Mick Smith

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Philosophy | School of Environmental Studies

Note: On sabbatical for winter term 2013.

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Research Interests

Environmental ethics, social constructions of nature, environmental sociology, the ethics and emotions of place, Gadamer, social theory and hermeneutics, theories of modernism and postmodernism.

I originally trained as an ecologist, inspired by the upsurge in environmental consciousness from the 1970's onwards. I have a long-standing interest in the experiential, social, and political reasons why people do (or don't) value differing aspects of ecological communities with a particular interest in environmental ethics, politics and phenomenology. My research seeks to develop theoretical understandings of the complex intersections of nature and culture as they affect our evaluations and experiences of environments. It engages directly with a number of current debates that are of vital significance for environmental politics which might be classified under 6 specific but overlapping headings:

1) Environmental phenomenology and hermeneutics - understanding how and why we come to interpret environments in particular ways, for example, as wilderness, natural, or brown-field sites, and how these interpretations inform our understandings of those environments' roles, values and sustainability. In brief - what do we mean by 'nature', how do we experience it, and how does it become meaningful to us?

2) Environmental ethics - the nature of ethical values and the ethical value of nature.

3) Social-theoretical understandings of nature and environmentalism - including the role of nature in sociological, political and philosophical traditions, current debates about the social construction of nature, theoretical understandings of space and place e.g. Henri Lefebvre, and different ways of thinking about nature-society interactions, for example, 'risk society'.

4) The emotional mediation of environmental responses - including emotional geographies, emotional attachments to place, bio-philias and bio-phobias. I am particularly interested in phenomenological approaches to these questions.

5)Environmental politics - the place of nature in political theory especially in terms of the relations between ideas of nature, freedom, and citizenship, sustainable development, ecological activism, ecofeminism, radical and deep ecology and questions of posthumanism and ecological sovereignty.

6) Tourism ethics - the many ethical issues that arise at the intersections of cultures and ecologies due to tourism developments and recent attempts to ameliorate some of the more deleterious aspects of these developments through, for example eco-tourism, community tourism etc.

I am jointly appointed between the School of Environmental Studies and the Department of Philosophy and have just completed on a book entitled Against Ecological Sovereignty together with a second co-edited collection on emotional geographies entitled Emotion, Space and Culture – to be published by Ashgate in 2009. I am joint editor of the Elsevier journal Emotion, Space and Society (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/locate/emospa) and am currently working on an SSHRC funded project on ‘Environmental Responsibility’. For details of my publications please see the School of Environmental Studies website.

Cultural Studies Courses

ENSC-801*: Methodological and Conceptual Basis for Environmental Studies
Department: School of Environmental Studies	Term Available: Fall 2013	Instructors: Mick Smith
The course examines methodological and conceptual issues arising from Environmental Studies position as an inter-, multi- and/or trans-disciplinary practice. It will focus on the inherent difficulties in overcoming disciplinary fragmentation in approaches to studying complex issues in environmental sustainability that require integrated understandings of the inter-relations between social and natural systems. The course will promote methodological literacy beyond student's own area of expertise, develop critical and reflexive thinking about how environmental studies might approach issues of sustainability, and encourage and facilitate communication across disciplinary paradigms. The course precedes and compliments ENSC-802, familiarizing students with the historical origins, philosophical underpinnings and practical deployment of key approaches within the social and natural sciences and humanities. Three term-hours.
Prerequisite: permission of instructor