DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 317 442 SO 020 500

AUTHOR Rothman, David J.; And OthersTITLE The Humanities and the Art of Public Discussion

.Essays and Commentaries.

INSTITUTION Federation of State Humanities Councils, Washington,DC.

PUB DATE Jul 89NOTE 48p.

AVAILABLE FROM Federation of State Humanities Councils, 1012Fourteenth Street, NW, Suite 1007, Washington, DC20005.

PUB TYPE Viewpoints (120) -- Collected Works - General (020)

EDRS PRICE MF01 Plus Postage. PC Not Available from EDRS.DESCRIPTORS *Day Care; *Drug Abuse; Drug Addiction; *Employed

Parents; Employed Women; *Family (Sociological Unit);Family Structure; Futures (of Society); Humanities;Mothers; *Physical Environment; *Social Change;Social Sciences

ABSTRACTThese essays are the fist of an annual series that

brings to the public the distinctive views and approaches of thehumanities to urgent issues of the day. David Rothman, in "Lessonsfrom an Opium Eater," examines how the nineteenth-century confessionsof a famous English opium addict, Thomas De Quincey, has relevance tothe present, how it might be used to help find solutions to thecurrent problem of drug abuse. Ann Henderson offers a commentary onthe issue of drug abuse and public policy. Joan Scott, in "TheHistory of Families," argues that, far from being fixed andimmutable, the family is a varied, changing, adaptable institution.Whether women work to support their families or to find meaningful,productive activity, or both, their wage-earning activity does not initself disrupt family stability or impoverish their childrenemotionally. Rather, the attempt to impose idealized models of thefamily on diverse and changing families undercuts their ability toadapt to changing economic and social circumstances and so tosurvive. Margaret Kingsland adds a commentary that focuses on their'sue of day care. Donald Worster in "Devastating Nature" examinessome of the threats to the environment and relates them to thechanging values and ideals of modern society. If society want., tostop the devastation of the earth, it must be willing to changeitself. David Tebaldi's commentary illustrates the distinctionbetween the anthropocentric and the biocentric view of nature and theenvironment. An appendix lists addresses for humanities councils inall 50 states. (JB)

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The Humanitiesand the

Art of Public Discussion

Essays and Commentaries:

"Lessons from an Opium Eater"David J. Rothman, Ann Henderson

"The History of Families"Joan Wallach Scott, Margaret Kings land

"Devastating Nature"Donald E. Worster, David Tebaldi

Essays by Humanities Scholars:

David J. Rothman, Ph.D.Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine and Director of theCenter for the Study of Society and Medicine at Columbia. Publications:The Willowbrook Wars, Co-author with Sheila Rothman (New York: Harper& Row, September 1984); Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum andIts Alternatives in Progressive America (Boston: Little Brown & Co. 1980);Social History and Social Policy, Co-editor with Stanton Wheeler (SanDiego, CA: Academic Press, 1980).

Joan Wallach Scott, Ph.D.Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study at PrincetonUniversity and Adjunct Professor at Brown University. Publications:Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press,1988); Women, Work and Family, Co-author with Louise Tilly (New York:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978); The Glassworkers of Carmaux: FrenchCraftsmen and Political Action in a Nineteenth Century City (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).

Donald E. Worster, Ph.D.Hall Distinguished Professor of AmerLan History at the University ofKansas. Publications: A Country without Secrets: Essays on Nature andHistory in the American West (in preparation, to be published by OxfordUniv^Tsity Press); Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of theAmerican West (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986); Nature's Economy: AHistory of Ecological Ideas (New York: Cambridge University Press,1985).

Commentaries by Executive Directors:

Ann Henderson, Ph.D.Executive Director of th,: Florida Endowment for the ilumanities

Margaret Kingsland, Ph.)).Executive Director of the Montana Committee 14 the Humanities

David Tebaldi, Ph.D.Executive 1)ireetor of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities

Jamil S. Zainaldin, Ph.D.President of the Federation of State Humanities Councils

ForewordJamil S. Zainaldin

Contents

"Lessons from an Opium Eater"David J RothmanAnn Henderson

"The History of Families"Joan Wallach ScottMargaret Kings land

"Devastating Nature"Donald E. WorsterDavid Tebaldi

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Appendix 35

Foreword

"Policy" is a magnificently complex word, difficult todefine, not particularly friendly. It implies a science of legisla-tion that belongs to the expert, to the lawmaker. Yet we see iteverywhere, use it casually, read editorials about it, questionpolitical candidates about it. For all of that, few of us reallyunderstand what policy means or how it is developed. Most ofus wonder, if we think about it at all, what the creation ofpolicy has to do with the ordinary citizen.

As the following essays attest, everything. Using the per-spectives of the humanities, the writers offer a context forunderstanding some of the most important public issues of ourtime: drug abuse, child care, and the environment. These issuestouch us all. Our future as a nation depends in part on how werespond to the particular challenges these dilemmas pose.

There are no final answers to these problems, which isanother way of saying that there are many answers. Picking theright one is ultimately a personal choice. When the societyadopts that choice, it becomes public policy. How do we makethe right choice'?

As individuals and as communities, we can turn to thehumanities for help to history, philosophy, literature, andother bodies of knowledge. The humanities are dynamic: theyare ways of thinking through issues and learning what it is webelieve, and why. They are an exploration of our truths, ourjudgments, our experience, our knowledge, and our wisdom.The humanities are found in books, yes, but they are also foundoutside of books. (A favorite humanities entry through the agesis a 2,600-year-old poem that was told to the accompanimentof a lyre for audiences who could not read and only later waswritten down as a "book" -- Homer's Odyssey.) The humani-

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ties are about quality of conversation, discourse that pairspassion and belief with reasoo and reflection. The humanitiesare user-friendly; they are the tools of citizenship.

As we think and talk about urgent national issues, thehumanities help us to separate mere opinion from discernmentand judgment. They make room for the voice of history andexperience. They give meaning to seemingly unconnectedfacts. They give us v '.digger picture in which to place things. Inshort, the humanities give us an intelligent start in going aboutthe business of a democracy: constructing wise laws to meetthe needs of people in communities.

These essays, however, written by scholars in the humani-ties, are not about laws. They are about people, facts, values,and the past. They are about us. They present, in each case, apersonal viewpoint. They are offered to the American public inthe spirit of continuing the conversations, not ending them.Whatever significance they may have will depend on how youwish to use them. We hope you will do so.

These essays are the first of an annual series being pro-duced by the Federation of State Humanities Councils that willbring to the American public the distinctive views and ap-proaches of the humanities to urgent issues of the day. Wewould like to express our appreciation to each author for theircontributions.

Humanities Councils, one in each state (see the Appendixfor a complete listing), are private nonprofit organizations thatmake small grants to support humanities programs for thepublic in communities across the country. They receive fund-ing from the National Endowment for the Humanities and othersources. Many Humanities Councils make grants to supportthoughtful discussion about public policy from the perspective,of the humanities. For further information, contact the Humani-ties Council in your state, or the Federation of State Humani-ties Councils.

lama S. ZainaldinPresident

Federation of State Humanities Councils

viii

Lessons from an Opium Eaterby David J. Rothman

In 1821, Thomas De Quincey, the son of an English textilemanufacturer and himself an Oxford dropout, published hisConfessions of an English Opium Eater, one of the first

texts to describe, with exquisite ambival ice, the perils anddelights of drug use. His account was exceptionally, andpurposefully, contradictory. He apologized for writing theessay, for lifting the "decent drapery" to expose his secret life,conceding that "guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct,from public notice." He characterized his addiction as "anaccursed chain which fettered me," and enforced "a captivityso servile." But all the whi:e, he admitted to keen pleasures.His addiction was a "fascinating enthrallment," for opiumpossessed "fascinating powers" as one of the "divineluxuries."'

De Quincey remembered and recounted the minute detailsof his introduction to opium, deslribing it as others did theirconversion experience to saving grace. "It was a Sundayafternoon wet and cheerless: and a duller spectacle this earth ofours has not to show," when he enteret:' "the Paradise of opiumeaters." Suffering from an acutely painful toothache, he went toa 'dull and stupid" druggist who dispensed the tincture ofopium, and thereby served as the "unconscious minister ofcelestial pleasures." With one dose of the opium, De Quinceydiscovered that "Happiness might now be bought for a penny,and carried in the waistcoat pocket."'

