Assisted Colonization?

Colonizing ground next to a sidewalk. Wikimedia Commons.

   It’s well known that the climate emergency is threatening the continued existence of numerous species, especially those in places subject to extreme habitat change or loss, such as on the Pacific island of Palau, where the combination of sea level rise with hotter temperatures could make Palau uninhabitable for many species found nowhere else. In response, the conservation community has floated the idea of moving populations of endangered species to other places thought to provide hospitable habitats, to prevent them from extinction. The name for this is “assisted colonization.” The downside of assisted colonization is that it is impossible fully to predict the consequences, bad as well as good, of introducing a new species into an ecosystem. Needless to say, the conservation community is not of one mind about this. The introduced species might well survive, but it might also become invasive and crowd out other species in the habitat, as happened when lake trout were introduced in streams to benefit recreational fishing, but it turned out that it was at the expense of other species of trout whose populations became endangered. Besides, the original intention of conservation ecology (aka conservation biology) was restoration of ecosystems to an earlier, healthier condition; assisted colonization would be a very new kind of goal that would, presumably, divert energy from conservation as originally conceived. Against this it is argued that humans have, intentionally as well as unintentionally by way of travel and exploration, introduced new species to ecosystems; assisted colonization would be just a more carefully considered way of doing what has been done for tens of thousands of years anyway, but this time explicitly for the benefit of the endangered species and for continued biodiversity.
    In 2006 I lectured to folklorists and ethnomusicologists about the advantages of an ecological approach to musical and cultural sustainability. This idea of sustainability caught a tailwind and now, fifteen years later, the research into cultural sustainability is widespread, though more often from the standpoint of economics than ecology. Yet the contemporary debate over assisted colonization is worth considering in this light. Could endangered music cultures, for example, be assisted in moving to new geographical locations? In case this strikes you as a solution waiting for a problem, consider Old Regular Baptist singing, the oldest religious music in continuous oral tradition in the United States and identified as a national treasure. Old Regular Baptists’ “habitat” is in the upper South, in central Appalachia, where for the past hundred years most made their living from coal mining. But now mining is no longer viable and the music culture, which for generations fended off threats from other religious musical traditions, such as gospel singing, faces a different kind of threat: economic rather than cultural. They need to find another way to make a living and if they cannot in that place they will have to move. Where? Should applied ethnomusicologists direct them as a group to move en masse to a new location where they can prosper and maintain their religious communities and music? Certainly not; the idea is preposterous. The analogy between environmental and cultural intervention appears to break down at this point. Besides, the words "colonial" and "colonization" have a bad odor about them these days. And yet, it appears that some Old Regular Baptists are migrating on their own anyway, and have been doing so for decades, following the paths of Appalachian out-migration to southern Ohio, for example, and more recently into Florida, where they prefer to establish new communities of Old Regular Baptist families, and then later out-migrants feel attracted to move into these new communities, smaller of course than those in central Appalachia, and build some churches for themselves.
    Perhaps, then, applied ethnomusicologists could partner with community scholars to study these patterns of out-migration and community establishment, and see which ones have more success than others, and try to learn why. For example, a few churches were erected for Old Regular Baptists in Washington State in the last century, but these appear to have become extinct, so to speak, while the ones in Ohio have managed to maintain themselves. Possibly there is a role for applied ethnomusicologists here after all, acting more or less as consultants who would share the results of their studies with those considering out-migration as well as with those who have already out-migrated, with a view to strengthening their new communities by developing resilience. In this small way, assisted colonization might be something that ethnomusicologists and folklife specialists could do.

Natural Selection and the Invisible Hand

   

Invisible path to Oxford, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

     My sound ecology project led me to study animal sound communication, from three points of view: the modern science of behavioral ecology; indigenous ecological knowledges; and poetics, including zoomusicology. Zoomusicologists are especially interested in birdsong, from an aesthetic point of view. Sound functions for indigenous peoples as an indicator of nature: weather and climate, for example, and the locations and activities of animals, as well as spirit-persons. Behavioral ecologists study sound communication as part of the science of animal behavior: they are interested in understanding how, what, and why animals (and plants) signal information to one another by means of sound. Music may be understood as a special form of communication among human animals. Of course, compared with other animal sound communication, human music is thought to be complex in structure, to have aesthetic qualities, and to operate as part of the cultural matrix—that is, it varies among different peoples, it is learned and transmitted from one group and generation to the next, it is creative, and so on, making it different in degree (if not in kind) from the croaks of frogs and the chirps of crickets. And yet, I’ve wondered whether insights from the study of animal sound communication have bearing on music and sustainability, on the one hand, and on the place of sound and music in the contemporary environmental and cultural crisis, on the other.

     In reviewing the literature of behavioral ecology, I found that explanations of animal sound communication were based in the neo-Darwinian paradigm of fitness combined with modern gene theory. That is, individual animals communicated (in sound and by other means) in a struggle for survival with the result that those better adapted to their ecological niche would have the best chance of living longer, mating more often, and contributing their genetic inheritance to the ongoing gene pool of their species. Those better adapted exhibited advantageous variations compared with other members of their species: bigger, stronger, “smarter,” more flexible, and so on; or in the realm of sound communication they could vocalize louder, or longer, or in a more elaborate way, or more often, or when there was less interference from other sounds. As Darwin’s theory of natural selection proposed, then, the animals who were better at vocalizing (all other things equal) would gradually comprise a greater percentage of their species, and over very long (geological) periods of time, would “transmute” (or mutate) into new species. 

     One of the things that struck me immediately about Darwin’s theory of natural selection was that its evolutionary algorithm operated like Adam Smith’s "invisible hand." In both, individuals acting in their self interest—that is, selfishly—were said to produce an overall outcome for the common, or public, good: whether for the better adaptation of a species, or the benefit of society (the market economy, with opportunities and benefits for more individuals). Darwin himself credited the genesis of natural selection to his reading of Malthus on population: “In October 1838 I happened to read . . . Malthus . . . and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.” 

    But recently in reading Silvan Schweber’s detailed examination of Darwin’s reading during the period that led up to his eureka moment, I found confirmation that Smith's "invisible hand" had also been an influence. With natural selection, as in the free market, there was no external intervention or regulation; things were said to work out for the best naturally, and of their own accord, as if guided by an invisible hand. Also, in reading Stephen Jay Gould’s summary of Darwin’s “middle road” the other day, I ran across a similar reaction to Darwin’s theory from none other than Karl Marx. Writing to Engels shortly after reading Darwin, Marx put it this way: “It is remarkable how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his English society with its division of labor, competition, opening up of new markets, ‘invention,’ and the Malthusian ’struggle for existence.’” Nature, in other words, operated in the plant and animal kingdoms as the free market did in the sphere of human economics.

