Paul Pulé

After completing my Bachelor of Science in Field Ecology at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia (1991), I commenced my career as a Naturalist and Outdoor Educator, working with young people. Through this work, I developed a keen interest in the ideological underpinnings of the human/nature relationship, which led me to complete a Master’s in Holistic Science at Schumacher College (2003) in Devon, U.K. There, I explored Western humanity’s exchanges with wider nature, writing a thesis that encouraged an embodied and holistic understanding of our way of being in the world. This work is titled:Us and Them: Primate Science and the Union of the Rational Self with the Intuitive Self.

In pondering the reasons why is it difficult for Western humanity to show care for self, society and environment, a specific interest in the intersection between modern Western masculine identities and nature emerged. I will shortly submit a doctoral dissertation through Murdoch University in Perth that explores this topic. The dissertation is titled: A Declaration of Caring: Towards an ecological masculinism, and posits an ecologised masculinities theory and praxis that reawakens an ethics of caring to counter the ethics of daring that currently dominate Western malestreams. This work aims to dispel the male/nature oxymoron by aligning men with sustainability through primatological, paleoanthropological, historical, sociological, psychological and philosophical themes that are both theoretical and practical. Through this multidisciplinary approach to the research, I have constructed ecological masculinism as a new conversation in ecophilosophy that encourages Western men and masculine identities to show care for human and other-than-human Others – as the ultimate gesture of caring for the self.

I currently teach about Australian national identity along with the ethical and philosophical underpinnings of sustainability at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia.