Professor, ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ National Scholar
Contact Information
​O´Ú´Ú¾±³¦±ð: Rm 3123 Biosciences Complex
Phone: 613.533.6000 ext. 78634
Email: michael.smith@queensu.ca
Mailing Address:
School of Environmental Studies
÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥
Biosciences Complex
Kingston, Ontario, Canada,
K7L 3N6
Department of Environmental Studies and Department of Philosophy
Supervising
Please direct inquiries to the contact information provided.
Mick also supervises graduate students through the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies.
Current Students
PhD
Joshua Jones (Env. Studies)
Kate Lawson (Philosophy)
Kelsey Watt
Completed Environmental Studies Graduate Students
Jason Young
Gabrielle Pulver (co-supervised with Kristen Lowitt)
Zhuonan Liu
Peter Graham
Liz Cooper
Tracey Guptill
Riley Cassidy
Kristan Hart
Royah Khorsandi
P. van Huesen
Lisa Figge
Heather Schmitt
Sunny Lam
Hilary Davies
Corinna Dally-Starna
Academic Training
Ph.D. (Humanism and Anti-humanism in Environmental Values), University of Stirling, UK (1993);
M.A. (Modern European Thought), Thames Polytechnic, UK (1988);
M.Phil (The Ecology of Basidiobolus and Conidiobolus in Soils and Plant Litters), North Staffordshire Polytechnic, UK (1988);
B.Sc. Hons. (Ecology), University of York, UK (1982).
Research Interests
I originally trained as an ecologist, inspired by the upsurge in environmental consciousness from the 1970's onwards. I have a long-standing interest in the experiential, social, and political reasons why people do (or don't) value differing aspects of ecological communities with a particular interest in environmental ethics. My research seeks to develop theoretical understandings of the complex intersections of nature and culture as they affect our evaluations and experiences of environments. It engages directly with a number of current debates that are of vital significance for environmental politics which might be classified under 6 specific but overlapping headings:
- Environmental hermeneutics and phenomenology - understanding how and why we come to interpret and experience environments in particular ways, for example, as 'wilderness', natural, or brown-field sites, and how these interpretations inform our understandings of those environments' roles, values and sustainability. In brief - what do we mean by 'nature', how do we experience it and how does it become meaningful to us?
- Environmental ethics - the nature of ethical values and the ethical value of nature.
- Social-theoretical understandings of nature and environmentalism - including the role of nature in sociological, political and philosophical traditions, debates about the social construction of nature, materialism, vitalism, theoretical understandings of space and place, and different ways of thinking about nature-society interactions, for example, 'risk society'.
- The emotional mediation of environmental responses - including emotional geographies, emotional attachments to place, bio-philias and bio-phobias.
- Environmental politics - the place of nature in political theory especially in terms of the relations between ideas of nature, freedom, and citizenship, sustainable development, ecological activism, ecofeminism, sovereignty, community, and deep ecology.
- Tourism ethics - the many ethical issues that arise at the intersections of cultures and ecologies due to tourism developments and recent attempts to ameliorate some of the more deleterious aspects of these developments through, for example eco-tourism.
I am jointly appointed between the School of Environmental Studies and the Department of Philosophy. My current work is concerned with posthumanist notions of ecological community. I was a founding editor of the Elsevier journal Emotion, Space and Society (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/locate/emospa). I am happy to consider supervising graduate students in any of these or allied fields.
Books Authored:
Smith, M & Young J. Does the Earth Care? Indifference, Providence, and Provisional Ecology. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022).
Smith, M. Against Ecological Sovereignty: Ethics, Politics, and Saving the Natural World (2011) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Smith M. and Duffy R. The Ethics of Tourism Development (2003) London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-26685-8 (hbk) 0-415-26686-6 (pbk), pp.195.
Smith M. An Ethics of Place: Radical Ecology, Postmodernity and Social Theory (2001) New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-4907-6 (hbk) 0-7914-4908-4 (pbk), pp.286.
