1NC MS Baez-Vera vs SWS Saari-Zhao Round C

8/10/2019 1NC MS Baez-Vera vs SWS Saari-Zhao Round C

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1nc-ms-baez-vera-vs-sws-saari-zhao-round-c 1/25

T – not an increaseA. Increase means the plan must mandate more development

Increase means make greater

Meriam Webster 13 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/increase

in·crease verb \in-ˈkrēs, in-ˌ\ in·creasedin·creas·ing Definition of INCREASE intransitive verb

1: to become progressively greater (as in size, amount, number, or intensity) 2: to multiply by

the production of young transitive verb 1: to make greater : augment 2 obsolete : enrich

Increase excludes decrease

Words and Phrases 8 vol 20B p 264

U.S. Ct. Cl. 1919 Act March 4, 1909, § 2, 35 Stat. 1065, authorizing the Secretary of theTreasury to "increase" and "fix" compensation of inspectors of customs, as he may think

advisable, not to exceed a certain amount, gives no power to decrease compensation:

"fix" being controlled by "increase." Cochnower v. United States, 39 S.Ct. 137, 248 U.S. 405,

63 L.Ed. 328, modified 39 S.Ct. 387, 249 U.S. 588, 63 L.Ed. 790 – Cust. Dut. 60.

B. Violation – the plan restricts development

Ocean development means commercial action, not preservation, protection or

restore

Underhill 7 Stefan R. Underhill, United States District Judge. STATE OF CONNECTICUT and ARTHUR J.

ROCQUE, JR., COMMISSIONER OF THE CONNECTICUT DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION, Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE and THE HONORABLE DONALD L. EVANS, IN HIS CAPACITY AS SECRETARY OF COMMERCE,

Defendants, ISLANDER EAST PIPELINE COMPANY, LLC, Intervenor Defendant.CIVIL ACTION NO. 3:04cv1271 (SRU) UNITED STATES

DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF CONNECTICUT 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 59320 August 15, 2007, Decided

lexis

The term "develop" is not defined in the statute, and there is a dearth of case law on the

subject. In the "absence of statutory guidance as to the meaning of a particular term, it is

appropriate to look to its dictionary definition in order to discern its meaning in a given

context." Connecticut v. Clifton Owens, 100 Conn. App. 619, 639, 918 A.2d 1041 (2007). There

are various definitions of the term "develop," some of which connote commercial and industrialprogress, and some of which imply natural growth. See BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 462 (7th ed.

1999); WEBSTER'S NEW COLLEGE DICTIONARY 310 (2d ed. 1995). Having gained no clear answer

from the dictionary, words must be given their "plain and ordinary meaning . . . unless the

context indicates that a different meaning was intended." Connecticut v. Vickers, 260 Conn. 219,

224, 796 A.2d 502 (2002). [*19] Here, the plain meaning of the term "develop" includes

commercial improvement. Connecticut argues, in effect, that by placing the term

"develop" in the context of other terms, such as "preserve, protect, and restore," the



definition of "develop" must have a natural, conservationist meaning. That argument

is not supported by the legislative history of the CZMA. Congress intended the CZMA to

balance conservation of environmental resources with commercial development in the coastal

zone. See, e.g., COASTAL AND OCEAN LAW at 229. In fact, in the context of the CZMA,

the term "develop" has been defined to mean commercial improvement. Id. ("[T]he

CZMA reflects a competing national interest in encouraging development of coastal

resources.").See also Conservation Law Foundation v. Watt, 560 F. Supp. 561, 575 (D. Mass.

1983) (noting that the CZMA recognizes a wide range of uses of the coastal zones, including

economic development).

Sustainable development reduces development

UN 11 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) 2011 An inter-agency paper

towards the preparation of the Blueprint for ocean and coastal sustainability

http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/ MULTIMEDIA/HQ/SC/pdf/

interagency_blue_paper_ocean_rioPlus20.pdf

SIDS expect Rio+20 to provide support for sustainable ocean development and protection of

resources. Measures could include actions to reduce fishing overcapacity, to establish

MPAs, enhance and support local coastal management efforts, improve wastewater

treatment as well as solid waste management and recycling. Significantly, capacity development

could take place through SIDS-SIDS partnerships based on the sharing and consolidation of

unique SIDS approaches to coastal management; such as the Pacific Locally Managed Marine

Areas (LMMA) network, the recognition and transmission of local and indigenous knowledge

and customary management of the coastal environment, and community participation in

scientific coastal monitoring, management and decision-making as practiced in UNESCO’s

Sandwatch programme.

At best, the plan is effectually topical, they only get to commercial

development after the effects of the plan. Effects T, is a voter for limits on the

broad topic

C. The affirmative interpretation is bad for debate

Limits - are necessary for negative preparation and clash. The aff unlimits by

making every action topical – both increases in development and decreases in

development.

D. T is voter because it's necessary for good, well-prepared debating

http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/%20MULTIMEDIA/HQ/SC/pdf/%20interagency_blue_paper_ocean_rioPlus20.pdf






PoliticsRepublicans will win the Senate now – they’re winning the mobilization race

Jim Malone, 7-3-14, http://www.voanews.com/content/political-forecast-more-

gridlock/1950498.html

Given that the chances for agreement on substantial legislation in Congress are now fleeting, both

sides are ramping up their arguments for midterm voters. Democrats start with a huge disadvantage. A lot of their folks

are much less inclined to turn out in midterm congressional elections than they are for a presidential contest. Obama and other

Democrats are now heavily focused on encouraging core Democratic supporters, especially what they like to call the

“rising electorate”, to get off their rumps and out to the polls in November. That rising electorate includes younger voters, especially unmarried women, as well as Hispanic and

Asian-American voters. In fact, many Democrats see motivating younger unmarried women as the key

to boosting turnout enough that it could save their majority in the U.S. Senate. There is general consensus among political

analysts and pundit-types that Republicans appear to have a big advantage in holding on to their majority in the House of

Representatives. In fact, by some estimates, they could add seats. The real battle is for control of the Senate, where 36 of the 100 seats are at stake. Republicans need to gain six

Democratic seats to reclaim a majority. That would normally be a tall order in any election year but this year there are far more Democratic seats at stake than Republican, and

many of the Democratic seats are in states where Republicans have an advantage.

New policy is key to boost Democratic votes. No risk of a link turn – the

Republican base is already mobilized

Sargent 7/9 [Greg Sargent, Washington Post writer, “Morning Plum: Obama to set off bomb in

middle of midterms”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-

line/wp/2014/07/09/morning-plum-obama-to-set-off-bomb-in-middle-of-midterm-elections/,

7/9/14]

Now that Republicans have made it clear that they will not participate on any level in basic problem solving

when it comes to our immigration crisis, it is now on Obama to determine just how far he can go

unilaterally, particularly when it comes to easing the pace of deportations .

