Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Peter Cannavo attended the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association (WPSA) in Oakland, Calif., from March 16-19. He chaired the environmental political theory section, which entailed selecting paper and panel proposals and organizing the section's seven panels. At the conference, he participated in an annual workshop on environmental political theory. He also presented a paper titled, "Virtu-Based Politics and Environmental Values: Contemporary Political Thought Confronts Stability, Place, and ... Ruddy Ducks."
The paper discussed how postmodern political thought is often hostile to the values of stability and place-based rootedness and instead favors a politics of perpetual change and contestation and celebrates mobility and nomadism. Cannavo argued that postmodernism may conflict with environmental values. Environmentalism emphasizes stabilization of, and attachment to, valued places, such as wilderness areas or urban neighborhoods and emphasizes the protection of places against threats such as development, habitat destruction, and invasive species.
