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SUMMARY:How places matter: A new theory of environmental value. - Dr Simon
  P. James\, University of Durham
DTSTART:20210309T130000Z
DTEND:20210309T140000Z
UID:TALK157015@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Rogelio Luque-Lora
DESCRIPTION:In 1972\, the Navajo activist Katherine Smith told Senate inve
 stigators that she would never quit her home on Big Mountain. I will ‘ne
 ver leave the land\, this sacred place’\, she said. ‘The land is part 
 of me and I will one day be part of the land… All that has meaning is he
 re.’\n\nIt is standard practice to conceive of the value of places in te
 rms of the ‘ecosystem services’ they provide. For Smith\, however\, Bi
 g Mountain was not merely a service-provider. It was a part of her life. T
 here is a need for a theory of environmental value that can accommodate su
 ch cases. In this talk\, I present such a theory.\n\nI begin with a descri
 ption of the standard model of environmental value\, according to which pl
 aces such as Big Mountain have instrumental or ‘service’ value for us 
 humans on account of their causal powers. I then argue that that model com
 es up short when applied to those cases when places have religious\, polit
 ical\, historical\, mythic or any other kind of cultural value. I then mov
 e on to present my own model of environmental value\, according to which p
 laces can have constitutive value on account of the contributions they mak
 e to certain meaningful wholes. In the final part of the talk\, I briefly 
 consider that model’s implications for environmental policy.
LOCATION:Delivered online via Zoom
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