This thesis explores how rally drivers in Scotland perceive environmental issues and the environments through which they drive. The overarching aim behind this is to think about a group of people who may be more hostile towards questions of environmental responsibility, and look at how such stakeholders reason round their behaviours and perceive environmental issues. I argue that due to the potentially farreaching impacts of contemporary environmental challenges, it is crucial to take seriously the viewpoints and values of those who are perhaps not so willing to engage with environmental issues. The work draws on several bodies of literature. First is work in environmental philosophy on the practical contribution of this sub-discipline, in particular environmental pragmatism. Second is thinking in sociology and human geography on responsibility, especially the interface between responsibility and care. Third is recent material in geography on the body and movement, in particular the burgeoning field of automobility. These issues are addressed through a three-fold research design. Ethnographic and participatory techniques are used to foster an understanding of what exactly ‘the environment’ might mean to rally drivers (and indeed other users of the forest with whom rallying may come into conflict) and how it is experienced. In-depth interviews and subsequent narrative analysis seek to delve further into participants’ narratives and life histories in order to get a handle on how rally driving sits in relation to broader life contexts. Finally, two small-scale participatory projects with rally organisers relating to environmentally-responsible practice look at how this all comes together when participants make practical responses to environmental challenges. The key conclusions arising from the empirical data are that environmental problems are experienced through a range of senses, with different groups using different sensory ‘evidence’ to make claims about environmental damage; that in some cases stakeholders’ views of environmental issues are based on perceived conflict with others as opposed to actual conflict; and that the values activities such as motor sport may represent are just as significant as their physical environmental impacts. In terms of the broader applicability of this research, I suggest two things. Firstly, that one of the key challenges in responding to contemporary environmental issues lies in thinking through how publics link up their everyday practices with much bigger discourses on global environmental change. Secondly, that careful and critical reflection on the rich narratives of place and people, and on the range of emotions shaped by embodied experience, can go some way to explaining why people may persist with more environmentally damaging practices in spite of ethical and environmental criticisms.

In 1975, the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed the grizzly bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Following the listing, a recovery plan was drafted in which the Bitterroot Ecosystem of central Idaho and extreme western Montana was one of six proposed grizzly bear recovery areas. It was the only one of the six, however, which did not contain a resident population of grizzlies. The Fish and Wildlife Service eventually accepted a proposal submitted by a coalition of environmental and timber industry groups. The coalition proposed to reestablish a population of grizzlies in the Bitterroot by translocating 25 bears over five years from existing populations in the US and Canada. The proposal, however, included significant concessions, including reduced protection for the reintroduced grizzlies and management of the grizzly population by a Citizen Management Committee. A large contingent of regional and national environmental groups quickly rose up in vociferous objection to the proposal exposing a significant rift within the environmental movement. These environmentalists objected to the very idea of Citizen Management and also claimed that the proposed recovery area was too small to ensure recovery. Drawing on interviews and document analyses, this dissertation employs an environmental pragmatist approach to examine the intra-environmentalist disputes that flared up throughout the Bitterroot grizzly recovery debates. The dissertation focuses on the relationship between environmental ideologies, science, and conservation advocacy, with an eye toward examining how environmentalists crafted and defended rival proposals for grizzly recovery. Through this interpretive lens, the dissertation aims to explain the existence and persistence of this intra-environmentalism rift as well as explore its ramifications for environmentalism in the region. While no wholly unified environmental movement can ever be possible or is even necessarily desirable unwavering commitments to unreachable ideals on the part of many environmentalists are hindering the growth, flexibility and efficacy of conservation in the region. The main contribution of this dissertation will be to provide an empirical case study that defends the environmental pragmatist assertion that hostile and unnecessary divisiveness within the environmental movement ultimately obstructs the development of a more successful environmentalism.

The field of environmental ethics has been in discussion and debate the past 40 years over how to best expand the circle of moral consideration away from a privileged human perspective to encompass the rest of the non-human world in order to change minds and social practices to address environmental degradation and destruction. One of the main methods is devoted to arguing for the intrinsic value of non-human lives and places as the means to do this. I argue that this method of environmental ethics because it, at best, is a lazy framework for moral deliberation that ignores the entangled sociopolitical and environmental complexity of a situation by reducing the answer to a single set of predetermined values and interests which (re)produces and reinforces social and environmental injustice. An environmental pragmatist approach geared towards addressing environmental injustice is a better way of addressing both environmental degradation and social inequalities.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de proposer une caractérisation du bien propre des touts écologiques, comme les communautés biotiques et les écosystèmes, dont peut être dérivée une notion de ce qui est bon pour eux. Ceci vise à défendre les deux principales approches holistes en éthique de l’environnement, c’est-à-dire l’approche pragmatiste défendue par Bryan G. Norton et l’approche écocentriste défendue par J. Baird Callicott, contre certaines objections ayant été soulevées contre elles, faisant valoir l’impossibilité pour les écosystèmes d’avoir un bien propre. Cette thèse répond à ces objections en mobilisant plusieurs ressources théoriques issues de la philosophie de la biologie et de la méta-éthique. Ces ressources sont notamment celles fournies par les discussions sur les notions de fonction et de santé en philosophie de la biologie, celles fournies par les conceptions néo-aristotéliciennes de la normativité en méta-éthique, et celles offertes par les discussions de philosophie de l’écologie sur le holisme et le réductionnisme, sur l’idée d’équilibre de la nature, et sur le concept de santé écosystémique. Cette thèse mobilise ces ressources afin d’élaborer les fondements philosophiques des notions de fonction écologique et de santé écosystémique, desquelles est dérivée une caractérisation du bien propre des écosystèmes. / The goal of this dissertation is to defend the view that ecological wholes, such as biotic communities and ecosystems, have a good of their own, from which an idea of what is good for them can be derived. This aims to respond to the common criticism addressed to the two main holistic approaches to environmental ethics, namely Bryan G. Norton’s pragmatist approach and John Baird Callicott’s ecocentrist approach, which argues that biotic communities and ecosystems have no such good. This dissertation addresses those objections by mobilizing theoretical resources taken from the philosophy of biology and metaethics. In particular, those theoretical resources come from studies about the notions of function and health in the philosophy of biology, from neo-aristotelian accounts of normativity in metaethics, and from discussions in the philosophy of ecology on holism and reductionism, the balance of nature idea, and the concept of ecosystem health. Those resources are mobilized to elaborate some philosophical foundations for the notions of ecological function and ecosystem health, from which an account of the good of ecosystems is derived.

