Chapter Six: Reclaiming Our Indigenous Worldview: A More Authentic Baseline for Social/Ecological Justice Work in Education

The world is currently in the midst of a social-ecological crisis. We cannot ignore that the primary cause of this change in our planet's ecological balance and the increase in social injustices is our heavy dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels and a capitalist economic system, which encourages exploitation of both human and more than human resources with no regard for the consequences. In such a reality, it is alarming that education treats knowledge as disconnected fragments and that environmental and social issues are often addressed separately in education. In order to live in environmentally healthy and socially just communities, we need ways of thinking and teaching that integrate rather than fragment issues. There is a need to recognize that the ecological crisis is a “cultural crisis”. With the need for such an approach in mind, Morgan Gardner (2005) formulated the term “linking activism” to describe one's “blended social-ecological justice practice” when “being positioned in a single construct” (p.3). I extend this into a consideration of environmental and social-justice educators as agents of change whose daily activism works to change the current cultural paradigm and bring social-ecological order and harmony. This paper will argue for the importance of engaging in linking activism in education by critically examining the mainstream environmental educational field in order to critique its paradigm that is imprinted by the current dominant culture, which in turn perpetuates social-ecological oppression.

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Four Ways to Expand the Foundation for CPED's Social Justice Framework

Impacting Education Journal on Transforming Professional Practice ◽

10.5195/ie.2017.28 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Four Arrows

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

Knowledge Economy ◽

Doctoral Programs ◽

Focal Point ◽

Project Based Learning ◽

Topic Area ◽

Final Project ◽

Social Ecological ◽

Ecological Justice ◽

The World

This article offers recommendations for deepening and expanding the important ideas about social justice that are presented in the current CPED social justice framework for the EdD. One suggestion is to better articulate the fact that social justice is ultimately inseparable from ecological justice, sustainability and diversity. I also argue that it is best if the proposed framework’s reference to the knowledge economy include awareness of the possibility that it can be as destructive as a material-based one. Although the framework report does mention community as a target for social/ecological justice, sustainability and diversity (SEJSD), it tends to focus primarily on its application in education settings. This paper emphasizes a greater expansion of SEJSD into the world of social/ecological justice education. Finally, I suggest a foundation for CPED’s framework that includes “project-based learning” whereby work on the EdD program’s final project, whether a capstone or dissertation, start “from day one” and be the focal point for all coursework. Such a process, common in most International doctoral programs, will assure SEJSD and mastery of a chosen topic area are at the highest level of interdisciplinary and will help encourage the kind of praxis in the real world the EdD should require, especially in the Trumpian era we entered on January 20, 2017.

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The Virocene Epoch: the vulnerability nexus of viruses, capitalism and racism

Journal of Political Ecology ◽

10.2458/v27i1.23748 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

pp. 635-684 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jude L Fernando

Keyword(s):

Political Ecology ◽

Social Order ◽

Ecological Change ◽

Human Species ◽

New Normal ◽

Social Ecological ◽

Ecological Justice ◽

Political Economy Of Health ◽

The World ◽

And Function

COVID-19 has ushered in a new planetary epoch—the Virocene. In doing so, it has laid bare the limits of humanity's power over nature, exposing the vulnerability of 'normal' ways of living and their moral and pragmatic bankruptcy in coping with those vulnerabilities. 'Normal' is powerless against the virus and has not worked for a majority of the world's human and non-human population. Whatever new normal humanity fashions depends on the socio-ecological change set in motion by mutations between human and non-human species. The outcomes of society's responses to the pandemic depend on how human agency, as an embodiment of social, ecological, and metaphysical relations, transforms the relations now shaped by capitalism and racism—the two mutually reinforcing processes at the root of the Virocene's social and ecological vulnerabilities. A deeper understanding of vulnerabilities is necessary to avoid recreating a 'new normal' that normalizes the current oppressive and vulnerable social order, while inhibiting our ability to transform the world. At the same time, the sweeping possibilities of alternative ways of organizing humanity's mutual wellbeing and nature lie at our fingertips. The emancipatory political consciousness, rationalities, and strategies inherent in such intuitively sensible and counter-hegemonic approaches, first and foremost, are matters of justice, embodied in the power that shapes human-nature metabolism. The Virocene is thus a battleground for social and ecological justice. To be effective partners in these struggles for justice, political ecology needs a universal perspective of social and ecological justice that functions both as a form of critical inquiry—that is, as a way to understand how social and ecological inequalities and justices arise and function—and as a form of critical praxis—that is, as a way to reclaim and transform capitalism and racism's power in valuing and organizing social and ecological wellbeing.Key Words: Virocene; political economy of health; capitalism; racism, vulnerability, pandemic

