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作者:Jay Roberts 8 年以前

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ENST 240 Environment and Society

Environmental studies encompass understanding and addressing environmental problems through a systems thinking approach. This method encourages a holistic view, considering the interconnectedness and complexity of systems in both natural and social contexts.

ENST 240 Environment and Society

ENST 240 Environment and Society

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Unit Four: Eco and Environmental Justice

Localism and Its Discontents

Demonstration of Learning Assignment
Reflection

One takeaway from this unit on Environmental Justice is...

Question #5

If you want to make the biggest environmental impact-- become a vegetarian. Why not?

Question #4

"Food like that is a toy for rich people. It is not an environmental solution." (Owen, p. 78)

Question #3

There is no difference between natural food and unnatural food-- it is all just food.

Question #2

It would be important for Earlham to work toward a goal of providing more of its food from local sources

Question #1

Labelling food organic food is a waste of time

How It Works

Folks on outside listen and consider what questions and or comments you would make to what is being said

Folks on inside discuss question posed-- be sure to speak up!

8 folks inside, the rest outside

Introduce Demonstration of Learning Assignment

Reflections on Environmental Justice

Fishbowl!

Questions on Vocation-By-Design?

Industrial Agriculture and Its Discontents

Local Food and Its Discontents

Last class in our Env Justice Unit!

Why Can't We All Just Sit Down and Eat Nicely Together?

Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming

Let Them Eat Kale?

Final Thoughts
Home Groups Redux

Discussion: what are the ethics of food? If you could limit human suffering by your food choices would you do it? If you could limit animal suffering would you do it? If you could limit ecosystem suffering...?

Report back from each of the expert groups (1-6)

Can we eat our lamb chops in peace?

Expert Groups

Expert Group 6

How might systems thinking help address current agricultural problems? What specific examples of systems thinking does Levins use?

Expert Group 5

How does he implicate a particular form of "science" in our current agricultural system? pgs. 437-439

Expert Group 4

What problems does Levins have with the word "modern" pgs. 434-437

Expert Group 3

Is there a way to eat ethically according to Manning? How do we create a "just" food system?

Expert Group 2

What is the "Green Revolution" and how did it affect our agricultural system according to Manning? pgs. 430-433

Expert Group 1

What is the history of our agricultural system according to Manning? Pgs. 426-430

Home Groups

Select Expert Groups: count off (6) within home group

Opening Query: Can you eat your lamb chops in peace? Why or why not?

Expert Group

Home group

Lesson

Class Overview

Final reflections

Levins: Seven Developmentalist Myths

Manning: The Oil We Eat

Jigsaw!

Opening Parable

Global and Local Dynamics
Globalization: Part 2

Work on Vocation-By-Design assignment!

Read Manning and Levins

Re-Thinking The Foodshed: Industrial Agriculture and Its Discontents

Vidal writes, “the new age of localism and globalism is here to stay. Where environmentalists position themselves is another matter.” After these two classes, where do you position yourself? How do you see living into this new age of localism and globalism? What makes you optimistic? What makes you fearful? What questions do you continue to have?

John Vidal

What does he mean when he says “environmentalism wants it both ways, needing, as much as loathing, globalization”?

How does he define localism and globalism? How do proponents of each view the other?

Paul Hawken

What the heck was the whole skeleton woman thing about?

How does Hawken provide a direct critique and response to Friedman’s call for speed and greed in regards to globalization? What other chronologies does he speak about?

Vandana Shiva

“The global, free market economy has become a threat to sustainability. The very survival of the poor and other species is at stake not just as a side effect or an exception but in a systemic way through a restructuring of our worldview at a most fundamental level.” Agree?

How does she argue that globalization disproportionately affects women in the developing world?

What does Shiva mean by monoculture of the mind?