     Gould himself had come to the same conclusion after reading Schweber’s 1977 essay. He wrote, “I believe the theory of natural selection should be viewed as an extended analogy—whether conscious or unconscious on Darwin’s part I do not know—to the laissez faire economics of Adam Smith. The essence of Smith’s argument is a paradox of sorts: if you want an ordered economy providing maximum benefits to all, then let individuals compete and struggle for their own advantages. The result, after appropriate sorting and elimination of the inefficient, will be a stable and harmonious polity. Apparent order arises naturally from the struggle among individuals, not from predestined principles or higher control." Gould was quick to demur from Smith's classical economic theory: laissez-faire economics leads to oligopoly and inequality, not a stable and harmonious society. 

     Gould also went on to point out that just because natural selection and laissez-faire economics were analogous, that in itself did not mean they were wrong. Even so, I believe there are reasons to be skeptical. For one thing, it is also possible that Marx was right, in that natural selection is anthropogenic, projecting our human understanding of behavior onto the animal kingdom because we have no alternative: we can’t comprehend what it is to be a nonhuman animal. And for another, as I learned just recently, from a 2011 essay by Peter Harrison in the history of ideas, Adam Smith didn’t mean what Marx, Schweber, Gould, and I thought he meant by the invisible hand. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” was understood, by Smith and others at the time he was writing, as deliberate intervention, “higher control” —in fact, it was taken to be the hand of God, hidden and invisible, yet working for the good of mankind. In other words, Smith’s free market was not free from the direction of God’s invisible hand. The irony is that Darwin’s natural selection was free from it. And so in this important aspect, Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the classical economic theory of Adam Smith are quite the opposite. Darwin himself would have liked to believe that God’s invisible hand was operating in the natural world, but could not bring himself to that faith, for various reasons that can be found in the voluminous literature about Darwin.

     Metaphors and analogies are necessary in scientific theories. Mathematical formulas represent ideas; Newton’s f=ma and Einstein’s e=mc squared are meaningless until the concepts are explained in words. “Relativity” is both a fact and a metaphor. Smith's "invisible hand" is a metaphor. In The Origin of Species, Darwin wrote that he used the phrase “struggle for existence” in a “large and metaphorical sense including the dependence of one being on another.” And this is to say that for Darwin the “struggle for life” involved not only selfishness, but also interdependence and cooperation, something that is sometimes forgotten by contemporary neo-Darwinians fixated on what Richard Dawkins famously called “selfish gene theory.” Interdependence, after all, is the cornerstone principle of ecological science—the study of the relationships among organisms and to their environments—and one of the four principles of an ecological approach to musical and cultural sustainability. 

Ruled for dollars and cents

The sustainability discourses, as I’ve written earlier, are strongest in ecology and economics; and the two are not unrelated. That is to say, economists map scientific views of the natural world onto the economic world, and vice-versa. For example, according to intellectual historian Joel Kaye, the rise of empirical science in 14th-century Europe was likely the result of a craze for measurement made necessary by the monetization of society—the rise of a currency economy, which impacted the scholastics in the universities who, as a consequence, began observing and measuring the natural world (Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century [Cambridge University Press, 2000]). Conversely, in the 18th century, economic theory was influenced by concepts borrowed from science (natural philosophy), as Margarat Schabas argues in The Natural Origins of Economics (University of Chicago Press, 2005). For example, the idea that electricity was a fluid led classical economists to the idea that money flowed through the economy, while gravitational forces were translated into market forces.

Disentangling the two discourses, particularly when, as noted, they rely on the same word root (oikos = household), is a perpetual struggle; they seem to be in constant attraction, as two particles, one with a positive and the other a negative charge. And so today they mingle in concepts like heritage tourism, where heritage represents either a music-cultural ecosystem, or a natural one; and where money from cultural tourism or ecotourism is meant to sustain them.

Even Thoreau, despite trying to live a simple, thrifty life free from materialism, had a hard time keeping the two realms apart. He left us his ecological observations in 37 notebooks—his journals, a priceless legacy. And yet, as he observed, in his essay “Life without Principle,” “I cannot easily buy a blank book to write thoughts in; they are all ruled for dollars and cents.”

Nature's Economy at the Ethnomusicology Conference

At the annual conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Nov. 11-14, 2010, in Los Angeles, I read a paper similar to the one I presented at the folklore conference (see my blog entry for October 26, 2010), but I framed it differently, aiming it at an audience of ethnomusicologists. I wrote about the way my pursuit of music and sustainability is an effort to theorize one aspect of applied ethnomusicology. And because the panel was entitled “Revisioning Science,” I summarized a few things about the historical development of the idea of "Nature's economy," and its relation to natural philosophy (the analytical and experimental side of what we now call science) and to the beginnings of ethnomusicology in the science of comparative musicology. The historical development of economics and, to a lesser degree, ecology also occupied some of my attention.

Rather than reproduce the entire paper here, I will simply reproduce the additional paragraphs, which can be read along with the paper for the folklore conference:

***

"For the past five years I've been speaking and writing on the topic of music and sustainability. In so doing I am theorizing one aspect of applied ethnomusicology, that aspect which concerns applied ethnomusicologists’ desires to give back something to our friends and acquaintances in the musical communities we study, those who have given so much to us, in order to help them sustain their musical practices and move confidently into musical futures of their own choosing.

"Today the “sustainability” concept is omnipresent. If one aspect of sustainability is preservation, then it could be argued that ethnomusicologists got interested in sustainability more than 100 years ago, in their efforts to preserve and display musical documents in archives and museums. But today’s sustainability efforts are attempts to sustain music cultures in situ, rather than only in archives, museums, and on the internet. UNESCO’s international treaty for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage is perhaps the best known contemporary effort at sustaining music cultures, but only the latest in a series of efforts that gathered momentum in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

"Musical sustainability is vastly under-theorized. The most powerful contemporary sustainability discourses occur in the sciences; that is, in the science of ecology and in the science of economics. And so I have been visiting in these sciences to learn how conservation ecologists and developmental economists are thinking about sustainability, with a view both towards critiquing their discourses and gaining insights that might be helpful in theorizing musical-cultural sustainability. Interdisciplinarity, of course, is an old habit in ethnomusicology, for we are both by name and by nature interdisciplinary. We need not apologize for it; it is who we are and what we do….

"This concept (Nature’s economy) may be traced to the ancient Greeks. It became commonplace in eighteenth-century Europe to speak of “the oeconomie of Nature.” The natural and economic realms were governed in the same way, with wealth and commerce explained by natural law. But beginning in the late eighteenth century, in the field of natural philosophy, Nature and the economy parted ways, with the de-naturalization of economics and its emergence as an area subject not to natural law but to human institutions and agency. In the study of Nature, however, the idea of Nature’s economy persisted well into the nineteenth century, although the Deism which justified Linnaeus’s vision of the “oeconomie of Nature” had all but disappeared for Darwin, though “Nature’s economy” remained an important concept for him and he did write about it. After about 1860, however, with the rise of biology and various specialized biological pursuits, “Nature’s economy” lost its force in natural philosophy. Instead, the idea became a mainstay of the conservation movements, which were arising at that time in Europe and a bit later in the United States…..

