Books
Imagining transformation otherwise, 2021
This publication features ten case studies of organizations and initiatives from around the world... more This publication features ten case studies of organizations and initiatives from around the world that are committed to bringing about positive changes in society and strive to do that in different ways. Working in diverse social, cultural, and political contexts, the organizations and initiatives presented in this publication seek to address the systemic inequalities, injustices, and harm they perceive as important. They strive to do that in ways that correspond to their analysis of the problems, their respective theories of change, and their available means and resources. Although highly diverse in the ways they approach social change, these organizations and initiatives emphasize the importance of learning and unlearning in their work. This applies in equal measure to those initiatives with an explicitly education-oriented mission and to those that work on other approaches to social change, such as different practices of (internal) organizational transformation.
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Global Citizenship Education (GCE) for Unknown Futures - Mapping Past and Current Experiments and Debates, 2019
Using social cartography as its principal methodological lens, this report presents and engages w... more Using social cartography as its principal methodological lens, this report presents and engages with a multitude of GCE-related topics, including different understanding of the concept, competing academic and practical trajectories in the field, as well as current opportunities for collaboration within and beyond the relevant sectors. The publication also maps GCE-related or GCE-inspired initiatives, projects and partnerships, and offers key findings from a comparative study of these cases. The report was commissioned by the Bridge 47 project, a consortium of 15 European and global NGO networks, led by the Finnish NGDO platform FINGO, and funded by the European Union.
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Global Citizenship Otherwise Study Program, 2019
This publication was produced in the context of the "Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collect... more This publication was produced in the context of the "Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective". It was prepared by Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, Sharon Stein, Rene Suša, Tereza Čajkova, Dani d’Emilia, Elwood Jimmy, Bill Calhoun, Sarah Amsler, Camilla Cardoso, Dino Siwek and Kyra Fay.
We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Musagetes Foundation for the research of the collective, the residencies in Gorca, Slovenia, and the production of this booklet. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Cover image "Earth" by Vanessa Andreotti Website: decolonialfutures.net
This booklet was developed with a specific audience in mind: educators working with global citizenship education in Europe. It presents an overview of the work of the collective and outlines two pedagogical experiments.
The first pedagogical experiment, “Bare Basics” is a program for self or group study consisting of a collection of resources organized around 6 thematic areas (denial of violence, denial of unsustainability, denial of entanglement, how education has helped create the problem, so what/now what?, the difficulties/impossibilities of imagining otherwise).
The second pedagogical experiment is an experiential learning program that we run by request (as a TTT or a residency). It involves mapping, imagination, body and land-based exercises. We invite you to engage with the outline of both programs, starting with our “broccoli seed agreement” on the back of the booklet.
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This research project explores how notions of Canadian exceptionalism are being challenged and/
o... more This research project explores how notions of Canadian exceptionalism are being challenged and/
or reproduced in responses of students of seven Canadian universities to a survey related to
internationalization of higher education. The study analyses data from surveys (n=1451)
completed by undergraduate students in different disciplines collected between 2013 and 2015.
This data is part of a larger database of surveys that was developed within the Ethical
Internationalization in Higher Education (EIHE) research project (2012–2016).
This research adopts a mixed-methods approach to the analysis of quantitative and qualitative
data. A post-representational approach to the methodology of social cartography is used to map
two facets of the data. These facets are the general discursive field in which various exceptionalist
tendencies are being contested and/or reproduced, and the multiple dimensions of articulations of
exceptionalist tendencies.
Canadian exceptionalism is in this research understood as a complex set of self-constitutive
discursive practices, policies, self-perceptions and assumptions that simultaneously affirm and
construct an imaginary of Canadian society and Canadian nationals as morally, ethically and
culturally superior by exalting both the nationals’ and the nation-state’s inherent character as
already good global citizens. Exceptionalism is used as an umbrella term that joins together
several problematic aspects of unexamined ennobled narratives about the nation and national
subjects. In this research the concept of exceptionalism is developed by drawing on multiple
critiques of different aspects of liberal subjectivities.