Free-Write

Discussion of each text

Quiz #4

Introduce vocational by design project

First, using available resources (Web, Career Services, and/or the Environmental Studies website), find a job in the environmental field that you would be interested in that you might reasonably qualify for in 3-5 years after graduating from Earlham. Be sure to note what qualifications and experience requirements they are looking for. Write a cover letter and resume for that job noting your current experience and qualifications and a fictional (but reasonable) 3-5 years worth of additional experience that then sets you up for that job.

Quiz #4!

From Env Justice Unit thus far

Discuss the more detrminetal aspects of globalization

Globalization

What do we do with globalization?

In what ways do you disagree?

In what ways do you agree with the characterizations of globalization as essentially a positive force?

Ted Talk

Friedman: "...the only way to run as fast as the herd is by riding the herd itself and trying to redirect it. We need to demonstrate to the herd that being green, being global, and being greedy can go hand in hand. If you want to save the Amazon, go to business school and learn how to do a deal..." (254)

"You may have your own views about whether the freedom to choose between 30 different types of breakfast cereal is a valuable freedom. That is a matter of opinion. What is not a matter of opinion but rather a matter of bitter experience is that the extension of state power required to eliminate the cross-border choice offered by globalization is damaging and deeply undemocratic" (Martins, p. 13)

What do Friedman and Martin think about globalization? In what ways do their arguments connect to environmental issues?

Environmental Globalization

Transnational Problems

Resource depletion

Fisheries

Water

Food

Health

Global Pandemics

Diseases (Malaria)

Species loss and deforestation

Climate change

Population: A Bomb or a Boom?

Is it population increase, resource consumption, or poverty that is the real issue?

Environmental Kuznet's Curve

Population rates: The first billion took from the dawn of humanity until 1830. The second billion took only 100 years -- from 1830 to 1930. Three billion more arrived in the next 60 years. The next billion will take only 13 years. 11 new NYC/year Now: 6.9 billion. By 2050: 9 billion

7 Billion People...

'Globesity"

Disproportionate impacts

Multinational power

Cultural "invasives"

Ecological invasives

U.S citizen's lifetsyle neccesitates 5 planets

Earthrise (1968)

Introduction

Brief History

“More and more, politics in the flat world will consist of asking which values, frictions, and fats are worth preserving-- which should, in Marx’s language, be kept solid-- and which must be melted away into the air.” (p. 222)

“Creation of a global, web-enabled playing field that allows multiple forms of collaboration-- the sharing of knowledge and work-- in real time without regard to geography, distance, or… even language” (p. 176).

Flattening Forces... Fall of Berlin Wall Beyond communism. New world order. Netscape goes public Development of a web browser Off-Shoring Moving operations to where cheap labor is Open-sourcing Intellectual commons (wiki’s, google, apps., etc.)

Globalization 1.0 1492-1800, New World, Trade Routes Globalization 2.0 1800-2000, rise of multi-nat. corps. Globalization 3.0 2000-?, global, fiber-optic network and rise of a flattened world

Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat

Definitions

Economic integration of transnational corporations and ideological dominance of free-market systems.

"The free movement of products, reosurces, plants, animals, and in some cases people around the world" (Adelson, p. 248)

a contested concept

Avalanche!

Query: is the process of globalization giving us the results we want? Why or why not?

Is it possible to opt out of globalization?

Who was responsible?

Why did it result in the opposite of what you wanted?

Deb Jackson and SOAN focus
Introduction to Environmental Justice
Class Announcements

2 Readings

Meet in LBC Computer Lab

Deb Jackson Visit

Mid-Term Feedback

Adjustments

Students "multi-tasking" with computers (checking email, etc). Distracting to others.

All students should more consistently do the reading

Provide more concrete examples

Put Powerpoints up on Moodle

Provide more guidance ahead of time with readings

Large group discussions (low energy sometimes and low participation). Make more directive, more depth, more prompts. More students need to get involved.

Positives

Overall course design

Quizzes keep us on track

Experiential and hands-on activities

Small group discussions

Readings (amt, type, etc)

Mixing things up (movement, music, etc)

Fundamental Questions of Environmental Justice

Ownership, globalization, and the commons: how does globalization, privatization and commons "enclosure" benefit and/or disenfranchise historically marginalized communities?