This is going to be one of the mostconsequential decisions of his presidency in substantive, moral, and legal terms, and

politically, it could set off a bomb this fall, in the middle of the midterm elections. I’m told

there are currently internal discussions underway among Democrats over whether ambitious action by Obama could be politically harmful in tough races. According to two

sources familiar with internal discussions, some top Dems have wondered aloud whether Obama going big would further inflame the GOP base, with little payoff for Dems in red

states where Latinos might not be a key factor. I don’t want to overstate this: These are merely discussions, not neces sarily worries. Indeed, some Dems are making the opposite

case, and that argument is described well in a new Politico piece out this morning. The story notes that Obama has privately told immigration advocates demanding ambitious

action that they might not get what they want, tel ling them: “We need to right-size expectations.” And yet, according to Politico, some advocates still hope

for aggressive action and believe Dems see it as in their own political interests: Adding to the elevated hopes about

what Obama will do is the feeling among Democratic strategists that immigration reform is a clear political winner:The people who will be

opposed to reform or to the president taking action on his own are already likely prime

Republican base voters. But voters whom Obama might be able to activate, both among

immigrant communities and progressives overall who see this issue as a touchstone, are exactly the ones that Democrats arehoping will be there to counter a midterm year in which the map and historical trends

favor GOP turnout.

Women key to midterms- ensure Dem win

Anderson 4/15/14(Kristen Soltis, a partner and co-founder of Echelon Insights, an opinion research, data analytics and

digital intelligence firm and is a columnist for The Daily Beast. Previously, she served as Vice President of The Winston Group, a

Republican polling firm in DC. Anderson has done extensive research on public opinion, studying subjects such as the youth vote and



education reform, “Win Women, Win the Midterms”, April 15 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/15/win-

women-win-the-midterms.html, C.B.)

It is a mathematic truth that “women decide elections,” as we constitute the

majority of voters, even in midterm elections. In the 2006 midterms, women

made up 51 percent of the vote, and in 2010 that increased to 53 percent . The

election that swept in Speaker Pelosi saw Democrats winning female voters by a 12-point margin, and the election that gave us Speaker Boehner had Republicans

outperforming Democrats among women. For all that Republicans are hoping the

midterms are much closer to the 2010 election than 2012, the polls these days

do show women have a very different take on the GOP than they did four years

ago. While at this point in 2010, there was little difference between who men

and women said they wanted to vote for in the midterms, the polls today show

women still disinclined to vote Republican. We know women will be critical on

Election Day, and we know what Democrats’ plan is to win them over. Do Republicans have a

better response this time? Maybe. Take the “equal pay” conversation. While, at the macro level,

research shows much of the gender gap in pay is attributable to other factors, it comes across as

tone-deaf for Republicans to tell women that there’s essentially no such thing as pay discrimination,

as if any woman who has felt uneasy about how she is treated at work must just be imagining things

or whining. In 2012, the Republican Party’s answer to the question of differing incomes for working

men and women involved ignoring it and ceding the argument to Democrats, never really getting

around to explaining their opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law that didn’t end up

shrinking the pay gap at all. Today, we have some steps in the right direction. Republican women are

increasingly out front with their own vision for how best to address the issues facing women in the

workplace. Four Republican female senators are proposing legislation to update the decades-old

Equal Pay Act to do things like protect employees who voluntarily choose to discuss their salaries

and to improve job training programs. And though Democrats have been attacking rising Senate

candidate and Republican Terri Lynn Land of Michigan for suggesting women care more about

flexibility in the workplace than pay inequality, the data show Land is right in her assessment of most

women’s concerns: research shows that women acknowledge earning power was a top concern a

decade ago but flexibility and balance are the top priority today. Democrats hold anadvantage today with female voters that, if maintained, will dampen any

potential for a GOP wave in November. And with the Supreme Court expected to

hand down its ruling on the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage mandate

sometime this summer, the “war on women” rerun isn’t even close to over. This

time, Republicans know exactly what attack the Democrats are planning, and this

time they have no excuse for not putting up a better defense.

GOP win immigration reform

May, 5-22 (Caroline May, 22 May 2014, IMMIGRATION MAY COME BACK WITH A VENGEANCEIN 2015, http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/05/22/Immigration-May-Come-

Back-With-A-Vengeance-In-2015)

Republicans are already in the beginning stages of planning their legislative agenda if they take control of the Senate in November, and many

say immigration reform would be a top priority, even while President Obama's trustworthiness as a legislative partner remains in

doubt. “I don’t know anyone who thinks the immigration system is working the way it should, so we’re gonna have some ideas an d we’re going to move

them across the floor in smaller consensus — on a consensus basis. And not the sort of divisive, all-or-nothing, pig-in-the-python sort



of method,” Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn told Breitbart News last week when asked about the prospect of a GOP-controlled Senate

pushing its own immigration reform agenda. Days earlier, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said Republicans would “absolutely”

try to pass better immigration reform legislation if the GOP wins the Senate in November. Even some noted anti-

amnesty hawks sounded relatively optimistic. “I think there is a better prospect that we would go forward with some

immigration initiative if the Republicans control the Senate, but we still have the p roblem of trusting the president. But I think we’d be in a

better position to try and enforce the law if we have both the House and the Senate,” Texas Republican Lamar Smith told Breitbart Tuesday. House

Republicans are quick to point out the lack of confidence many have in the Obama adminis tration’s willingness to fully implement what Congress passes. South Carolina

Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy noted that the GOP has controlled the Senate before without pass ing immigration reform and alluded to concerns about Obama’s lack of

enforcement of immigration law.

Immigration reform key to the economic growth

Kelley and Wollgin, 11 (Angela Maria Kelley, Vice President for Immigration Policy at

American Progression, and Philip Wolgin, Senior Policy Analyst on the Immigration Policy team

at American Progress, 9-29-11 “10 Reasons Why Immigration Reform Is Important to Our Fiscal

Health,” http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2011/09/29/10375/10-

reasons-why-immigration-reform-is-important-to-our-fiscal-health/-- WH)

Here are the top 10 reasons why immigration reform, or the lack thereof, affects our economy.¶ Additions to the U.S. economy¶ 1.

$1.5 trillion—The amount of money that would be added to America’s cumulative g ross d omestic

p roduct—the largest measure of economic growth—over 10 years with a comprehensive immigration reform plan that includes

legalization for all undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States.¶ 2. 3.4 percent—The potential GDP growth rate

over the past two years if comprehensive immigration reform had gone into effect two years ago, in mid-2009. (see Figure 1)¶ figure

1¶ 3. 309,000—The number of jobs that would have been gained if comprehensive immigration reform had gone into

effect two years ago, in mid-2009. A GDP growth rate of 0.2 percent above the actual growth rate translates into, based on the

relationship between economic growth and unemployment, a decrease in unemployment by 0.1 percent, or 154,400 jobs, per year.¶

4. $4.5 billion to $5.4 billion—The amount of additional net tax revenue that would accrue to the federal

government over three years if all undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States were legalized.¶ Revenue

generated by immigrants¶ 5. $4.2 trillion—The amount of revenue generated by Fortune 500

companies founded by immigrants and their children, representing 40 percent of all Fortune 500 companies.¶ 6.

