note limitations in how culture is conceptualized in current human dimensions research, and offer a retheorized notion of culture as a pervasive dimension of meaning in all social processes associated with environmental change, concluding with observations regarding research opportunities.

Proctor, James D. 1998. The social construction of nature: Relativist accusations, pragmatist and critical realist responses. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88(3): 352-376.

Social constructivists argue that what we call "nature" is far less universal and extrahuman than generally assumed. Yet this argument has been vigorously attacked by some natural scientists and other scholars due to what they perceive as its dangerous flirtation with relativism. I introduce this debate by reference to a recent controversy over the concept of wilderness, an important icon of nature in North America. I then define several forms of relativism, and compare two contemporary bodies of thought that are in broad agreement with social constructivism, yet do not promote strong forms of relativism: critical realism and pragmatism. For its part, critical realism is marked by a qualified, though vigorous, rejection of strong forms of relativism in understanding nature, whereas pragmatism involves more of an agnostic response, a sense that the so-called problem of relativism is not as serious as critics of the social-construction-of-nature argument would believe. Taken together, the two approaches offer more than either one alone, as they both suggest important truths about nature, albeit generally at different scales. Ultimately, pragmatists and critical realists alike admit that all knowledges are partial and a certain degree of relativism is thus unavoidable; yet they both, in a sort of tense complementarity, point to ways that geographers and others whose business and concern it is to represent nature can indeed have something to say.

Proctor, James D. 1998. Geography, paradox, and environmental ethics. Progress in Human Geography 22(2): 234-255.

As a diverse and divided discipline, geography embodies tensions central to the paradoxical nature of human dwelling on earth, from which questions of environmental ethics arise. The article reviews major ontological and epistemological tensions within geography- that between nature and culture, and objectivism and subjectivism - emphasizing the ways in which common resolutions to these tensions often represent flawed strategies of avoiding paradox. It then connects these tensions to important philosophical dimensions of environmental ethics. I argue that normative environmental ethics must be built on an adequate sensitivity to the nature/culture tension, and that environmental meta-ethics - specifically, the problem of relativism as applied to environmental discourse - must be similarly informed by the object/subject tension. The most fundamental contribution geography can make, therefore, lies in establishing a philosophical space for environmental ethics that takes paradox seriously and avoids its simplistic resolutions.

Proctor, James D. 1998. Environmental values and popular conflict over environmental management: A comparative analysis of public comments on the Clinton Forest Plan. Environmental Management 22(3): 347-358.

Public participation in environmental management decisions has frequently led to conflict. This paper examines the role of environmental values in fueling these conflicts, based on a data base and sample content analysis of written public comments solicited in 1994 regarding the highly contentious Clinton Forest Plan (also known as Option 9) proposed for management of federal forests in the US Pacific Northwest. The analysis considered whether those respondents favoring more versus less environmental protection than was offered in Option 9 held entirely different values, identifying which antagonistic values appeared to be most fundamental and where (if at all) values consensus occurred. It also compared values emanating from respondents within and outside the affected region, although few major differences were detected in this regard. Results suggest that strong values differences did exist among those preferring greater versus less environmental protection, in particular as concerned the extent, form, and spatial and temporal scope of justification of their positions, their ideas of forests, and the appropriate role of people in forest management. Disagreement concerned far more than purely environmental values: a major point of difference involved human benefits and harms of the proposed forest plan. Indeed, both sides’ positions were overridingly anthropocentric and consequentialist—a values orientation that almost inevitably spells conflict in light of the commonly differentiated social impacts of environmental management decisions. Although public involvement in environmental management thus cannot be expected to lead to a clear and consensual social directive, the Pacific Northwest case suggests that viable environmental management solutions that take this range of values into account can still be crafted.

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Proctor, James D. 1998. Ethics in geography: Giving moral form to the geographical imagination. Area 30(1): 8-18.