Example: Shrimp industry-- wild caught vs farm raised

Who decides? How do decision-making structures at local, national, and transnational levels either give voice to or disempower the historically marginalized?

Example: Migrant workers and working conditions in the U.S. Living wage, pesticide exposure, access to health care, etc.

Where do people live? What are the interesections between health, economics, and policy?

Example: "Cancer Alley" in LA. Home of 125 companies that produce 25% of petrochemicals manufactured in U.S. 85 mile stretch is predominantly A-A.

Who is defining the problems and potential solutions? Who benefits from such definitions? Who pays?

Example: Climate Change and Developing World. Average U.S. citizen takes approx. 4 planets in terms of resource footprint. So why are problems framed as an issue of the "dirty" countries such as China, India, etc?

A Brief History

Popular Examples

Hurricane Katrina

Erin Brokovich, Hinkley, CA

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Like the Civil Rights Movement, much of this work has happened through the court system and through legislation

Clinton Executive Order in 1994

Environmental Justice Act of 1992

Internationally- more focus on indigenous rights and issues of intellectual property rights and cultural self-determination

Environmental groups such as Sierra Club, Greenpeace began to pay more attention to disproportionate environmental impacts on communities of color and economic disadvantage

1990 University of Michigan convened conference on race and incidence of environmental hazards launched an academic focus on "environmental racism"

1982 Warren County, NC PCB hazardous waste site: 69% non-white and 20% below poverty line

Basic Definitions

Issues of Identity and Marginalization: race, class, gender, and inter-nationalism (between) and intra-nationalism (within)

Power and Hegemony: an indirect from of rule or dominance. Can be established historically (colonialism/imperialism) or socio-culturally (policy/education/media/socialization)

Examples

Maori system of property ownership

Red-Lining

Issues of equity: whose fundamental needs are met now? Whose needs are not? Why?

The right to access and acquire certain fundamental needs: health, education, civil liberties, economic opportunity, etc.

"Until you talk about me having food, shelter, and clothes, I'm not listening to any appeals from environmentalists," a Black woman shouted out in one of the Workshops at the 1976 UAW Conference at Black Lake, Michigan.

Linking Social Justice with Environmental Concerns

Readings for Today

Three Stations

Station #3 Cynthia Hamilton

Station #2 Alice Walker

Station #1 Rachel Carson

Three Groups

The Context

Environmental Elitism

Ideological: Environmental "concerns" are only those that disproportionately benefit middle and upper class white's in developed world at the expense of marginalized Others.

Imapcts: NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) and LULU's (Locally Undesireable Land Uses)

Compositional: mostly middle and upper-class white's in developed world

Environmentalism=Preservation of Pristine Areas and Wildlife Preservation (Save the Rainforest, Save the Whale)

Unit Five: Action and Activism

Final Course Reflections
Systems Thinking-in-Action

Course evaluations

Final course reflections

CAP exhibitions

Gallery style. 15 minutes for each "gallery" with class mingling.

Come ready to present your CAP in some way

Queries

Does it represent a core, essential way of knowing for those interested in environmental problems and problem solving? Why or why not?

How does one (can one?) think this way? Does it come naturally or does one need to learn it?

What does Systems Thinking mean to you now, as we approach the end of the class and semester?

Systems Wisdom

Expand the Boundary of Caring-- our world is inextricably connected. "It will nto be possible for your heart to succeed if your lungs fail, or for your company to succeed if your workers fail..." (184).

Be TRULY interdisciplinary. Learn from, but don't be limited by, multiple disciplinary lenses. Recognize the value of the disciplines and also the distortions that can come from narrow points of view. Work on real problems.

In times of change, the learners will inherit the earth... (180)

Just because it is hard to measure, or quantify, does not mean it does not exist. "No one can define of measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love" (177). Beware the Biospheric Number.