De Quincey reported that for eight years, from 1801 to1813, he took opium two times a week, and was enthralled byit. lie insisted that opium was superior to alcohol and otherspirits. "Wine disorders the mental faculties, opium on the

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contrary . . . introduces amongst them the most exquisite order,legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-posses-sion: opium greatly invigorates it." To borrow a technicaldistinction from medicine, wine gives an acute pleasure, opiuma chronic one; "the one is a flame, the other a steady andequable glow." Accordingly, De Quincey was neither surprisednor displeased that the English working class was substitutingopium for alcohol. He complacently reported that severalManchester cotton manufacturers had informed him that theirworkers "were rapidly getting into the practice of opiumeating," and that "on a Saturday afternoon the counters of thedruggists were filled with pills .. . in preparation for the knowndemand of the evening." The immediate stimulus for thechange was a drop in wages since opium was cheaper thanale or whiskey, the workers turned to it. But, De Quinceycommented, do not think that when wages climb the workerswill abandon opium: "I do not readily believe that any man,having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will after-wards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alco-hol."'

The second half of the Confessions tells a very differenttale. In 1813, De Quincey began taking daily doses of opium,and his account of his addiction over the next eight years turnsgrim. The sections devoted to "The Pains of Opium" are moredisjointed than the earlier narrative, but they fully spell out his"acutest suffering." The drug had "palsying effects on theintellectual faculties. . . . I cannot read to myself with anypleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance." In addition toinducing an "intellectual torpor," the addiction led to "theneglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties."Worse yet, opium gave De Quincey terrifying nightmares andleft him deeply depressed.'

The Confessions closes with a brief and obscure two-pageaccount of how Dc Quincey broke his habit. "A crisis arrivedfor the author's life, and . . . I saw that I must die if I contiouedthe opium: I determined, therefore, if that should be required,to die in throwing it off." Tapering his doses, he managed thetask. "I triumphed." He concluded his essay with an admoni-tion to other opium eaters and would-be opium eaters: if he had

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taught them "to fear and tremble, enough has been effected."'The historian who reads De Quincey today, when drug

abuse ranks among the nation's two or three most pressingdomestic concerns, has a marker of just how much has changedin drug addiction over the past 170 years. By comparison to thecurrent situation, De Quincey's accounts and attitudes canseem almost quaint. It is no longer the neighborhood druggistwho dispenses opium over the counter on a Saturday night, noris the typical addict an ex-Oxford student or a factory workerin a textile mill. Supplying and distributing drugs is an interna-tional and flourishing underworld activity, and the cocaine andcrack addicts will do anything to get their fix, not only preyingon others but putting themselves at risk of deadly disease (ofwhich AIDS is only the latest threat) through intravenousinjections and shared needles. Indeed, so much seems to havechanged that it takes an act of imagination to comprehend howDe Quincey could favorably compare drugs to alcohol forbringing a higher degree of order and harmony.

Nevertheless, for all the obvious differences, De Quincey'stext is altogether relevant to our own times and its verytimelessness helps define its classic quality. However differentthe world we inhabit and the problems we confront, this con-fession of a nineteenth-century addict has much to teach us. Inthe first instance, De Quincey's account makes altogether clearthat addiction is not simply the response of one contemporarysocial class or group to one particular set of social circum-stances. Drug use is so complex and thorny a problem preciselybecause the drugs themselves are at once captivating andenthralling, humiliating and invigorating. Drug use, to take thecontradictions of De Quincey as our guide, may reflect notonly on the external condition of daily living but on the humancondition the readiness to take tr.) flight and then suffer thecrash, to soar high and plummet low.

Thus, when it comes to drug use, the individual calculus ofpleasure and pain is unlikely to be a rational one, a carefulmeasuring of costs and benefits. The opium eaters, and lateraddicts as well, may lament their plight, even as they remainenmeshed in it. They, and their habits, may not be responsiveto a rise in the price of drugs, or to greater drug testing and

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surveillance, or even to an increase in penalties. In other words,in the sanction may not lie the solution.

With De Quincey again our guide, we can appreciate justhow difficult it is to find a suitable language with which todepict addiction and the difficulty of finding the right wordsis an apt illustration of the difficulty of finding the right publicpolicy. The analogies that came most easily to De Quinceywere religious ones: the Sunday conversion that led to findingparadise. But how are we to describe the phenomenon? Shouldwe think of addiction as a disease, the current situation as anepidemic, and invest our resources in the effort to find a medi-cal cure, through pharmacology (methadone for heroin, andsome as yet undiscovered "cure" for cocaine and crack)?Should we label drug addiction a vice and search for ways toovercome it, investing heavily in education as though this wereany other avoidable habit? Or is addiction a crime, so that theanswer rests in putting more money into a better policing ofour borders and our streets, securing better conviction rates,and building more prisons so as to be able to incarcerate morepeople for longer periods? Should we see drug use the predict-able response to social disorganization, whether the source is inunemployment, bad housing, family breakup, or inadequateschools, so that we must conceptualize and realize a granderagenda of social reform. Or should we be thinking of drugaddiction as part of the human condition, an escape from thepain of life, whether that pain is endemic to a ghetto and theescape route is crack, or to a corporation and the escape routeis cocaine? Were this our model, we should be searching forways simply to limit the impact of drug use on both users andnon-users, looking not to invoke harsher penalties but to allowdistribution without conferring legitimacy.

Neither the De Quincey text, nor any other classic from thehumanities, is likely t J provide us win. an answer to which ofthese frames to adopt, but these texts do sensitize us to howlanguage determines outlook, to how naming an entity isanything but a neutral act. Thus, should we speak of the druguser or the drug, abuser? If we can hardly go as far as DeQuincey in calling le seller of drugs an "unconscious minis-ter," are we altogetl,mr confident that the seller is a "pusher"

and not a "provider "?But if these texts cannot provide solutions, they may

provide guidance as we attempt to find solutions, or better put,they may help to free our thinking, suggest possibilities thathave been passed over, unleash the imagination to considerpossibilities that may not be popular in contemporary policyanalysis. To be sure, these resulting approaches will have theirown particular emphasis and orientation. In our culture, forreasons that are not difficult to trace, perspectives dtaom fromthe humanities are likely to bring to the considerations ofpolicy a commitment to the centrality of me individual and acommitment to democratic, non-authoritarian ideals. After all,these are the values that underlie many of the classic texts inwestern civilization, and these are the values that will, perforce,be brought forward to inform the public debate.

Thus, without succumbing to the fallacy that the past is asure guide to the future or that one individual can stand for all,it may be useful and liberating to remember that there was atime when drugs were available for the asking and that what-ever individual pains an addict like De Quincey suffered, thewider society was not corrupted by them. Some contemporaryobservers notwithstanding, such a policy may not haveamounted to "moral surrender," and under it, England did notbecome a "society of zombies," or the United States, w heresimilar practices held, a setting of "social chaos and disorder."

By the same token, texts like De Quincey's may help tokeep ambitions for policy both moi c realistic and more consis-tent with other societal values. To ueclare a "war" on drugs andappoint a drug "czar" or "general" to spearhead it warrants aseries of cautionary notes. War suggests unqualified victory, abattle in which surrender cannot be eliminated once and for all,and an overambitious program can fail of its own weight. Infact, analogies drawn from czars and wars may carry dangersof their own. Wartimes are not good times for civil liberties(whether the president is Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roose-velt), and czars should have no place in democratic societies,drug crisis or not. The better part of wisdom may be to set fOrthmore modest aims under more democratic forms of leadership.

At the same time, it may prove helpful to consider the

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possibilities of individual solutions, both in terms of educationand treatment. To be sure, in this arena especially, goals willhave to be prudently circumscribed. De Quincey himselfacknowledged the possibility that the reader of his text would.come away more attracted to the prospect of enjoying opiumthan frightened about the iron prison of addiction. ("He maysay that the issue of my case is at least a proof that opium, afterseventeen-year's use, and eight-year's abuse of its powers, maystill be renounced: and that he may chance to bring to the taskgreater energy than I did.") 6 But if education seems a slow andcumbersome process and the appeal of drugs too great for atleast some to resist, it surely remain.; one of our best hopes fora long-term solution and is most consistent with our values andcommitments. Recall, too, that De Quincey did escape hisaddiction, that we generally do hold to the notion of the re-demption of the individual, and in keeping with these judg-ments, addicts ought to be afforded the opportunity to altertheir life-styles. All this, of course, makes it difficult to recon-cile the rhetoric of a war on drugs with the glaring lack ofinvestment in rehabilitation and treatment centers.

