De l’écologie symbolique à l’écologie politique. Anthropologie des controverses environnementales chez les Salish côtiers

Most ecological arguments fit within a perspective that can be called « naturalistic », that is they assume that there is a fundamental difference between humans (people) and nonhumans (things), and therefore between cultures (groups of people) and nature (things and objects). From this fundamental dichotomy, the central point of this ecological reasoning is to remind us that only cultures can be regarded as responsible (people) and must therefore protect nature (sets of things). We present here the emergence of a new type of ecological justification for the protection of nonhumans, which does not use the concept of nature or the ontological difference between people and things. These political claims must both fit with the modern ecological trend of global protection of the environment, and at the same time be able to refuse the implied ontology leading to the naturalistic understanding of the preservation of the environment. The latter notably includes the concept of nature and the notion that nonhumans are things that must be protected, which is the basis of ecology in the Euro-American world.