"Natural history and the idea of “Nature’s economy” will appear quaint to many contemporary scientists. But in order for ethnomusicologists to think interdisciplinarily with science (rather than just do science) it’s important to pay attention to the history of scientific ideas and the history of science as social practice. Michel Foucault famously claimed that the study of Nature had undergone a profound shift around 1800, when the observational, formal, descriptive, classificatory and historical orientation of natural history gave way to an increasing analysis of the inner structures of things and their functions, gradually leading to biological science in the nineteenth century along with the development of various specialties such as experimental morphology, a subject I studied while in college. This is a narrative in which natural philosophy triumphs over natural history to become modern science.

"However, at the risk of disagreeing with Foucault, I believe that the descriptive, classificatory, and historical orientation of natural history was just as useful to those nineteenth century sciences that were most influential on comparative musicology, namely linguistics and Darwinian evolution, as was the analytical orientation of natural philosophy, which could be found in the young scientific specialties embryology and comparative anatomy. I regard natural philosophy and natural history as complementary orientations that have been simultaneously available in the Western world from the Renaissance onward. In the early eighteenth century the Royal Society was run by both the natural philosopher Isaac Newton (its president) and the natural historian Peter Collinson; and as far as I know, they got along. And natural history courses such as botany were normal offerings in American colleges and universities as late as the middle of the twentieth century, after which time they both changed character (to a concentration on the natural history object as an organism) and quickly declined in popularity.

"Not surprisingly, the comparative musicologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drew on the orientations of both natural history and natural philosophy. In their fascination with scales and intervals, their transcriptions, analyses, and comparative work Stumpf and Hornbostel and the others were operating as natural philosophers, while in their descriptive, classificatory and historical work (for example, in the Sachs-Hornbostel classification of musical instruments) they were operating as natural historians. Natural history and natural philosophy are always available, just as scientific and humanistic standpoints are always available; and ethnomusicologists will embrace their interdisciplinary perspectives and methods insofar as they answer the questions that ethnomusicologists wish to ask…"

***

After presenting the paper there was an interesting discussion and some critique. One ethnomusicologist took issue with my portrait of economics, saying that I had unfairly “demonized” it. She pointed to environmental economics as a field where the practitioners were taking the natural world into account. I responded that it was the field of developmental economics that I was critiquing most severely. Environmental economics would include Herman E. Daly’s ecological economics, which I acknowledge as an important corrective to neoclassical economics. But I can't give full assent to “sustainable development,” and if environmental economists embrace that concept, then I part ways with them because I don't think they understand all its consequences.

I was asked, also, about transferring management techniques from conservation ecology to cultural sustainability, and given the example of what to do in the face of a forest fire. I replied that forest fires are managed, if possible, considering sometimes contradictory principles; on one hand, when they threaten human settlements, they are fought; on the other, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that small, controlled fires will burn up the understory and prevent larger, catastrophic ones. Biomimicry would advise the controlled burn, but  when human lives and property are threatened, compassion trumps strict biomimicry and decrees that the fire be fought. There had been interesting critique at the folklore conference, also; and I am emailing with a colleague about the issues he raised. I look forward to discussing them in a future entry.

At the folklore conference, about 50 people had come to hear my paper, so for the ethnomusicology conference I imagined the interest would be at the same level. I made 50 handouts for distribution. To my great surprise, about 300 people came to listen to my paper. I was embarrassed and apologetic over having too few handouts. In cases like this, a blog where people can go to read the paper is a great blessing, and so I pointed them here.

Reconciling Ecology and Economy by means of "Nature's Economy"

From Oct. 13-16 I was in Nashville, TN for the American Folklore Society conference. For my paper presentation at the conference this year, I returned to an idea that I’ve mentioned on this blog a couple of times before: Nature’s economy. This was the title of Donald Worster’s fine book on the history of ecological thought. Re-reading it, I found the section where Worster tried to explain the phrase, tracing it to the Enlightenment naturalist Gilbert White. The explanation was intriguing in the context of my attempts to find common ground between ecology and economics, and so I decided to read White’s book, The Natural History of Selborne, compiled from letters that he wrote in the mid-1700s. Doing so, I observed White’s use of the phrase “Nature’s economy” (Nature as the greatest economist) and began to think that the concept might point the way towards a reconciliation of the two conflicting discourses over sustainability—those from conservation ecology and from developmental economics. After I delivered the paper—which is printed below—there was a lively discussion with some critique, which I will summarize in a later blog entry. I will also present a version of this paper at the conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology, where it will be framed on a panel asking the question whether ethnomusicology should consider taking a “scientific turn” at this time. Of course, it will depend on what is meant by “science.” But for now, here is my AFS paper: 
 

“Ecology vs. Economics: Reconciling Two Sustainability Discourses for Folklife through the Concept of ‘Nature’s Economy’”

     By Jeff Todd Titon, Department of Music, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA

           

[Paper delivered Oct. 14, 2010, at the annual conference of the American Folklore Society, Nashville, TN]           

Just about every other day around noon I take a walk through the woods back of my house, and I see in the forest there the operation of Nature’s economy. In this paper I want to suggest that understanding Nature’s economy is the key that unlocks the door to natural and cultural sustainability by showing a complementary relationship between ecology and economics. For, as I pointed out in my talk at this conference last year, ecology and economy come from the same Greek root, eikos, meaning household. In this paper I claim that managing our cultural household for sustainability rests on our ability to model our cultural interventions upon the way Nature’s economy manages the earth’s household.

Sustainability entered the folklife discourse with Alan Lomax’s “Appeal for Cultural Equity” (1972) and the 1983 report on The Conservation of Culture, coordinated by Ormond Loomis for the American Folklife Center. It entered developmental economics and policy planning with the 1987 Brundtland Commission Report on sustainable development. Since then, cultural sustainability has been invoked to support UNESCO’s conventions on safeguarding folklife, or intangible cultural heritage, where it enjoys great currency and has been the subject of considerable attention from folklorists and ethnomusicologists. However, the roots of sustainability may be found in the lay knowledge of natural historians; and in particular in the idea of “Nature’s economy.”

However appealing sustainability is conceptually, it remains open to a variety of interpretations, ideologies, and practices. In this paper I first review how sustainability operates in two principal scientific areas, ecology and economics. For although the words come from the same root, their meanings have diverged to the point where contemporary mainstream economists do not think of the natural world at all except in terms of resource exploitation. Second, I review two discourses of alternative economics, namely economic anthropology and ecological economics, and conclude that although each remains promising, neither one at present is able to reconcile the contemporary differences over sustainability among developmental economists and conservation ecologists. Third, I attempt to integrate ecology and economics under the concept of “Nature’s economy.” This concept does not originate with me; it may be traced through a line of naturalists from Gilbert White in the mid-18^th century through Henry David Thoreau in the mid-19^th, then to Sir Albert Howard, the founder of the organic gardening movement in the early 20^th century, and then to a variety of cultural and agricultural visionaries in the late 20^th century that include Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson. As a concept, Nature’s economy begins with the idea that Nature is the greatest economist; as developed by organic farmers, it means that agriculture should wherever possible imitate Nature; and insofar as the concept may prove useful in the cultural realm, it means that culture workers have their best chance of success when imitating the patterns found in Nature. Finally, I outline a number of design and management principles that follow from the concept of Nature’s economy, principles that culture workers may find useful in their interventions on behalf of cultural sustainability.