Moreover, it becomes ever so tempting to suggest (nostronger word will do) that public policy should at the leastexperiment with some effort at decriminalizing some of thedrugs now labeled illegal. The objections are certainly notfrivolous, and initiatives would have to be introduced carefullyand scrupulously evaluated. There arc many possible models tofollow (from prescription writing to state-run distributioncenters). But it is unpersuasive to refute arguments in favor ofsuch an experiment by invoking the principle of paternalismthat the state should act in the best interests of the citizenry--when that paternalism results in addicts beincT, confined toovercrowded and often brutal jails and prisons.

Finally, and perhaps most important, one conies away froma reading of De Quincey's text with a heightened sense of theneed for commitment. Rather than promote complacency andresignation in light of the fact that addiction has a long history,Confessions makes us acutely aware of what is elemental toaddiction the terror of the entrapment and the inability toescape without a helping hand. It also serves as a reminder that

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addiction affects people in very different circumsta..ces. DeQuincey was responsible only to himself. Through chance, inthe person of a friend with financial resources, he was able topurchase the opium he craved without difficulty, and as ayoung and unattached man, it was only his own future that wasat stake. But for most drug users today, feeding the habitinevitably leads to criminal behavior; and the addict may wellbe a young woman of childbearing age, P r pregnant withseveral other children at home, so that her behavior has thegravest implications for others. And one cannot forget that inthe shadow of the AIDS epidemic, addiction now frequentlycarries a death sentence. Thus, everyone who comes in contactwith the addict, whether at home, or in a hospital, or on thestreet, is exposed to many of the same dangers that the addictconfronts.

To ignore these risks, to do nothing in face of the predica-ment, would violate not only self-interest but the core values inour society. Our commitment to the individual is not a pretextfor neglect. Although we seek to preserve the autonomy of theindividual, we recognize the obligations of mutual responsibil-ity, whether the context is education, social welfare, or healthcare. Thus, the question becomes not whether to act but how toensure that the action is at once humane, wise, and effective.

David! ". Rothman is Bernard Schoenberg Professor of Social Medicine andDirector of the Center for 11w Study of Society and Medicine at the Collegeof Physicians & Surgeons of Columbia University.

1 Thomas De Quincy, Cf)nfessions of an P.:nglish Opiwn Eater (Oxford Pressedition: New York, 1985), pp. 2-4.

2 /bid, :38-39,3 /bid, pp. 40, 3,4 /bid, pp. 63.67.5 /hid, pp. 78-79.6 /bid, p. 79.

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Commentary

Sometime after World War II, Mario Puzo's fictionalItalian "godfathers" deliberate about entering a newbusiness venture drugs. Don Corleone, long wary of

drug trafficking, observes: "I think this drug business willdestroy us in the years to come. There is too much strongfeeling about such traffic in this country. It's not like whiskeyor gambling or even women, which most people want and isforbidden them by the church and the government. But drugsare dangerous for everyone connected with them."

In the end Corleone bows to his fellow dons and theirconcern: unless the organization takes over, the people they areresponsible for will get involved with the drug business and pthurt. The dons swear they will not permit drugs to be sold tochildren, but only to "the dark people," who are "the bestcustomers, the least troublesome and they are animals any-way. . .. Let them lose their souls with drugs."

We have all now discovered how wrong the dons were. Noone can be insulated from the drug business, even those whocontrol the supply. Drug abuse and its subsidiary industries,drug production and distribution, reach beyond the boundariesof any one community or nation. The magnitude of the prob-lem and the difficult policy choices we face cannot be over-stated. As one of Puzo's godfathers comments, "Something hasto be done. We just can't let people do as they please and maketrouble for everyone."

Or can we? To read Confessions of an English Opium Eateris to be reminded that addiction is a part of the human condi-tion. For a variety of reasons patent medicines, over-the-counter drui,s, Civil War veterans with chronic medical prob-

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lems proportionally more Ameiicans abused drugs in thelate nineteenth century than do today. And society did notcrumble.

Today the immediate emotional reaction to the word "drug"is negative. For many, it means horrors cocaine, crack,heroin. For others, it includes such addictions as tobacco andalcohol. Meanwhile, historians such as Sidney Mintz remind usthat food substances can function as drugs, as did the sugar,tea, and coffee that were introduced into the seventeenth-century European diet. Could it be that just as our nationaladdiction to cocaine and heroin has created an internationalunderground industry, the seventeenth-century Europeancraving for sugar accelerated the spreau of slavery and anexploitative system of colonialism?

Complicating it all is what Francis Bacon called "thebabble of the marketplace." Knowing, not what we mean, we donot know if there is any meaning to it at all. Language and themeanings words hold for us are basic components of thisnational debate. As Thucydid yarned, "a nation falls apartnot when men take up arms it, ..st each other, but when keywords do not mean the same thing to the majority of citizens."What are we saying when we refer to drugs and addiction? Andhow are these terms logically and emotionally tied to publicpolicy'?

In High,r Learning in the Nation's Service, Ernest Boyerand Fred Hechinger write that our "public policy circuitsappear to be dangerously overloaded." Faced with complexpublic issues, Americans seek simple solutions. We turn to"repressive censorship, align ourselves with narrowly focusedspecial interest groups, retreat into nostalgia for a world thatnever was, succumb to the blandishments of glib electionsoothsayers, or worst of all, simply withdraw completely,convinced that nothing can he done." Boyer and Hechingerwonder if we Americans can resolve together public policyissues so long as we do not have the language to talk together.

Boyer and Hechinger call upon the university to providethe necessary language training. Regardless of the time lagimplicit in this request, the university's proclivity for breakingapart into specialized languages makes this a council of de-

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spair. A more likely and ready hope is in public humanitiesefforts, notably the programs sponsored by the state humanitiescouncils. Here there is more informal, more effective, and morewidespread access to civic literacy. Discussion and dialogue,essential to a democracy, are the chief characteristics of publichumanities programs. Each state possesses one of these statehumanities councils, where public voices are dedicated topreserving our cultural heritage and creating our commondestiny.

Public policy grows out of our most deeply held values.The contribution of the humanities to public policy formationis to go behind our immediate responses and solutions to revealthose values. When we properly understand that for some of us"human dignity," for others "individual autonomy," and forstill others "welfare of the society" are the basis for action andresponse, we are on the road to developing wise, long-lastingpolicies.

Most North Americans have a poor grasp of abstract ideals.We lack the language to express our values. We find ourselvesbogged down in particulars without knowing how to compre-hend the moral scope of our policy decisions. National IssuesForums address this problem by providing the format to ascer-tain the opinions of our neighbors. Public humanities programs,sponsored by state humanities councils, provide a vehiclethrough which we can learn to articulate our own values. Theseare the means at hand to recover the skills of discussion anddialogue.

Ann HendersonExecutive Director

Florida Endowment for the Humanities

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For Further Reading

Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

David Musto, The Great Drug Debate

Ethan A. Nadelmann, "The Case for Legalization," John Kap-lan, "Taking Drugs Seriously," andPeter Reuter, "Can the Borders BeSealed?" in The Public Interest (Num-ber 92, Summer 1988)

11

The History of Familiesby Joan Wallach Scott

The last few years have witnessed cries of alarm aboutthe family from a wide spectrum of social opinion. op-ponents of child care legisiation and proponents of

Right-to-Life claim that they are defending the family againstforces of destruction and moral erosion. Liberals bemoan the"emptying family," referring to the family as an endangeredspecies which must be protected if it is to be saved. The con-servative and liberal views usually share two assumptions.First, both see the family as a fixed, immutable institution,whether they believe with religious fundamentalists that itsshape was divinely ordained or, with liberals, that a particularhistorical configuration ought to be retained. Second, eachview assigns a causal role in family breakdown to a change inwomen's activities, usually the massive entry into the paidlabor force of married women with young children at home.

I want to argue that both assumptions are incorrect whenviewed from a historical perspective. Drawing on evidencemainly from European and American history, I will show thatfamilies have always been flexible and changing, not fixedinstitutions, and that labor force participation by marriedwomen is compatible with many kinds of family structures andwith the successful raising of children.

FamiliesLet us begin with the family. Investigations by historians

and anthropologists have shown that there is no single defini-tion or uniform standard for family organization. The ideal of afamily and of appropriate roles for family members has variedover time, across cultures, and among classes within a society.

Moreover, there is always a discrepancy in any society betweenideals and lived experience. Some sociologists estimate, in fact,that at any single moment only 25 to 40 percent of families liveup to idealized norms.