Langauge creates reality. How we speak about the world creates the world. "We don't talk about what we see, we see only what we can talk about"

Question: why do you think Meadows sees the Freedom of Information Act as one of the most important laws in the nation from a systems point of view? (173)

Be transparent in your thinking, admit your mistakes, and be mentally flexible- everything you know is only still a model.

This helps reveal misconceptions and "over-realizing" the problems (leaping to solutions after quick problem definitions). 171-172

Learn a system by watching it work and studying its history. Permaculture-- watch your land for a full year before planting.

Meadows: Living In A World of Systems

It requires the BEST of the Liberal Arts... "our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our vision, and our morality" (170)

What to do? "...stay wide awake, pay close attention, participate flat out, and respond to feedback" (170)

This messyness means we have to be comfortable with uncertainty, unpredictability, and a lack of control

Systems, once lived out in the social world, are messy

Overview

Preparations for CAP presentations for TH

Systems Thinking Reflection

Meadows: Living in a World of Systems

Final Quiz!

Models of Social Action
Appreciative Inquiry
Educational Imperatives
Next Time

Vocation-By-Design project due

Read: Thich Nhat Hahn and Francis Moore Lappe

How do we work positively toward change given the realities of the world?

Avoiding "activist burnout"

What might an education for the future (in terms of EfS) look like?

Are we trying to "meet the future" with what we have done in the past?"

Do you all agree with Ken Robinson that we have a "factory" model of education?

Discussion of the Readings

Everyone

What is your reaction to this call? Should we look to the epistemology, ontology, and ethics of school as a key driver for both environmental probelms and possible solutions?

Number Three's

Find evidence of the same in the piece by Wilcove and Eisner

Number Two's

Find evidence of the same in David Orr's text.

Number One's

Find evidence in Aldo Leopold's text of these key questions. Be prepared to cite at least one passage.

Three Key Questions

Ethics

How should education prepare you for the Good Life? What is a moral education?

Teaching about sustainability vs teaching FOR sustainability?

Ontology

What is the purpose of schooling?

What is education for? Should all education be environmental education?

Epistemology

What knowledge is of the most worth?

How do we come to "know" nature and what role does formal and informal curriculum play?

Some Environment-Related Curriculum Projects

Eco-Schools movement

STEM

Eco-Literacy

Outdoor Education

Environmental Education

Place-Based Education

Education for Sustainability (EfS)

Some Key Terms

Method and Content

But... what if how you teach influences what you teach?

How you teach it

What you teach

Formal v Informal Curriculum

Informal curriculum of the everyday

Hidden curriculum

Formal curriculum

Education vs Schooling

A process of BOTH individuation and socialization

Schooling= social institution of cultural transmission (both reprecutive and productive)

Educare= Leading Out

Education is an APPLIED field

Environment/Sustainability?

Diversity and Race Relations: Brown v Board, Affirmative Action

Economic Competitiveness: Sputnik, Flat World

National Identity and Civichood: "Becoming Americanized"

Fulcrum Point of Social Change

Aims to examine (and solve) specific problems

Education is a MULTIDISCIPLINARY field

Psychology

Politics/Policy

History

Philosophy

SoAn

Overview of today

Reflections

Sir Ken Robinson

Discussion of Leopold, Orr, and Wilcove/Eisner

Intro to Education for Sustainability

Overview of the Unit
Meatless Monday's!
Key Queries of the Unit

Outer Work

What am I supposed to do with what I know?

What kinds of movements and activism are most effective?

How do I build solidarity with others?

How do I make a difference?

Inner Work

What am I personally committed to?

Where do I find hope?

Where is my moral center?

What do I believe?

Unit Three

Politics, Policy, and Econ focus
Humans-in-Systems
Environmental Policy
Environmental Economics
What is Society?

Unit Two

Humanities focus
Notions of Wilderness and Nature
What is the Environment?

Unit One

Introduction to Systems Thinking
What is Environmental Studies?