$67 billion—The amount of money that immigrant business owners generated in the 2000 census, 12 percent of all business income.

In addition, engineering and technology companies with at least one key immigrant founder generated $52 billion between 1995

and 2005 and created roughly 450,000 jobs.¶ Taxes generated by immigrants¶ 7. $11.2 billion—The amount of tax

revenue that states alone collected from undocumented immigrants in 2010.¶ Negative

consequences of mass deportation¶ 8. $2.6 trillion—The amount of money that would evaporate from cumulative

U.S. GDP over 10 years if all undocumented immigrants in the country were deported.¶ 9.

618,000—The number of jobs that would have been lost had a program of mass deportation gone

into effect two years ago, in mid-2009. A mass deportation program would have caused GDP to decrease by 0.5

percent per year, which, based on the relationship between economic growth and unemployment, translates to an increase in

unemployment by 0.2 percent, or 309,000 jobs, per year.¶ 10. $285 billion—The amount of money it would cost to deport all

undocumented immigrants in the United States over five years.¶ The upshot¶ Most Americans and their elected representatives in

Congress would be pleasantly surprised to learn about the substantial benefits of comprehensive

immigration reform to our nation’s broad-based economic growth and prosperity, and

thus our ability to reduce our federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. Given how difficult a challenge the super committee

faces, we cannot afford to ignore any viable options for strengthening our economy. We hope the super committee takes these top

10 economic reasons into account as they move forward with their deliberations.



Impact – lack of growth causes economic decline and great power war

Green & Schrage, 2009 - Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and

Associate Professor at Georgetown University; CSIS Scholl Chair in International

Business .( Michael, Steven, Asia Times, March 26,

p.http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/KC26Dk01.htmlHowever, the Great Depression taught us that a downward global economic spiral can

even have jarring impacts on great powers. It is no mere coincidence that the last

great global economic downturn was followed by the most destructive war in human

history. In the 1930s, economic desperation helped fuel autocratic regimes and

protectionism in a downward economic-security death spiral that engulfed the world

in conflict. This spiral was aided by the preoccupation of the United States and other leading nations with economic troubles at

home and insufficient attention to working with other powers to maintain stability abroad. Today's challenges are different, yet

1933's London Economic Conference, which failed to stop the drift toward deeper depression and world war, should be a cautionary

tale for leaders heading to next month's London Group of 20 (G-20) meeting. There is no question the US must urgently act to

address banking issues and to restart its economy. But the lessons of the past suggest that we will also have to keep an eye on those

fragile threads in the international system that could begin to unravel if the financial crisis is not reversed early in the Barack Obamaadministration and realize that economics and security are intertwined in most of the critical challenges we face. A disillusioned

rising power? Four areas in Asia merit particular attention, although so far the current financial crisis has not changed Asia's

fundamental strategic picture. China is not replacing the US as regional hegemon, since the leadership in Beijing is too nervous about

the political implications of the financial crisis at home to actually play a leading role in solving it internationally. Predictions that the

US will be brought to its knees because China is the leading holder of US debt often miss key points. China's currency controls and

full employment/export-oriented growth strategy give Beijing few choices other than buying US Treasury bills or harming its own

economy. Rather than creating new rules or institutions in international finance, or reorienting the Chinese economy to generate

greater long-term consumer demand at home, Chinese leaders are desperately clinging to the status quo (though Beijing deserves

credit for short-term efforts to stimulate economic growth). The greater danger with China is not an eclipsing of US leadership, but

instead the kind of shift in strategic orientation that happened to Japan after the Great Depression. Japan was arguably not a

revisionist power before 1932 and sought instead to converge with the global economy through open trade and adoption of the gold

standard. The worldwide depression and protectionism of the 1930s devastated the

newly exposed Japanese economy and contributed directly to militaristic and autarkic

policies in Asia as the Japanese people reacted against what counted for globalization at the time. China today is similarly

converging with the global economy, and many experts believe China needs at least 8% annual growth to sustain social stability.

Realistic growth predictions for 2009 are closer to 5%. Veteran China hands were watching closely when millions of migrant workers

returned to work after the Lunar New Year holiday last month to find factories closed and jobs gone. There were pockets of protests,

but nationwide unrest seems unlikely this year, and Chinese leaders are working around the clock to ensure that it does not happen

next year either. However, the economic slowdown has only just begun and nobody is certain how it will impact the social contract

in China between the ruling communist party and the 1.3 billion Chinese who have come to see President Hu Jintao's call for

"harmonious society" as inextricably linked to his promise of "peaceful development". If the Japanese example is any precedent, a

sustained economic slowdown has the potential to open a dangerous path from

economic nationalism to strategic revisionism in China too.



State BadExploration of the earth’s ocean should happen through a feminist

environmentalism based on a notion of nature called Prakriti.

The state sustains collective identity through an increasing process of

oppressive power struggles – the aff can never solve

Connoly in 2k2 (William, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science @ Johns

Hopkins University, Identity/Difference)

In several domains, the state no longer emerges as a consummate agent of efficacy, even though it expands as a pivotal agent of

power.4 A crack in the very unity of "power" has opened up. We have entered a world in which state power is

simultaneously magnified and increasingly disconnected from the ends that

justify its magni- fication. As obstacles to its efficacy multiply, the state

increasingly sustains collective identity through theatrical displays of punish-ment and revenge against those elements that threaten to signify its inefficacy.

It launches dramatized crusades against the internal other (low-level criminals, drug users,

disloyalists, racial minor- ities, and the underclass), the external other (foreign enemies and terrorists), and the interior

other (those strains of abnormality, subversion, and perversity that may reside within anyone). The state becomes, first,

the screen upon which much of the resentment against the adverse effects of the civilization of

produc- tivity and private affluence is projected; second, the vehicle through

which rhetorical reassurances about the glory and durability of that civilization

are transmitted back to the populace; and third, the instrument of campaigns

against those elements most disturbing to the collective identity. In the first instance,

the welfare apparatus of the state is singled out for criticism and reformation. In the second, the presidency is organized into a

medium of rhetorical diversion and reassurance. In the third, the state disciplinary-police-punitive apparatus is marshaled to

constitute and stigmatize constituencies whose terms of existence might otherwise provide signs of defeat, injury, and sacrifice

engendered by the civilization of.

The Affirmative’s attempt to “explore” in the name of the United States re-

entrenches western superiority

Tinker & Freeland 08(Thief, Slave Trader, Murderer: Christopher Columbus and Caribbean Population

Decline Tink Tinker & Mark Freeland, Wicazo Sa Review 23.1 (2008) 25-50,Tinker is professor of American

Indian cultures and religious traditions at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. Freeland He is

currently a doctoral student in the Joint PhD Program at the Iliff School of Theology and the University of

Denver, concentrating in religion and social change. G.L)

To this end, we must examine the evidences for the decline in indigenous population of the island of Española under the eight-yeargovernorship of Columbus and to demonstrate his immediate responsibility for that precipi tous decline.