The findings suggest that exceptionalist tendencies and articulations can be observed in the
responses of both international and Canadian students. They also suggest that while critical
thinking and engagement with diversity are valued highly by almost all students, the responses in
the survey exhibit a high level of ambivalence in terms of how (and to what extent) critical
thinking is deployed, while diversity is often constructed in commodified ways that seem to
indicate a desire for consumption of the Other’s difference for personal and/or national benefit.
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Papers, Chapters, Journal Articles
Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education, 2024
Despite the continued popularity of education for sustainable development (ESD) and expanded call... more Despite the continued popularity of education for sustainable development (ESD) and expanded calls for educators to inspire hope in the face of the climate and nature emergency, scholars from varied disciplines and knowledge systems have pointed to the disavowed social and ecological costs of the promise that we can continue pursuing infinite economic growth on a finite planet. In this article, we offer an alternative
approach to education grounded in a regenerative inquiry methodology. Regenerative inquiry can prepare people to honestly confront the limits and harms of “green growth” and support them to “grow up” by expanding their capacity to navigate complexity and uncertainty and activating a sense of intergenerational responsibility. We also offer an example of how this methodology was mobilized in the context of a year-long transdisciplinary program focused on the climate and nature emergency.
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Weaving an otherwise: Reframing qualitative research through relational lenses., 2022
The Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) research/arts/ecology collective is a transnation... more The Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) research/arts/ecology collective is a transnational and intergenerational collaboration among researchers, artists, educators, students, social justice and environmental activists, and Indigenous knowledge keepers. The work of the collective is multifaceted, but one of our primary orienting concerns is to grapple with the difficulties, paradoxes, and complexities that are often involved in efforts to enact systemic change at the intersection of concerns related to ongoing colonial violence and ecological crises. Specifically, we ask how we might pedagogically interrupt and reorient the colonial patterns that tend to be circularly reproduced through mainstream theories of change and approaches to problem-solving. The “gesturing” in our name indicates recognition of the fact that decolonization is not a single event but rather an ongoing, non-linear, long-term process. As GTDF member Elwood Jimmy says, decolonizing work is more like a marathon than a sprint; and in order to prepare for this marathon, we need to develop the endurance, capacities, and stamina that will equip us to face the detours, potholes, and speedbumps that will inevitably arise in this path. We frame the work of the GTDF collective as a form of education otherwise that seeks to become more accountable to the fact that our lives and livelihoods are subsidized by a violent and unsustainable (i.e., colonial) system, while also gesturing toward horizons of hope beyond what is offered by that system.
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Teaching in Higher Education, 2023
Many pedagogies that seek to address the climate and nature emergency (CNE) promise hope and solu... more Many pedagogies that seek to address the climate and nature emergency (CNE) promise hope and solutions for an idealized future. In this article, we suggest these pedagogies are rooted in the same modern/colonial system that created the CNE and other ‘wicked’ socio-ecological challenges in the first place, and thus they are not well-suited for preparing students to navigate these challenges. We also ask what kind of climate education could invite students to interrupt the reproduction of colonial futures, and deepen their sense of social and ecological responsibility in the present. As one possible response to this question, we offer an outline for climate education otherwise, which seeks to prepare students with the stamina and the intellectual, affective, and relational capacities that could enable more justice-oriented coordinated responses to current and coming challenges.
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Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 2019
Internationalization continues to be a priority within many Canadian universities. While it is im... more Internationalization continues to be a priority within many Canadian universities. While it is imperative to attend to the ethical dilemmas that accompany the intensification of internationalization, different ethical frameworks operate according to different orientating assumptions. In this paper, we seek to pluralize and deepen conversations about the ethics of internationalization by illustrating how three global ethics approaches address questions of international student mobility, study and service abroad, and internationalizing the curriculum. We conclude by emphasizing the need for both scholars and practitioners to engage in multi-voiced, critically-informed analyses, and dissensual conversations about complex ethical dilemmas related to internationalization.
