Examining Earth Day through Practice Theory and Postmodernism

As some of you might know, Earth Day took place yesterday on April 22^nd. Worldwide, since its inception in 1970, the day has been about supporting the environment and creating awareness about the issues that plague and threaten our planet. On Wake’s campus, there was an Earth Day Fair which occurred out on the quad where different groups talked about their Earth-friendly goods and organizations. Some of these groups include the Sierra Club, Eco-Products, and other organic food and product makers. But why do we celebrate this event, and what is the theory behind it? Through the lens of both Practice theory and Postmodernism, we can help to reveal the hidden meaning of the holiday.

Practice theory seeks to expand the previous anthropological approaches and theories into something more dynamic. It also seeks to address the weaknesses of other theories through its method of examining different aspects of culture and seeing how everyday practices affect culture. More specifically, Practice theory deals with the relationship between ideology, structure, and practice. Through examining this triangle, we can see how all of these three aspects affect each other as well as shape and change practices and culture itself. 

When applying this relationship triangle to Earth Day, we can immediately see how the event affects ideology. The goal of the event is to raise awareness of environmental issues, and by having special events to commemorate the day, the holiday seeks to shift people’s system of beliefs concerning the environment and make people more conscious of taking care of our world. This is a shift away from the ideology of consumerism and the wastefulness that capitalism promotes, as well as a shift from the effects of industrialism and pollution. Having this day once a year serves as a continual reminder and push towards this more earth-friendly ideology involving the planet and humanity's effects on it.

By trying to change the ideology that involves our care of the planet, Earth Day attempts to then use this shift to affect another area of the triangle, which is practice. When an ideology is shifted, daily practice also shifts in order to accommodate this new ideology. In the case of Earth Day, this shift in practice is to use more environmentally friendly products, and to live a more sustainable lifestyle. This shift in practice will then change the structure of the countries and world in which we live, because when people are more concerned with environmental issues and living in a more environmentally conscious way and push for these changes, governments respond. Their response entails changes in policies and the creation of new laws that are in accordance with their citizens' shift in ideology and practice. 

One example of a shift like this that we have seen in the past was through the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which brought to light the terrible effects of DDT use in agriculture on animals. This popular book affected the ideology of American citizens, and in turn, this concern affected the government and ended with a ban on DDT in agriculture as well as the onset of the Environmental movement.

Applying the Postmodernist lens, however, can create a different evaluation of Earth Day. One of the major ideas of Postmodernism is that there is no such thing as unbiased knowledge. Applying this to Earth Day and its celebrations, we can see that even though each group seeks to promote their own environmentally friendly and organic products, we can conclude that we do not know if what say is actually true. Some products that claim they are organic could have taken advantage of the many loopholes that exist for food labelling, and oftentimes consumers are unaware of this. In this way, it is important to be critical of the organizations that take part in Earth Day, to make sure they are actually following through on what they are promoting.

Another principle of Postmodernism is that of culture being a performance. Earth Day, in a way, is a performance. It is an act that shows how involved and invested in the environment one is, and by taking part in the celebrations, you do not necessarily have to live your own life in a sustainable way. Another aspect of this is that the organizations that promote themselves at events, like the fair here at Wake, could also be performing in a way that highlights or exaggerates how environmentally conscious they actually are in an attempt to promote themselves and ultimately sell their products. In Dr. Thacker’s Culture and Nature class, we examined this phenomenon through looking at the ways in which groups and companies endorse themselves as being more "green" than they actually are in advertisements. By doing this, companies take advantage of the environmental movement and the people trying to be more environmentally conscious. By looking at this tenet of performance within Postmodernism, we are able to look at the Earth Day with a more critical eye and examine the biases that could be hidden underneath the surface.