The essay will then move to argue that much of north american history since Columbus consists of events that are firmly

based on a narrative created in the public consciousness about Columbus (which begins with Columbus's

conquest ) and the ensuing narrative (cultural and legal) developed by american jurists, historians,

politicians, movie makers, and the general public to justify their own conquest and genocide

of indigenous populations . Part of this american national narrative, of course, is a loosely conceived denial of its own



history of violence, which is repeated each year to promote the idea of american exceptionalism at the cost of the

truth of the American Indian genocide. That Columbus, or Cristóbal Colón (to give him his proper spanish name), was a

slave trader is a matter of historical fact. He cut his nautical teeth sailing under a portugese flag engaged

in the african slave trade a dozen years before 1492. When easy wealth in the form of gold proved not readily

available in the Caribbean, Colón resumed his slave-trading occupation by loading the holds of his ships

with Indian human cargo headed for the slave market in Seville. That he was a thief is equally self-evident, however a high-

level thief he may have been. The law of tribute that he instituted in the island he called Española sometime in 1495 forced Indian people on

the island to surrender goods, including gold ore, can only be classed as armed robbery. And we will argue

in this essay that Colón was indeed a murderer, culpable for those crimes against humanity as the head of

an authoritarian regime just as readily as Adolph Hitler is held accountable for the murder of some six

million Romas (the so-called Gypsies), Jews, and gays in Nazi Germany. We know that Colón's law of tribute

effectively resulted in the murder of Taino persons who failed to procure sufficient gold for the admiral

and his monarchs. Actually, the mandated punishment was the severing of the hands of the person who so failed, a punishment that must have,

given the state of medical technology, resulted in death from excessive bleeding. But what exactly was the full extent of Colón's crimes against

humanity? That is the subject we address here.



Norm“The USFG should…” is a form of legal positivism, it doesn’t take into account

the moral “ought”, and you give away any chance of making any real change

when you give yourself away to the stateSCHLAG 91| PIERRE, “Symposium THE CRITIQUE OF NORMATIVITY ARTICLES NORMATIVITY

AND THE POLITICS OF FORM”

(http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3741&context=penn_law_revie

w) A.B.

The orientation of American academic legal thought is pervasively and overwhelmingly

normative. For the legal thinker, the central question is "what should the law be?" Or, "what

should the courts do?" Or, "how should courts decide cases?" Or, "what values should the

ubiquitous (and largely non-referential) 'we' (i.e., us) believe?" Or, "how should . . . ." These

questions and their doctrinal derivatives constitute, organize, and circumscribe the tacit agenda

of contemporary legal thought. The key verb dominating contemporary legal thought is

some version of "should." Sometimes this "should" does not quite rise to the moral

"ought," and remains merely an instrumental, technical, or prudential "should."

Sometimes it is a covert "should" -- hidden beneath layers of legal positivism. But the fact

remains that "shoulds" and "oughts" dominate legal discourse. And the question of

whether any given "should" is a true moral "ought" or another instrumental "should" turns out

to be just another internecine squabble among competing normative perspectives. n10 The

normative orientation is so dominant in legal thought that it is usually not noticed. No

doubt the very pervasiveness and dominance of this thought has enabled it to escape

conscious thematization. n11 Indeed, while the concept "normative legal thought" is

hardly unknown or unintelligible to American legal thinkers, its precise significance, its

precise movements in social or intellectual space, remain largely unrecognized and

undetermined. Indeed, the understanding (or rather understandings) of normative legal

thought within the legal academy are not nearly as refined or contested as the

understandings, for instance, of legal formalism, legal realism, legal process, law and

economics, critical legal studies (cls), or the like.

The aff’s rhetorical performance is premised on the idea of a rational subject

with free will who can act upon the law – this normative model of subjectivity isbureaucratic control itself – its essential meaning is the infliction of pain and

death

Schlag 90|Stanford Law Review November, 1990 Essay “NORMATIVE AND NOWHERE TO GO”

Pierre Schlag [FNa1] Copyright © 1990 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior

(https://www.pravo.unizg.hr/_download/repository/SchlagSLR.pdf) A.B.

http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3741&context=penn_law_review


https://www.pravo.unizg.hr/_download/repository/SchlagSLR.pdf

https://www.pravo.unizg.hr/_download/repository/SchlagSLR.pdf





All of this can seem very funny. That's because it is very funny. It is also deadly

serious. It is deadly serious, because all this normative legal thought, as Robert Cover

explained, takes place in a field of pain and death. n56 And in a very real sense Cover was

right. Yet as it takes place, normative legal thought is playing language games -- utterly

oblivious to the character of the language games it plays, and thus, utterly uninterested in

considering its own rhetorical and political contributions (or lack thereof) to the field of

pain and death. To be sure, normative legal thinkers are often genuinely concerned

with reducing the pain and the death . However, the problem is not what normative legal

thinkers do with normative legal thought, but what normative legal thought does with

normative legal thinkers. What is missing in normative legal thought is any serious

questioning, let alone tracing, of the relations that the practice, the rhetoric, the

routine of normative legal thought have (or do not have) to the field of pain and

death. And there is a reason for that: Normative legal thought misunderstands its own

situation. Typically, normative legal thought understands itself to be outside the field of

pain and death and in charge of organizing and policing that field. It is as if the actionof normative legal thought could be separated from the background field of pain and

death. This theatrical distinction is what allows normative legal thought its own self-

important, self-righteous, self-image -- its congratulatory sense of its own accomplishments

and effectiveness. All this self-congratulation works very nicely so long as normative legal

[*188] thought continues to imagine itself as outside the field of pain and death and as having

effects within that field. n57 Yet it is doubtful this image can be maintained. It is not so much

the case that normative legal thought has effects on the field of pain and death -- at

least not in the direct, originary way it imagines. Rather, it is more the case that normative

legal thought is the pattern, is the operation of the bureaucratic distribution and the

institutional allocation of the pain and the death. n58 And apart from the leftover ego-centered rationalist rhetoric of the eighteenth century (and our routine), there is nothing at

this point to suggest that we, as legal thinkers, are in control of normative legal

thought. The problem for us, as legal thinkers, is that the normative APPEAL of

normative legal thought systematically TURNS US AWAY from recognizing that

normative legal thought is grounded on an utterly unbelievable re-presentation of the

field it claims to describe and regulate. The problem for us is that normative legal thought,

rather than assisting in the understanding of present political and moral situations,

stands in the way. It systematically reinscribes its own aesthetic -- its own FANTASTIC

UNDERSTANDING of the political and moral scene. n59 Until normative legal thought

begins to deal with its own paradoxical postmodern rhetorical situation, it will remainsomething of an irresponsible enterprise. In its rhetorical structure, it will continue to

populate the legal academic world with individual humanist subjects who think

themselves empowered Cartesian egos, but who are largely the manipulated

constructions of bureaucratic practices -- academic and otherwise.



