YSEALI Study Guide
This study guide is designed to help you understand the required readings and their
relevance to the Institute. A brief summary of the reading and some questions to
help you think about the meaning of the reading for you, your country and region
are provided for each chapter assigned. You are not required to write out answers
to the questions, but they could be very valuable insights to share with your fellow
YSEALI scholars and the teaching staff.
Community and the Politics of Place
Author Daniel Kemmis, a former member of the Montana Legislature and former
Mayor of the City of Missoula, offers an examination of the roots of US/Montana
political structure and its relationship to how people can and do participate in
political decisionmaking and discussion. He chronicles the evolution of participation
in local decisionmaking in the US and documents the decline in community activity.
He argues that this decline is due to the loss of a sense of place and citizens actively
inhabiting their place are more likely to participate positively in political discussion.
Chapter 1: Preamble
Chapter 1 takes the reader through the Montana Constitutions, the document that
sets political structure, individual rights and the relationship of people to
government in Montana. Kemmis describes the evolution in the use of the word
“public” and how that reflects changes in public attitude toward politics.
Questions:
1. What guiding principles set the relationship between the people and your
government in your country? How are they similar or different from those
Kemmis describes in this chapter?
2. Do you see any influence of place in your country’s guiding principles? How
might they be different if they did or did so more strongly?
3. Montana does not have very many people in it. Does this make it easier to
connect to place do you think?
4. Are you surprised by the decline in trust in government in America? How is it
different from what you expected?
Chapter 2: Keeping Citizens Apart
This chapter reviews the contrasting ideas of government and the necessity of civic
involvement in its workings held by two founders of the American system: Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison. Jefferson believed that if citizens worked together
they would get to know one another and be able to agree to act in the common
good- the republican position. Madison believed that people could not be trusted to
act in anything but their own self interest and therefore designed a system of checks
and balances (like the courts ability to strike down unconstitutional legislation or
the president’s ability to veto (stop) a law passed by the legislature or the ability of
the legislature to override that veto with a supermajority of 60 out of 100 senators)
to keep any one body of government from abusing its power- the federalist position.
Questions:
1. Which position do you like better: federalism (Madison) or republicanism
(Jefferson)? Why?
2. Which model is closer to what you thought was the way government was
structured in the United States?
Chapter 6: Barn Raising
We start this chapter with the idea that there is a better consensus to be found, one
that better serves the purpose and the common good, than government usually finds
and government fails in this way because of the way it makes decisions. Kemmis
introduces the idea of “higher common ground” to describe a higher public good
that all would agree is preferred. One remedy he prescribes is to get in touch with
how others live their lives rooted in the place they are governing. This shared place
is literally common ground and the discussion, if attached to that place, can be
centered on that sharing and common experience. He goes on to urge the expansion
of “practices of commitment” based on a central concern about what is good for the
community and a strong objectivity about the reality of life in the place. The book
challenges the language of individualism and urges political discussion to return to
identification of shared values, in other words, a discussion explicitly oriented to
finding areas of agreement. Ultimately, Kemmis proposes that shared memory of a
common place is the start for such change.
1. Do you agree that living in the same place will make a group of people more
likely to reach consensus and to do so with common good as the most
important goal? Why or why not?
2. How does this compare with your political and social culture? Are Americans
more individualistic to your observation?
3. Can you think of examples where local people are better able to reach
agreement than regional, provincial/state or national governments can? If so,
do you think common knowledge of a place was important for that ability to
agree?
Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac is a very important book that strongly
influences how America views nature and the environment. In this book the two
essays “Thinking Like a Mountain” and “The Land Ethic” are core pieces of the
American environmental ethic and have shaped how we govern ourselves in
relation to nature.
Thinking Like a Mountain
This essay describes the animals of a mountain area in the United States and how
the various elements or parts of that place relate to one another. Leopold begins
with a vivid description of his killing of a wolf, a common practice at that time, and
his regret at seeing the “fierce green fire” die in the animal’s eyes as it passes away.
He then goes on to reflect on how necessary the wolf is as a piece of that landscape,
controlling deer populations and preventing starvation. Ultimately, he reflects on
the nature of safety and how our desire for security can lead us to do the wrong
thing for the world. He quotes Thoreau, another very important environmental
philosopher, and adds his support to the idea that “in wildness is the salvation of the
world.”
Questions
1. How are wild areas thought of in your city? Do people think they are unsafe?
Why? How does that change how they think about nature?
2. What is the right balance between security and letting nature do what it will?
What are the factors you think about when you try to answer this question?