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Think Piece: Working for Living - Popular Education as/at Work for Social-ecological Justice

Southern African Journal of Environmental Education ◽

10.4314/sajee.v36i1.2 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 36 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jane Burt ◽

Anna Katharine James ◽

Shirley Walters ◽

Astrid Von Kotze

Keyword(s):

Popular Education ◽

Care Work ◽

Future Projection ◽

Large Measure ◽

Relational Work ◽

Working Lives ◽

Social Ecological ◽

Ecological Justice ◽

Transformative Action ◽

Care Economy

Drawing on the working lives of popular educators who are striving for socioeconomic and socio-ecological justice, we demonstrate how popular education is a form of care work which is feminised, often undervalued and unrecognised as highly skilled work. It is relational work that aims to forge solidarity with communities and the environment. Given the state of the planet, the radical transformations that are needed, and the future projection of ‘work’ as including the care economy in large measure, we argue that popular education is a generative site for further exploration of research into work and learning. However, to move popular education as work from the margins means to rethink the current economic system of value. Addressing the contradiction that undervalues work for life/living, popular education engages transformative action motivated by a deep sense of solidarity and a focus on imagining alternatives as an act of hope.Keywords: work and learning, popular education, care work, solidarity

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From sustainable development to social-ecological justice: Addressing taboos and naturalizations in order to shift perspective

Environment and Planning E Nature and Space ◽

10.1177/25148486211029427 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 251484862110294

Author(s):

Katrin Grossmann ◽

James JT Connolly ◽

Małgorzata Dereniowska ◽

Giulio Mattioli ◽

Luca Nitschke ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Urban Greening ◽

Political Climate ◽

Critical Fields ◽

Social Ecological ◽

Ecological Justice ◽

Policy Goals ◽

Barriers To Change ◽

Trade Offs ◽

Vested Interests ◽

Applied Fields

While sustainability was introduced as a game-changing idea, it has often been criticized for its vagueness and its over-accommodating bent toward powerful, vested interests, economic growth, and profit seeking—or, on the contrary, for not being able to enter mainstream politics. As a result, in the current political climate, sustainability policies seem to be everywhere, but so does the social and ecological critique of these policies. In this article, we articulate the seeds of an emerging cross-sectoral shift away from sustainability and toward social-ecological justice. Coming from a multidisciplinary background, we explore commonalities in the shortcomings of sustainability agendas and identify discursive barriers to change across three critical fields: transport, energy, and urban greening. Within each of these fields, we observe an upswing of scholarly work addressing the pitfalls and trade-offs of sustainability, but we also show how taboos and naturalizations embedded in these fields hinder adequately questioning the economy’s role in sustainability thinking and action. To develop our argument that there is an emerging cross-sectoral push away from sustainability agendas and toward social-ecological justice goals, we briefly examine the current state of the wider sustainability discourse together with its critique from a social and ecological justice angle. We then review relevant academic work across the applied fields of transport, energy, and urban greening, focusing on the normative and analytical aspects dealt with, and how they address and conceptualize tensions between the different dimensions of sustainability. In the concluding section, we highlight how a focus on sectoral and local tensions between ecological, economic, and social policy goals uncovers the ways in which injustices or environmental degradation are continually reproduced, despite the sustainability framework. We conclude with suggestions for thinking and acting under the umbrella of social-ecological justice.

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