The ideal of a family as a nuclear household with twoparents and their children is a relatively recent development.That definition emphasizes a division of labor between hus-band and wife that is supposed to be "natural" and in which thehusband earns wages and the wife takes care of the home andchildren. It also says that the primary function of the family isemotional. The French historian Philippe Aries' pioneeringstudy shows that this idea and the family organization thataccompanied it developed in the West late in the eighteenthcentury and was most fully articulated by urban middle-classfamilies during the nineteenth century.

Although nineteenth-century writers equated the nuclearfamily with the family, there have been, and are, many differ-ent ways of organizing and defining families in the past andpresent. Among the European nobility or the gentry in colonialAmerica, for example, families were primarily agencies fortransmitting the property that was the basis of social andpolitical power. Marriages secured alliances among powerfulfamilies. Children inherited land and so perpetuated a familyname and its power from generation to generation. Love wasnot a reason or requirement for marriage. Parental attention didnot center on children. Indeed, children were often raised byservants or sent off to live in other households, spending littletime in the company of their parents. Emotional ties existedwithin families, but they were not a primary justification for afamily's existence. The typically successful aristocratic familywas the one whose marital and inheritance arrangementsmaintained wealth and power for the next generation.

But this was not the only family form in these societies.Peasant, farming, and craftsmen's families were also economicunits, but of a different kirid. They were centers of productiveactivity. Groups of people lived, worked, and ate together. Inaddition to blood relatives, servants and other non-kin werealso considered part of the family. A recurrent peits.nt proverbin many parts of Eastern and Western Europe defined family

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members as all those people eating from the same pot. Thehighest priority for these family meriters was to contributelabor or wages to the household. If a family couldn't supportall its children, they were sent to another household to live,learn, and work. If a family needed more hands to work, it tookothers' children into the household. Though a division of laboraccording to age and sex certainly existed, it did not excludemarried women from work. An eighteenth-century Englishpoem advising a young girl about her future captured theattitude well:

You cannot expect to marry in such a manner asneither of you shall have occasion to vork, andnone but a fool will take a wife whose breadmust be earned solely by his labor and who willcontribute nothing towards it herself.'

The ideal family arrangements for these people were thosethat best provided subsistence for all family members. Theneed of families for workers on the land or in the shop andtheir subsistence requirements created changing family ar-rangements with a range of different and sometimes unforeseenroles for individual family members.

In the history of the United States, stable nuclear familieshave been neither a consistent ideal nor a continuous reality. Inperiods when death or divorce rates are high, families consistof complex arrangements of adults and children. The historiansDarrett and Anita Rutman have shown how parenta' death inthe seventeenth century created families with complex mixes ofnatural and stepparents and their children. When a mother diedin childbirth (a fairly common occurrence), the father wouldremarry. He might later become ill and die and his wife re-marry. The children produced by these unions remained underthe care of the living parents. In one household the Rutmansstudied in Virginia between 1655 and 1693, there had been "sixmarriages among seven people" that produced 25 children. In1680, there were living in this house1)31d children ranging inage from infancy to 20 who were the products of four mar-riages and some of whom had no parents in common These

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arrangements are similar to those we see today, when divorceand remarriage rates are high. The similarities suggest thathouseholds with various "step" relationships or single parentsare not the product of late twentieth-century "decline," but apractical way of accommodating prevailing demographic oreconomic circumstances. Furthermore, they are recognized andexperienced as families by their members, even if they don'tlive up to the ideal of what "the family" is supposed to looklike.

If we look farther afield we find arrangements understoodto be families that differ dramatically from the nuclear house-hold ideal. In India, families have been organized as extendednetworks of kin living in the same household and incorporatingmany generations of married couples and their children. Alter-natively, there are parts of Africa where marital and livingarrangements do not coincide. Domestic units consist of moth-ers and their children, while fathers live elsewhere and mayhave a succession of different wives. Furthermore, property isnot passed directly from parents to children, but from amother's brothers to her daughters or sons.

The point of these examples is that the needs of subsis-tence, transmission of property, reproduction, and humanconnection can and have been met in a variety of ways. Idealsof families differ in different societies and so do the practicalorganizations differ from the ideals. There is no "natural" or"God-given" way to organize a family; family organizationdepends on cultural and social practices, on legal norms, ondemographic and economic conditions, and on a host of othercircumstances that have always made it a variable and chang-ing institution.

Women's WorkWhat is the impact of women's work on their families? Are

parenting and work incompatiLle activities for mothers? Theanswers vary according to historical periods, cultural beliefsabout children's needs, and the circumstances under whichwomen work.

Although throughout history, one of women's roles hasbeen understood to be the bearing of children, they have not

15 2 2

always been considered to be entirely responsible for theraising of children. In preindustrial Europe, for example, whenbirth and infant death rates were very high, women spent mostof their married lives bearing children. Yet this did not makechild rearing a central preoccupation for them, and it did notpreclude their engaging in other activities. Among the rich,children were sent to wet nurses and then raised by servants,while their mothers conducted the social business of familylife. Among peasants and artisans, women incorporated thecare of children into the chores of the day, which might includespinning or sewing, running a craft shop or family business,planting and harvesting, caring for domestic animals, going tomarket to buy or sell food. Women silk spinners in eighteenth-century Lyons (France) sent their infants to wet nurses ratherthan interrupt their lucrative trade, as did Parisian shopkeepersand artisans.

Among nineteenth-century factory workers in theStaffordshire potteries in England, for example child carewas shared by parents. Often it was easier for women than mento find jobs and so (reported one observer),

The men and boys appear to be willing to dotheir part in the domestic work of the home andit is no uncommon sight to find a man cleaningand sweeping, caring for the children and evenputting them to bed in the evening. 2

For middle-class families in this period, such an arrange-ment was considered a violation of a woman's duty to herchildren. These families accepted the belief that "woman'splace is in the home," and they insisted that there was a neces-sary connection between the physical presence of the mother inthe household an' the quality of family relationships. But thechildren of working mothers do not seem to have shared thisbelief or to have experienced emotional deprivation. Observersof working families in nineteenth-century English textiletowns, where mothers were employed in factories, noted that"bonds of affection were particularly strong between mothersand their children." s These bonds were based on the children's

16

sense of loyalty to a hardworking, caring mother.Not only have middle-class views about children's needs

differed for those of the working class, middle-class viewsthemselves have changed over the past 200 years, In the UnitedStates, there have been periods (in the first half of the nine-teenth century) when a mother's moral and educational influ-ence was seen as primary. In the early twentieth century,emphasis shifted to her responsibility for children's health.More recently, it is the social and economic future of the childthat is considered vital. These shifts in beliefs about whatchildren need have led to shifts in middle-class ideals of moth-ers' roles. While morality and health were said to require amother's presence in the household, education and trainingrequire additional funds. Part of a mother's job is now consid-ered to be the provision of those funds, and many women havesought to fulfill the ideal of good motherhood by going out towork.

Indeed, the charge that middle-class women's decisions toseek employment represents a selfish desertion of familyresponsibilities is belied by study after study of women in thelabor force. These reveal that the vast majority of women workeither as the sole source of or as an important contributor tofamily income. They work to accumulate a down payment for ahouse, to maintain family living standards in the face of infla-tion, to pay for medical care, and to give their children a decenteducation. The economic stability of middle-class familiesnow, as well as that of working-class families, often dependson a mother's wage-earning activity; when mothers don't orcan't work, or when they can't earn enough, unstable andneedy households are often the result.

Perhaps the most dramatic evidence of the impact ofwomen's not working comes from Linda Gordon's recent hookon family violence in late nineteenth-century Boston. It showshow social workers' insistence on keeping mothers in poorfamilies at home often led to continued abuse of children by afather or to the sending of children to orphanages or fosterhomes. When women were economically dependent they hadno way to protect children or, for that matter, to feed them. Ifthey had had payng jobs, however, their options would have

17 24

4

been better and their families stable.The effect on families of mothers working depends on the

circumstances of families and of the jobs women can find.Numerous studies from the nineteenth and twentieth centuryhave borne this out. One of the earliest, dare by Clara Collett,a social investigator in London in the 1890s, describes thepossible varieties. The women who were best off, she found,were those who worked not from necessity but from choice.These women set the terms of their employment, and becausetheir husbands also earned good wages, they could refusedrudgery or dangerous work. They might even be able to hiredomestic help. The worst off were women who were the solesupport of a family, usually widows, but also those whosehusbands were injured, ill, or unemployed. These women hadto work at whatever jobs they could find and they had to acceptwhatever wages were offered. They were most vulnerable toexploitation, the poorest, most desperate, and miserable ofwomen workers in London. Collett's conclusions were echoedlater by another study of women workers in London thatconcluded: "The grave drawback of much of the work done formoney by married women is not that it is injurious in itself, butthat it is scandalously ill-paid."'

