Abstract
When discussing the sustainability of agriculture, we cannot help but turn to the specific characteristics of farming labour. It is from such an eco-socialist perspective, of course in a very broad sense, that we can easily understand the incompatibility of environmental protection of rural areas and an internationalising market of agricultural products. Furthermore, as the analysis of the Japanese case has shown, to integrate agricultural production policy with environmental protection policy, we have no alternative but construct a decentralised market where local people can physically confirm the credibility of environmental safety for themselves. In this sense, the agricultural environmental policy reform pursued in Western industrial countries, including in Japan, can clearly not meet these requirements, if not moving along a wrong direction.
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- 1.
Like every concept of social thought, eco-socialism is in itself contentious. In this chapter, I will evade this difficult question of definition but focus upon the theories of Ted Benton and the eco-feminists, who propose for rethinking the importance of agriculture from a broad eco-socialist standpoint.
- 2.
One of the well-known caring theorists, Milton Mayeroff, defines care in this way: ‘To care for another person, in the most significant sense, is to help him grow and actualise himself’ (Mayeroff 1971: 1). He asserts that there is a universal pattern of caring which covers non-human life or even an idea. However, as his definition above shows, the interpersonal relation is at the center of his model. In a care activity, communication between the caring person and the cared is particularly important. Therefore, we must be cautious to apply this general idea directly to agricultural labour. Farmers inquire after soil or listen to crops though there is no answer except the one that the questioner imagines. May we not say this posture is almost caring?
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Maruyama, M. (2010). Evaluating Japanese Agricultural Policy from an Eco-socialist Perspective. In: Huan, Q. (eds) Eco-socialism as Politics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3745-9_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3745-9_10
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