Last year at AFS I prepared the following diagram, which may be helpful still in reviewing the contemporary sustainability discourse in ecology and economics:

 CONSERVATION ECOLOGY                        ECONOMY

Sustainable populations                                     Sustainable economic growth

Conservation                                                      Development

Endangered Species                                           Resources

Targeted -> Systems Approach                          Targeted approach

Stewardship                                                        Property and Ownership

Equilibrium (Disequilibrium)                             Prosperity

Gifts of nature, wonder                                       Commodity exchange & fetishism

Co-existence                                                       Human dominance

Conservation policy                                            Economic and cultural policy

Diversity  (Concentration)                                  Efficiency

Summarizing what I spoke about last year, conservation ecologists target endangered species; they intervene to protect and sustain populations. Developmental economists target resources; they intervene to manage sustainable economic growth. Conservation ecologists value diversity; economists value efficiency. Both are engaged in policy-making, but conservation ecologists, like organic farmers, proceed from the principle of human co-existence with the natural world, whereas developmental economists consider the natural world in terms of resources for human welfare. Economists are driven to think of their world in terms of property, commodities and exchange, whereas conservation ecologists look to the cycle of growth, death, decay, and reproduction in natural world as their model. One could say that economists look forward to a world of prosperity while ecologists hope for a world of equilibrium with its connotations of justice and equity.

Confronted, late in the twentieth century, with a world of diminishing natural resources, economists embraced the concept of sustainability, as it pertained to both growth and development. Not only do institutions like the World Bank promote sustainable development along with modernization in the Third World, but economists prescribe growth for whatever ails Western economies. Meanwhile corporate conglomerates jump on the sustainability bandwagon, promoting themselves as “green” enterprises good for the planet. When Monsanto proclaims that it is “green” and that its combination of pesticides and genetic seed modifications produce a healthier world ecosystem, it is time to seek out alternatives.

Alternative economics are available, both “in the past” and “over there.” Can we learn anything about sustainability from production, consumption, and exchange among indigenous peoples? The literature of economic anthropology contains at least one provocative line of thought: the contrast between gift economies and commodity economies; yet while the interpretations support the idea that these two kinds of exchange encourage different kinds of human relations, personal and impersonal, with obvious social implications, they do not directly support a hypothesis that gift economies value resource sustainability any more than commodity economies do. Do people in indigenous societies have more awareness of the natural world than people in modern, Western ones; and if so, has this led them to practice sustainability? The answer to the first question is yes, but the answer to the second is contested, with some scholars (and natives) arguing on behalf of indigenous peoples as conservationists and others taking the opposite view. Early economic anthropologists assumed that neoclassical economics did not apply to indigenous economies and sought similarities between them and pre-capitalist Western economies, rejecting the ideal of the “economic man” who always tries to act in such a way as to maximize material wealth with the least effort. Instead, the early economic anthropologists embedded indigenous economic behavior in culture, explaining apparently irrational economic behavior terms of what Melville Herskovits termed “mythological thinking” (Herskovits 1952: 492).

But how could economics be a science if it could not explain economic behavior in all societies? By the 1970s a reaction occurred; economic anthropologists, whether formalist or neo-Marxist, blew away the fog of mythological thinking and attempted to demonstrate how economic behavior in indigenous societies was both rational and materialistic. By 1990 the powerful post-structuralist critique of science that overtook cultural anthropology was returning economic anthropology to a kind of relativism emphasizing, once more, the primacy of local knowledge. This would have amused Malinowski, who is credited with introducing the idea, 100 years ago, that cultural anthropology must first of all grasp the native’s point of view in its own terms. In this way economic anthropology has followed the intellectual trends of its parent discipline, while the evidence it offers concerning sustainability is both equivocal and contested.

            Besides economic anthropology, a second alternative to mainstream economics is provided by ecological economics, a discipline founded, named, and developed by economist Herman E. Daly beginning in the 1970s. Daly’s bona fides include working for six years in the 1990s as a senior economist with the World Bank as well as holding various professorships in the United States. I’ve written extensively about Daly and ecological economics on my research blog; time permits only a brief summary here. Daly indicts mainstream economists for failing to understand limits to growth because they do not realize that economies are not worlds unto themselves, but that like all human institutions they are constrained by Nature. If we bear in mind the classic economic concept of marginal utility, then when the costs of growth outweigh its benefits we have what Daly terms “uneconomic growth,” or growth that is harmful rather than beneficial. Today the most obvious consequence of uneconomic growth is global warming.

Instead of embedding economics in culture, as economic anthropologists do, Daly embeds economics within the earth’s ecosystem, endorsing policies that promote “sustainable yield.” He critiques economic development policies based on the concept of sustainable growth, which he claims is an oxymoron because unlimited growth is unsustainable. On the other hand, he endorses the principle of sustainable development. Quoting Daly, “when something grows it gets bigger. When something develops it gets different.” For Daly, development does not necessarily imply growth; but this distinction between growth and development is lost on most people, including developmental economists, and may have been one of the reasons Daly resigned from the World Bank. Ecological economics does provide a real model for cultural sustainability contextualized within the natural world, but at present it remains wedded to Daly’s interpretation of sustainable development, which unfortunately attracts developers who pretend that there are such things as smart growth and clean coal. Is there no way to reconceive the two discourses, ecology and economics, to bring them together in a complementary relationship?

            I think there is. The clue is in a line of lay knowledge and practice spread among naturalists from the Enlightenment to the present, and its contemporary extensions into a variety of related social, political, and food/shelter/transportation/place expressions, involving lay empowerment and an emphasis on recovering the commons with an emphasis on the local, organic, and participatory. I trace this line of knowledge and practice to natural history and the concept of Nature’s economy, and to its corollary, biomimicry, or the principle of following Nature in cultural design and management.

            The influential thinkers in the twentieth century’s first wave of agricultural environmentalism understood the connections between nature and culture in just this way. Wendell Berry, for example, approached both culture and agriculture in his 1977 book, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, pointing out that both words come from an Indo-European root meaning “to dwell.” Let us recall that “household” is root meaning of the words economy and ecology. In this way, we are able to view the culture of agriculture as dwelling within the earth household. In his 1981 essay “Solving for Pattern,” Berry remarked that “a bad solution solves for a single purpose such as increased production in ignorance or deliberate disregard of the larger patterns in which it is contained.” The obvious examples of bad agricultural solutions are chemical pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and genetically modified crops. These mistakes follow the law of unintended consequences and ignore the principle of interconnectedness, one of the four principles culture workers can learn from the science of conservation ecology: interconnectedness, diversity, limits to growth, and stewardship. But these principles did not originate with latter-day environmentalists, alternative agriculturists, or conservation ecologists; they are implicit in the concept of “Nature’s economy.” Again, the idea is that Nature is the “great economist,” in the sense that everything is interconnected and nothing is wasted. Here I quote from Gilbert White’s observations in The Natural History of Selborne, Letter VII, written about 1765:

“A circumstance respecting these ponds [in Selborne], though by no means peculiar to them, I cannot pass over in silence; and that is, that instinct by which in summer all the kine, whether oxen, cows, calves, or heifers, retire constantly to the water during the hotter hours; where, being more exempt from flies, and inhaling the coolness of that element, some belly deep, and some only to mid-leg, they ruminate and solace themselves from about ten in the morning till four in the afternoon, and then return to their feeding. During this great proportion of the day they drop much dung, in which insects nestle; and so supply food for the fish, which would be poorly subsisted but from this contingency. Thus nature, who is a great economist, converts the re-creation of one animal to the support of another!” (White 1908 [1788]: 30).