The effects on children of their mothers working dependsas well on circumstances economic, social, and cultural.What is clear, from the historical record and from currentexperience, is that there is no necessary ill effect on children'swell-being and on their relationships with their mothers. Mem-oirs from the nineteenth century eloquently substantiate thispoint. They reveal deep feelings of gratitude, admiration, andlove by children for working mothers, even if the children werecared for by others while their mothers were at work. Onewoman attributed her morality to the influence of her mother:"I have had many temptations during my life, but my mother'sface her poor, tired face always seemed to stand betweenme and temptation."'

All of this is not meant to idealize working-class familyrelationships in the past. Poverty, illness, and death often brokeemotional as well as physical bonds, then as today. Indeed, itwas most often grinding poverty and not the daily absence

18 2 u

or presence of the mother that disrupted families and madeimpossible sustained relationships among family members.And it was the quality of alternative care for children whilemothers worked that made the difference in the child's experi-ence and memory of what a mother's daily absence meant.

What then are my conclusions? First, the history of thefamily is the history of a varied, changing, adaptable institu-tion. We must not confuse variations of organization withdisintegration or breakdown. Second, whether women work tosupport their families or to find meaningful, productive activ-ity, or both, their wage-earning activity does not in itselfdisrupt family stability or impoverish children emotionally.Indeed, historically, it has often had the opposite effect. Neitherthe work of women nor changes in family structure causesocial problems in themselves. Rather, the attempt to imposeidealized models of "the family" on diverse and changingfamilies undercuts their ability to adapt to changing economicand social circumstances and so to survive.

Joan Wallach Scott is Professor of Social Science at the Institute forAdvanced Study at Princeton University and Adjunct Professor at BrownUniversity.

1 "A Present for a Servant Maid" (1743), quoted in Ivy Pinchbeck, WomenWorkers and the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1930), pp. 1-2.

2 Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, BritishParliamentary Ppers 1904. Cited in Margaret Hewitt, Wives and Mother.; inVictorian Industry (London, 1958), p. 193.

3 Michael Anderson, Family Structures in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cam-bridge, 1971) p. 77

4 Clementina Black, Married Wow' s Work (Layton, 1915), p. 11.5 Margaret Llewelyn Davies, cd. Life As We Have Known It (New Yolk, 1975),

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19

Commentary

The current day care dilemma is a topic of immense con-cern in all of the industrialized nations of the world. Ashistorian Joan Scott points out in her overview of the

history of families, the dilemma is related to contemporaryconcepts of the family, but families have not been fixed institu-tions thiough time. Over the ages, it is probable that moremothers have participated in the labor force while still raisingchildren than have functioned exclusively as homemakers.

The origin of our current day care dilemma, however, maylie in a broader problem that also affects other areas of ourculture, including education. Americans seldom dare to namethis problem: It is that we as a people no longer seem to like,value, or cherish children or childhood.

If our culture were one that truly valued children andchildhood, there would be no "day care dilemma." We wouldread:'y view every child as "our" child, and we would shelter,cherish, educate, celebrate, and protect all children. Instead, weview children as a "problem." We undervalue those who carefor and educate children. We envy those who are "child free."We are reluctant to pay teachers adequately. And we oftenview parents who choose to stay home to rear their offspring asunserious people, at best, "lightweights" suited for "themommy track" rather than the fast track; at worst, "welfaremoms" or freeloaders.

Children in America nem to have been moved to themargins of our culture. To an extraordinary degree they arebombarded with messages that suggest that, as children, theyare unfit and unacceptable members of our society. FromBarbie, Ken, and G.I. Joe to Garbage Pail Kids and TeenageMutant Ninja Turtles, to clothing more suited to battlefields

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and streetwalking than to childhood, we signal to children oursense that they must hurriedly pass out of childhood intoadulthood.

Thus, in a sense, a choice has already been made by power-ful interests. Whether by serving as drug runners in the urbandrug market while still preteens, or by dressing as veterans oflife's stresses, children are used by commercial interests anddenied the nurture and care of sponsoring adults. They aremolded into the shapes of adults instead of being allowed to fillthese forms by themselves in measured growth.

Several factors may contribute to this situation. As Americahas ceased to be a largely agricultural nation or a nation ofspecialized craftspeople, the importance of children to theirpatents' economic enterprises has declined. Nowadays, chil-dren are a decided economic drain on parents, and they areseldom assigned critical roles or responsibilities in the home,much less in the community. Among the Navajo, children asyoung as five are assigned responsibility for protecting thefamilies' flocks and arc dignified thereby, and valued for theircontribution to the group's well-being. Where children areremoved from the central enterprises of the family and givenno clear responsibilities but to stop being children and becomeyoung adults as quickly as possible, they are devalued, andtheir self-concepts are crippled. Not surprisingly, a. largenumber of them appear to be growing up withdrawn, alienated,sometimes hostile., often silly.

American adults' fear of both "dependents" and of "de-pendence" may be an additional factor. Americans prefer tocelebrate young adulthood the carelessness, narcissism, andpresumed freedom of those eighteen to thirty. We seem per-plexed and perhaps alarmed by the softness, trust, and helr-less-ness of children. In this way, the day care dilemma is alsorelated to what is becoming our "elders care dilemma." Materi-alism, careerism, narcissism, and vocationalism can brook littlecompetition from these needy ones, the children, the elders.

An analysis of these questions focused through the humani-ties can deepen our awareness of the implications of our historyand our choices. Our understanding of the historical and philo-sophical contexts and consequences of our contemporary view

21 26

of children, of the issues that contribute to the day care di-lemma and of the choices relating to its solution can be deep-ened by reading, discussion, and debate in which scholars inthe humanities participate. Anthropologists can provide us withcross-cultural comparisons. Literature scholars can contributeto discussions concerning changing images and concepts ofchildren, childhood, parenting, or work. Charles Dickens'novels, for example, still provide us with some of the mostmoving portraits of children and conflicts involving children,parenting, and work. Historians such as Joan Wallach Scott,along with philosophers, and specialists in religious studies,can also add to the analysis of the choices we face.

The state humanities councils can assist citizens' groups inorganizing and implementing examinations of these and otherdimensions of the day care issue. They can also help to addresssome underlying and perhaps even more-troubling problems.Through thoughtful discussion of our choices we can resolvethe present day care dilemma. Through humanities-centeredexplorations we can gain a deeper understanding of the largerproblem of which it may be a part.

Margaret Kings landExecutive Director

Montana Committee for the Humanities

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For Further Reading

Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History ofFamily Life

Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics andHistory of Family Violence

Darrett B. and Anita H. Rutman, A Place in Time, Explicatus

Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, Women, Work and Family

23

Devastating Natureby Donald E. Worster

/4ow many slugs of vodka would it take to devastatePlanet Earth? It shpuld riot be impossible to calculate.We now know how many drinks it took to send a

hapless ship captain slumping to his berth, leaving an unli-censed mate in charge of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker, a bewil-dered and panicked novice who proceeded to drive that tankeracross a submerged reef, tear a hole in its hull, and spill 11million gallons of crude oil into pristine Prince William Soundof Alaska, killing perhaps hundreds of thousands of sea otters,herring and salmon, marine birds, and other living things.

"One drunken sailor" was a common lament after the spill,but in a spirit of truth and charity we must remember thatsailors have been getting drunk since the Phoenicians it's anold human weakness, one we are unlikely ever to overcome.We also ought to admit that in this case the sailor may havebeen driven to drink by the intense speedup and heavy over-time hours imposed by a corporation trying to cut costs. When-ever there is a disaster, it is tempting, especially for those inpowerful positions, to look for a lone, flawed individual to takethe rap.

The historian, however, resists that easy blaming; he triesto step back and discover the larger forces operating to magnifya private weakness into a social and ecological catastrophe. Ilewants to discover from the oily scum spreading over PrinceWilliam Sound an explanation for our growing environmentalcrisis on the globe, a clarification of its causes.

Surely as guilty as the captain are the men who employedhim and wit() gave so many assurances to the public that theywere competent to handle any spill if he failed. Exxon had

24 31

devised "the perfect system" of emergency response, as oneobserver put it, and it was impressively set forth in completetechnical detail, 28 volumes thick, a plan prepared by expertsand installed on company shelves with a great deal of hoopla.When the disaster came, the plan was useless; there was noequipment, no alertness, no moral urgency, to put it into play.The flaws that drove a man to overindulge were compoundedby the flaws of overconfidence, stinginess, delay, and compla-cency that ran straight to the top of one of the largest multina-tionals in the world.