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Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education., 2020
In this article, we reflect on learnings from our collaborative efforts to engage with the comple... more In this article, we reflect on learnings from our collaborative efforts to engage with the complexities and challenges of decolonization across varied educational contexts within the Americas. To do so, we consider multiple interpretations of decolonization, and multiple dimensions of decolonial theory and practice. Rather than offer normative definitions or prescriptions for what decolonization entails or how it should be enacted, we seek to foster greater sensitivity to the potential circularities in this work, and identify opportunities and openings for responsible, context-specific collective experiments with otherwise possibilities for (co)existence. Thus, we emphasize a pedagogical approach to decolonization that works with and through complexity, uncertainty, and complicity in order to "stay with the trouble."
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On Education: Journal for Research and Debate, 2020
The growing traction of decolonization as a discourse and practice within and beyond the context ... more The growing traction of decolonization as a discourse and practice within and beyond the context of academic scholarship has generated important spaces for critical, self-reflexive engagements with the role of systemic, historical, and ongoing colonial violence in the foundations of various scholarly fields. Although the overarching area of “decolonial critique” contains a considerable range of perspectives, both complementary and contradictory, overall these perspectives challenge the common assumption that colonialism is “over”, pointing instead to the ways that it has persisted and shapeshifted both in settler colonial countries (where the colonizing power never ‘left’), as well as in purportedly decolonized countries that are nonetheless characterized by “patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations” (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 243).
In addition to denaturalizing and historicizing the colonial present – that is, the ways that colonial relations continue to organize everyday contemporary life – decolonial critiques also gesture toward alternative possibilities for knowing, being, and relating. These alternatives are not sanctioned by, and in fact are often ignored or actively suppressed within, mainstream institutions and discourses. While decolonial critique has been around for a long time, arguably since the onset of European colonialism in the 15th century, its recent growing popularity has prompted many critical responses. These responses range from Indigenous scholars who express frustration with how decolonization has been conflated with other social justice projects premised on representation, recognition, and redistribution within a reformed but still-colonial system (Tuck & Yang, 2012), to the vitriolic backlash of right-wing groups who warn that decolonial critiques are nefarious efforts to eradicate white, western ways of life.
Yet beyond these two highly visible perspectives are perhaps the more common responses from researchers who question claims about the enduring character of colonialism and challenge the legitimacy of decolonial critiques in more subtle ways. Rather than dismissing them outright, they offer seemingly reasoned engagements with decolonial critiques that nonetheless ultimately conclude that the critiques are premised on scholarship that does not hold up to careful scrutiny, nor meet accepted (Eurocentric) standards of academic rigour, rationality, and social impact. Although these approaches are much less direct in their dismissal than those that attack decolonial critique on principle, ultimately, they tend to come to a similar conclusion that suggests these critiques are of little social or scholarly value. Because these engagements are articulated within the standard discourse and political orientation of mainstream scholarly critique, they tend to carry significant weight both within and beyond higher education institutions, and thus, they warrant a response. This is what we offer here.
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Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE), 2020
In this article, we reflect on learnings from our collaborative efforts to engage with the comple... more In this article, we reflect on learnings from our collaborative efforts to engage with the complexities and challenges of decolonization across varied educational contexts within the Americas. To do so, we consider multiple interpretations of decolonization, and multiple dimensions of decolonial theory and practice. Rather than offer normative definitions or prescriptions for what decolonization entails or how it should be enacted, we seek to foster greater sensitivity to the potential circularities in this work, and identify opportunities and openings for responsible, context-specific collective experiments with otherwise possibilities for (co)existence. Thus, we emphasize a pedagogical approach to decolonization that works with and through complexity, uncertainty, and complicity in order to “stay with the trouble.”
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Educational Philosophy and Theory
In this article, we address the limitations of sustainable development as an orienting educationa... more In this article, we address the limitations of sustainable development as an orienting educational horizon of hope and change, given that mainstream development presumes the possibility of perpetual growth and consumption on a finite planet. Facing these limitations requires us to consider the inherently violent and unsustainable nature of our modern-colonial modes of existence. Thus, we propose a shift from "education for sustainable development" to "education for the end of the world as we know it." We contend that the predicament we face is not primarily rooted in ignorance and thus solvable with more knowledge, nor primarily rooted in immorality and thus solvable with more normative values; rather, it is rooted in denials that stem from harmful desires for and investments in the continuity of the securities and satisfactions promised by modernity-coloniality. Faced with these denials, we emphasize a collective need to "grow up" so that we might "show up" differently to do the work that is needed as we collectively face unprecedented global challenges.