Geographers have become increasingly interested in questions of ethics. In this paper I introduce the scope and major concerns of ethics, briefly reviewing recent literature as a means to situate geography’s potential contribution. I then link ethics to the geographical imagination by developing a twofold schema representing geography’s ontological project and epistemological process, an approach which joins existing professional and substantive ethical concerns among geographers. Examples of recent work by geographers in these areas are noted. I close with a set of broad questions at the interface of ethics and geography worthy of further reflection.

Proctor, James D. 1998. Expanding the scope of science and ethics: A response to Harman, Harrington, and Cerveny's “Balancing Scientific and Ethical Values in Environmental Science.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88(2): 290-296.

In this response I critique four steps in Harman et al.'s argument: (1) ethics arises in the application of science to policy, (2) uncertainties in science lead to ethically difficult policy decisions, (3) in uncertain cases, it is best to adopt a position of ethical versus scientific rationality, and (4) ethical rationality is particularly compelling for its symbolic utility. The limitations of each call for an expansion of the scope of science and ethics, such that values are understood not as an add-on to science but as an inherent component, worthy of the sort of analysis the authors do here.

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Proctor, James D. 1997. Earth's Insights: A geographer's perspective on its rationale and method. Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 1: 131-138.

I review the rationale, method, and conclusions of J. Baird Callicott's book Earth's Insights: A survey of ecological ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback. Callicott's book is admirable in attempting to build a multicultural environmental ethics, but I question his assumptions regarding environmental crisis, his negative sense of ethics as primarily imposing restrictions on human behavior, and his tendency toward primitivism. A larger question concerns how one may usefully compare ethics cross-culturally, and whether Callicott's longterm devotion to Leopoldian ecocentrism has got in the way of this comparative effort such that a pre/post-modern version of Leopold emerges, globally triumphant, in the end. In the end, though, I commend Callicott for this far-reaching effort, and hope geographers give it a try themselves.

Proctor, James D., and Anthony E. Richardson. 1997. Evaluating the effectiveness of multimedia computer labs as enrichment exercises for introductory human geography. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 21(1): 41-55.

Quantitative proof that multimedia enrichment activities are a positive benefit to lower-division undergraduate geography is an alluring though elusive goal. The results are presented of a careful experimental evaluation of two multimedia computer modules used as enrichment devices for an introductory human geography course at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The objectives were to determine their overall effectiveness, as well as the kinds of students and kinds of geographical knowledge and skills they best served. The rather disappointing results in respect of all three of these areas tend to corroborate one published allegation that quantitative evaluation of multimedia effectiveness is itself ineffective, due primarily to the inherent complexity of learning. The conclusion of this article, and of the study, is that an array of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods will better serve the important objective of improving multimedia use at the university level.

Proctor, James D., and Stephanie Pincetl. 1996. Nature and the reproduction of endangered space: The spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest and southern California. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 14(6): 683-708.

Recent efforts to protect biodiversity in the United States often reproduce the literal and figurative divisions of space that have originally endangered target species. Nature as redefined by these efforts is as much a social construction as it is some biophysical entity under siege by humans. We focus on the categorical and spatial distinctions between landscapes prioritized for protection and landscapes given less priority or ignored altogether. These distinctions, we wish to demonstrate, reflect pragmatic considerations of habitat quality and political expediency, but they also are enmeshed in dualist nature-culture ideologies that serve to legitimate and ultimately to reproduce the different practices that occur on these landscapes. We focus on protection of spotted owl habitat, one of the most important cases of biodiversity conservation in the United States since the passage of the Endangered Species Act. We consider recent spotted owl protection efforts in the Pacific Northwest and southern California. In the Pacific Northwest, spotted owl protection plans on public forests have been cited as justification for easing habitat protection on private lands, in spite of the major historical biodiversity role of these forestlands. In California, spotted owl policy deliberations for the urbanized forests of southern California have lagged far behind those in the Sierra Nevada, even though owl populations have declined faster in southern California than anywhere else in the state. These cases are indicative of a nature epistemologically understood and ontologically constructed as separate from culture, of what Latour would call an act of purification set up against the undeniably hybrid character of nature-cultures in late modernity. It is precisely this recognition of nature-culture intertwining, however, that will prove central to the creation of sustaining habitats for nonhuman life.