Paper short abstract:

Under Western emphasis on non-contradiction and purposive rationality (Bateson 1987:156), the realities of environmental care can be difficult to hold. Attending to practices of culling-for-conservation in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this paper examines the promise and challenge of holding contradictions

Paper long abstract:

While public conservation discourse in Aotearoa/New Zealand tends to frame animals in dichotomies of good and bad, allowing for some species to be seen as ‘killable’ (Lidström et al. 2015, Haraway 2008), this paper follows the practices of conservationists in Aotearoa/New Zealand who privately hold care for the lives and suffering of ‘pest’ animals, even as they continue to work towards a vision of a country free of them. This stance holds much in common with that which Parker Palmer refers to as “standing in the tragic gap” (2005), in which one remains responsive to the present even while continuing to work towards one’s hopes. Arguing for the possibilities of kindness and creative attentiveness that can arise through the refusal to prematurely resolve contradictions, this paper attends to practices of holding such tensions amid the pressures of mainstream scientific emphasis on non-contradiction (Zanetti 2003: 261) and purposive rationality (Bateson 1987:156). This paper also considers the affective and cognitive skills and strategies needed for holding apparent contradiction in our contemporary world.

References

Bateson, Gregory. 1987. Steps to an Ecology of Mind.

Haraway, Donna. 2008. When Species Meet Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Lidström, S. et al (2015). Invasive Narratives and the Inverse of Slow Violence: Alien Species in Science and Society. Environmental Humanities, 7, 1-40.

Palmer, Parker. 2005. "The Politics of the Brokenhearted: On Holding the Tensions of Democracy." In Reflections on the Inner Life and Spirit of Democracy, 231–257.

Zanetti, Lisa. (2003). Holding Contradictions. Administrative Theory & Praxis. 25. 261-276.