Autor: Byrne, Patrick H.

Buch: Beitrag zur Konferenz: World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion 7: 1-2 (March 2003)

Titel: Ecology, Economy and Redemption as Dynamic: The Contributions of Jane Jacobs and Bernard Lonergan

Stichwort: Jane Jacobs; Merkmale für gesunde biologische u. ökonomische Systeme 3; Selbsterhalt (self-refueling); Skepsis gegen Umwelt-Moralisten

Kurzinhalt: Jacobs distinguishes dynamic natural ecologies and economic ecologies from mere machines by their capacities to "refuel" themselves.

Textausschnitt: (3) Self-maintenance through Self-refueling

"Machines lack equipment for refueling themselves" (2000, 66).

10a Jacobs distinguishes dynamic natural ecologies and economic ecologies from mere machines by their capacities to "refuel" themselves. What she means by this is that part of the system's operation is devoted to obtaining the forms of "energy" usable by the system itself. "Part of the energy each takes in from outside itself is spent to capture subsequent infusions of energy, and part of that to capture more infusions, and so on, repeatedly" (2000, 65). Mere mechanical systems, by comparison, are passive with regard to energy acquisition; someone else has to turn the crank or fill the tank, so to speak. (Fs)

10b In line with her endorsement of the value of diversity and complexity in other contexts, here, too, Jacobs insists that

Each system has its own integrity as a discrete, tangible unit. One organism's waste is another's dinner. Self-refueling has no generalized form - only many, many specific forms (2000, 67). (Fs)

10c Because self-refueling is so crucial to a system's integrity and survival, this assertion of uniqueness implies, therefore, that it is imperative to learn how each system effects its own form of self-refueling, and to undertake no policy that would imperil it. Once again drawing upon her earlier work, Jacobs argues that vital economic systems refuel themselves by beginning to produce locally what they had previously been importing from outside. Earlier she had devoted much attention to the dynamics of this "import replacing" process (1969, 1985); here she is integrating that earlier analysis into her broadened framework of natural/human ecology. (Fs)

10d Jacobs explains that she deliberately coined the term, "self-refueling" in order to avoid certain kinds of moral principles associated with environmental movements that she has found inadequate:

What about self-relying, self-sustaining, and sustainable? ... Those expressions overlap with self-refueling, although we tend to give them moral overtones. For example self-reliance is generally taken to be so admirable that lack of it is seen as unfortunate or even bad. Sustainable commonly applies to the practice of drawing on renewable resources at a rate no needier or greedier than the rate at which the resources can renew themselves; the practice implies environmental morality. Self-refueling [rather] is a basic natural process ... so fundamental to survival ... that conceptions of whether it is a good or bad thing are pointless (2000, 67-68). (Fs)

10e Her point is that simplistic versions of these moral principles can interfere with really understanding how refueling works - preemptively classing certain forms as "bad" before they are properly understood in relation to their environments. This is not to say, however, that Jacobs is unconcerned with the rate at which resources can renew themselves. Quite the contrary; she explicitly acknowledges that all natural systems and human settlements require unearned "gifts" (Lonergan's earlier schemes) that are "inheritances from earth's past developments and expansions" in order to start their own developments (2000, 54-55). (More on the theological significance of this observation later.) What she opposes is policies based moral principles that would declare certain categories of innovations in self-refueling to be "off limits" before the concrete situations are fully explored. Rather, in healthy economies, "chains of replacements typically start with goods and services that are easiest to replace at a specific time and in a specific place and replacements can proceed to more complex and difficult ones as ... its refueling equipment ... diversifies and expands" (2000, 78-79). (Fs)

10f In dynamic ecologies self-refueling is itself a dynamic process. It is no mere matter of constantly taking in the same forms of energy in the same way year in and year out. She points out that if this were so, the system would eventually perish. The constancy of the form of its input energy cannot be guaranteed; moreover, by its own expansion, it produces ever increasing amounts of dissipated energy that begin to accumulate in its own environment. Unless the system adapts, it will cease to function.

10g In any healthy biological or economic ecosystem, therefore, the dynamics of self-refueling both presuppose and are presupposed by the dynamics of development and expansion (2000, 82). Self-refueling takes in appropriate forms of "energy" (inputs, imports). Development modifies the system's "equipment" including its mechanisms of self-refueling. Expansion converts, recycles, and recombines the energy, altering its dissipated energy (outputs, exports). Altered outputs provide new potential energy sources, which further development, expansion, and self-refueling can make use of. (This, again, is comparable to Lonergan's account of development.)