The bigger questions thus become: Why was Exxon,despite all its rational planning and command of expertise, sofundamentally careless? Why have governments and corpora-tions everywhere in Bhopal, India; Three Mile Island,Pennsylvania; Basel, Switzerland; Chernobyl, the SovietUnion; and so forth behaved so irresponsibly toward theenvironment? And why have so many ordinary citizens livingin the urban, industrial era done so much unwitting damage toearth's fabric of life and been so unconcerned about it? Whyhas carelessness in our dealings with nature become a way oflife?

Explaining environmental destruction does not, in a sense,require a n.1-4/ or complicated theory. There is a history of suchbehavior going back all the way to Australopithecine ape-man.Forests burned down because ancient hunters fell asleep bytheir camp fires. Farmers starved by their own mismanagementof soils. We entered the world as an often ;reedy, shortsighted,violent, and capricious species and ever after have been deplet-ing our game, eroding our lands, overpopulating our habitats,looking for easy ways to get ahead, and inste'd underminingour existence. Taken as individuals or as collectivities, we havenever been free of imperfection or immune to its consequences.It may not flatter a contemporary executive, ensconced in anair-conditioned penthouse of chrome and glass, to think so, buthe has all the potential for folly and darkness that his naked,unwashed ancestors had. The debacle in Prince William Soundexpressed that old grim potential. It was waiting in our genes amillion years ago.

Nonetheless, the human impact on nature has changed over

25 3

time, so that we cannot dismiss it with a glib phrase, "Thingshave always been that way." In fact, things are getting worse. Ifwe are to understand the growing seriousness of environmentalproblems, there are some peculiar characteristics of modernpeople and their history that need confronting.

The most obvious change has been in the scale of the toolswe wield. Over the last 300 years science has shown us how toconstruct increasingly more efficient ways to extract, ship,refine, process, and manufacture the goods and energy weconsume. Fire was a potent, deadly tool for early man, buttoday we have dreamed up nuclear fission reactors, chlorinatedhydrocarbons suca as DDT, chain saws and logging mills, anda 987-foot tanker longer than three football fields thatcan float millions of gallons of oil from the Alaska pipeline toLos Angeles. Science has put into our flawed grasp a powerthat is unprecedented on the earth.

Commonly overlooked is the fact that such large, compli-cated technologies did not spring fo 'h directly from anyindividual's brain. They required the research, capital, andlabor of many people to bring them into being, and in turnthose people required organization. Most of that organizationin the United States has taken the shape of private, profit-seeking corporations, although like other nations, we areturning more and more to government to develop some of themost advanced technologies, such as those of the military andspace exploration. Whatever the type of organization control-ling science and technology, it is bound to be driven by thesame old desires and ambitions for wealth, power, comfort,self-expression, national aggrandizement. But the very fact thatit is a modern organization, which typically means a very bigorganization, has changed fundamentally the context, themeaning, and the expression of the old desires.

What Exxon wants these days is to he found nowhere nearits New York City or Houston offices. It wants the black,viscous deposits of decayed marine life lying deep under thepermafrost of the Arctic slclie, and wants to mine and pumpthose deposits at a site some 4,000 direct-flight miles awayfrom its board rooms. In other words, it wants something itsofficers may never have seen, nor had the slightest personal

0 ,t..)

26

relationship with: a substance that has become purely anabstraction oil that can be translated into money. So do theconsumers who buy the company's gasoline; they want anabstraction called mobility. To get that freedom to come and goat will, they have joined in exploiting a part of the earth thathas no immediate presence or visibility or importance in theirlives.

No wonder today's consumer has become so careless. Heassumes that neither he nor his immediate neighborhood willsuffer from the destructive consequences of his unleasheddesires. The higher he climbs up the ladder of success, thefarther he seeks to put himself from those consequencesfrom the pollution and ugliness he has caused. Only afterintense public criticism did the chairman of Exxon decide tovisit the scene of the oil spill, and then it was three weeks afterit happened.

If that change in scale, that distancing of people from theirsources of supply in nature, were not enough, there has alsooccurred a major shift in our thinking about ourselves. Call it achange in self-image. Many have come to believe that in theprocess of becoming so clever, rich, and powerful, they havealso become superior creatures all-round. They are morerational than their ancestors. More trustworthy. More civilized.

That shift in self-iinage began in the so-called Age ofReanon, which historians place approximately in the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the point of beginningfor the scientific, economic, and industrial revolutions thathave created the modern world.

The leading philosophers of that age began to celebrate thehuman mind and its potential for transforming the earth. If wecould puzzle out the laws of gravity and celestial motion, if wecould create a factory to spin thread and weave cloth, then itfollowed that we humans must surely be a very noble :species.There is no end to what we can do. We are capable of the mostelegant reasoning, the mostly astonishing technical wonders,freed from tl.e corruptions of emot,on, superstition, and vice.Potentially we are godlike in our intellectual endowment. As anAmerican thinker, Elihu Palmer, remarked: "The organicconstitution of man induces a strong conclusion that no limits

3 427

can justly be assigned to his moral and scientific improve-ments."

The most strik ing implications of that new optimism abouthuman nature appeared in the field of economics. Heretofore,greed had been widely viewed as one of the worst human vices,requiring laws, regulations, and a general attitude of suspicionto keep it safely under control. But following the teaching ofmen like Adam Smith, greed came to be regarded, not as rawselfishness, but as the rational pursuit of self-interest, which isto say it became a virtue.

Each person was assumed to be the best judge of his or herwelfare, capable of using reason to discover what that welfareentails; no one else could know it better. Let each, therefore,exercise the reason with which he or she has been endowed,seeking to maximize personal gain, and the whole society willbenefit. This pursuit of rationalized greed came to be seen asthe way to progress, or what we today call "growth." To pro-mote progress and achieve growth, Smith and others of his dayrecommended, we should eliminate laws aimed at controllingselfishness, do away with social constraints on the individual.Set free from external interference, humans will advancetoward a utopia of wealth and enlightenment for each and all.

The 1980s have been a time of harking back to the laissez-faire principles of Adam Smith, and nowhere more so thanamong the parties principally associated with the spilling of oiloff the coast of Alaska. The federal government relaxed itsregulation of the oil industry over the past decade; for example,the requirement that tankers have double hulls was droppedafter lobbying by the oil companies. The consortium formed bythose companies, the Alyeska Pipeline Service, dismissed itsoil spill response team in 1981. The Coast Guard in Alaskabegan scaling back its marine traffic surveillance in 1984,apparently confident that the invisi )le hand of rational self-interest would keep all ships prudently on course. In a statewhere 85 percent of the public budget has been coming fromoil revenues and taxes, there has been little inclination to askunfriendly questions about the reliability of corporate self-interest. "We trusted them," said a state official. Such is theexplanation heard all over Alaska these days as to why the spill

28 3 Li

occurred; it is the plaint of the victimized, the innocent by-stander who feels duped and misled by sharpies. But whoreally is the victim, and who is the criminal, in a culture whereendless economic growth, deregulation and free enterprise, fastautomobiles, and low taxes are the slogans that get votes? Didany group the tanker crew, the corporations, the bureaucrats,or the voting majority of citizens really prove trustworthy?Eleven million spilled gallons suggest the answer is no.

In the lost archaic world of hunters and gatherers theindividual had to live with external restraints that we wouldfind intolerable. There were social rules establishing when andwhere hunting was permitted and how it should be done (youshould humbly approach your prey and ask its permissionbefore taking its life). There were elaborate rituals and taboos,passed down generation after generation, embedded deeply inthe religious life of the tribe, that were supposed to guide theindividual in making a living. Procreation was not taken to be aprivate or unlimited right, but was carefully hedged about agroup-defined sense of environmental limits. A failure tomaintain those collective checks on the wild disorder of privateappetite might lead, it was feared, to destroying everybody'sfuture.

Modern societies, in contrast, have celebrated the ideal ofthe self-reliant, self-determined individual set free from almostall restraints, whether those of nature or of society. We trusteach other, we trust ourselves, far more than our ancestors did.Some of us want to extend that trust even farther, denouncingall laws, rules, traditions and pressure as illegitimate, or at bestnecessary evils.

