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Sustainable Agriculture : Pragmatism, Distinctions On Artifacts And The Role Of The Land Ethic, Dustin Mulvaney

Theses

This thesis will explore the ethical dimensions of global agriculture from the productionist paradigm to the land ethic in the context of the sustainable agriculture promoted in the fair trade, shade grown, and organic coffee movements. Much of the sustainable development debate in the environmental ethics literature has centered on justifications (from anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric worldviews) for preserving nature. Since agriculture is an artifact of human sedentary civilization, traditional nonanthropocentric arguments do not suffice because of the tendency to focus exclusively on natural systems. Building on the work of Katz's "Pragmatic ReConsideration" and Light's "methodological pragmatism," the role of anthropocentric …