Page 34 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

10 M.P. Mueller and D.J. Tippins

by those who survived the legacy of Katrina, or those who escape the many apparently
destructive forces of Earth. The act of defending Nature’s rights based on our
obligations to Nature as embedded beings is a contradiction of reproductive and
survival ethics. Ecojustice enlarges the conversation; however, there are many
things that we grant charity, empathy, and generosity whereas do not extend rights
to Earth’s nonhuman entities and physical environments. Ecojustice requires that
for Nature to have rights, the larger society must accept that Nature has rights that
can be defended beyond the utility of humans. It is anticipated that ecojustice theory
will eventually convince such that the claim will go from “Nature ought to have
rights” to “the indispensability of Nature’s necessity for rights and ecojustice.”
Ultimately this morally defensible environmentalism will be the consequence of
our generosity, or the “violence” that the Earth will wage on humankind through
climate, pestilence, and famine.

References

Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human
world. New York: Vintage Books.
Dewey, J. (1916/1966). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.
Mueller, M. P. (2009). Educational reflections on the “ecological crisis”: Ecojustice, environmen-
talism, and sustainability. Science & Education, 18(8), 1031–1056.
Thayer-Bacon, B. J. (2003). Relational (e)pistemologies. New York: Peter Lang.