Books Edited:
Smith, Mick., Davidson, Joyce, Cameron, Laura, & Bondi, Liz. (2009) Emotion, Place and Culture Burlington VT & Farnham: Ashgate. ISBN 978 0 7546 7246 3
Davidson J., Bondi, L and Smith M. Emotional Geographies (2005) Burlington VT & Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 0 7546 4375 1 pp.258. (hb) & 978 0 7546 4375 3 (pb)
Di Domenico, C. Law, A. Skinner, J and Smith, M. Scotland's Boundaries and Identities in the New Millennium (2001) Dundee: University of Abertay Press. ISBN 1-899796-08-8.
Chapters in Books:
Smith Mick & Young, Jason (2022) ‘Does the Earth Care? Indifference, providence, and provisional ecology in an age of atmospheric change’ in Nuno Castanheira et al ed. Questões Ecológicas em Perspectiva Interdisciplinar Vol. 2, Brasil: Editora Fundação Fênix. pp.13-36. available for download at ISBN – 978-65-81110-67-3
Smith, M. (2021) ‘Community (Ecology and the Body Politic)’ in Marc Botha & Patricia Waugh eds. Future Theory: A Handbook of Critical Concepts (London: Bloomsbury 2021).
Smith, M. ‘Place’ in Dominick DellaSala & Michael Goldstein eds. Encyclopaedia of the Anthropocene (Amsterdam: Elsevier (2017) pp.95-101
Smith, M. ‘The Anthropocene: The eventual geo-logics of posthuman tourism?’ in Bryn Grimwood, Kellee Caton, and Lisa Cooke eds. New Moral Natures in Tourism (London: Routledge 2017)
Smith, M. ‘Rain’ in Jeffrey Cohen & Lowell Duckert eds. Veer Ecology: A Companion for Environmental Thinking (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2017)
Smith, M.‘Morrow’s Ants: E.O. Wilson and Gadamer’s Critique of (Natural) Historicism’ in Forrest Clingerman, Brian Treanor, Martin Drenthen and David Ustler eds. Interpreting Nature: The Emerging field of Environmental Hermeneutics New York: Fordham University Press, 2014).
Smith, M. & Davidson, J‘Autistic Autobiographies and More-than-Human Emotional Geographies’ in Dale Spencer, Kevin Walby & Alan Hunt eds. Emotions Matter: A Relational Approach to Emotions Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012) pp.260-279.
Smith, M.‘Apres Moi le Deluge: Ethics, Empire, and the Biopolitics of ‘Last-Chance’ Tourism’, in R. Lemelin, J. Dawson & E. Stewart eds. Considering the Ethical Dimensions of Last-Chance Tourism (London: Routledge, 2012).pp.153-167
Smith, M.‘The Earthly Politics of Ethical An-Arche: Arendt, Levinas, and Being with Others’, in William Edelglass edLevinas and Ecology. (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 2011). pp.135-160.
Smith, M. ‘The State of Nature: The Political Philosophy of Primitivism and the Culture of Contamination’ in Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl (eds.) New Perspectives in Anarchism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010) pp.381-399.
Davidson, J. and Smith, M. ‘Emotional Geographies’, in Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift (eds.) International Encyclopaedia of Human Geography (Oxford: Elsevier, 2009), pp. 440-445.
Smith, M. ‘Ethical Perspectives: Exploring the Ethical Landscape of Tourism’ in Tazim Jamal and Mike Robinson eds.The SAGE Handbook of Tourism Studies (London: SAGE, 2009) pp.613-630
Smith, M. ‘Development and its Discontents: Ego-Tripping Without Ethics or Idea(l)s' in J. Tribe ed Philosophical Issues in Tourism(Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2009).
Smith, M. ‘Road kill: Remembering What is Left in our Encounters With Other Animals' in Smith, Mick, et al Emotion, Place and Culture(Burlington VT and Farnham: Ashgate Press 2009) pp.21-34.
Smith, M. and Davidson, J. ‘Civility and Etiquette' in T. Hall, P. Hubbard & J.R. Short eds. The SAGE Comp