Affirm the 1ac rhetorical strategy but reject the plan – refusing the temptation

to support normative legal thought opens up space to recognize the brutality

beneath the liberal humanist mask of the state

It’s vital that you refuse all reasonable value to their normative legal project –

allowing them case leverage is the most effective means of deflecting criticalinterrogation of normative legal thought

SCHLAG 91| PIERRE, “Symposium THE CRITIQUE OF NORMATIVITY ARTICLES NORMATIVITY

AND THE POLITICS OF FORM”

(http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3741&context=penn_law_revie

w) A.B.

It is apparent that virtually all aspects of normative legal thought are suited to the

rhetorical reproduction and maintenance of the sovereign individual subject. As Charles

Fried put it, "[b]efore there is morality there must be the person. We must attain and

maintain in our morality a concept of personality such that it makes sense to positchoosing, valuing entities -- free, moral beings." n259 This insistence of normative legal

thought on the importance of a morally competent, normative subject is quite

consonant with the rhetorical construction of the legal thinker as a sovereign

individual subject. Indeed, this rationalist rhetorical construction is at once a prefigurement

and the entailment of what Fried calls "choosing, valuing entities -- free moral beings." The

normative enterprise of norm-selection and norm-justification, with their emphases

on choice orientation, value orientation, and prescription, is keenly suited to keeping

the sovereign individual subject in the driver's seat. Likewise, the single-norm,

conclusion-oriented character of legal thought, with its FIXATION ON END-PRODUCTS

and its requirements that these end products be non-paradoxical, non-contradictory,complete, self-sufficient, discrete, separable, and transsituational, is conducive to

deflecting any serious interrogation of either the rhetorical practices, forms, or

processes that constitute the sovereign individual subject or his rhetorical enterprise:

Hence, we are drawn toward the meticulous dissection and examination of what the legal

subject has produced and whether these END-PRODUCTS have been produced in the right (non-

contradictory, non-paradoxical, linear, authority-driven) way. And in turn, this orientation

draws attention away from the legal subject who is producing all this stuff in the first

place. n260 The action-deferring and reader-centered character of normative legal thought

likewise ensure that no serious challenge is posed to the identity or character of the sovereign

individual subject. The [*901] texts of normative legal thought are supposed to have theireffect by appealing to the choice and the intellectual faculties of the reader. The texts are

supposed to honor the reader's already preformed views, ideas, prejudices, and aesthetic

representations of social and political life. There is to be no overt disabling or subversion

of her identity or role. For instance, within the rationalist rhetoric of contemporary legal

thought, it is permissible to write articles about Derridean deconstruction of legal thought -- but

to actually practice Derridean deconstruction will simply evoke resistance, misunderstanding,







and incomprehension. The expectation is that any author will, of course, explain and

justify any significant departure from the default positions and will refrain from any

rhetorical exercise that might actually require active change on the part of the reader.

Finally, the adversarial advocacy orientation of normative legal thought -- which is

attributable, at least in part, to the conflation of the role of lawyer and legal academic -- does

much to insulate the sovereign individual subject and its rhetorical supports from

scrutiny. Because so many legal academics understand their legal thought to be

positional in character -- on behalf of some (intangible, often very worthy but poorly

identified) client-surrogate, much of legal thought is produced within the explicit context

of adversarial advocacy among academics and is devoted to advancing or defeating

this or that position. Many normative legal thinkers understand themselves to be engaged in

"passionate advocacy" on behalf of some cause. Now admittedly, there is no tribunal

listening; no one is empowered to put all this normative passion into effect. But this

does not mean that this passionate advocacy is therefore without effect: on the contrary, it

often succeeds in BRACKETING ANY SERIOUS QUESTIONING of the rhetorical systemsthat enables such aimless passionate advocacy to be produced in the first place.

Indeed, when one is engaged in passionate arguments to an imagined tribunal, the last

thing one will do is question the argumentative structures that allow the arguments to

be framed and presented in the first place. Not only does normative legal thought conduce

to the maintenance of the sovereign individual subject and his rationalist rhetoric, but one can

see the reverse process at work as well. Indeed, if normative thought occupies so much

attention in the legal academy; if normative legal thought seems like the obvious, the

"natural" thing to do; if the "what should we do?/what should the law be?" question

seems so legitimate, so important; and if normative legal thought seems veritably like

law itself, it is because the rhetorical [*902] situation -- the default settings -- havealready enabled us, constituted our discourse, and configured our roles so that we will

produce normative legal thought.



ON CASE



Author Indict and Validity of Source

The affirmative will make the argument that their author for their Prakruti

arguments is valid and that the judge should prefer their arguments. Disregard

and prefer our author for the following reasons.

1) Vandana Shiva is a wealthy orientalist who grew up with Western education

and does not support the poor or environment and considers the Indian culture

to be an inferior third world sphereHenry I. Miller and Drew L. Kershen Shiva, the Indian activist who opposes modern agriculture

and modern science –and well, modernity in general –is a popular guest lecturer on American

campuses. Last spring, she held the Weissberg Chair in International Studies (2013-2014) at

Beloit College and this fall is scheduled to lecture at Arizona State and Wake Forest universities.



Although she gets good press from left-wing and environmental publications,

Shiva is widely considered by the scientific community to be unbalanced (in both

senses of the word) for advocating unsound, anti-social policies and

promulgating disproven theories about agriculture. One hopes her remarks to

university students are placed in perspective by someone who knows better.English: Golden Rice grain compared to white rice grain in screenhouse of Golden

Rice plants. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) As science writer Jon Entine and Dr. Cami

Ryan of the University of Saskatchewan discussed in a Forbes.com article earlier

this year, many of Shiva’s hobby horses have proven to be exceedingly lame.

Some prominent Forbes The “Green Revolution.” The new varieties and practices

of the Green Revolution introduced in the second half of the 20th century

provided greater food security to hundreds of millions of people in developing

countries on much of the planet;;they made available high-yielding varieties of

wheat and also new agronomic and management practices that transformed theability of Mexico, India, Pakistan, China, and parts of South America to feed their

populations. From 1950 to 1992, the world’s grain output rose from 692 million

tons produced on 1.70 billion acres of cropland to 1.9 billion tons on 1.73 billion

acres of cropland—an extraordinary increase in yield per acre of more than 150

percent. India is an excellent case in point. In 1963 wheat grew there in sparse,

irregular strands, was harvested by hand, and was highly susceptible to rust

disease. The maximum yield was 800 lb per acre. By 1968 the wheat grew

densely packed, was resistant to rust, and the maximum yield had risen to 6000

lb per acre. Without high-yield agriculture, either millions would have starved orincreases in food output would have been realized only through drastic

expansion of land under cultivation—with losses of pristine wilderness far greater

than all the losses to urban, suburban and commercial expansion. And yet, from

her perch in a parallel universe, Shiva contends that the Green Revolution

actually caused hunger. Here, as elsewhere, she employs the propaganda

technique known as the Big Lie, a phrase coined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 book

