Contraries
April 23, 2008 by BAKHTIYAR IBRAYEV , John Morelli and NEIL MILLER | Filed under: 1, 2, 3-The Goal of the Environmental Manager
Reading the articles in the library internet database, I came across the article that describes Environmental Professional as a Myth. The author insists that Environmental Professional is not a profession, but a government-endorsed, vague occupation without description of aims and responsibilities and, apparently, no meaning. The author uses sarcastic style in strongly criticizing the existence of Environmental Professional as a profession from the root.
I thought it would be useful to think from contrary and gain some more food for thoughts.
Environmental Professionalism as Myth
Tom P Abeles. “Environmental Professionalism as Myth. ” Greener Management International 49 (2005): 69-77. ABI/INFORM Global. ProQuest. RIT Lib., Rochester, NY.. 23 Apr. 2008 <http://www.proquest.com.ezproxy.rit.edu/>
Bakhtiyar,
I have found that the use of the word “myth” in the title of articles concerning the environment are often published by rabid industrialists posing as environmentalists. This article may fall into that category. I will need to spend more time reviewing it before I can say with any certainty, but I can say that environmental management did not come about as the author has suggested only a response to a “need to market goods and services.” It is a relatively new, a very important, and and evolving profession.
“the foundational underpinning, based on ‘interdisciplinary’ skills, is a fiction that is valid only because academia has knowledge catalogued and distributed using other unitary expressions. As a result the specialized knowledge is little more than old wine blended into new bottles”.
I actually didn’t like this article at all. I don’t know where the author is coming from when making all of these movie references to make fun of an entire educational field. I think you need to have diverse backgrounds in order to even understand what problems are possible. He even mentioned biochemistry… would you want a chemist to work at a company making drugs if they didn’t know anything about biological effects? The same is for a geophysicist, those go hand and hand in order to solve problems that come about in those situations.