The Land Ethic
Leopold begins the essay by describing an ethic as a limitation on freedom of action
in the struggle to survive. From this powerful image he goes on to say that land is
regarded as property and our relation to it has been solely economic. He finds this
relationship inadequate to protect the value of the land to people and nature. For
Leopold, ethics are about promoting cooperation to regulate our relationships to all
the “parts” that make up the world. Nature is a part and is itself made up of a very
complex combination of parts, all of which should be preserved. Ultimately, Leopold
advances the following as the manifestation of an active ecological conscience: “A
thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the
biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Questions
1. Do you agree with Leopold’s land ethic? How can you balance it with the
need for development to improve human quality of life in your countries?
2. Is there a leading statement of an environmental ethic in your country? What
is it and how does it compare to Leopold’s Land Ethic?
Living Downstream
In Living Downstream author Sandra Steingraber analyzes the effectiveness of
current US environmental policy through stories, often about her home along the
Vermilion River in the state of Illinois. Illinois is a long way from Montana and has a
relatively flat geography with large slow moving rivers through large urban areas
and intensively farmed agricultural lands. Although it is very different from
mountainous Montana, Illinois still shares water pollution, air pollution and toxic
pollution issues with some of the places you will visit in Montana. Therefore, it is an
excellent introduction to how US environmental policy has worked to fix some
issues and failed to resolve others.
Chapter 1: Trace Amounts
In this chapter Steingraber introduces us to her home: the flat agricultural land of
Illinois. She documents the chemicals used in this area and their effects on people
and nature. There is an introduction to the important environmental author Rachel
Carson and her classic book on chemical pollution: Silent Spring. Carson, a scientist,
was the first to raise the alarm that industrial chemicals, particularly pesticides like
DDT, were killing wildlife and threatening human health. Silent Spring began a
national debate that led to the water and air pollution prevention laws that we have
today in the United States. Steingraber reviews the effects of three chemicals: DDT,
PCBs and atrazine, and raises the issue that it is very difficult to show direct effects
but that strong evidence of a causal link between exposure to these chemicals and
cancer exists. Steingraber questions why this evidence is not enough to ban the use
of these chemicals. This chapter is the foundation that the rest of the book builds on.
Questions:
1. Are DDT, PCBs or atrazine used or released in your country?
2. How much evidence about the toxicity of a chemical do we need to take
action to protect public or ecosystem health?
3. Should we require more testing of chemical effects before we allow them to
be widely used?
4. Do you think people understand the risks of using chemicals like pesticides?
Chapter 8: Air
In the chapter called “Air”, the environmental effects of air pollution iare reviewed.
The issue of international spread of air pollutants is also reviewed. We discover that
toxic air pollutants like mercury or the pesticide DDT released in Asia travel all the
way to the middle of the United States. This connects to air pollution issues in Libby
and Glacier National Park, Montana. In the town of Libby the air was polluted with
the microscopic fibers of asbestos released by mining of a mineral called
vermiculite, causing dame to the residents’ lungs and a special form of lung cancer.
Likewise, in Glacier National Park, one of the most pristine places in the lower 48
states, mercury is deposited from the air, some of it coming from burning coal in
Asia.
Questions
1. What air pollution issues do you have in your country?
2. What laws do you have to protect public health from toxics in air?
3. Does your country burn coal to make steel or electricity? Do you know where
the mercury that coal contains goes?
4. How well has US air pollution law and regulation protected public health?
Are there ways US air pollution prevention rules could be improved?
5. What ideas do you have about how air pollution could be prevented in your
country?
Chapter 9: Water
The Chapter titled “Water” discusses the sources and effects of water pollution using
the Illinois River in Illinois as an example. Steingraber traces the sources of toxic
water pollutants from industry and farming in the watershed. The toxic chemical
issues of the Illinois River are very similar to those downstream of Butte, Montana
where a legacy of more than 100 years of mining has polluted the Clark Fork River
all the way to Missoula. Runoff from mining operations in Butte has led to the
presence of heavy metals in the water and sediment of the Clark Fork River. Heavy
metals are toxic and can cause a variety of effects ranging from skin disease to
cancer in humans exposed to them. Thus, the effects of water pollution in Illinois
described by Steingraber are similar to Montana and the effectiveness of US
pollution prevention law in Illinois is much the same as in Montana.
Questions
1. What water pollution issues do you have in your country?
2. What laws do you have to protect public health from toxics in water?
3. Are pesticides used in agriculture in your country and is the water there ever
polluted with them?
4. Do you have water pollution from mining in your country?
5. How well has US water pollution law and regulation protected public health?
Are there ways US water pollution prevention rules could be improved?
6. What ideas do you have about how water pollution could be prevented in
your country?