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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Education and Learning
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European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, 2019
This article explores how aesthetic gestures, experiences, interventions might help us make visib... more This article explores how aesthetic gestures, experiences, interventions might help us make visible certain problematic, enduring, and historically contingent aspects of the troubling ways of being in which we, modern/Cartesian subjects exist in the world. The article does not seek to ultimately suggest some pedagogical strategies or approaches that will help us deconstruct/dismantle these problematic aspects. Instead, it proposes that the common way in which we imagine solutions to our problems, is the very way, through which these problems are being created in the first place. The text pays particular attention to two problematic constitutive characteristics of the modern/Cartesian subject. First is the reductivist insistence on having our being reduced to knowing (Andreotti, 2016) that results in having our relationship to the world mediated (exclusively) through knowledge. Second is our insistence on being able to see/sense/experience ourselves only as separate, presumably autonomous, individuals that ultimately ends up producing us as such..
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Sinergias – diálogos educativos para a transformação social | n8, 2019
Tradução de Renato da Silva Pereira e Vanessa Andreotti.
Este texto é um experimento pedagógico... more Tradução de Renato da Silva Pereira e Vanessa Andreotti.
Este texto é um experimento pedagógico na forma de cartografia social que convida os leitores a refletir sobre suas teorias de mudança. O texto apresenta a metáfora da 'Casa construída pela modernidade' enquanto construção humana que ultrapassa os limites do planeta. A metáfora da casa oferece um diagnóstico possível de crises globais contemporâneas em sociedades modernas. O texto também apresenta um possível horizonte de esperança através de uma analogia orgânica que propõe uma forma de justiça transformadora e regeneradora vindoura que integre as justiças ecológica, econômica, cognitiva, afetiva e relacional.
Revista disponível em: http://www.sinergiased.org/index.php/revista/itemlist/category/99-revista-8
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Globales Lernen: Wie transformativ ist es?, 2018
This article (in German) is part of the "Globales Lernen: Wie transformativ ist es?" edited colle... more This article (in German) is part of the "Globales Lernen: Wie transformativ ist es?" edited collection of discusssion papers that offers a collection of reflections on transformative potential of global education / global learning. The collection was published by VENRO (Verband Entwicklungspolitik und Humanitäre Hilfe deutscher Nichtregierungsorganisationen e.V.). The article discusses the differences between critiques in global education that are oriented towards methodological, epistemological and ontological concerns. Using the example of the EarthCARE global justice network (https://blogs.ubc.ca/earthcare/) and drawing on Santos's (2007) concept of "ecologies of knowledges" it introduces multiple layers (ecological, cognitive, affective, relational, economic, intergenerational) of possible engagements with questions of global and local justice.
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This essay is part of the "Learn2Change. Transforming the world through education" book, publishe... more This essay is part of the "Learn2Change. Transforming the world through education" book, published by Verein Niedersächsischer Bildungsinitiativen, VNB e.V. The essay explores the difficulties involved in attempting to induce deep, transformative change through educational practice. It questions the power of knowledge, information and rationalistic deliberation (consensus building) as effective tools for inducing change. Instead it proposes that a transformation of historically inherited harmful patterns of behavior could be seen as similar to the
(embodied) processes involved in trying to overcome an addiction. As such it would likely involve facing an (externally imposed) crisis and a (potentially painful) "re-wiring" of existing neurological pathways. The conclusion remains skeptical of whether we are either willing or able to attempt such a "re-wiring".
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This document (in Slovene) discusses developments in the field of global education in Slovenia du... more This document (in Slovene) discusses developments in the field of global education in Slovenia during the period 2008 - 2014. It presents the broader context of the field of GE in the country, including key actors, institutions, policy documents and events that shaped this period. It also includes an annotated bibliography of global education resources available in Slovene language. The report was prepared on behalf of SLOGA - Slovene NGDO platform.
