Congratulations Pat Brereton on his new book!
Congratulations to Pat Brereton,Water Institute Principle Investigator, Communications, on his new book "'Environmental Ethics and Film" (Routledge 2015).
This book explores how a wide range of contemporary Hollywood films and documentaries pose provocative ethical questions related to the environment and address the environmental challenges of the future. The book’s analysis reflects a growing interest in how film represents ecological issues, particularly the apocalyptic dangers of climate change, alongside other related environmental and ethical dilemmas. This accessible and engaging book provides a broad and extensive survey of a wide variety of films in which environmental ethics are, both implicitly and often explicitly, expressed.
Brief Outline of Chapters
In essence this volume will be structured by reapplying various core concepts and principles already mentioned, including the Tragedy of the Commons; Lifeboat ethics; Indiginous Otherness; Deep ecology, together with the ever present notion of anthropocentricism that preoccupies much of the debate in the literature. Leopold’s Land Ethic and notions around wilderness are also applied across various filmreadings. In turn these core concepts are dovetailed in a matrix manner with overarching themes and principles that have been abstracted and foregrounded from the broad array of ethical theories used to underpin and help frame the subsequent chapters in this volume.
-These categories and trajectories are loosely categorised to foreground varying ecological precepts, most specifically lifeboat ethics within chapter 2:
-Indiginous Natives, Otherness, hunting and the ethics of food consumption, explored in chapter 3
-Eco-feminism as a core lens to untangle progressive forms of environmental ethics, as explored in chapter 4
-Ontological debates around human agency vis-a-vis animals and spiritualism, as explored in chapter 5
-Environmental Justice and Third World poverty, alongside deep ecological notions like frugality, as explored in chapter 6
-Sustainability, Resource Management and the Ethics of Moral Hazard regarding global finance, as explored in chapter 7
-Environmental Risk and the Precautionary Principle framing ‘End of the World’ narratives and Climate change, as explored in chapter 8
-Some Final Observations and Concluding Remarks in chapter 9.
Contents:
Chapter 1 – Literary Review around Eco-cinema and Environmental Ethics
Chapter 2 – A broad overview of Eco-cinema and a selection of filmic examples drawn from the cannon, including very contemporary films concentrated around lifeboat ethics [All is Lost and Captain Phillips]
Chapter 3 - Indiginous Natives, Otherness, hunting and the ethics of food consumption are explored [Apocalypto and The Road]
Chapter 4 - Eco-feminism is used as a core lens to untangle progressive forms of environmental ethics [The Hunger Games, Gravity and Elysium]
Chapter 5 - Ontological debates around human agency vis-a-vis animals and spiritualism [Avatar, Fantastic Mr Fox, Grizzly Man, Life of Pi]
Chapter 6 - Environmental Justice, Frugality and Third World poverty [Koyannsqatsi, Powaqqatsi and TheConstant Gardener]
Chapter 7 - Sustainability, Resource Management and the Ethics of Moral Hazard [Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street]
Chapter 8 - Environmental Risk and the Precautionary Principle framing ‘End of the World’ narratives [Melancholia and Tree of Life]
Chapter 9 – Summary of chapters and concluding remarks.
Environmental Ethics and Film
Pat Brereton, Dublin City University, Ireland Series: Routledge [Earthscan] Studies in Environmental Communication and Media
2016 - published