White’s vision of Nature’s economy integrates ecology with economy; things are recycled and nothing is wasted.

            Sir Albert Howard, the founder of the organic gardening movement, also understood these interconnections, and extended them to humankind. In his 1940 book, An Agricultural Testament, he wrote: “The whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal and man [is] one great subject.” Howard advanced the other key idea, biomimicry, or following nature’s economy, when he wrote that the way “Nature manages her land [must] form the basis of all our studies of soil fertility. What are the main principles underlying Nature’s agriculture? These can most easily be seen in operation of our woods and forests.” As I wrote earlier, I see these principles in operation every time I walk in the woods behind my house. They include biodiversity rather than monoculture; and the cycling of plant and animal waste into the forest soil that produces the food for the next generation of plants and animals. For Howard and a few thousand pioneers in 1940, and today for the tens of millions of people who produce and consume organic agriculture, managing agriculture means managing in imitation of Nature. The definition of organic gardening contained in Rodale’s Organic Gardening Encyclopedia reads: “The balance of Nature must be respected. Each part has its own sphere of activity as well as fusing with and complementing other related parts. A substance that alters one part, for instance, may affect half a dozen others—most often to our own disadvantage. . . . The soil is a storehouse of living organisms which must be fed and cared for as any others. . . Organic gardening or farming is a system whereby a fertile soil is maintained by applying Nature’s own law of replenishing it. . . .” (Rodale 1973: 794-795).

            Imitating Nature inspires Wes Jackson’s contemporary work at the Land Institute, in Kansas. In response to the problem of agribusiness and its depletion of natural resources, Jackson undertook a plant breeding program based on what he saw in the perennial state of the original Kansas prairie. One example involves cross breeding annual wheat with perennial grass to make a perennial wheat. It would be planted once; it would replenish the soil; and some could be harvested each year. Interviewed by National Public Radio in 2009, he said that “The solution is to build an agriculture based on the way nature’s ecosystems work” [NPR story, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113766846]

            Biomimicry follows from the idea that Nature is the great economist in earth’s household. Thus ecology and economy, Nature, culture, and agriculture are brought together in a single discourse. Another contemporary manifestation of sustainability through biomimicry is found in the Permaculture movement. Permaculture, a portmanteau word made from “permanent agriculture” and “permanent culture,” is, in the words of its most influential thinker, Australian Bill Mollison, “an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in natural ecologies.”

            In conclusion, the various design and management principles that follow from Nature’s economy and biomimicry integrate nature with culture and offer strategies to culture workers acting in stewardship to the public interest. Folklorists are well aware of some but perhaps not others; it is their integration that I have been seeking here. I end this presentation with a few of those design and management principles:

            (1) Observe patterns in Nature that connect all living beings and design with these in culture. Do not impose form; in Nature form follows function. Manage for whole systems; do not offer single solutions.

            (2) Encourage cultural and biodiversity as a strategy for sustainability through adaptation and dynamic change. Encourage revitalization movements that recycle tradition and know that in order to survive, tradition must be dynamic.

            (3) From organic agriculture to culture, apply the principle “Feed the soil, not the plant.” Do not intervene to bolster specific expressive cultural genres—these will come and go naturally, and today in the internet age all are capable of staying in one form or another. Direct support to the social, political, and economic conditions or the cultural soil under which expressive cultures flourish and upon which they depend.

            (4) Nature rewards cooperation and demands local expertise; culture workers should partner with local scholars and practitioners, ascertain their desires and goals, and work towards mutual ends and rewards.            

References

Lomax, Alan. 1972. “An Appeal for Cultural Equity.” The World of Music, 14:3-4, 9.

Brundtland Commission Report. 1987. Our Common Future. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Howard, Sir Albert. 1940. An Agricultural Testament. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press.

Loomis, Ormond, coordinator. 1983. The Conservation of Culture. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, American Folklife Center.

White, Gilbert. 1908 [1788]. The Natural History of Selborne. London: Cassell.

Herskovits, Melville. 1952 [1940]. Economic Anthropology: The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples. New York: Norton.

Rodale, J. I., and staff. 1973. Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books.

Anthropological Economics, Heritage, and Musical Sustainability

     The most influential thinker upon economic anthropology during early period (approximately 1940-1970) was Karl Polanyi, whose book The Great Transformation (1944) contrasted medieval European peasant economies with later capitalistic ones. For Polanyi, the “transformation” was not only a transformation of economic institutions but a transformation in the way of thinking about property, commerce, money, capital, and above all, social relations. Although for personal, political reasons he denied any connection between his thought and that of Karl Marx, the connections are obvious.

    Although Polanyi was not an anthropologist, his influence on economic anthropology was enormous and he remains a seminal thinker in the field. Like Herskovits, he promoted a cultural approach to economics, rejecting the classical and neoclassical construction of “economic man” and replacing it with an actor embedded in the social and cultural thought (Herskovits would have called it mythology) of his or her society. This approach to economics he called “substantivism,” and he contrasted it with the neoclassical approach, which he called “formalism,” maintaining all the while that formalism was not suitable for understanding economics in pre-literate societies. The implication was, of course, that it was unsuitable for understanding economics in developed Western societies as well; for economic decision-making and institutions are easily viewed as culturally embedded in the West as elsewhere.

    Polanyi's work was critiqued—by formalists—and gradually, beginning in the 1960s, economic anthropologists began relying on materialist rather than "mythological" explanations for economic transactions and institutions in pre-literate societies, to the point where in the 1970s and 1980s formal, quantitative, mathematical models prevailed. It appeared that principles of neoclassical economics could be applied universally with satisfactory results. “Formalism” in economic anthropology had re-established an “economic man” guided by principles of maximizing material well being at the center of many, if not all, non-literate societies as well as in developed economies.

    As the twentieth century came to a close, the powerful critique of cultural anthropology from within, based on post-structuralist, post-colonial Theory, attacked formalist approaches to economic anthropology, substituting instead the competing approach that has been dubbed “culturalism”: understanding a people’s economic thinking in their own terms or trying, as one would say now, to understand it in terms of local knowledge. In so doing, economic anthropology has, ironically, moved full circle back to Malinowski, who advanced the thesis, in his book Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), that anthropology must be directed at grasping the native’s point of view in the native’s own terms. (Of course, for Malinowski, grasping the native’s way of thinking was only a starting point; ethnographic analysis and ethnological comparison followed on). 

