Framing an Ecology of Hope

Excellente introduction à l’oeuvre de Pierre Dansereau

Abstract

Responding to the social, political, economic, and ecological

challenges that confront contemporary society, this

article—the 2019 Presidential Address to the American

Society for Environmental History—argues that critique and

resistance, married with a quest for alternative possibilities,

will serve us better than a doleful narrative of decline. It

seeks hope by reengaging with the ideas of scholars who

earlier lamented despoliation and envisaged other, better,

ways of being in the world. By discovering, interrogating, and

drawing insight from the ways in which our precursors sought

to emancipate their contemporaries, we can ask what they (or

their ideas) can do for us. Although this strategy is unlikely to

deliver immediate efficacious solutions to current dilemmas, it

can help us to historicize ourselves and the precepts that

shape our lives. It can also expand the range of existential possibilities

by calling into question the conceited convictions,

tired mantras, and blithe assumptions of contemporary economic

and political discourse. By reflecting on the lives and

contributions of two Canadians—Pierre Dansereau, an ecologist,

and C. B. Macpherson, a political theorist—whose ideas

cast light on the roots of our present predicament, this article

helps to frame hopeful strategies with which to address our

circumstances.