Mein Kampf. Shiva promulgates lies so “colossal” (as Hitler put it) that it would be

inconceivable for someone to “have the impudence to distort the truth so

infamously.” Read on. Golden Rice. These are genetically engineered varietiesthat are biofortified, or enriched, by genes that produce beta-carotene, the

precursor of vitamin A. They could be a monumental public health breakthrough,

because vitamin A deficiency is epidemic among poor people whose diet is

composed largely of rice, which contains no beta-carotene or vitamin A. In

developing countries, 200 million-300 million children of preschool age are at



risk of vitamin A deficiency, which increases their susceptibility to illnesses

including measles and diarrheal diseases. Every year, about half a million children

become blind as a result of vitamin A deficiency and 70% of those die within a

year. Inexplicably, Shiva is opposed to it: “By focusing on only one crop, rice,

which by itself does not provide all the nutrients, including higher quantities ofVitamin A than Golden Rice, the Golden Rice pushers are in fact worsening the

crisis of hunger and malnutrition.” “Promoters of Golden Rice are blind to

diversity, and hence are promoters of blindness, both metaphorically and

nutritionally,” she adds. Shiva has dismissed Golden Rice as a hoax and a myth –

which are the vilest sort of lies, not unlike those of the pernicious charlatans who

condemn childhood vaccination to prevent infectious diseases. As Entine and

Ryan wrote: “Shiva’s alternate proposed solution for promoting a ‘diversity of

diet’ has not worked for the very poor who cannot afford to buy vegetables or

fruits, or cannot devote the land on their subsistence farm to grow more ofthem.” The hoax is Shiva’s unworkable alternative, not the proven capabilities of

genetic engineering. Genetically engineered, pest-resistant cotton (Bt-cotton,

so-called because it contains a protein from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis

that kills certain insects). Shiva claims that the cultivation of these seeds is not

only ineffective but has been the cause of hundreds of thousands of farmer

suicides in India. But Shiva’s statistics are cherry-picked, largely irrelevant and

often wrong, and her argument relies on a fallacy of logic known as post hoc,

ergo propter hoc –after the fact, therefore because of the fact. In other words,

she confuses correlation with causation, the kind of “logic” that leads one tobelieve that autism is caused by organic food because of graphs like this one. In

an article last year in the journal Nature, agricultural socio-economist Dominic

Glover observed, “It is nonsense to attribute farmer suicides solely to Bt cotton,”

and moreover, “Although financial hardship is a driving factor in suicide among

Indian farmers, there has been essentially no change in the suicide rate for

farmers since the introduction of Bt cotton.” Reinforcing Glover’s observations, a

definitive, comprehensive study of Bt- cotton in India published in 2011

concluded: “Bt cotton is accused of being responsible for an increase of farmer

suicides in India. . . Available data show no evidence of a ‘resurgence’ of farmersuicides. Moreover, Bt cotton technology has been very effective overall in India.

Nevertheless, in specific districts and years, Bt cotton may have indirectly

contributed to farmer indebtedness, leading to suicides, but its failure was mainly

the result of the context or environment in which it was planted.” In addition, a

2006 study of four of India’s major cotton-producing states found that Bt-cotton



gave rise to yield gains of approximately 31% and a 39% decrease in number of

insecticide sprays, which led to an 88% increase in profitability, equivalent to

about $250 per hectare. Eminent Berkeley agricultural economist David

Zilberman sums up India’s experience with genetic engineering this way: “India

[has] gained from adopting [genetic engineering applied to] cotton but has lostfrom not adopting it with other crops. The US, Brazil and Argentina adopted

[genetic engineering] in corn and soybean, which led to increases in output and

gains from exporting these extra crops. India and the rest of the world have also

indirectly enjoyed benefits from the increased global supply of corn because of

[genetic engineering]. We endorse shopping in the marketplace of ideas, but not

when is is polluted by toxic goods. Recall Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s observation

that everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts. Shiva is a

seemingly endless font of bogus, made-up facts –that is to say, lies –and bizarre

reasoning.cEven the way Shiva represents herself to the public at large and topotential sponsors for her lectures –variously as a “scientist,” “nuclear physicist,”

or “quantum physicist”–is dishonest. She earned her doctorate not in physics, but

in philosophy. Ironically, Shiva’s connection with physics illustrates not her

expertise in the discipline, but her wrong-headedness. Her dissertation in the

philosophy of science (not in physics) at the University of Western Ontario

focused on the debate over a central notion in physics known as Bell’s Theorem,

which is concerned with “testing whether or not particles connected through

quantum entanglement communicate information faster than the speed of light,”

and which has been called the “most profound theory in science.” The abstract ofShiva’s dissertation states, in part: “It has been taken for granted that Bell’s

[theorem] is based on a locality condition which is physically motivated, and thus

his proof therefore falls into a class by itself. We show that both the above claims

are mistaken” [emphasis added].cContrary to Shiva’s conclusion, however, Bell’s

theorem has been proven scientifically correct. As Entine and Ryan wrote, “The

main thesis of quantum mechanics that she challenged has since been confirmed

by experimental physics, meaning that her thesis stands at odds with factual

reality.” But factual reality has never been Shiva’s forte.cWhile this upper-caste

Indian gets little right about science, she is clearly adept at extracting moneyfrom sponsors on the lecture circuit. According to her speakers’ agency, the Evil

Twin Booking Agency (we are not making this up), Shiva’s usual fee for an

American university appearance is $40,000 plus a business class round-trip ticket

from New Delhi. Thus, we infer that Beloit, Wake Forest and Arizona State have

probably paid Dr. Shiva close to $50,000 each for exposing their students to her



mendacious, baseless attacks on modern agriculture and science. As for the

substance of Shiva’s presentations at universities, we can only imagine. . . After

all, she is the author of “In Praise of Cowdung”–a paean to peasant agriculture

and an attack on improved seeds and modern fertilizers in Indian agriculture.

That essay and her other writings remind us of an old. Wealthy Activist VandanaShiva Is A Poor Advocate For The Poor – Forbes Peanuts cartoon in which the

character Lucy van Pelt is about to embark on a writing assignment. “Write about

something you know well,” the teacher instructs. Lucy begins typing, “The air

hung heavy with stupidity...

2) Their author is an embodiment of Orientalization and a slave to the Western

hell-hole. She grew up in Canada and lives in New York. Do not let the pysiccal

appearance of their author fool you of her true demonself. Completely ignore

their author and prefer our arguments.



Instumentalization Turn

Treating the sea as a symbol obscures the way the ocean is withdrawn from

human interaction which reduces the sea to something to be instrumentalizedSteinberg 13 (Philip E. Steinberg (2013) Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in maritime regions, Atlantic Studies: Global

Currents, 10:2, 156-169, DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2013.785192 Professor of Political Geography at Durham University in the UK 9/94 – 5/96 Ph.D., Clark University, Worcester, MA. Major: Geography. Dissertation: Capitalism, Modernity, and the Territorial

Construction of Ocean Space. Supervisory committee: J. Richard Peet (chair), Roger Kasperson, David Angel, Janice Thomson, Robert

Vitalis. 9/90 – 5/94 M.A., Clark University, Worcester, MA. Major: Geography. 9/83 – 5/87 B.A., Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH. Major:

Politics / Third World Studies.)

