ABSTRACT
Chapter 19 of the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity builds upon recent research into the origins of political identity, outlining a broader preliminary hypothesis that the longstanding tension between ‘left’ and ‘right’ political biases has evolved, in part, to serve ecological purposes. Carr and Milstein engage in an experimental re-reading of pre-European contact Hawai’ian history, tracing how political disposition helped populations respond to changing relations between population size and ecological carrying capacity. Specifically, in times of plenty, there was a predominance of political approaches congruent with contemporary tenets of ‘left’ politics – including a broad definition of ‘in group’ belonging and openness to difference and novelty – all of which facilitated the growth of populations to meet available resources. In contrast, where populations met or exceeded ecological capacity, political approaches associated with tenets of today’s ‘right’ politics – including suspicion, hostility to outsiders, and aggression – came to the fore, as violent conflict enabled groups to increase access to resources, while simultaneously and incidentally reducing populations. The authors contrast the potential survival functions of these historic emplaced ecopolitical identities with the current era, in which increasingly urbanized populations are removed from the direct influence of ecological patterns of scarcity and plenty, which are instead produced by capitalist political economies. Carr and Milstein close by exploring the ecological and cultural regenerative capacity of both ‘left’ and ‘right’ political identities in the contemporary epoch.
