Ecosocialism, Radical Pedagogies and Everyday Academy with Capitalism Nature Socialism (original) (raw)
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2020
This text begins with the assertion that we need to listen to nature and recognise the interconnectedness of all beings and living. I outline three principles central to a Freirean approach in popular education: political purpose and bias of the educator; dialogue as an epistemological and ontological process; and the 'vocation' of humanization. Using an eco-feminist lens, I then suggest that ecological solidarity: being part of, rather than apart-from, nature, must be a crucial part of any education going forward. This leads me to take the notion of emancipation away from individual, personal freedom towards a practical embracing of interdependence and interrelatedness as inscribed in the original meaning of 'ubuntu'.
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Infiltrating the Academy through (Anarcha-)Ecofeminist Pedagogies
Abstract In this manuscript I hope to clarify my use of a pedagogy that is sensitive to social and ecological struggles by reflecting on my personal teaching trajectory, ethnographic experiences, and theoretical reservations to feminism, anarchism and anti-/de-colonial struggles, because these can effectively inform students that we are tied to one another in biospheric knots by histories of domination and structural violence in ways that cannot be ignored. Any institutionalized, essentialist, corporate-driven teaching content cannot be challenged without a mutual synthesis of teacher-student knowledge, critical formulations of social and political realities through praxis, action and place-based environmental pedagogy. To me, this has been the first and most vital reason for the development of an anti-authoritarian pedagogy that is sensitive to (indigenous) people-environmental relations. Different sections of the manuscript focus on disciplinary boundaries around geography, anarcha-ecofeminist and de-colonial philosophical trends, my adopted philosophies and methods of human geography instruction. I conclude by emphasizing the ecosocialist orientation to human geographies because the real world is not divided into silos and disciplines, but is connected, complex and untidy. Hence, my intervention in support of the urgent need to bring sustainability, indigeneity, interdisciplinarity and intersectionality into the curriculum of the discipline in which I find myself, i.e., human geography. Keywords: Pedagogy; Anarcha-Ecofeminsm; Ecology; Feminism, Indigeneity
Knowledge and power: the illusion of emancipatory pedagogies within environmental education1
The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, 1996
The increased calls for transformation in response to the socio-ecological 'crisis' and the movement towards more sustainable societies; the dramatic political changes in South Africa, Eastern Europe and elsewhere; the epistemological shifts in the conceptualisation of science, education and research, and the paradoxes of the world of the late twentieth century provide the context for this paper. The need for educational organisations and educators to make an effective curriculum response to environmental and development concerns legitimises socially critical approaches to environmental education and a concern with processes of social change. We are faced, therefore, with dilemmas of personal, professional and political change: the need for transformation of both actors and structures. The paper highlights the unquestioned assumptions which underlie growing calls for social transformation and considers the significance of a socially critical orientation to environmental educ...
Green Theory and Praxis Journal, 2012
This essay explores the shared characteristics of ecopedagogy, radical pedagogy, and critical public scholarship in order to explicate directional guideposts for scholars and students wishing to engage in promoting environmental and social justice through their pedagogy or scholarship. I look to practices of transformative education for a core framework to connect students and teachers to understanding, critiquing, and struggling with forces at work in their communities and within global systems. In order to illustrate, I borrow terms for these guideposts from O'Sullivan's (2002) three discourses of transformative education: survive, critique, and create. These guideposts are interrelated and, though separated into three characteristics with multiple facets, can be viewed as interdependent. Under the survive guidepost, I investigate facets of contextualization, development of a critical moral character, the pain that often accompanies paradigm shifts, and the building and recognition of community and interrelatedness. Under the critique guidepost, I explore critique at two levels: the level of scholars and the level of their publics and students. Under the create guidepost, which engages both the material and spiritual creative contexts, I elucidate three elements: activism, transformation, and the creation of sites of change. In identifying and exploring these guideposts, I provide examples and build details into core ecopedagogy frameworks that I believe can serve as guiding characteristics in illustrating functional radical pedagogy and public scholarship in practice. 1 This essay begins with the assertion that scholars are engaged in an ongoing struggle to define and effectively deliver radical pedagogy and its sister practice, critical public scholarship. Whereas academics have performed both radical approaches to education and public service in one form or another since the earliest origins of the institution of higher education, I argue that discussions of definitions and delivery often overlook or sidestep fundamental shared characteristics of radical pedagogies and public scholarship practice.
2014
Setting out from the etymological meaning of the concept ‘education’, this paper is an attempt to conceptualise the contemporary educational terrain in so far as it is inescapably situated within the broader cultural landscape of 21st-century globalised society. The priority granted to technical rationality in modern and postmodern societies is noted, and the related ‘disciplinary’ character of modernity is explored via Foucault. This is elaborated on through the work of Hardt and Negri on Empire, or the new form of sovereign power in the world, in which the ‘multitude’ is called upon to rescue democracy from its current crisis. Returning to Foucault, the preconditions of autonomy in a world where we are reduced to ‘docile bodies’ are outlined, and the urgent need for recovering such autonomy in the current global situation of deteriorating ecosystems is examined in relation to the dominant economic system of neoliberal capitalism. If humans are born humans, as cats are born cats…it...
Ecopedagogy in education as the liberating praxis of modern society
2016
We consider the problems of anthropocentric pedagogical practices and propose the paradigm of ecological pedagogy (ecopedagogy) as a liberating praxis. It presents a reflection on the environmental crisis in the contemporary society and indicates conceptual ways to deal with the global problem created by modern industrial practices. In the context of European Renaissance, a new world view arose based on the heliocentric theory, while the ground of the anthropocentric science appeared. The Enlightenment was crucial in the battle against tyranny and oppression, but most (natural) philosophers committed their utopias to the development of science and technology for the sake of the economic progress of civilization. Since the 19 th century, capitalism became a dominant socio-economical system with the planetary power for the exploitation and devastation of Nature. In the cultural environment of the industrial society, human conditions are modeled according to the anthropocentric pedagog...
Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement
"We live in a time of unprecedented planetary ecocrisis, one that poses the serious and ongoing threat of mass extinction. What role can critical pedagogy play in the face of such burgeoning catastrophe? Drawing upon a range of theoretical influences including Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Herbert Marcuse, traditional ecological knowledge, and the cognitive praxis produced by today's grassroots activists in the alter-globalization, animal and earth liberation, and other radical social movements this book offers the foundations of a philosophy of ecopedagogy for the global north. In so doing, it poses challenges to today's dominant ecoliteracy paradigms and programs, such as education for sustainable development, while theorizing the needed reconstruction of critical pedagogy itself in light of our presently disastrous ecological conditions. Students and teachers of critical pedagogy at all levels, as well as those involved in environmental studies and various forms of sustainability education, will find this book a powerful provocation to adjust their thinking and practice to better align with those who seek to abolish forms of culture predicated upon planetary extermination and the domination of nature. BOOK NEWS REVIEW: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Critical+pedagogy,+ecoliteracy,+and+planetary+crisis%3B+the+ecopedagogy...-a0225460110"
Problems and Prospects in Ecocritical Pedagogy
""A critical discussion of the status quo in ecocritical pedagogy, in the wake of the publication of the new Waage 'Teaching North American Environmental Literature' anthology. The final published version has been much altered, thanks to the comments of Scott Slovic and Timothy Morton. Author Posting. (c) Taylor & Francis, 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Taylor and Francis for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Environmental Education Research, Volume 16 Issue 2, April 2010. doi:10.1080/13504621003624704 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504621003624704) ""