Different cultures may have very different environmental practices, even when they live as neighbors on similar lands. This indicates the choices human societies may make in terms of social and environmental values and arrangements. Following ecofeminist ideas, it is my sense that we can distinguish human cultural arrangements as to whether they express values of democracy and partnership or whether they express values of hierarchy, domination and oppression.
This is not an all or nothing proposition–cultures are as complex as the humans that comprise them, but over time human social arrangements have been linked to particular kinds of environmental choices. Thus the ways in which peoples belong or do not belong to their land can tell us much about who they are in other arenas.
As ecofeminist Val Plumwood and theologian Walter Wink have pointed out, each culture has its own worldview–a mode of perception that often appears to be reality. The pdf file below contrasts broadly classified “partnership” and “dominator” societies in terms of their worldviews along dimensions of environmental values, social systems (including sexuality and power), economic systems, ideas of survival, and spirituality.
Below is a link to a pdf file you can download that presents an outline of contrasting worldviews that I have drawn up.
You are welcome to link to this page. Note, however, that the material and pdf file on this page is copyright 2008, Madronna Holden. Please email me for permission if you wish to pass it on in any other way than linking to it.
