EcoJustice Education and Community-Based Learning The Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition

EcoJustice Education: A Crucial Kind of Change Because the assumptions that belong to a culture are often invisible in their fullest dimensions and consequences, one must make them visible before discerning change. The very process of seeing the structure of thought is itself a crucial kind of change and genesis. Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life

An EcoJustice Framework Social and ecological justice are not separate. They share the same cultural roots.

An EcoJustice Framework Ecology: From the root “Oikos” meaning “home” A strong emphasis on relationships and interdependence Disrupts the managerial model introduced mid-20 th C. where science is applied to manage and control problems “out there.”

An EcoJustice Framework Two Primary Strands: 1.A deep analysis of the cultural foundations of socio-ecological violence 2.A recognition of beliefs, behaviors, traditions, knowledge, and skills that lead to a smaller ecological footprint/sustainable communities

An EcoJustice Framework Strand 1: A deep cultural analysis of how we think Examining “Discursive roots” of culture --Language matters How we come to think and behave in relation to each other as well as the natural world as created in our symbolic systems

An EcoJustice Framework Centuries-Old Cultural Discourses –Anthropocentrism –Ethnocentrism –Androcentrism –Mechanism –Individualism –“Progress” and “Growth” –Scientism

Dualisms and Hierarchized Thinking in Western Culture Basic hierarchized structure leading to hyper-separated consciousness and a logic of domination Culture/nature (anthropocentrism) Reason/ emotion Mind/body Man/woman (androcentrism)

The Language of Mechanism “My aim is to show that the celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism, but to a clockwork.” Johannes Kepler ( ) “For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so may strings, and the joints but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651 “Like the computer, the human mind takes in information, performs operations on it to change its form and content, stores information, retrieves it when needed, and generates responses to it.” Anita Woolfolk, from Educational Psychology, 1993 “The machine that biologists have opened up is a creation of riveting beauty. At its heart are the nucleic acid codes which in a typical vertebrate animal may comprise 50,000 to 100,000 genes.”

The Language of Individualism The idea that humans are “autonomous individuals” with the independent capacity to reason outside of our relationship or shared language with others. Assumes that the most “advanced” societies are those that maximize the so-called inherent drive to accumulate individual wealth and power. Thus, competition is seen as normal, and hierarchized social relations are a natural outgrowth of rewards for individual merit.

The Language of Individualism Examples: “Think for yourself!” We all construct “our own meaning.” Social inequality is a result of inherent genetic or cultural “deficits.”

The Language of “Progress” The idea that rapid social or technological change is inevitable and necessary to “advance” culture.

The Language of “Progress” “You can’t stop progress!” “unimproved land” “developed” vs “underdeveloped” “growth” “innovation” “advanced” vs “backward”

What would you expect to see in a culture organized by an anthropocentric world view? “It seems to me that in a culture organized by an anthropocentric way of thinking, it would be a short leap to treating some people like they are inferior.” Sabrina Clark, 12 th grade

Strand 2: Attention to local communities and indigenous cultures Revitalizing the cultural and ecological “commons” Practices and traditions, relationships that have a smaller ecological footprint Shared without the need for monetary exchange

Strand 2: Attention to local communities Attention to the relationship among biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity as the strength of any community. Problem of cultural, linguistic, and ecological destruction via economic and cultural globolization

Strand 2: Attention to local communities Earth democracy: recognizing the need for collective decision making by those who are most affected by the decision Recognizing the importance of decisions that take seriously the right of other living creatures to renew themselves.

Strand 2: Attention to local communities It is not quite imaginable that people will exert themselves greatly to defend creatures and places that they have dispassionately studied. It is altogether imaginable that they will greatly exert themselves to defend creatures and places that they have involved their lives in. ~Wendell Berry

Developing Citizen Stewards: EcoJustice and Community-Based Education Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMIS)

Three Key Strategies Community- based Learning K-12 Professional Development Community Partnerships

SEMIS Professional Development

What does this all mean for what we need to do? Developing the habits of mind and heart necessary for stewardship and creation of sustainable communities.

EcoJustice Habits of Heart & Mind Guiding Questions What are root causes of the social and ecological crises we face? How are the projects we are working on contributing to alternatives (more sustainable alternatives)? How do we know if our thinking and actions (or their implications) support or undermine life/living systems? How do we reflectively listen/understand the messages/ communication/ Nature/living systems are sending? How do we become ethical participants in an “Ecology of Mind”?