The Ethics of Participatory Processes: Dynamic Flux, Open Questions - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 322

are enhanced by “Tak[ing] the time and silence it takes to prepare us to participate”
through “listening, probing, creating new connections, refl ecting [and] opening
questions.”
The qualities of engagement, participation, and cultivating collaborators are
illustrated by the case of community planning in a district in Northern Ontario
included as Appendix 2 . However, as the postscript to that case shows, the commu-
nity's capacities were stretched and its plans undermined by decisions made at a
distance by a multinational employer. This experience points to the need for an
additional quality to engagement, namely, that it cuts across and connects different
strands, processes, and social realms. Such transversality of engagement means
not only taking seriously the creativity and capacity-building that arises from
well- facilitated participation among people who share a place or livelihood, but
also incorporating knowledge-making of non-local or trans-local researchers—
including knowledge about the dynamics that produce adverse trans-local decisions
and about ways to try to mitigate their effects.
A corollary of transversality is that cultures or cultural forms are not founda-
tional entities for understanding the history of a place or situation and its prospect
for the future. Granted, it may sometimes be effective as a tactic to focus on biocul-
tural conservation—just as invoking the Endangered Species Act in the United
States provides a way to check environmentally unsound economic development
(but see Sellers 1999 for some interesting history behind that tactic). Yet, as empha-
sized by the anthropologist Eric Wolf ( 1982 ), the cultural form to be conserved may
be the contingent and perhaps transient outcome of connections among places and
distant peoples. For example, as rubber began to be used in nineteenth century
Europe, the Mundurucú deep in the Amazon changed from villages centered
around male-headed, manioc-growing and hunting units, to numerous small
female-centered households, “each linked separately to the trading post in a web of
exchanges [of latex for commodities]” (Wolf 1982 , pp. 17-18, 326ff). Such eco-
nomically mediated changes may be just what a biocultural ethic seeks to resist—
after all, the cultural shift for the Mundurucú was tied up with their growing
indebtedness. Yet, given the long reach of commodity chains, such resistance can-
not be focused on one social location. The ideal of transversality means fi nding
ways in the Global North to be accountable for the effects that our consumption—as
well as the economic production and other actions (e.g., military interventions)
that support our consumption—have on people distant from us geographically,
culturally, socioeconomically. This challenge of “walk[ing] the talk in actions as
consumers that lessen our footprint” (cluster 7 in Fig. 21.1 ) increases even further if
we add distant from us in time —in the future—to this list.
Additional corollaries of transversality stem from recognizing that when, as
researchers or activists, we are faced with complex connectedness and dynamic fl ux,
our sense of how to change and sustain a new orientation is often crystallized by
simple themes, such as “Reduce CO 2 below 350 ppm,” “Maintain biodiversity as
essential for human survival,” “Promote Earth Stewardship,” or “Facilitate partici-
patory approaches.” A challenge, then, for a dynamic fl ux ethics is to acknowledge