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DEEEP reflection series. Published by DEEP/CONCROD, Brussels., 2014
This thinkpiece was published as part of the DEEEP/CONCORD Reflection Series of publications rela... more This thinkpiece was published as part of the DEEEP/CONCORD Reflection Series of publications related to global (citizenship) / development education and awareness raising. According to DEEEP: "The Reflection series provides a space to present and reflect on new lines of thinking within the field of development education. The publications are personal, provocative pieces intended to inspire further debate and discussion on a particular theme. Our thinkpieces target predominantly development education practitioners and researchers, as well as anyone interested in the transformative potential of education and learning." This thinkpiece challenges some of the normalized underlying assumptions driving mainstream approaches to global education and argues for a need to radically re-imagine both its purpose and methods.
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Postcolonial Directions in Education, 2016
This paper discusses selected dispositions and characteristics of the modern liberal/Cartesian su... more This paper discusses selected dispositions and characteristics of the modern liberal/Cartesian subject observed in students' responses to a survey on internationalization of higher education in Canada. The data on which this paper draws is part of a larger database of surveys, interviews, policy analyses and case studies that were developed within the framework of the Ethical Internationalization in Higher Education (EIHE) research project. The EIHE project was funded by the Finnish Academy of Science and was conducted between 2012-2016. This paper draws on three key findings from the responses of students (1451) of seven participating Canadian universities to present a broader (theoretical) context that could be inferred from what was observed in the data. For this purpose the paper first discusses some of the theories related to the existence and prevalence of the modern global imaginary that could be considered as a meta-framework under which such relations between the (modern) subject and his/her Other are normalized. In the next step it draws on psychoanalytical strands of decolonial and postcolonial critiques of the modern subject in an attempt to sketch some of problematic (and often unacknowledged) characteristics of the modern liberal/Cartesian subject that lead to constant reproduction of binary hierarchical relations grounded on epistemic violence and privilege.
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We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Musagetes Foundation for the research of the collective, the residencies in Gorca, Slovenia, and the production of this booklet. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Cover image "Earth" by Vanessa Andreotti Website: decolonialfutures.net
This booklet was developed with a specific audience in mind: educators working with global citizenship education in Europe. It presents an overview of the work of the collective and outlines two pedagogical experiments.
The first pedagogical experiment, “Bare Basics” is a program for self or group study consisting of a collection of resources organized around 6 thematic areas (denial of violence, denial of unsustainability, denial of entanglement, how education has helped create the problem, so what/now what?, the difficulties/impossibilities of imagining otherwise).
The second pedagogical experiment is an experiential learning program that we run by request (as a TTT or a residency). It involves mapping, imagination, body and land-based exercises. We invite you to engage with the outline of both programs, starting with our “broccoli seed agreement” on the back of the booklet.
or reproduced in responses of students of seven Canadian universities to a survey related to
internationalization of higher education. The study analyses data from surveys (n=1451)
completed by undergraduate students in different disciplines collected between 2013 and 2015.
This data is part of a larger database of surveys that was developed within the Ethical
Internationalization in Higher Education (EIHE) research project (2012–2016).
This research adopts a mixed-methods approach to the analysis of quantitative and qualitative
data. A post-representational approach to the methodology of social cartography is used to map
two facets of the data. These facets are the general discursive field in which various exceptionalist
tendencies are being contested and/or reproduced, and the multiple dimensions of articulations of
exceptionalist tendencies.
Canadian exceptionalism is in this research understood as a complex set of self-constitutive
discursive practices, policies, self-perceptions and assumptions that simultaneously affirm and
construct an imaginary of Canadian society and Canadian nationals as morally, ethically and
culturally superior by exalting both the nationals’ and the nation-state’s inherent character as
already good global citizens. Exceptionalism is used as an umbrella term that joins together
several problematic aspects of unexamined ennobled narratives about the nation and national
subjects. In this research the concept of exceptionalism is developed by drawing on multiple
critiques of different aspects of liberal subjectivities.
The findings suggest that exceptionalist tendencies and articulations can be observed in the
responses of both international and Canadian students. They also suggest that while critical
thinking and engagement with diversity are valued highly by almost all students, the responses in
the survey exhibit a high level of ambivalence in terms of how (and to what extent) critical
thinking is deployed, while diversity is often constructed in commodified ways that seem to
indicate a desire for consumption of the Other’s difference for personal and/or national benefit.
