Ecocinema, Slow Violence, and Environmental Ethics:

BOOK REVIEW: edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro.<i>ENVIRONMENTAL VIRTUE ETHICS</i>. New York and Oxford: Rowman &amp; Littlefield, 2005.

Human rights concerns in relation to the impacts brought forth by artificial intelligence (‘AI’) have revolved around examining how it affects specific rights, such as the right to privacy, non-discrimination and freedom of expression. However, this article argues that the effects go deeper, potentially challenging the foundational assumptions of key concepts and normative justifications of the human rights framework. To unpack this, the article applies the lens of ‘slow violence’, a term borrowed from environmental justice literature, to frame the grinding, gradual, attritional harms of AI towards the human rights framework.The article examines the slow violence of AI towards human rights at three different levels. First, the individual as the subject of interest and protection within the human rights framework, is increasingly unable to understand nor seek accountability for harms arising from the deployment of AI systems. This undermines the key premise of the framework which was meant to empower the individual in addressing large power disparities and calling for accountability towards such abuse of power. Secondly, the ‘slow violence’ of AI is also seen through the unravelling of the normative justifications of discrete rights such as the right to privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of thought, upending the reasons and assumptions in which those rights were formulated and formalised in the first place. Finally, the article examines how even the wide interpretations towards the normative foundation of human rights, namely human dignity, is unable to address putative new challenges AI poses towards the concept. It then considers and offers the outline to critical perspectives that can inform a new model of human rights accountability in the age of AI.

On 27 February 2013, Mad Ave staged The River Talks, a collation of linked performances in and on the banks of the Omaru River in Glen Innes, Auckland, New Zealand. The event brought together artistic and discursive works that challenged a view of this local river as always and forever degraded. An example of committed ecological performance, The River Talks created time and space for kōrero (dialogue) between people with diverse views and stories of the river. Both the enactment of performance and the performance of meeting drew on Māori protocol on the marae and on Māori concepts of the relationship and obligation to the natural world (kaitiakitanga). The writing of this article was invited by the director Tamati Patuwai as part of extending the kōrero to a global audience. In the article we explore how ecocriticism might be applied to ecological issues in performance. To begin to discuss The River Talks ecocritically, we draw on Rob Nixon's postcolonial analysis of the textual response to the ‘slow violence’ of environmental harm. Together, we consider the question of how far The River Talks provides a model of performance that could inform other activists, educators and artists.

ABSTRACT: This essay bridges a gap between Waste Theory, Postcolonial Studies, and Environmental Justice through a new reading of Marcos Herrera’s La mitad mejor (2009). Set in Buenos Aires’ clandestine underworld, the narrative stages acts of extreme cruelty that reduce its marginalized characters to ‘wasted lives’ (Zygmunt Bauman), ‘living dead’ (Achille Mbembe), and ‘less than human beings’ (Maria Lugones). Attending to Herrera’s ‘unplots’, racialized ‘uncharacters’, and wasted settings, I argue that violence flows deeper than these spectacular acts, and read La mitad mejor as a fictionalized response to Rob Nixon’s pressing question: how to narrate the ‘slow violence’ of environmental injustice.

The rapid loss of global biodiversity has been dubbed the sixth mass extinction event (Lewis &amp; Maslin, 2015). Biodiversity governance is already difficult due to contextual factors at local, global, and regional scales (Rockström et al., 2023; Gupta et al., 2023). The interests of local, Indigenous, and other stakeholders can clash with different extrinsic, intrinsic, and relational value sets with biodiversity that can bring forth debates on morality (Armstrong, 2024; Petersson &amp; Stoett, 2022; Biermann &amp; Kim, 2020; Oksanen, 1997). For example, biodiversity conservation can harm relational values that Indigenous and other local people have with nature by designating certain biodiversity areas as restricted areas, all while protecting the intrinsic value of biodiversity (Armstrong, 2024; Gupta et al., 2023). And while biodiversity offsetting can harm both intrinsic and relational values, there can be benefits with increased stakeholder engagement and overall decision-making that can benefit both people and nature (Armstrong, 2024; Armstrong, 2025; Oksanen, 1997; Sebo, 2022; Kallhoff, 2014; Rockström et al., 2023; IUCN, 2015). However, biodiversity offsetting is often met with heavy criticism from environmental ethicists and Indigenous scholars (Karlsson &amp; Björnberg, 2021; Whyte, 2018; Armstrong, 2025). Political theorists also debate the morality of biodiversity offsetting due to these intrinsic values (Armstrong, 2025). Indigenous scholars argue that the relational values Indigenous peoples have with biodiversity are also disrupted with biodiversity offsetting (Armstrong, 2025; Whyte, 2018). Despite this criticism, biodiversity offsetting is becoming an increasingly prominent method of response to biodiversity loss (Armstrong, 2024). Furthermore, it is clear that there are a multitude of different perspectives on the ethics of biodiversity offsetting. Thus, the research question I ask is: how can decision-making on biodiversity offsetting be more inclusive of relational values with other interests and value sets? I argue that these decisions can be made by defining legitimate expectations within the context of biodiversity loss, with the starting point grounded in the exploration of whose voices are being included with stakeholder engagement in decision-making for biodiversity offsetting.