    This post-structuralist strain within contemporary economic anthropology directs us at looking at local knowledge in order to better strategize sustainability for cultural as well as natural resources. In this reading a partnership, however uneasy, between local and comparative-based knowledge, so-called lay and expert knowledge, brings diversity to the enterprise and has the best opportunity for success.

    In our new century, a (predictable) reaction against post-structuralism has advanced formalism once more, to the point that formalist models now compete with culturalist ones, while a revival of interest is promoting Polanyi’s substantivist perspective. Formalists would direct culture workers towards “economic man” models stressing that sustainability of musical cultures depends on the degree to which they reward desires for material well-being. To that we may add desires for the social and cultural capital which participation in art worlds such as music provides.

    From a practical standpoint, commodification of music and heritage tourism do provide a certain degree of social and cultural capital, and of course there is a good deal of material culture surrounding the production and consumption of music, whether “gear” for producing music, or iPods and the like for consuming it. (Only a couple of decades ago one could speak of “cassette culture” and boom boxes.) More and more sophisticated, computer-based tools of music production are becoming available to lay individuals, while internet access offers unprecedented opportunities for individuals to market their own music. Whereas twenty years ago musicians had to depend on the recording industry to get their music out beyond what they could do with personal appearances, today virtually all commercially-oriented musicians in developed economies make their own music available directly via the internet. Economic anthropologists of a formalist bent would urge culture workers toward a “realistic” view of music’s place in the economy, in effect advising those musical cultures interested in sustainability to join the marketing bandwagon. Giving music the cachet of heritage, in this way of thinking, adds value in marketing, and provides cultural capital for those who are willing to place a value on traditional music, thereby sustaining it.

    As I’ve written earlier in this research blog, marketing heritage is the prevailing strategy among contemporary culture workers who would effect policy in the direction of sustaining music. Make certain that traditional music takes up its rightful place in the global jukebox that the internet has become. Make it prominent among available choices for musicians and fans; encourage it however one can by adding value through heritage designations and attracting tourists. Those who remain uneasy with the commodification of traditional music are dismissed as idealists, romancers of the folk, and so forth. Are they? Further exploration of economic thinking in terms of musical commodities and their alternatives (usually conceived of as gifts) may offer some answers, putting us back again in Polanyi’s “great transformation” way of framing the questions concerning sustainability of music cultures.

Ecological Awareness

From ecological economics we move (temporarily) to ecological awareness. Many Americans and some Europeans reading this blog will remember playing “cowboys and Indians” when growing up. Some merely imagined themselves one or the other; others donned a bit of costume such as a buckskin shirt and moccasins, or they wore a cap pistol in a holster. (Interestingly, my Native American friends have told me that they, too, played cowboys and Indians when growing up.) The Indian stepped silently through the woods in his or her moccasins, with senses keenly attuned to nature. Young Boy and Girl Scouts learn woodsmanship: how to get along in the wilderness. Hunting, fishing, building a fire, making shelter, survival skills: all these require a kind of ecological awareness of the natural world unavailable in the course of ordinary life to youngsters living protected lives in cities and suburbs; and so for some it becomes a kind of serious recreation. Euro-American culture values ecological awareness, as it values nature.

Do (or did) native or indigenous peoples acquire ecological awareness that leads to sustainability practices? If so, there is something to be learned from them. Anthropologists who study the pre-European contact lifeways of tribal societies agree that their peoples are ecologically aware; indeed, this feature is oft remarked on in popular anthropology, whether it is the Eskimos’ forty or so different words for different snow conditions, or the Australian natives’ intricate mental mapping of the landscape. But whether their ecological awareness led to practices that we would call sustainable turns out to be a more difficult question to answer.

It is more difficult because it is unclear whether their traditional economies were maintained over thousands of years prior to European contact because ecological awareness led to sustainable practices, or because the available technology was unable to exploit the resources to the point of exhaustion. Indeed, if resources such as game grew scarce, a smaller human population was supported until the resources were renewed. Anthropologists have looked hard to find instances of ecological awareness among tribal peoples leading to conservation and sustainability practices, but a recent review of the scholarly literature concludes that except in a few cases, indigenous groups exploited resources to exhaustion when new technology (e.g., guns, horses) made this possible. Of course, one could argue that new technology and contact with European cultures may have caused the disequilibrium, but whatever the cause, it would appear that the indigenous peoples’ ecological awareness did not lead to sustainable practices. Seymour Krech’s The Ecological Indian (1999) concluded, for example, that “little or no evidence could be found for conservation among Native Americans prior to contact and plenty of evidence demonstrated a lack of conservation during the contact period. . . . This view is consistent with major reviews of the conservation literature in the ethnographic world” (Raymond Hames, “The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 2007, p. 178).   

Does this mean that there is nothing to be learned about sustainability from indigenous ecology? I would not rush to such a conclusion. For one thing, in the midst of the current sustainability debates, indigenous cultures have mounted legal actions based on the relation between ecology and cultural property rights, viewing nature in terms of what my friend Nathan calls a “sacred ecology” and claiming property rights to various natural resources on the land, basing those claims on traditional beliefs and practices which may be and often are in a revival phase within the native groups. In the midst of these debates, indigenous peoples, even if they did not practice sustainability in the past (when perhaps they felt no need to do so), are acutely aware of sustainability issues today. Further, it’s inconceivable to me that the more tradition-minded among them did not ponder and enact strategies for sustaining their traditional cultures in the face of Western colonial and cultural onslaught. To deny them deliberation in this way—that is, to deny that they thought about sustainability—is to perpetuate the myth of the unself-conscious, unreflective, savage. The strategies they adopted, and are adopting, in the face of such difficult odds, would indeed repay study.  

Sustainable Growth as an Oxymoron

Many of the big players on the international stage think that "smart" or "sustainable" growth is the best solution to the big problems today. Not only a bigger pie, but a smarter recipe. Is sustainable growth indeed possible? Or are the terms self-contradictory, an oxymoron? Several years ago Tom and Ray Magliocci, the “Click and Clack” of the NPR radio program Car Talk, talked about morons and oxymorons. One of them had said that such and such a thing, such as an inexpensive Mercedes-Benz, was an oxymoron. “Who are you calling a moron?” replied the other. Yet there is something moronic about an oxymoron, particularly one like sustainable growth.

Herman E. Daly’s ecological economics places the world of economic production and consumption squarely within the constraints of the natural world ecosystem, and in so doing he critiques today’s economists’ emphasis on growth. If anyone doubts where contemporary economists stand on growth, they have only to review current government policy regarding the so-called great recession. Economic policy makers such as Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke view growth as the remedy for the problems supposedly caused by a contracting economy. (The causes, of course, are far more fundamental, and they are bound up in the way people think about human beings, the natural world, property, rights, production, consumption, wealth, money, work, life, ethics, pleasure, and leisure, among other things.) Indeed, economists frame recessions in terms of growth versus contraction in the gross national (domestic) product. We must produce and consume our way out of this predicament, according to the economists. Produce more! Buy more! Spend more! Save less! Put people back to work making more product so that the cycle of growth and progress can continue. This is  neo-classical economics in action, dominating contemporary policy.