Papers, Chapters, Journal Articles
approach to education grounded in a regenerative inquiry methodology. Regenerative inquiry can prepare people to honestly confront the limits and harms of “green growth” and support them to “grow up” by expanding their capacity to navigate complexity and uncertainty and activating a sense of intergenerational responsibility. We also offer an example of how this methodology was mobilized in the context of a year-long transdisciplinary program focused on the climate and nature emergency.
In addition to denaturalizing and historicizing the colonial present – that is, the ways that colonial relations continue to organize everyday contemporary life – decolonial critiques also gesture toward alternative possibilities for knowing, being, and relating. These alternatives are not sanctioned by, and in fact are often ignored or actively suppressed within, mainstream institutions and discourses. While decolonial critique has been around for a long time, arguably since the onset of European colonialism in the 15th century, its recent growing popularity has prompted many critical responses. These responses range from Indigenous scholars who express frustration with how decolonization has been conflated with other social justice projects premised on representation, recognition, and redistribution within a reformed but still-colonial system (Tuck & Yang, 2012), to the vitriolic backlash of right-wing groups who warn that decolonial critiques are nefarious efforts to eradicate white, western ways of life.
Yet beyond these two highly visible perspectives are perhaps the more common responses from researchers who question claims about the enduring character of colonialism and challenge the legitimacy of decolonial critiques in more subtle ways. Rather than dismissing them outright, they offer seemingly reasoned engagements with decolonial critiques that nonetheless ultimately conclude that the critiques are premised on scholarship that does not hold up to careful scrutiny, nor meet accepted (Eurocentric) standards of academic rigour, rationality, and social impact. Although these approaches are much less direct in their dismissal than those that attack decolonial critique on principle, ultimately, they tend to come to a similar conclusion that suggests these critiques are of little social or scholarly value. Because these engagements are articulated within the standard discourse and political orientation of mainstream scholarly critique, they tend to carry significant weight both within and beyond higher education institutions, and thus, they warrant a response. This is what we offer here.
Este texto é um experimento pedagógico na forma de cartografia social que convida os leitores a refletir sobre suas teorias de mudança. O texto apresenta a metáfora da 'Casa construída pela modernidade' enquanto construção humana que ultrapassa os limites do planeta. A metáfora da casa oferece um diagnóstico possível de crises globais contemporâneas em sociedades modernas. O texto também apresenta um possível horizonte de esperança através de uma analogia orgânica que propõe uma forma de justiça transformadora e regeneradora vindoura que integre as justiças ecológica, econômica, cognitiva, afetiva e relacional.
Revista disponível em: http://www.sinergiased.org/index.php/revista/itemlist/category/99-revista-8
(embodied) processes involved in trying to overcome an addiction. As such it would likely involve facing an (externally imposed) crisis and a (potentially painful) "re-wiring" of existing neurological pathways. The conclusion remains skeptical of whether we are either willing or able to attempt such a "re-wiring".
We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Musagetes Foundation for the research of the collective, the residencies in Gorca, Slovenia, and the production of this booklet. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Cover image "Earth" by Vanessa Andreotti Website: decolonialfutures.net
This booklet was developed with a specific audience in mind: educators working with global citizenship education in Europe. It presents an overview of the work of the collective and outlines two pedagogical experiments.
The first pedagogical experiment, “Bare Basics” is a program for self or group study consisting of a collection of resources organized around 6 thematic areas (denial of violence, denial of unsustainability, denial of entanglement, how education has helped create the problem, so what/now what?, the difficulties/impossibilities of imagining otherwise).
The second pedagogical experiment is an experiential learning program that we run by request (as a TTT or a residency). It involves mapping, imagination, body and land-based exercises. We invite you to engage with the outline of both programs, starting with our “broccoli seed agreement” on the back of the booklet.
or reproduced in responses of students of seven Canadian universities to a survey related to
internationalization of higher education. The study analyses data from surveys (n=1451)
completed by undergraduate students in different disciplines collected between 2013 and 2015.
This data is part of a larger database of surveys that was developed within the Ethical
Internationalization in Higher Education (EIHE) research project (2012–2016).
