Andean Llamas and Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 78

to these questions by discussing environmental or Earth stewardship using “peasant
economy” as a hermeneutic and, therefore, proposes that, like the Aymara Indian--
and Adam and Eve--, stewardship is best understood as caring and respectful mutual-
ity for the earth and its defense.

7.1 Stewardship in Western Thought

By defi nition stewardship means taking care of and managing someone else's prop-
erty. Its origin is in ancient English social structure (as well as that of the Ancient
Near East, Rome, Greece and across feudal Europe) in which the household duties
were performed by domestic servants who were guardians and managers of the prop-
erty of the owners. Clare Palmer ( 1992 , p. 77) explains, “The idea of stewardship
originates in a society which is based on slavery or serfdom, and represents a des-
potic and autocratic form of government, a fact which is particularly clear when
considering it in the feudal context.” However the term became disassociated from its
original context and became associated generally with managing other people's
goods and as restraint on one's own use of those goods or property. As John Passmore
( 1974 ) indicates, Western traditions of stewardship and cooperation with nature are
diverse, complex, and have changed over time. It was not until the late seventeenth
century that the idea was applied to nature. Richard Bauckham ( 2011 , p. 58) argues
that it was fi rst used as “a response to the growing sense of human control over
nature” brought about by the Italian Renaissance and “the excessively anthropocen-
tric Baconian view” of human domination, this in the framework of the cultural
Christianity of the time. Human control of nature continued to be assumed, yet not in
an unlimited fashion because, it was argued, “the world was not created solely for
human benefi t but for God's glory” (Bauckham 2011 , p. 59). Although stewardship
in this sense introduces the idea of restraint, it also argued for human control over
chaotic nature (Bauckham 2011 , p. 60). Humans were understood as separate from
and above nature. For Michael Northcott ( 1996 , p. 129), “the fundamental prob-
lem … is the implication that humans are effectively in control of nature” and sets up
a master-servant relationship. Still, as Northcott ( 1996 , p. 180) explains, “the concept
of stewardship of nature is mobilised (sic) in the Western tradition from the Fathers
to Benedict to refer to the just and gentle care of nature by humans.” The problem is
its later association with property rights thus turning stewardship into “a metaphor of
human control and mastery over nature.” In addition, Palmer ( 1992 , pp. 72-73)
argues that the idea became inseparably connected to money, as managing nature as
a bank account for human enrichment.
Although stewardship in relation to nature is not a theological nor Biblical con-
cept, but rather an idea used for theological construction and applied to certain
Biblical texts, these interpretations were based mainly on readings of the creation
stories in Genesis 1 and 2, especially Genesis 1 where human beings are given
“dominion” over God's creation, that refl ected the interpreter's own time. In histori-
cal context, the “praxis” of the time was that of emerging science, technology, and