Even as ocean-region-based studies gain popularity, they all too often fail to engage the

aqueous center that lies at the heart of every maritime community. Studies that seek to

highlight political economic connections across ocean basins tend to ignore the sea

altogether , while those that highlight it as a site for challenging modernist notions of identity

and subjectivity tend to treat the ocean solely as a metaphor . In contrast, this article argues

that in order for oceanregion-based studies to reach their potential, the ocean must beengaged as a material space characterized by movement and continual reformation across all

of its dimensions. Drawing on a range of theories, from conceptualizations of morethan-human

assemblages to the oceanographic modeling techniques of Lagrangian fluid dynamics, this

article proposes a perspective that highlights the liquidity of the ocean, so that the sea is seen

not just as a space that facilitates movement between a region’s nodes but as one that, through

its essential, dynamic mobility and continual reformation, gives us a new perspective from

which to encounter a world increasingly characterized by connections and flows . The sea is not

a metaphor. So asserts Hester Blum in the first sentence of her agenda-setting article, ‘‘The

Prospect of Oceanic Studies.’’ 1 Blum goes on to identify a fundamental flaw in the bulk of

ocean-themed literature, maritime history, analytical work on cultural attitudes toward theocean, and a raft of scholarship in cultural studies in which the fluvial nature of the ocean

is used to signal a world of mobilities, betweeness, instabilities, and becomings. While

all of these perspectives on the sea serve a purpose in that they suggest ways for theorizing an

alternative ontology of connection, Blum cautions that they fail to incorporate the sea as a

real, experienced social arena . Instead, she argues for a perspective that ‘‘draws from the

epistemological structures provided by the lives and writings of those for whom the sea was

simultaneously workplace, home, passage, penitentiary, and promise’’ and that is thereby

‘‘attentive to the material conditions and praxis of the maritime world.’’ 2 I applaud Blum’s

aversion to those who would reduce the ocean to a metaphorical space of connection;

indeed, in the first part of this article I amplify her comments in this regard. At the same time,however, I find her alternative the study of works that emerge from the actual, material

encounters of humans with the sea somewhat wanting. While the sea is a social (or human)

space a ‘‘social construction’’ it is not just a social construction. 3 Indeed, human encounters

with the sea are, of necessity , distanced and partial . The encounter from the shore, from the

ship, from the surface, or even from the depths, while laden with affective feelings, captures

only a fraction of the sea’s complex, four-dimensional materiality. 4 To be certain, the



combination of emotional intensity with material distance that characterizes our understanding

of the sea has made for some excellent literature. 5 Art, after all, thrives on the distance

between affective and cognitive understandings. 6 This tension also happens to have led to

some relatively enlightened environmental management practices. 7 But the partial nature of

our encounter with the ocean necessarily creates gaps, as the unrepresentable becomes

the unacknowledged and the unacknowledged becomes the unthinkable . To that end,

following a discussion of some of the problems with the way that the maritime is often

considered in literary, historical, cultural, and geographical studies, I suggest three, related

alternative perspectives that directly engage the ocean ’ s fluid mobility and its tactile

materiality. To be clear, my aim is not to deny the importance of either the human history of the

ocean or the suggestive power of the maritime metaphor. Rather, I am asserting that in order to

fully appreciate the ocean as a uniquely fluid and dynamic space we need to develop an

epistemology that views the ocean as continually being reconstituted by a variety of

elements: the non-human and the human, the biological and the geophysical, the historic and

the contemporary. Only then, can we think with the ocean in order to enhance our

understanding of and visions for the world at large

Instrumentalization of the ocean undergirds modernity, racism, slavery,

ecological collapse and ongoing systems of colonial brutalityJacques 12

Environmental Governance: Power and Knowledge in a Local-Global World, ed Gabriela Kütting,

Ronnie Lipschutz

Peter Jacques, Ph.D. Department of Political Science University of Central Florida

Education Ph.D., Political Science, Northern Arizona University, 2003, with distinction. Masters

in Public Administration (M.P.A.), environmental policy focus, Northern Arizona University,

2000. B.A., Philosophy, Montana State University, with honors, 1993. B.A., Film and Theater

Arts, Montana State University, with honors,1993

Natural law here is important to the construction of power also, because it normalizes a specific

ontology as infallible. Thus, I have argued that it was not that Grotius made the ocean open for

all to use that set up matrices of world power and marine crises, but rather it was what he made

it open for that became so disastrous. Even after the open pool regime is closed, the purpose

remains the same— instrumental enterprise—and closing mare liberum fails to change the

essential place that the World Ocean holds in the minds of technocratic elite of the

modern nation-state. During modernity, such violence is unaccountable to the livingspaces of the World Ocean whether as the source of life, a home, an organism, an integrated

part in the universe that creates identity, or other purpose , because what had been “as

common once as light and air” had been bound in logos that precludes non-

instrumental ontologies and converts the oceans into a global water closet and avenue

to other lockers, just like South Africa became for Grotius’ Netherlands. Where mare liberum

originates a few years after the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch colonial seeds are soon



thereafter spread to South Africa in 1652. One space on the ocean became the same as

any other in its function and purpose. Thus, with a natural law of European privileged

trade and accumulation via a World Ocean, all other purposes, histories, and geographies

are erased or shrouded. See, for example, Hegel's view on Africa as a subject of such

globalization that is only possible after social relations and human-ocean relations are

commodified and open up the world to barbaric subjugation : Africa is not interesting from

the point of view of its own history. ... Man [in Africa] is in a state of barbarism and savagery

which is preventing him from being an integral part of civilization. ... [Africa] is the country of

gold which closed in on itself, the country of infancy, beyond the daylight of conscious history,

wrapped in the blackness of night. Of course the “blackness of night” appears to be a crude

reference to skin color , and blackness equating the undeveloped, the empty, and the savage.

Colonizing the “heart of darkness” then is rationalized by erasing geography through

the sea, making European development the end of history, and replacing other purposc(s) with

a singular global purpose of free access to the rest of the worlds spaces and homes as

naturalized right. Such erasure connects Grotius to Stephen Biko—where Biko led Black SouthAfricans to see “blackness of their skin” as the cause of their collective oppression and articulate

a Black Consciousness to reinstate not just political power in the face of Apartheid (apartness),

but to reinstate pre-colonial South African purposes and ontologies (sec Abdi 1999). Colonial

and neo-colonial periods expunge the meanings of the local connection of inlet to stars

of the South Pacific, or the organic functions of a living water . Perhaps this is the most

powerful reducer of modernity where all life and home is made to serve one master,

making the habitation of multiple “overseas” spaces (see Luke, this volume) less palpable

because there is no perceptible loss of purpose or function to the then colonial and now

globalized “Northern” minds. Enterprise, use, and free access to habitat and home

underlies the structure of contemporary political order, which means that this veryorder must maintain a hegemonic hold on ontological notions of not just the ocean or

of social relations, but of all-inclusive ecology (human and non-human) itself. Plumwood

agrees that a main explanation for how the rationalist culture of the west has been able

to expand and conquer other cultures as well as nature was that it has long lacked

their respectbased constraints on the use of nature—a thought that puts the “success” of

the west in a rather different and more dangerous light. (Plumwood 2002: 117) The success is

“more” dangerous because it leads in a boomerang effect back to the West where

ecological collapse presses hard on the doors of the West threatening broad social

collapse, and the West will not be immune regardless of how remote it tries to make itself.