Freedom and power have become, at least among themiddle and upper classes, the modern idols. They are what wesee reflected in the oily sheen on Prince William Sound and inso many other scenes of environmental deterioration, some oftheta sudden and dramatic like the spill, others slow and oh-scute like the global greenhouse effect. History and philosophyalike reveal that no merely technological solution, say, a newdesign of tankers or an advanced radar system, will begin toaddress the more profound forces underlying that deterioration.The source of our predicament lies in the simple fact that,

3 629

though we remain a flawed and unstable species, plagued nowas in the past by a thousand weaknesses, we have in recenttimes tried to achieve both unlimited freedom and unlimitedpower. It would now seem clear that, if we want to stop thedevastation of earth and the growing threats to our food, water,air, and fellow creatures, we cannot go on trying to maximizeboth. To retain freedom we must sacrifice some power. To holdonto the power we must surrender some of our freedom.

Donald E. Worster is Hall Distinguished Professor of American History atthe University of Kansas.

(-) t

1.) I

30

Commentary

The poet from Alaska who directs the Alaska HumanitiesForum, Gary Holthaus, describes the humanities as anongoing conversation about matters of ultimate concern.

The purpose of the state humanities councils, Holthaus sug-gests, is to draw even more people into this conversation.Essays like the one by Donald E.Worster, written as a supple-ment to the National Issues Forums book, The Environment atRisk: Responding to Growing Dangers, attempt to do just that.

People involved in the work of the state humanities coun-cils throughout this country share the conviction that the dis-ciplines of the humanities enlarge our understanding of publicissues and help us to make wiser, longer-lasting policy deci-sions. History teaches us that all decisions and actions occur ina social and cultural context that determines, in part, not onlywhat choices we make but also how we frame, and think aboutthe issues themselves. Literature connects us to others, offeringinsights into human aspirations and anxieties, many of whichwe may share, but all of which we should try to understand.Philosophy provokes us to rethink our most basic beliefs aboutthe way the world is, to question what is practical in light ofwhat is possible, and to give good reasons for what we thinkand say and do. These are matters of ultimate concern.

The environment matters ultimately, too. Although naturewriting as a literary genre dates from at least the early 1800s,critical studies oL the way; in which men and women regardthe natural environment are a much more recent intellectualdevelopment. These studies, whether they are primarily histori-

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cal, literary, or philosophical, largely have been spurred on bya growing awareness that modern methods of production andhabits of consumption are gradually and perhaps irreversiblydespoiling the earth.

Environmental historians like Donald E. Worster investi-gate our changing relationship to the environment over time.They show us how we got ourselves into our present predica-ment. Scholars and writers of environmental literature illumi-nate this relationship as well. Their stories express and evokeimaginings that arise from our recognition of nature's wonder-full ness. Environmental philosophers explore the moral di-mensions of our relationship to the environment. The centralquestion of what has come to be called environmental ethics iswhether, and with what justifications, we can ascribe to nature,to natural systems and even to individual natural objects,intrinsic worth a worth that does not derive from theirusefulness to humanity. If we can make this case, then we canargue that actions that are harmful to the environment, even ifthey harm no identifiable persons, may be nevertheles morallywrong.

There are, traditionally, two ways of looking at this issue.According to what the philosophers call the anthropocentricview, only human beings have intrinsic worth and so onlyhuman beings are morally considerable. The value of all otherthings is determined by the extent to which they help or harmhuman beings. In contrast, many environmentalists argue for abiocentric view in which human beings are a part of nature, notapart from nature, and nature itself has intrinsic value whichdeserves our respect. For those who adopt the biocentric view,environmental protection is not merely a social goal to beweighed in the balance with other social goals. It is much morelike an inalienable right 'I right that entails a moral obliga-tion on our part not to pollute or destroy the environment if wecan possibly avoid it.

Let me illustrate these two points of view with a story.Several years ago, while standing on the north rim of the GrandCanyon, a visitor from the East Coast was overheard complain-ing to the park ranger that it took her an entire day to drive overfrom the south rim, only to find, to her dismay, that "the view

32

is just the same. Why don't you build a bridge across theCanyon so people don't have to drive all the way around?" sheasked plaintively. Without a moment's hesitation or a trace of asmile, the ranger replied, "Do you realize how difficult thatwould be? This canyon is a mile deep!"

Now if you sympathize with the tourist, or if you think thateconomic considerations should preclude building the bridge,whether or not it is possible technically, or even if you thinkthat spanning the Grand Canyon with a bridge would detractfrom our experience of the Canyon's awesome beauty, thenyour attitude toward the environment is anthropocentric. If, onthe other hand, you feel that there is something fundamentallywrong with both the tourist's question and the ranger's reply, ifyou believe that a bridge across the Grand Canyon would be acosmic insult, a secular sacrilege, then your attitude toward theenvironment is biocentric.

If you are planning to organize or participate in a NationalIssues Forum, and you are interested in bringing historical,literary, and philosophical perspectives to bear on the issuesyou will be discussing, contact your state humanities council.The council can provide you with scholars who are practiced inthe art of public discussion as well as other forms of assistance.Join in the ongoing conversation we call the humanities.

David TebaldiExecutive Director

Massachusetts Foundation for Humanitiesand Public Policy

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For Further Reading

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agri-culture

J. Baird Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays inEnvironmental Philosophy

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists andthe Ecology of New England.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology andthe Scientific Revolution

Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind

Tom Regan, ed., Earthbound: New Introductory Essays inEnvironmental Ethics

Holmes Rolston, Philosophy Go.te Wild: Essays in Environ-mental Ethics

Mark Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth: Philosophy, Law andthe Environment

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods

Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s

Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity 'Ind theGrowth of the American West

34

Appendix

Alabama HumanitiesFoundationBox 2280Samford University800 Lakeshore DriveBirmingham, AL 35229(205) 870-2300Chair: William H. ChanceEx. Dir.: Robert Stewart

Alaska Humanities Forum430 West 7th Avenue, Suite 1Anchorage, AK 99501(907) 272-5341Chair: Gerald WilsonEx, Dir.: Gary Ho lawns

Arizona humanities CouncilEllis-Shackelford House1242 North Central AvenuePhoenix, AZ 85004(602) 257-0335Chair: Karl WebbEx, Dir.: Lorraine Frank

Arkansas Endowment for theHumanitiesThe Baker House109 W. 5thNorth Little Rock, AR 72114(501)372-2672Chair: Frank Schanibach

Dir.: Robert Bailey

35

California Council for theHumanities312 Sutter, Suite 601San Francisco, CA 94108(415) 391-1474Chair: Morton RothsteinEx. Dir.: James Quay

Colorado Endowment for theHumanities1836 Blake Street, Suite 145Denver, CO 80202(303) 292-4458Chair: Wilton Eck leyEx. Dir.: James Pierce

Connecticut HumanitiesCouncil41 Lawn AvenueWesleyan StationMiddletown, CT 06457(20.i) 347-6888 or 347-3788Chair: Robert J. LevineEx. Dir.: Bruce Fraser

Delaware Humanities Forum26(X) Pennsylvania AvenueWilmington, DE 19806(302)573 -4410Chair: Dennis N. ForneyEx, Dir.: Henry Hirschbiel

D.C. Community HumanitiesCouncil1331 H Street, NW, Suite 310Washington, DC 20005(202) 347-1732Co-Chairs: Jerome Paige

Charles E. DynesEy. Dir.: Francine C. Cary

Florila Endowment for theHumanities3102 North Habana Ave., #300Tampa, FL 33607(813) 272-3473Chair: Michael BassEx. Dir.: Ann Henderson

Georgia Humanities Council1556 Clifton Road, NEEmory UniversityAtlanta, GA 30322(404) 727-7500Chair: Betty Zane MorrisEx. Dir.: Ronald Benson

Hawaii Committee for theHumanitiesFirst Hawaiian Bank Building3599 Waialae Avenue,Room 23Honolulu, 11 96816(808) 732-5402Chair: Jean ToyamaEx. Dir.: Annette Lew

Idaho Humanities CouncilRoom 3()0, LIU Building650 West State Street.Boise, ID 83720(208) 345-5346Chair: I lugh NicholsPres.: Thos. McClanahan

36

Illinois Humanities Council618 South MichiganChicago, IL 60605(312) 939-5212Chair: Richard J. FrankeEx. Dir.: Frank Pettis

Indiana Humanities Council1500 North Delaware StreetIndianapolis, IN 46202(317) 638-15(X)Chair: Anya RoyceEx. Dir.: Kenneth Gladish

Iowa Humanities BoardOakdale CampusUniversity of IowaIowa City, IA 52242(31r) 335-4153Chair: J. D. SingerEx. Dir.: Abby Zito

Kansas Committee for theHumanities112 W. 6th St., Suite 210Topeka, KS 66603(913) 357 -0359Chair: David WalkerEx. Dir.: Marion Cott

