From: Michael_E_Jackson-AT-brown.edu
Subject: AUT: ecology work? ecology workers?
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 0:30:07 -0400


I was wondering if anyone can help direct me towards useful ideas/resources on a project I've been curious about these last few days.

First, the requisite intro to the list: as indicated by my email account, yes, I am an undergrad at an actual Ivy League School, which according to the recent discussion almost definitely qualifies me as actively, currently capitalist-class... though I work for wages 20-30 hrs in a given week on top of my classes and thesis work, and though I'll have loans to pay and not much of a practical headstart in any job market when I get out of here. Disclaimer disclaimer, believe what you must, etc, but I'm in this for the long haul (as far as I can tell at age 20). 

Right now I'm attempting to finish concentration work on crisis theory and flexible accumulation and stuff; I'm becoming increasingly interested in autonomia; reading this list daily for the past few months has been helpful. (And, in case you're cynically wondering, my interest began with Midnight Notes and Harry Cleaver, not Hardt/Negri.) On to my question...

I've been trying to assemble the elements of a useful description of the "ecology worker." The two major approaches to ecological struggle, at least in North America, have been deeply problematic. On the one hand, there is an "environmentalist" faction of the ruling class that advocates a more total ecological management, usually on the part of the state as collective capitalist but more recently in a recuperative push towards "green capitalism" amongst private industrialists. On the other, there is increasingly a movement of "environmental justice"-minded people who share some level of awareness that capital unevenly externalizes environmental costs. For the most part (in NA at least) these folks seem to either submit themselves to exploitation in the nonprofit sector, or adopt a partially declassed (?) scavenger lifestyle as a vangaurd representing the interests of "nature" (and even those people viewed as "closer" to it) against capital as a whole. (Some are against industry or "civilization" too.)

The situation is enough to send anyone with a strong class analysis skittering away from action around environmental concerns--myself included. I was wondering, though, if it would be possible to understand "ecology work" as an aspect of social work. This would encompass all work (except managerial?) performed on the basis of ecological knowledge (of any degree of formality and particularity) and with the intended consequence of maintaining a biological environment which fosters social reproduction.

Ecology workers would therefore be, variously, (a) those whose wage (or other form of compensation from capital) is formally linked to ecological performance; (b) those whose wage ('') is linked to productivity which happens to depend on ecological performance; and (c) those whose ecological performance does not determine their wage ('') but is nevertheless carried out and is imposed by capital (for example, if it counteracts the material side-effects of capitalist production on their own well-being). 

Ecology work would encompass: much "housework" (food selection, cleaning); jobs in sanitation and waste disposal; tasks within most workdays that involve cleaning and disposal; agricultural labor; street-bureaucratic work around health and urban pollution issues; voluntary direct defense of biota *perhaps* (but certainly not conservationist real-estate accumulation); grassroots community activism against toxic dumping; work in construction and landscaping; and possibly certain types of intellectual labor that pertain directly to this work as such.

The key elements of this project would be:
--to uncover the diverse forms of ecological knowledge that most of us (as ecology workers) have developed; but
--to understand how this knowledge is developed to fulfill work that is created and imposed by capital; and
--to recognize that ecology work is inherently social work.

The goal, finally, would be to understand ecology work as a category of work under capital, in a way that allows for workers to make ecological demands directly in the context of a more general circulation of struggles.

That's the gist of it. 

Some immediate concerns:
1) Where is the line between ecology work and work in healthcare? There is a continuum of relevant biological knowledge.
2) Are owner-managers of small farms ecology workers?
3) Ecological knowledge on a small scale is highly diverse and specific, tending to vary with locality. Would increasingly succesful circulation of consciousness about ecology work tend to correspond with an increasingly abstract conception of "ecology" itself? Would this more closely mirror the ("instrumental") capitalist perspective on environmental dynamics (and hence be more susceptible to recuperation by capital/the state)? 
4) Could unified struggles based on "ecology work" really circulate between urban and rural populations? Or does capital impose qualitatively different types of strain on urban environments and rural ecosystems?

That's about the extent of my musings. If anyone can offer a critique--specifically either to shoot down the endeavor entirely, or to push it towards coherence--I'd really appreciate it. I'm new at this stuff, and if this is a topic that's long since been settled on I'd love to know.
 
Also, I realize that variations on this analysis have already been put forth: the better ecofeminists have discussed the uneven imposition of ecology work, in terms of the "externalization of costs" disproportionately onto oppressed strata; and the "social ecology" tendency suggests that one of the benefits of radically participatory control over production will be the incorporation of all these special ecological demands into the decision-making process (the end of ecology work as a separate sphere?). But I'm more interested in the autonomous activity of ecology workers, in a manner that fosters c. of s.'s with other (overlapping) sectors of the w.c. Any suggestions? (If anyone just points me to Engels, I'll scream.)

Thanks,
MJ



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