Nonetheless, without the Grotian or Scldenian ocean, the colonial nations could not have

gone across the sea to siphon off resources, and ultimately create the structure of a

world capitalist system we now live in. Imagine the power of the current core states, such as

those in the G-8, without a colonial legacy to found their current power, and through this image

we can imagine a counterfactual position for the modem power of the sea. Certainly,

this power of the sea was not lost on Alfred Thayer Mahan, who knew that control of the ocean



was a prerequisite for extending national and imperial power . Control the sea, control the

world . was his modem contribution. In order to control the sea, it has to be something

ontologically that can be controlled, such as the “heap of matter that Nature could not bring to

perfection.”



Essentialism is bad Turn

Ecofeminism’s essentialization of men and women ignores the environmental

relations between men and women

Jackson 95 (Cecile Jackson, professor of development studies at University of East Anglia, New Left Review I/210, March-April

1995 “RADICAL ENVIRONMENTAL MYTHS: A GENDER PERSPECTIVE” http://newleftreview.org/I/210/cecile-jackson-radical-

environmental-myths-a-gender-perpective)

The problem of essentialism is a continuing issue in feminisms generally. Hilary Rose states

that ‘The problem for feminist materialists is to admit nature, particularly the body—that is, a

constrained essentialism—while giving priority to the social, without concluding at the

same time that human beings are infinitely malleable.’ *53+ The constraints on

essentialism are hard to find in radical environmental discourses where essentialism takes

the form of universalized positions on women’s love of nature as closely connected to

maternalism , and their emotional and spiritual understanding of nature, both of whichfeed into ecofeminist myth-making. Both ecocentrism and, especially, ecofeminism , thoroughly

essentialize women and offer no gender analysis of the specific and variable environmental

relations of women and men . For Mies and Shiva, women are always the victims of

ecodegradation—the impact of ecological disasters on women is said to be worse than

on men. Women are universal nature lovers, and: [E]verywhere, women were the first to protest against environmental

destruction. . . .[M]any women worldwide [feel]. . .the responsibility to preserve the bases of life, and to end its destruction.

Irrespective of different racial, ethnic, cultural or class backgrounds, this common concern brought women together to forge links in

solidarity with other women. *54+ Thus ‘women are the most active and committed in movements for conservation and protection

of nature and for healing the damage done to her’. *55+ I have discussed elsewhere the problem with such assumptions and

interpretations of the meaning of women’s involvement in environmental movements, [56] but suffice it to say that one needs

a contextual, historical, materialist and gendered analysis of particular examples .

Ecofem characterizes all women as maternal and caring – that is inaccurate and

reinforces westernized ideals of the maternal identityJackson 95 (Cecile Jackson, professor of development studies at University of East Anglia, New Left Review I/210, March-April



Essentialism is a precondition for the myth-making about women which characterizes

ecofeminism. Women are treated as a homogeneous group, and their feelings andbeliefs are confidently generalized about: Third World women. . .regard the Earth as a living

being which guarantees their own and all their fellow creatures’ survival. They respect and

celebrate Earth’s sacredness and resist its transformation into dead raw material for

industrialism and commodity production. [57] The ecofeminist inversion of value

associated with essentialized male and female qualities leads to a new scale of worth

derived from caring and loving. Hence Mies is able to criticize the emotional competence of

scientists by saying that ‘modern science demands people who are emotionally crippled’. *58+ By



comparison ‘An ecofeminist perspective propounds the need for a new cosmology. . .which

recognizes that life in nature (which includes human beings) is maintained by means of

cooperation, and mutual care and love.’ *59+ The emphasis on caring springs from several

sources. The feminist critique of science and knowledge is one of these: Masculinist

knowledge in the West has taken the form of an intense emphasis on the domains of

cognitive and objective rationality, on reductive explanation, and on dichotomouspartitioning of the social and natural worlds. [60] It is the admission of love, a recognition

that the process of care shapes the product, which opens up the prospect of a feminist

reconstruction of rationality itself as a responsible rationality—responsible to people and to

nature alike. [61] Feminist theorists [62] have suggested that the experience of

motherhood and caring labour leads women to a distinct kind of thought and

knowledge. This is difficult to evaluate given the scarcity of cross-cultural studies of paternal

love, which no doubt reflects anthropological ethnocentricity in no small measure. But Ruddick’s

suggestion of a universal experience of maternal love along the lines idealized in Western

norms needs to be challenged . Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s study of child mortality in north-

eastern Brazil [63] demonstrates that the death of a child may be regarded with some

indifference and involve a degree of complicity by mothers in circumstances where

mortality is high. Early marriage, even prepuberty, and high infant mortality, especially of

first-born children, are also the backdrop for something similar amongst Hausa women

in northern Nigeria who ritually reject the first-born child, practise name-avoidance of the

child, refuse to feed it and express revulsion in its presence, and frequently foster out first-born

babies. [64] The growing incidence of female infanticide in India and China, and excess

mortality of girl children, from what has been called ‘aggressive neglect’, in many south

Asian societies, also speaks of children’s highly conditional and sex-biased experience

of ‘maternal love’. The biological experience of childbirth does not necessarily generatematernal emotions and behaviour in the form idealized in the West.

Ecofem denies the rationality of women and reinforces the dualism they criticize

Jackson 95 (Cecile Jackson, professor of development studies at University of East Anglia, New Left Review I/210, March-April



Another pathway into myth-making is theology, and a number of ecofeminist thinkers

have emerged from feminist theology, the theme of women’s spirituality permeating much

ecofeminist discourse. Mies and Shiva explain that ‘as women in various movements. .

.rediscovered the interdependence and connectedness of everything they also discovered what

was called the spiritual dimension of life. . .Hence some tried to revive or recreate a goddess-

based religion.’ *65+ The reinterpretation of religious history, the invention of new

rituals (e.g. Starhawk’s celebration of menstruation) and the rediscovery of witchcraft are

major features of ecofeminism. Spiritual ecofeminism has been invented, selectively, out of

traditional elements from Indian, Chinese, and American-Indian religions. But orientalist

representations of indigenous peoples, especially women, deny them the opposite

qualities of those they are said to possess— by labelling women as caring, they are



thereby denied rationality, accordingly and constructed as ‘other’ . This exclusion may not

matter much to ecofeminists, for whom rationality is a dirty word, [66] but I think it is a serious

problem. Ecofeminists rage about dualism but reveal some starkly dichotomous thinking .

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