This research is an ethnographic on the Kaharingan Dayak in Central Kalimantan, East Barito, and South Kalimantan in Tabalong District, and Gunung Meratus Dayak. The studies were conducted in 2012, 2016, 2018 and 2023. The research units were the male and female Wadian Kaharingan, and the Mantir Adat Dayak. The results of this ethnographic research produced 3 main findings, namely the Dara Mula Lapeh Ethics of Concern, Datu Mula Munta's Environmental Ethics, and the third is the Ethics of Living Together on the Land. The Caring Ethics develops the notion of caring as a feminine ethic, and applies it to the practice of moral education. Women "enter the practical realm of moral action in a different way". The Caring Ethic as a preference for moral deliberation takes place in practice, and an appreciation for the uniqueness of each caring relationship. The ethics of caring as the basis of human existence and awareness. Environmental Ethics is given a holistic intrinsic value, namely including non-human entities, more precisely animals, plants, water, mountains, seas and other organisms in a group of entities that have intrinsic value that must be protected and respected. All biotic and abiotic beings deserve moral judgment for themselves. In other words, along with the human species, all other living things have intrinsic value. Meanwhile, the Ethics of the Dayak Kaharingan are the Ethics of Living Together on the Ground. The results of ethnographic research state that the mental doctrine of the Dayak Kaharingan is mechanical solidarity occurring when society consists of individuals who are different from each other, and social cohesion is obtained to shared values, beliefs, and rituals as a form of collective awareness as well as reducing individuals

Most approaches in environmental ethics that contemplate the normativity of intrinsic values rely on the idea of love or reverence for nature. This paper challenges the need to love nature in order to respect it as a value in itself (i.e., as an intrinsic value). In this regard, the main questions to answer are: is there a need to regard nature as sacred in order to respect it (i.e., to ascribe intrinsic value to it)? What kind of coincidence is there between God and the natural world? The response to these questions calls for a deep inquiry into the cosmological or metaphysical ideas (or conceptions of divinity) underlying them. This paper analyses, thus, three theological, cosmological, or metaphysical ideas (i.e., pantheism, theism, and teleological conception of nature) concerning intrinsic values: some of these (e.g., pantheism) contemplate the idea of the sacredness of nature, which has a clear religious inspiration. These cosmological paradigms also imply different human behaviors towards life: 1. Pantheism implies reverence for Life since nature is sacred (God mainly coincides with nature). Thus, the human being is part of the extended more-than-human community. 2. Theism reaffirms that every form of life is good since it has been created by God. This implies that human beings are the steward of creation. 3. The finalistic idea of nature sustains that life is an end in itself (i.e., has intrinsic value) and that our responsibility emerges from both the value of life and our impact on the environment.

Using an ecocritical approach and discussing the theory of the graphic novel as it relates to Indian writing in English, this paper argues that In All Quiet in Vikaspuri Sarnath Banerjee blends the cli-fi genre with the medium of the graphic novel to illustrate “slow violence” that is perpetrated on nature in the name of vikas or progress. Through his text/image activism, Banerjee depicts India’s water wars at the community level, a corrupt political system, the shortsighted policies in politics and business, the detrimental effects of privatizing basic resources, the media’s lack of coverage of environmental issues, the paradoxical nature of the relationship that Hindus have with nature, and the inaction or silence that the average Indian maintains towards environmental concerns. These factors are forms of “slow violence.” Since there is no actual “violence” involved in any of these factors, the threat is difficult to translate. However, Banerjee responds to the challenge by intervening representationally to indicate “amorphous calamities” by (a) “devising iconic symbols” to illustrate the calamity and (b) by yoking popular objects to “amorphous calamities.” Personalizing the Anthropocene through an Indian cultural prism, Banerjee refers to popular sports, television dramas, Hindu mythology, and real environmental disasters. Ultimately, through his work, he holds up a mirror to his Indian readers to warn them of the dangers of keeping quiet in the land of progress.

