Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability: Redefining Our Relationship with Nature

Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability: Redefining Our Relationship with Nature by Brendon Larson. Yale U. Press, 2011. Pp. xvi + 301. $40. Brendon Larson begins with an epigraph from Wendell Berry's Life Is a Miracle (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2001): "It is impossible to prefigure the salvation of the world in the same language by which the world has been dismembered and defaced." This conviction, part of Berry's skepticism about the power and politics of contemporary science, rings for feminists with the words of Audre Lorde: "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" (eponymous essay in Sister Outsider [Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1984]). Larson, a scientist, does not seem to quote Berry with reverence or with doubt. Instead he offers a close analysis of the language of science and society that shrinks neither from confrontation with dismemberment nor from hope in salvation. In other words, Larson does not throw in the towel, abandoning the language of sustainability that by now must be a specialty in marketing departments. Adrian Parr's title Hijacking Sustainability (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009) says it all, as far as some people are concerned. A culture of sustainability has been incorporated into the workings of global capitalism, large oil and coal producers having become among the most vocal spokespersons of the "green" rhetoric of sustainability. What can be left of the 1989 international proposal to balance the values of economic viability with those of environmental health and social justice? What remains of the aspiration to protect the rights and resources of future generations, human and more-than-human from the practices of present (1980s, 1990s, '0s, '10s) human inhabitants on Earth that waste and damage those resources? How can the word "sustainability" continue to be useful even within the quantifiable confines of science? If human societies maintain many current practices, some may call this status quo sustainability, but won't it lack the resilience to adapt to quickly changing environments, both physical and social? This spin on sustainability does not deter Larson. He admits that his is a normative argument. He is seeking the metaphors best able to promote socio-ecological sustainability. That said, much of the strength of his book lies in its description of how metaphors of science, especially biological sciences, have arisen from and circled back to society at large. He "examines four feedback metaphors in the [book's] chapters: progress, competition, barcoding, and meltdown" (24). Each, he argues, has "reinforced respective status quo values: progressive idealism, competitive capitalism, consumerism, and fear-based militarism" (25). One might think that poets, writers, and literary scholars have little to learn about metaphor from a scientist. One would be wrong. Chapter 1, "Metaphor and Sustainability," demonstrates how Larson means to negotiate his knowledge of science and his broader knowledge of environmental studies. Looking at the extant scholarship that has connected science and metaphor, he introduces dominant scientific positions that have denounced metaphor as mere embellishment. He also introduces his intellectual kindred, those who have argued that "metaphorical reasoning is at the very core of what scientists do when they design experiments, make discoveries, formulate theories and models and describe their results to others" (Theodore L. Brown, Making Truth: Metaphor in Science [Urbana: U. of Illinois Press, 2003], quoted on 4). Larson elaborates. "Metaphoric ambiguity may actually be a fertile source of inquiry, and metaphors may allow leaps beyond stabilized meanings that revolutionize the process of scientific exploration. Science is built on metaphorical foundations, so metaphors occur in much of the science we hear about each day. Thus, we require greater sensitivity to their presence and implications" (4). To begin, Table 1 of Chapter 1 is "A Partial Who's Who of Metaphors Used in Environmental Science," sustainability being one among dozens that range from phalanx to kingdom. …