In his early writings, Daly argued that the economic world ought to be viewed as tending toward a steady-state (equilibrium) rather than continually progressing and growing. In so doing, he was following the consensus among ecologists that ecosystems tend toward states of equilibrium. (As I wrote earlier in this research blog, this consensus among ecologists eroded in the last decades of the twentieth century; but more on that later.) After the Brundtland Report, Daly began using the increasingly common term “sustainable development.” He did so in an interesting and characteristic way.

To back-track a bit, one of the reasons the term sustainable development has gained popularity is that its meaning can be understood broadly; that is, because it is capable of many interpretations, policy makers can find ways in which it suits their inclinations. The Brundtland Report did not define sustainability in detail, saying only that sustainable development is "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (This, of course, makes the strange assumption that the needs of future generations can somehow be known in the present.) In the nearly 25 years since the Brundtland Report, economists, environmentalists, ecologists, and to the dismay of many, corporate conglomerates have jumped on the sustainable development bandwagon.

Everyone wants to be green, today. My state public radio network, a non-profit corporation with employees and a Board, instituted an “evergreen friend” category of support. If instead of sending in a check after a telephoned pledge you agree to have a certain amount of money deducted monthly from your charge cards, you will "save a tree." It turns out that the trees saved would otherwise have gone to paper for fundraising letters, checks, and the like. How many trees can be saved by a few thousand evergreen friends? Ten? Two? I guess the idea is to have everyone do their part, however small. But the problem is much bigger than this.

Daly, predictably, has little use for such imprecision. In his textbook Ecological Economics, he explains what he means by “sustainable” in the context of “yield”; i.e., sustainable yield, as in a forest in which the re-growth exceeds the amount harvested or lost for other reasons such as disease and fire. In his more popular writings he takes great pains to define sustainable development in contradistinction to sustainable growth. He writes: “The term ‘sustainable growth’ when applied to the economy is a bad oxymoron” (“Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem,” in Valuing the Earth, edited by Herman E. Daly and Kenneth N. Townsend, MIT Press, 1993, p. 267). Obviously, if the economy is enveloped by a finite ecosystem there are limits to economic growth; when these limits are reached and costs of growth are greater than benefits, growth becomes “uneconomic.” But what about sustainable development? Daly thinks sustainable development is both possible and desirable. His argument is both subtle and clear, and it is worth taking some time to explore. I will do so in the next entry.

In print

The special issue of the journal The World of Music has just been published--the one on music and sustainability, with outstanding essays from scholars Tom Turino, Mark DeWitt, Lois Wilcken, Janet Topp-Fargion, and Tom Faux, along with my essay on an ecological approach to musical sustainability, and my editor's introduction to the entire volume. The wheels of publication turn slowly, but they do turn; now we shall wait to see what response is forthcoming.

In the meantime, a seminar during the current semester on music and cultural policy has helped inform me on what some others have been saying about these issues. I've refrained from commenting on the seminar here because, of course, the students know about this research blog, and I would prefer that they formulate their own ideas in response to the topic and weekly assignments. Still, it's plain that much of the discourse revolving around heritage and cultural tourism and engines of sustainability is based in economics; some is based in cultural studies. To date ecology has contributed only a little, by way of the concepts of biodiversity and conservation; my hope is that others will begin to think about how conservation works (and does not work) in ecology, and not simply borrow the concepts. For example, there is an interesting values-based critique of biodiversity that I hope will be the subject of a future post here.

Obviously, one of the things that fascinates me is the way these two discourses, economics and ecology, employ the concept of sustainability. I began to write about this in the paper for the American Folklore Society last fall--printed in its entirety in this blog a few months ago--and now I wish to explore it further. And so I've been reading not just in economics but in the field of ecological economics, to see what is out there. 

An Ecological Approach to Cultural Sustainability, pt. 1

I've neglected this blog for a couple of months on account of preparing for the new semester and then teaching. But music, culture, and sustainability have not been idle. I reproduce below a paper that I read in front of the annual conference of the American Folklore Society, on Oct. 24, only a few days ago. In a couple of days I fly to Beijing to deliver some invited lectures on music and sustainability to the musicology department of the Central Conservatory of Music. I'll have more to say about this trip as it goes. But now, here is a copy of my AFS paper:

[Paper delivered at the 2009 conference of the American Folklore Society, Boise, ID]

For several years I’ve been trying to think through ways that the discourse on sustainability might be brought helpfully to bear for folklorists and ethnomusicologists working in cultural conservation. Sustainability, if we think about it for a moment, operates chiefly in two realms: the environment and the economy. Of course, the two are closely linked, but there is a good deal of tension between those who are working to sustain the biosphere and those whose goal is sustainable economic development. Today, when even Monsanto claims to be all about sustainable agriculture, and when we have Wall Street bailouts while the U.S. unemployment rate is ten percent and rising, we can ask the question who and what is to be sustained.

Some of us interested in cultural conservation, or in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage as UNESCO has phrased it, have struggled with this tension between conservation and commerce. We promote cultural tourism at heritage sites, while our non-profit cultural conservation organizations engage in strategic planning and adopt a business mentality in order to thrive in the world of commerce. Some of us are uneasy with this business model in which folk cultures are displayed at festivals, in museums, interpretive centers, heritage sites, and so forth, and tourists are both educated and treated as consumers who walk away with product from the gift shops: CDs, folk art objects, that sort of thing. Advanced consumerism leads to connoisseurship and collections; some of the finest collections are bought by museums, which can be seen as model cultural consumers. We have faith that cultural tourism raises consciousness and promotes cultural conservation and renewal. As the Old Regular Baptists say of their faith, we have a “lively hope.” But some of us who decry global corporate capitalism remain uneasy with this tension between cultural conservation and commerce. Let’s explore some sources of that tension briefly now by contrasting the way sustainability works in the two worlds of ecology and economy.


Conservation ecologists target endangered species; they intervene through conservation to protect and sustain populations. Economists target resources; they intervene through development to manage sustainable economic growth. Conservation ecologists value diversity; economists value efficiency. Both are engaged in policy-making, but conservation ecologists proceed from the principle of human co-existence with the natural world, whereas economists consider the natural world in terms of resources for human welfare. Economists are driven to think of their world in terms of property, commodities and exchange, whereas conservation ecologists are filled with wonder and consider the natural world a gift. We could say that economists look forward to a world of prosperity while ecologists hope for a world of equilibrium with its connotations of justice and equity.

At the moment, the cultural conservation model that public folklorists employ tilts in the direction of the economists. The latest issue of NEA Arts arrived on my doorstep a few days ago, with its lead article entitled “The Business of Culture.” But what would it mean to tilt in the direction of conservation ecology instead? What would it mean for us in our cultural conservation efforts to follow nature’s economy? Nature’s economy values diversity for adaptation, and puts natural limits on growth as ecosystems move toward equilibrium; nature’s economy is built on the principle of interconnectedness, that everything in the ecosystem is connected to everything else, and that, to take a most famous example, the so-called butterfly effect, the flap of a butterfly’s wings in a park in China can transform the storm systems the following month over a city in North America. In addition to the principles of diversity, limits to growth, and interconnectedness, we add to nature’s economy the human equation of stewardship, or good caretaking, as a trustee acts in the interest of the trust, not him or herself. These four principles form the core of what we might learn by following nature’s economy.