Environmental Justice in Ethnic American Literaturefocuses on a wide range of conceptions, depictions, and issues of environmental (in)justice found in African American, Latinx, Asian American, and American Indian literature to provide a panorama of ethnic peoples, regions, and cultures affected by disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards and racial discrimination, now exacerbated by the effects of climate change. Specifically, the volume highlights the capacity of literature and literary criticism to help uncover the causes and consequences of instances of environmental injustice and their impact. The chapters analyze a diverse selection of voices and texts, which underscore how the literary imagination of ethnic American writers captures, in contrast with official statistics, impersonal data and the reports compiled from them, the tangible and often inescapable problems of communities struggling against environmental racism. The issues addressed in the volume range from slow violence, transcorporeality, food and reproductive justice, to agrarianism, while utilizing theoretical lenses such as ecofeminist paradigms or innovative applications of ecolinguistic methods to poetry. Overall, the monograph brings to the fore a diversity of literary responses to environmental racism and calls for environmental justice.

Typically, secular environmental movements locate intrinsic value in biological life. While some recent Christian ecotheologies have appropriated this stance, Christian ethics has generally tended to relate value to human life, considering creation as instrumental to human needs. Seeing neither of these alternatives as authentically Christian, James M. Gustafson finds a middle way between “deep” and “shallow” approaches. His theocentric ethics centres value on God, rather than on human or general biological life. In order to bring Christian theology and ethics back to this focus, Gustafson utilizes evidences from the sciences as a source for theology. At the same time, he modifies so-called deep ecologies for a Christian context by indicating that, for the religious person, all things are not of intrinsic value, but find their value in relation to God. This allows theocentrism to encourage Christians in a more responsible attitude toward the environment that takes into account nonhuman goods.

This paper will argue for a conception of intrinsic value which, it is hoped, will do justice to the following issues:(1) that Nature need not and should not be understood to refer only to what exists on this planet, Earth;(2) that an environmental ethics informed by features unique to Earth may be misleading and prove inadequate as technology increasingly threatens to invade and colonize other planets in the solar system;(3) that a comprehensive environmental ethics must encompass not only our attitude to Earth, but to other planets as well—in other words, it must not simply be an Earthbound but virtually an astronomically bounded ethics.

The purpose of the study was to check pedagogy students’ opinions on using anthropomorphizing nature for the development of pro-environmental knowledge and behaviour in the context of their own environmental ethics orientations. An online survey for university pedagogy students from Poznan, Poland, was conducted. N=221 respondents, of whom 97% were women, filled out the questionnaires. Descriptive statistics were used for closed questions on students’ opinions about using anthropomorphizing nature for environmental education. To find out the respondents’ environmental ethics orientations, content analysis of answers to open questions was used, applying theory-based categories of environmental orientations derived from environmental ethics (anthropocentrism, biocentrism). The findings revealed that the majority of students believe that anthropomorphism of nature helps in the development of pro-environmental behaviour (62.4%) and knowledge (55.8%). In justification, most (63.8%) presented anthropocentric attitudes; 27.5% of answers were biocentric, and 8.8% - mixed eclectic. According to the other questions the respondents supported biocentric environmental norms. Their justifications, however, again revealed mostly anthropocentric motivations 63.2%. Conclusion: Pedagogy students, although they support biocentric norms, believe that anthropomorphism of nature will be the right tool for environmental education, and use anthropocentric arguments in their justifications. In their future pedagogical practice, they will rather develop anthropocentric orientations in children, building positive attitudes towards nature on (false) belief in similarities of human and non-human living organisms, instead of recognition of their “otherness” and intrinsic value.