Kentucky HumanitiesCouncil417 Clifton AvenueUniversity of KentuckyLexington, KY 40506-0442(606) 257-5932Chair: Nancy ForderhaseEx. Dir.: Charles Cree

Louisiana Endowment forthe HumanitiesThe Ten-O-One Building1001 Howard Ave , Suite 3110New Orleans, LA 70113(504) 523 -4352Chair: James OlneyPres.: Michael Sartisky

Maine Humanities CouncilP.O. Box 7202371 Cumbeziand AvenuePortland, ME 04112(207) 773-5051Chair: Anne ScottEx, Dir.: Dorothy Schwartz

Maryland HumanitiesCouncil516 N. Charles St., Suite 201Baltimore, MD 21201(301) 625 -483()Chair: Albert R.C. WestwoodEx. Dir.: Naomi Collins

Massachusetts Foundationfor Humanities and PublicPolicy1 Woodbridge StreetSouth Hadley, MA 01075(413) 536-1385Chair: Vishakha DesaiEx. Dir.: David Tebaldi

Michigan Council for theHumanitiesNisbet Bldg., Suite 301407 S. Harrison RoadEast Lansing, MI 48F24(517) 355-0160('hair: Harold CI. MossEx. Dir.: Ronald Means

37

Michigan HumanitiesCommission580 Park Square Ct.6th & SibleySt. Paul, MN 55101(612) 224-5739Chair: Paul GruchowEx. Dir.: Cheryl Dickson

Mississippi HumanitiesCouncil3825 Ridgewood Road,Room 111Jackson, MS 39211(601) 982-6'152Chair: Thomas W. Lewis, IIIEx. Dir.: Cora Norman

Missouri Humanities Council4144 Lindell Blvd., Suite 210St. Louis, MO 63108(314) 531-1254Chair: Thomas B. HarteEx. Dir.: Christine J. Reilly

Alontana Committee for theHumanitiesP.O. Box 8036Ilellgate StationMissoula, MT 59807(406) 243-6022Chair: Julie KuchenbrodEx. Dir.: Margaret Kingsland

Nebraska HumanitiesCouncilLincoln Ctr. Bldg., 4422215 Centennial Mall SouthLincoln, NE 68508(402) 474-2131Chair: Jo TaylorEx. Dir.: Jam R. Hood

Nevada HumanitiesCommitteeP.O. Box 80291101 N. Virginia StreetReno, NV 89507(702) 784-6587Chair: Marilyn MeltonEx. Dir.: Judith Winzeler

New Hampshire HumanitiesCouncil15 South Fruit StreetConcord, NH 03301(603) 224-4071Chair: James MahoneyEx. Dir,: Charles Bickford

New Jersey Committee forthe Humanities73 Easton AvenueNew Brunswick, NJ 08901(201) 932-7726Chair: Gregory WatersEx. Dir.: Miriam L. Murphy

New Mexico Endowment forthe Humanities209 Onate HallUniversity of New MexicoAlbuquerque, NM 87131(505) 277.-3705Chair: M. Teresa MarquezEx. Dir.: John Lucas

New 'York Council for theHumanities198 Broadway, 10111 FloorNew York, NY 10038(212) 233-1131Chair: John Kilo lvi.; 'FeltenEx. Dir.: Jay Kaplan

4 0

38

North Carolina HumanitiesCouncil112 Foust Building, UNC-GGreensboro, NC 27412(919) '34-5325Chair: Joan H. StewartEx. Dir.: Alice Barkley

North Dakota HumanitiesCouncilP.O. Box 2191Bismarck, ND 58502(701) 663-1948Chair: Therese M. OlsonEx. Dir.: Everett Albers

Ohio Humanities Council695 Bryden RoadP.O. Box 06354Columbus, 011 43206-0354(614) 461-7802Chair: Thomas V; NortwickEx. Dir.: Charles C. Cole

Oklahoma Foundation forthe HumanitiesExecutive Terrace Bldg.Suite 5(102809 Northwest ExpresswayOklahoma City, OK 73112(405) 840-1721Chair: James R. TolbertEx. Dir.: Anita May

Oregon Committee for theHumanities418 S.W. Washington, it410Pi.dand, OR 97204(503) 241-0543Chair: Laura Rice-SayreEx. Dir.: Richard Lewis

Pennsylvania HumanitiesCouncil320 Walnut Street, #305Philadelphia, PA 19106(215) 925 -1005Chair: Samuel GuhinEx. Dir.: Craig Eisendrath

Fundacion Puertmiquenade las HumanidadesApartado Postal S-4307San Juan de Puerto Rico 00904(809) 721-2087Chair: Jose M. Garcia-GomezEx, Dir.:

Rhode Island Committee forthe Humanities60 Ship StreetProvidence, RI 02903(401) 273 -2250Chair: Porter A. HalyburtonEx. Dir.: Thomas Roberts

South Carolina HumanitiesCouncilI()10 Oak StreetColumbia, SC 29204(803) 771-8864Chair: Joseph SwannEx, Dir.: Randy Akers

South Dakota Committee onthe HumanitiesBox 7050, University StationBrookings, SD 5700'7(605) 688-6113Chair: Wayne S. KnutsonEx. Dir.: John Whalen

4 639

Tennessee HumanitiesCouncilP.O. Box 24767Nashville, TN 37202(615) 320-7001Chair: June Hall McCashEx. Dir.: Robert Cheatham

Texas Committee for theHumanities100 NechesAustin, TX 78701(512) 473 -8585Chair: Edward V. GeorgeEx. Dir.: James Veninga

Utah Endowment for theHumanitiesTen West BroadwayBroadway Building, Suite 900Salt Lake City, UT 84101(801) 531 -7868Chair: Amy OwenLx. Dir.: Delmont Oswald

Vermont Council on theHumanitiesP.O. Box 58Hyde Park, VT 056f.5(802) 88(3-3183Chair: William WilsonEx. Dir.: Victor Swenson

Virginia Foundation for theHumanitiesIJn iversity of Virginia1939 Ivy RoadCharlottesville, VA 22903(804) 924-3296Chair: Robert RogersPres.: Robert Vaughan

Virgin Island HumanitiesCouncilP 3. Box 1829St, Thomas, VI 00801(809) 776-4044Chair: William A. TaylorIntrm. Ex. Dir.: Magda Smith

Washington Commission forthe Humanities107 Cherry, Lowman BuildingSuite 312Seattle, WA 98104(206) 682-1770Chair: Donna GerstenbergerEx. Dir.: Hidde Van Duym

Humanities Foundation ofWest VirginiaBox 204Institute, WV 25112(304) 768-8869Chair: James W. RowleyEx. Dir.: Charles Daugherty

Wisconsin HumanisesCommittee716 Langdon StreetMadison, WI 53706(608) 262-0706Chair: Douglas A. NorthropEx. Dir.: Patricia Anderson

Wyoming Council for theHumanitiesBox 3972, t lniversity Stati(mLaramic, WY 82071-3972(307) 766-6496('hair: Paul FeesEx. Dir.: Robert Young

(August 1989)

"Most North Americans have apoor grasp of abstract ideals. Welack the language to express ourvalues. We find ourselves hoggeddown in particulars without know-ing how to comprehend the moralscope of our policy decisions. Na-tional Issues Forums address thisproblem by providing the formatto ascertain the opinions of ourneighbors."

Ann HendersonExecutive DirectorFlorida Endowment for

the Humanities

The National Issues Forums(NIF) arc a model for public dia-logue that citizens can use to dis-cuss public policy issues. NIF doesnot advocate any specific point ofview, but provides citizens anopportunity to exchange theirviews on issues, to consider alt

approaches to the issues,and to "work through" the alterna-tives to an in'Ormed judgment.

The three topics selected for the1989-1990 series of Forums are:"The Drug Crisis: Public Strate-gies for Breaking the Habit,""TheEnvironment at Risk Respondingto Growing Dangers," and "TheDay Care Dilemma: Who ShouldHe Responsible for the Children?"

Through a partnership betweenNIF and the Federation of StateHumanities Councils, The Hu-manities and the Art of PublicDiscussion has been developed toenhance the discussion of publicissues that take place in Forumsatop study circles by perspcctivesprovided through the disciplinesof the humanities,

National Issues Forums100 Con mons RoadDayton, t lhiu 0459 2777Telonlione: I -800.221-3657In 1-8(X)-523-0018

40 A r

Federation of State Humanities Councils1012 Fourteenth Street, NWsuite 1007Washington, DC 20005(202) 393-5400