This research adopts a mixed-methods approach to the analysis of quantitative and qualitative
data. A post-representational approach to the methodology of social cartography is used to map
two facets of the data. These facets are the general discursive field in which various exceptionalist
tendencies are being contested and/or reproduced, and the multiple dimensions of articulations of
exceptionalist tendencies.
Canadian exceptionalism is in this research understood as a complex set of self-constitutive
discursive practices, policies, self-perceptions and assumptions that simultaneously affirm and
construct an imaginary of Canadian society and Canadian nationals as morally, ethically and
culturally superior by exalting both the nationals’ and the nation-state’s inherent character as
already good global citizens. Exceptionalism is used as an umbrella term that joins together
several problematic aspects of unexamined ennobled narratives about the nation and national
subjects. In this research the concept of exceptionalism is developed by drawing on multiple
critiques of different aspects of liberal subjectivities.
The findings suggest that exceptionalist tendencies and articulations can be observed in the
responses of both international and Canadian students. They also suggest that while critical
thinking and engagement with diversity are valued highly by almost all students, the responses in
the survey exhibit a high level of ambivalence in terms of how (and to what extent) critical
thinking is deployed, while diversity is often constructed in commodified ways that seem to
indicate a desire for consumption of the Other’s difference for personal and/or national benefit.
approach to education grounded in a regenerative inquiry methodology. Regenerative inquiry can prepare people to honestly confront the limits and harms of “green growth” and support them to “grow up” by expanding their capacity to navigate complexity and uncertainty and activating a sense of intergenerational responsibility. We also offer an example of how this methodology was mobilized in the context of a year-long transdisciplinary program focused on the climate and nature emergency.
In addition to denaturalizing and historicizing the colonial present – that is, the ways that colonial relations continue to organize everyday contemporary life – decolonial critiques also gesture toward alternative possibilities for knowing, being, and relating. These alternatives are not sanctioned by, and in fact are often ignored or actively suppressed within, mainstream institutions and discourses. While decolonial critique has been around for a long time, arguably since the onset of European colonialism in the 15th century, its recent growing popularity has prompted many critical responses. These responses range from Indigenous scholars who express frustration with how decolonization has been conflated with other social justice projects premised on representation, recognition, and redistribution within a reformed but still-colonial system (Tuck & Yang, 2012), to the vitriolic backlash of right-wing groups who warn that decolonial critiques are nefarious efforts to eradicate white, western ways of life.
Yet beyond these two highly visible perspectives are perhaps the more common responses from researchers who question claims about the enduring character of colonialism and challenge the legitimacy of decolonial critiques in more subtle ways. Rather than dismissing them outright, they offer seemingly reasoned engagements with decolonial critiques that nonetheless ultimately conclude that the critiques are premised on scholarship that does not hold up to careful scrutiny, nor meet accepted (Eurocentric) standards of academic rigour, rationality, and social impact. Although these approaches are much less direct in their dismissal than those that attack decolonial critique on principle, ultimately, they tend to come to a similar conclusion that suggests these critiques are of little social or scholarly value. Because these engagements are articulated within the standard discourse and political orientation of mainstream scholarly critique, they tend to carry significant weight both within and beyond higher education institutions, and thus, they warrant a response. This is what we offer here.
Este texto é um experimento pedagógico na forma de cartografia social que convida os leitores a refletir sobre suas teorias de mudança. O texto apresenta a metáfora da 'Casa construída pela modernidade' enquanto construção humana que ultrapassa os limites do planeta. A metáfora da casa oferece um diagnóstico possível de crises globais contemporâneas em sociedades modernas. O texto também apresenta um possível horizonte de esperança através de uma analogia orgânica que propõe uma forma de justiça transformadora e regeneradora vindoura que integre as justiças ecológica, econômica, cognitiva, afetiva e relacional.
Revista disponível em: http://www.sinergiased.org/index.php/revista/itemlist/category/99-revista-8
(embodied) processes involved in trying to overcome an addiction. As such it would likely involve facing an (externally imposed) crisis and a (potentially painful) "re-wiring" of existing neurological pathways. The conclusion remains skeptical of whether we are either willing or able to attempt such a "re-wiring".