Suchergebnisse

This book throws light onto the nature and causes of three different but strongly interconnected crises in contemporary societies worldwide: an economic crisis, an ecological crisis and a normative (moral and political) crisis. These crises are reflected in the profoundly inequitable distribution of wealth, resources and life opportunities around the world. If we follow the causal roots of these crises, we are led back to an inherent dynamic in the capitalist economic system itself, discursively expressed as neoclassical, mainstream economics. For instance, by conflating human needs with market demand, mainstream economics disregards the needs of those who do not have sufficient purchasing power, as well as any needs that cannot be quantified or monetised in some way. Mainstream economics also ignores the notion of natural limits. Furthermore, it seems that everything that is quantifiable is potentially for sale and this results in the substitution of nature, indigenous cultural traditions and various life forms with commodities and 'human capital'. The latter is defined as the skills instrumental for continual economic growth. Besides critiquing the academic discipline of economics, this book also points to a number of dysfunctional and crisis-prone structures and practices of substantive economic life. It will be of interest to students and scholars working in philosophy, economics and environmental studies.--

1. Why critical realism, environmental learning and social-ecological change? Introducing the book / Heila Lotz-Sisitka and Leigh Price -- 2. Key critical realist concepts for environmental educators / Leigh Price -- 3. Using critical realism to explain change in the context of participatory mapping and resilience / Million Belay Ali -- 4. Networking : enabling or constraining institutionalization of environmental education courses in universities / Justin Lupele -- 5. Underlabouring systems thinking with critical realism in understanding Rhodes University's response to the sustainability imperative / Muchaiteyi Togo -- 6. Bhaskar and collective action : using laminations to structure a literature review of collective action and water management / Jane Caroline Burt -- 7. Absenting the absence of parallel learning pathways for intermediate skills : the 'missing middle' in the environmental sector in South Africa / Presha Ramsarup -- 8. The emergence of environmental ethics discourses in laminated, open systems : some educational considerations / Lausanne Laura Olvitt -- 9. Working with critical realist perspective and tools at the interface of indigenous and scientific knowledge in a science curriculum setting / Rob O'Donoghue -- 10. Indigenous knowledge and critical realism on the Eastern coast of Tanzania / Daniel Sabai -- 11. Dialectical critical realism and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) : exploring and expanding learning processes in sustainable agriculture workplace contexts / Mutizwa Mukute -- 12. Community learning as a passage through the dialectic? Engaging with absences in an irrigation scheme in Mozambique / Aristides Baloi -- 13. Exploring contradictions and absences in mobilizing 'learning as process' for sustainable agricultural practices / Tichaona Pesanayi -- 14. Exploring critical realist insights into transformative environmental learning processes in contexts of social-ecological risk / Ingrid Joan Schudel -- 15. Emergent properties and position-practice system of university educators in the mainstreaming of education for sustainable development / Adesuwa Vanessa Agbedahin -- 16. Steel Valley and the absence of environmental justice in the new South Africa : critical realism's kinship with environmental justice / Victor Munnik -- 17. Absenting absence : expanding zones of proximal development in environmental learning processes / Heila Lotz-Sisitka -- 18. Some implications of metaReality for environmental educators / Leigh Price.