Reviewed by: Migration and Refuge: An Eco-archive of Haitian Literature, 1982–2017 by John Patrick Walsh Robert Decker Migration and Refuge: An Eco-archive of Haitian Literature, 1982–2017. By John Patrick Walsh. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019. ISBN 13: 9781786941633. 254 pp. £90.00 hardcover. John Patrick Walsh's book Migration and Refuge: An Eco-archive of Haitian Literature represents a new and important approach to Haitian literary studies at a moment when an increasing number of scholars have expressed dissatisfaction with existing models of postcolonial scholarship. Although, as the title suggests, Walsh primarily examines narratives of human displacement, he breaks away from conventional paradigms of hybridity and identity formation by centering questions of political ecology. The book addresses the imbrication of ecological, geological, and social catastrophes in Haitian literature during a period beginning in the final years of the Duvalier era and continuing into the contemporary moment. Drawing inspiration from Rob Nixon's concept of "slow violence," which designates "a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all," Walsh proposes to read Haitian literature as what he terms an eco-archive.1 "At its most basic," he explains, the eco-archive "denotes a body of literary texts that depict ecological change over time and its impact on matters of social and environmental justice. The prefix 'eco' refers to the shared, lived space of ecological problems, between humans and non-humans, and 'archive' to the accumulation of texts that reveal overlapping histories of past and present" (3). As this book convincingly demonstrates, contemporary Haitian literature portrays social and environmental catastrophes such as the violence of the Duvalier regime or the 2010 earthquake not as discrete, exceptional events but rather as part of the longue durée of Haitian history. Walsh's study begins with a quotation from Yanick Lahens's Failles (2010), a narrative of the earthquake that devastated Haiti. The prominent position of Lahens's account centers the disaster within Walsh's book (indeed, the central section, Part II, engages with explicitly postseismic texts), and this focus on the heavily mediatized event of the earthquake might seem to contradict Walsh's stated interest in more expansive models of time. However, Lahens's elaboration of the concept of the fault line gestures beyond the immediate effects of the earthquake itself and comes to serve as a central critical metaphor in Walsh's work: whereas the disaster itself takes on the character of a discrete event, the underlying fault line belongs to a time-scale of wholly different proportions. Furthermore, as Lahens [End Page 144] argues and Walsh underlines, the earthquake "exposed a crosshatching of social, economic, and political fault lines" (2) that likewise belong to deeper histories that radiate outward and come into relation with broader narratives of globalizing modernity. The geological fault line responsible for the seismic event in 2010 thus connects with dividing lines of human invention: the class lines separating the wealthy Haitian elite from their impoverished compatriots, the forbidden shorelines of the United States' southern coasts, and the color line that continues to fracture societies of the greater Americas well into the twenty-first century. This understanding of ecology as including both human and nonhuman actors and involving a set of histories more conventionally understood as the purview of the social sciences may surprise readers expecting an ecocritical perspective focused on literary descriptions of plants, animals, or landscapes. However, the expanded scope of Walsh's conception of the notion of ecology constitutes one of the great strengths of this book. His comparative reading of Lahens along with philosophers such as Michel Serres and Bruno Latour convincingly indicates "the gap between the environmentalist concerns of European and North American writers and those in the Caribbean" (9) and provides a valuable corrective to more Eurocentric notions of ecocriticism that assume a homogenous understanding of humanity and the way it interacts with the environment. In Part I, "The Eco-archive," Walsh reflects on the ways in which Caribbean thought has postulated the sociocultural ramifications of a history of human migration, beginning with the...

Intrinsic and Instrumental Value

To be intrinsically valuable means to be valuable for its own sake. Moral philosophy is often ethically anthropocentric, meaning that it locates intrinsic value within humans. This paper rejects ethical anthropocentrism and asks, in what ways might nonhumans be intrinsically valuable? The paper answers this question with a wide-ranging survey of theories of nonhuman intrinsic value. The survey includes both moral subjects and moral objects, and both natural and artificial nonhumans. Literatures from environmental ethics, philosophy of technology, philosophy of art, moral psychology, and related fields are reviewed, and gaps in these literatures are identified. Although the gaps are significant and much work remains to be done, the survey nonetheless demonstrates that those who reject ethical anthropocentrism have considerable resources available to develop their moral views. Given the many very high-stakes issues involving both natural and artificial nonhumans, and the sensitivity of these issues to how nonhumans are intrinsically valued, this is a vital project to pursue.