I am returning in my recent work to an older way of thinking; twenty-five years ago in the first edition of Worlds of Music I asked readers to consider musical cultures as analogous to ecosystems, interconnected, with diversity advantageous for sustainable adaptation. Just as conservation ecologists look beyond targeted species to whole ecosystems, so those of us interested in cultural sustainability must look beyond expressive culture to the social, political, and most important, the economic aspects of the folk cultures we hope to help sustain. As the organic gardeners say, for the health of the plant look to the health of the soil. And beyond those aspects we must look at the ways in which these folk cultures interact with and are impacted by changes in the natural environment, as many of those we prize have been and are being marginalized by changes in the natural environment driven by economic desires, sometimes purely exploitative, sometimes exploitation cloaked in greenwash, and sometimes offered for sustainable development. When we put these expressive cultures on display we are offering little more than life support if we do not also work with the people in their communities, not only to conserve the expressive aspects of folk cultures, but also to confront the social, political, and economic props that keep these folk cultures going well or going badly. I turn now to two case studies illustrating these principles of nature’s economy in the world of cultural conservation. [continued in next entry]

Ecology, Economy, and Music

Donald Worster's book, Nature's Economy, introduced me to the history of ecological thought. I read it in the late 1970s in preparation for teaching an American studies course, "Ecology and History in America," team-taught with an anthropologist, a biologist, and a literary historian. At about that time I was forming my idea that musical cultures could be regarded as ecosystems, and wrote it into the first chapter of the first edition of Worlds of Music (1984), and each of the four subsequent editions (1992, 1996, 2001, 2009). In recent years I've come to see an opposition between ecology and economy, or at least a commodity-based economy; and it was in the back of my mind as I wrote yesterday about stage-readiness. What does thinking about an economy of nature yield? Worster didn't explore the phrase that lent the book it's title, but it is well worth looking into.

To formulate the problem as clearly as I can, then. Diversity, whether biological or cultural, has a clear advantage for adapting to changing circumstances. For the future, therefore, we should place a value on encouraging this diversity, which means conserving species and protecting habitat, whether biological or cultural. That is an ecological first principle, and it is a principle of equity, for diversity requires the survival of all, or as many as possible. But a consumer-driven, commodity-based economy tends toward specialization, professionalization and concentration of like products, whether in agriculture (monoculture instead of mixed farming), or industry, or art--or wealth, for that matter. Concentration is the opposite of diversity and is disadvantaged for adaptation and thus disadvantaged for sustainability, whether biological or cultural. Musical sustainability is well served, then, by diversity, and ill served by thinking of music as an economic commodity.

Economy comes from two Greek words: oikos (house) and nemein (manage). There are, of course, other kinds of economies besides global corporate capitalism, which is a generally accepted description of our current economic system. "Natural economy," or Naturalwirtschaft, was coined by German economists to describe a situation in which barter rather than the exchange of money characterized most transactions, and they attributed this economy to the European Middle Ages. Of course, a barter economy still places a commodity value on work and production; but barter requires the presence of owners to barter goods and services, whereas global capitalism operates impersonally. In a barter economy the lines of responsibility, legal and moral, are clearly traced to particular human beings. In an economy based on corporate capitalism, the owners are not held legally responsible for the corporation's activities. Government officials, while subject in their personal lives to the same laws as anyone else, are not held legally accountable for actions taken by the government.

The current economic crisis is a natural outcome of global corporate capitalism's need for continuous growth. Whereas ecology teaches us that there are limits to growth, our economic system is dependent on ever-accelerating growth. We are told we must spend our way out of this crisis. The gross national product must not continue to shrink. We must avoid deflation. The new idea is that we can grow the green economy. But continuous growth as conceived under current economic conditions, whether green or not, relies on leveraging capital and creates a house of cards, a giant Ponzi scheme that makes us all vulnerable.

I recall my puzzlement when as a child I was told that the bank I put my meagre savings in did not keep the money I had deposited. Instead, they loaned it out; indeed, they loaned more money than they had. How could that be? Only if everyone paid back their loans, I was told, which they are legally required to do. Now, of course, there is another kind of payback; some loans are considered "toxic" and people are "under water" with their payments: that is, their commodities, on which they owe money, are worth less than the money they owe. This is the outcome, every so often, of an economy predicated on continuous growth: boom and bust. As my friend Hap Collins said, "You can only blow up a ballon so big until it bursts."

There is another way to think of "nature's economy." What, as Wes Jackson would say, would it be like to model our economy after nature? Of course, that depends on how we view or construct nature's economy; but there is no natural economy without human beings, not now. We are in nature interactively; the question is how will we manage that interaction in the biocultural world. An economy based on diversity, limited growth, interconnectedness, and stewardship may be inefficient in the short term, but in the long term it is sustainable whereas the other is not. The same holds for music. Heritage tourism involving music, insofar as it commodifies the product, is implicated in the wrong kind of economy. Instead, sustainability of musical cultures requires, as I have stated before, the application of those four principles and the gradual replacement of the idea that music is a commodity with the notion that it is an act as natural as speaking or breathing.

Stage Readiness, Economics, and Diversity

In my previous post on stage readiness I referenced one of the axioms of musical sustainability: that just as biodiversity hedges species bets and aids adaptation, so a diversity of musical cultures possesses adaptational value. The greater the diversity, the better chance to adapt to changing circumstances. Heritage sites also value diversity, not for adaptational value, but on the grounds of cultural equity. Yet, as I showed in my previous post, the criterion of stage readiness works against diversity. Stage readiness belongs to the realm of economics, and arises from the idea that the tourists deserve a good show (even if, as is the case in some heritage sites, they don't have to pay for it.)

But just as local ecosystems are disturbed by economic development projects, so local musical cultures are impacted by heritage decisions driven by economic considerations. Such decisions place a cash value on musical exchanges among people. The people are led to think music is a commodity, even in those musical cultures that feature amateurs who make music "for the love of it" and who would prefer to think of music as a gift.

If the product of a musical exchange is sold and bought, if music is a commodity, its adaptational value diminishes. Professionalism, competition, and virtuosity become sought after. Participation among the general public diminishes. Instead of regarding music-making as a human activity like language, something that everyone does without thinking much about it, a commodity-driven musical culture views music as a specialized activity requiring talent. Instead of music as a reflex, an activity in the world as natural as breathing, music becomes a privilege and requires training.

But the commodified musical product, now bought and sold in the marketplace, is fragile. It requires protection under copyright law. It requires expensive gear. It divides people into classes: musicians, consumers, those who are indifferent, and those who are deemed non-musical. Deemed, damaged, and doomed. Adaptationally this is a disadvantage, clearly, when so much apparatus is required to support music-making, and when only a portion of the population is able to engage in it. Those who are directing efforts in musical sustainability would do well to consider these negative consequences of decisions based in economics rather than ecology.