The Ethics of Participatory Processes: Dynamic Flux, Open Questions - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 323

the impact of simple themes without discounting the additional, more idiosyncratic
knowledge researchers have about the complexity of their social context (Taylor
2004 , 2005 , p. 198). A complementary challenge is to “Keep Big Visions in tension
with action grounded in specifi c places” (cluster 8 in Fig. 21.1 ). For example, when
conservation biologists deeply value the species threatened by the clearing of a
tropical rainforest, transversality of engagement would mean that they learn about
the social and economic dynamics that embed the people who are clearing the forest
as well as those that embed anyone—local or trans-local—who seeks to resist that
destruction.
Neither Fig. 21.1 nor this chapter as a whole provides a concrete framework for
or illustrations of the addition of transversality to the ideals of engagement, partici-
pation, and cultivating collaborators. Whether a dynamic fl ux ethics would lead to
Earth Stewardship remains, therefore, an open question. My last ideal, then, con-
cerns a sense of stewardship characterized not by fi rm positions or readily identifi ed
loyalties, but by mutual recognition among inquirers—among people trying to make
sense of their own circumstances as they seek ways to change what has been given
to them by dint of history, place, and the unfolding actions of others. In Raymond
Williams's novel Loyalties , the ending of which is quoted at the start of this chapter,
an elderly character who was once a partisan fi ghting against Franco's overthrow
of the Spanish Republic but is now tending a forest plot for conservation, argues
with a relative from the next generation, noting that the scientifi c career of the
younger man has taken him away from the community of his birthplace. Political
involvement, the older man contends, cannot be a simple matter of staying loyal to
one's roots. Given the “powerful forces” that shape social and environmental
change, we can “in intelligence” grapple with them “by such means as we can fi nd”
and take a deliberate path of action, but “none of us, at any time, can know enough,
can understand enough, to avoid getting much of it wrong” (Williams 1985 ,
pp. 357-8). The final ideal, then, that I would associate with a dynamic flux
ethics is fostering curiosity —embracing the questions opened up once we set out
to put engagement, participation, cultivation of collaborators, and transversality
into practice.
The word [curiosity] pleases me..: it evokes "concern"; it evokes the care one takes for what
exists and could exist; a readiness to fi nd strange and singular what surrounds us; a certain
relentlessness to break up our familiarities and to regard otherwise the same things; a fervor
to grasp what is happening and what passes; a casualness in regard to the traditional hierar-
chies of the important and the essential… I dream of a new age of curiosity. (Foucault,
The Masked Philosopher, 1996 )
Acknowledgements Helpful comments on a draft were given by Marien González Hidalgo, Kurt
Jax, Steward Pickett, and an anonymous editor. This chapter would not have been possible without
those who took the risk to join the discussion group on the ethics of collaborative or participatory
processes at the 2011 Cary conference and, through their respectful interactions, generated insights
that stimulated me to further inquiry. The line of thinking conveyed in this chapter is, however, one
I pursued on my own, aware of the limitations this implies.