Author(s): Elizabeth Fortson
Mentor(s): Richard Stafford, Cultural Studies
AbstractDecisions about the development of societies are shaped by ideologies surrounding production, specifically in relation to the environment. As the climate changes, so does the literature examining our relationship with the world. One new idea is the Rights of Nature (RON), which grants legal personhood to a natural feature. These new frameworks necessitate deeper investigations into our current ideologies surrounding production and the environment and how they interact with alternate ideologies.A recent and relatively well-known case of the intersection between dominant and alternate ideologies is the battle concerning the construction of Enbridge Line 3. The pipeline was opposed by the White Earth Nation (WEN), a Native American tribe indigenous to the region. The tribe grows wild rice, which was recently granted legal personhood, near the pipeline’s route. This was one of the first major examples in America of RON being used.
I conducted a systematic content analysis of a local newspaper, the Star Tribune (n>1470). I compiled articles published between 6/28/2018 – 10/31/2021 and contained the words “production”, “productivity”, or “environment”. I contextualized these articles with press releases from Enbridge and WEN. I coded these articles using NVivo with a codebook of my own design, focusing on contrasting ideologies.
There are <700 articles remaining which have not been coded. So far, the newspaper prioritizes production and growth over everything else. The environment is viewed as passive and frequently seen as something to be managed by humans. Mentions of the environment as an agent, such as through legal personhood, were rarely mentioned and the newspaper distanced itself from these views.[/expand] [expand title="Audio Transcript"]Hello my name is Elizabeth Fortson and this summer, I worked with Dr Stafford to conduct a URSP project on the ideologies of production in the environment specifically, surrounding Enbridge Line 3, as presented by a local newspaper. Our current way of life relies on very strong underlying assumptions about production and the environment and our place in it. However, these assumptions are being challenged as people are beginning to believe that we need to change in response to environmental degradation and climate change. Questions of how to develop in a world increasingly affected by climate change are coming to the forefront of many different fields. In my research, I wanted to examine these underlying assumptions and ideologies about how we conceptualize these ideas of production in the environment both individually, and in relation to one another and ourselves. A recent example of when these ideologies were made more explicit and came under more scrutiny was the controversy surrounding the construction of Enbridge Line 3, a pipeline which transports crude oil from Alberta to Lake Superior. The original pipeline was degrading and so Enbridge proposed a new route for a new pipeline. However, this came under a lot of indigenous and environmental criticism. There were a lot of legal battles surrounding it and it gained national attention. The pipeline was completed as of October 1st 2021 however there was a very long period of time where Line 3 was under a lot of national focus. Something even more interesting about this case was that it popularized the idea of Rights of Nature, in which a natural feature or crop is given legal personhood and the state is then obligated to protect it the same way that they would protect a human's rights. In this case it was Manoomin, which is a wild rice grown by the tribes indigenous to the region, and they felt that this pipeline would endanger the crops and open the waterways to pollution and this was a violation of the rights of Manoomin. Since the dominant ideologies, as well as opposing and alternate ideologies were very present and explicit during this time period, I conducted a systematic content analysis of articles from a local newspaper called the Star Tribune. I took them from within the date range where the Line 3 project was most relevant and it was concrete and it gained the most controversy and criticism and I searched using terms "environment", "production", and "productivity" and then I contextualized this database with press releases from Enbridge and the White Earth Nation from within the same time frame. I coded these articles using a code book that I designed myself, which was made specifically to focus on these contrasting ideologies. It focused on how people view nature, the different ways that people can view nature, and their relationship to it the different ways that people can view production and what production ought to do; should it ought to increase, should it decrease things like this. This is an example of an article that I coded. It has codes for the different topics, such as solar energy or pollution, for relationships such as if the state government is supporting renewable energy, and I did this for every article to about halfway through the database and I'm still working on coding the rest. So I found that the newspaper presented production as the most important thing. In most cases, production was presented as it should always grow. Anytime something was going wrong with the workers or the environment, it was an issue because productivity was suffering. The main goal was always productivity and productivity should always increase and everything else just needs to be managed to achieve this goal. Nature was seen as something passive that people needed to act on behalf of because it wasn't an agent and of itself. However, the idea of Manoomin as a legal person directly challenges this ideology, while it was still presented as being a fringe idea that the newspaper distanced itself from. There are also four main views of nature which were popularized by Jedediah Purdy who was one of the major lawyers behind the push for the Rights of Nature. This was the providential vision, which is manifest destiny, we need to work the land type of view of nature. The romantic view, which prioritizes the spiritual and aesthetic values of nature. The utilitarian view, which sees nature as a resource warehouse that we need to properly manage. An ecological view, which sees nature as a larger system in which we are a part and we need to be more connected with nature and kind of focus less on this divide between us and our way of life and nature. However, Manoomin doesn't really fit easily into any of these categories. Overall, this was a really interesting project. I really have enjoyed working on it and I'd like to thank Dr. Stafford, and I look forward to continuing to code all of the rest of the articles and seeing what I find.[/expand]