Teaching Environmental Anthropology in Brazil and Latvia

This paper describes two courses dedicated to Environmental Anthropology offered respectively at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil and the Riga Stradins University in Latvia. The courses were organised in parallel modules, enabling the promotion of similar programs in the two. The aim of this paper is to present the discussions following each topic covered by the course and the case studies chosen by enrolled students for their final works in Brazil and Latvia. The final discussion highlights how, despite the differences between the two countries, the effective engagement of students promoted the emergence of their direct participation in the course development and new ways of situating themselves in their environments

Practical philosophy of education: the ecological-discursive paradigm as the complex problem

In the 21st century, more attention is drawn to the development of ecological thinking. Instead of explicating treatment of nature, a human being should take care of it. Such a caring attitude should become an educational universal, so it is to be transmitted as value. However, the ecological-discursive paradigm is still problematic in education. Therefore, the objective of the paper is to analyze it as a complex approach in philosophy of education. The paper considers environmental anthropology as the methodological basis of the ecological-discursive paradigm. Ecological culture is analyzed as ethnics of conservation. The paper emphasizes that ecological thinking cannot be developed without changing an epistemological model. Thus, instead of facts and competences, the person’s cognition should be based on values. The paper highlights the idea of diagnostic cognition, which is based on values. Its development in the process of education is the first step to the ecological-discursive paradigm.

Biomimicry as a Meta-Resource and Megaproject

This literature review of biomimicry and related models of treating nature as a meta-resource on a mega-scale integrates concepts of resources and abundance. Biomimicry, which lies at the intersection of biosciences and industrial design, is a praxis for drawing on designs and processes found in nature and using them as inspirational sources for technologies. Environmental anthropology often focuses on processes such as extraction and commodification that position nature as governed by an economy of scarcity with its existential state characterized by attenuation. The paradigm of biomimicry, on the other hand, construes nature as an infinitely renewable and generative mega-resource and meta-resource, one that is governable by an economy of abundance rather than scarcity. This literature review analyzes intellectual and epistemological trends and frameworks that have served as precursors to and have emerged around biomimicry across disciplines that treat the paradigm of biomimicry as a highly variable epistemological object.