Abstract This study describes the central views of MTK on Finnish environmental policy during the period 1980-2000. The empirical material is collected from the magazine Maataloustuottaja. The data is analyzed using ethnographic content analysis and examining the central arguments and discoursive structures of the texts. The study begins with a description of the development of Finnish agriculture and of MTK. The first chapter also presents and evaluates empirical studies on the environmental views of Finnish farmers. The following chapter discusses some theoretical and methodological issues in environmental sociology. The theoretical foundation of this study is grounded in the idea of ecological modernization and social justice in environmental issues. The essential methodological tension that underpins environmental sociology is between critical realism and social constructivism. The starting point of this research lies between critical realism and moderate constructivism; in other words, naïve realism and strong constructivism or scientism and relativism have been abandoned. This starting point is also closely connected to environmental pragmatism. The empirical part of the study begins with a thematical discussion on changes in the views that MTK has adopted toward environmental policy issues. Although these views have not changed significantly over the years, MTK has shown an increased interest in organic production and in cooperation with consumer and worker organizations to promote "environmentally pure", local food production and the social sustainability of Finnish food production and countryside. The second part of the empirical study reveals some stable discoursive practices in the environmental rhetoric of MTK that has traditionally accentuated the connection between nature and agriculture and the notion of farmers as stewards of nature. At the same time, MTK has emphasized the alienation of urbanites and environmental policy-makers from nature and countryside. MTK has also expressed a concern about private property rights, economic expenses and a variety of practical problems caused by nature conservation and preservation. MTK's attitude towards family farming is contradictory: they are regarded as the models of agriculture, while the scale of production is growing. / Tiivistelmä Tässä tutkimuksessa kuvataan MTK:n ympäristökäsityksiä vuosina 1980-2000. Tutkimusaineistona on käytetty sen julkaiseman "Maataloustuottaja" -lehden ympäristökysymyksiä käsitteleviä kirjoituksia. Aineiston käsittely perustuu etnografiseen sisällönanalyysiin tavoitteena tarkastella MTK:n ympäristöpoliittista argumentaatiota ja etsiä tekstin diskursiivisia rakenteita. Tutkimuksen alussa tarkastellaan MTK:n ja Suomen maatalouden kehitystä sekä viljelijäväestön ympäristökäsityksiä historiallisen ja yhteiskuntatieteellisen tutkimuksen sekä tilastojen valossa. Seuraavassa luvussa tarkastellaan ympäristösosiologian teoreettis-metodologista kysymyksiä ja niihin liittyviä ajankohtaisia kiistoja. Tutkimus rakentuu lähinnä ekologisen modernisaation teorian käsitteistölle täydennettynä ajankohtaisella, ympäristökysymyksiin liittyvän yhteiskunnallisen oikeudenmukaisuuden pohdinnalla. Ympäristösosiologian viimeaikainen metodologinen keskustelu on liittynyt kriittisen realismin ja konstruktionismin välisiin kiistoihin. Tutkimuksessa päädytään naiivin realismin ja radikaalin konstruktivismin hylkäämiseen ja ympäristösosiologisen pragmatismin mahdollisuuksien hahmottamiseen. Empiirisessä osassa tutkitaan aluksi MTK:n ympäristöpoliittisia käsityksiä ja niissä tapahtuneita muutoksia. Vaikka muutokset eivät ole kovin merkittäviä, on joitain merkkejä siitä havaittavissa: kiinnostus luonnonmukaiseen tuotantoon on kasvussa, tuottajien ja kuluttajien kesken on löytymässä yhteistoimintaa "puhtaiden" kotimaisten elintarvikkeiden ja lähituotannon puolesta ja järjestö on sitoutunut kestävän kehityksen periaatteiden toteuttamiseen. Toisessa empiirisen tutkimuksen osiossa etsitään diskursiivisia piirteitä MTK:n retoriikassa. Perinteisesti MTK on nähnyt viljelijät "todellisina luonnonsuojelijoina". Samalla se on katsonut kaupunkilaisten kuten myös ympäristöaktivistien ja -poliitikkojen vieraantuneen luonnosta. Järjestö on huolestunut omaisuudensuojasta, taloudellisista kustannuksista ja erilaisista käytännön ongelmista luonnonsuojelualueiden perustamisen yhteydessä. MTK:n suhtautuu perheviljelmiin ristiriitaisesti: niitä pidetään maatalouden mallina samalla, kun maataloustuotannon yksikkökoko on kasvamassa.