| Book Review | Environmental History, 13.1

Book Review

The Landscape of Reform: Civic Pragmatism and Environmental Thought in America. By Ben A. Minteer. Cambridge and London, England: MIT Press, 2006. viii + 264 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. Cloth $28.00.
Two familiar and laudable goals lie at the heart of The Landscape of Reform. The first is to show that American environmental thought runs deep in the grain of American political culture, and the second is to provide a philosophical rationale for an environmental ethics based on the principle of sustainable use. Minteer pursues these interrelated goals by unearthing a long-obscured connection between American environmentalism and civic pragmatism, which he traces from the early twentieth-century ideas and reform efforts of Liberty Hyde Bailey through Lewis Mumford, Benton MacKaye, Aldo Leopold, and, more recently, the Land Institute and the New Urbanism.	1
Environmental historians will not be particularly surprised or perturbed by Minteer's claim that American environmentalism is deeply enmeshed in American political culture. His enthusiastic endorsement of that connection, however, will undoubtedly rankle those scholars (including most of Minteer's fellow environmental philosophers) who are deeply invested in the notion that a sufficiently biocentric ethics must be grounded in non-Western traditions. In fact, Minteer's primary purpose in reconstructing the connection between environmental thought and civic pragmatism is to convince environmental ethicists to abandon the dogmatic biocentrism that has dominated their field since its inception. In focusing so obsessively on inculcating the intrinsic value of nature, Minteer argues, environmental ethicists have failed to consider how humans might sustainably meet their material needs. Consequently, they have rendered themselves irrelevant in the arena of public policy.	2
While environmental historians have long recognized connections between environmental thought and American political culture, and while a few environmental philosophers have recently begun to formulate a pragmatist environmental ethics, Minteer is the first to argue that American environmental thought is deeply rooted in the civic pragmatist tradition. Environmental civic pragmatists argue that the principles underlying environmental ethics are best understood not as a priori truths, but rather as provisional assertions worked out and continually modified within democratic communities of inquiry. This flexibility has allowed civic pragmatists to articulate a "third way" approach to environmental ethics in which the human use of nature is guided by the notion that nature's intrinsic and instrumental values are mutually reinforcing rather than antagonistic. Minteer makes a compelling case that even Leopold, who is usually regarded as the fountainhead of biocentric ethics, took precisely this sort of "multifoundational" stance.	3
In piecing together the evolution of environmental civic pragmatism, Minteer is at his best when his evidence allows him to reconstruct a genuine historical "conversation" based on actual influences and communications among the figures he writes about. But when such evidence is unavailable, Minteer frequently resorts to speculation, which weakens his argument that environmental civic pragmatism is a coherent intellectual tradition. Minteer also inflates the importance of his argument somewhat by occasionally suggesting that American environmentalism in general—as opposed to the much narrower world of academic environmental philosophy—is dominated by biocentrism. While biocentrism may reign supreme among environmental ethicists, mainstream environmentalists tend to prefer anthropocentrism.	4
But these are fairly minor weaknesses. The Landscape of Reform is clearly an important and well-written contribution to the history of environmental thought and politics. Those who take seriously William Cronon's sage admonition to focus our attention on issues of sustainable use will find Minteer's careful interdisciplinary scholarship particularly valuable.	5
Jordan Kleiman is assistant professor of history at SUNY-Geneseo. He is currently writing a history of the American branch of the appropriate technology movement.

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.