Re: [PeDAGoG] Stimulating points ... and some additional reflections (and points for 8th July meeting)
Dear PeDaGoGians, firstly apologies for such a late response to some truly moving and thought-provoking responses to my 'frustrated' mail, from Wendy, Vandana, Callie, Sujit, Katerina, and others. It has been a rich fare that I have finally managed to read in full, and I feel blessed. There are so many interesting points that have been made: how to break barriers between academics and rest of world, how to respond flexibly to situations in multiple timescales, crisis as opportunity (so big just now!), introducing the arts/theatre/music/dance into academics, the important of 'slow knowledge' and unlearning, how to deal with multiple identities, dig into deeper roots than conventional teaching tells us, the importance of place-based lives, picking up simple things like food and learning thrugh them, using not only our heads but also our hands, hearts, legs (Mahatma Gandhi's Nai Taleem education approach), getting out of classrooms to learn from the rest of nature and from communities in struggle/doing alternatives, 'thinking new thoughts' and going beyond teaching as a job, learning from children, the importance but complexity of 'translating' material into various formats/media for different audiences/participants, and much more! To these I would add: how do we see 'ordinary' people from commuinities, including so-called 'illiterate', as 'teachers' with their incredible practice-based knowledge and visioning; can we bring the art of dreaming into teaching/learning spaces (what are the youth visioning as their futures?); pickig up on the 'job' point, how can opportunities be created to make teaching/learning again a 'livelihood' rather than the deadlihood it has become for most (see https://www.localfutures.org/from-livelihoods-to-deadlihoods/). Each of these could be a great session of dialogue and cross-learning! On the 8th, lets discuss how at least some of the above can be dealt with in PeDAGoG, as earthy (I've stopped using the word 'concrete'!) activities: online dialogues, jointly written articles (Wendy), an international Masters course (Massimo's idea some months back), developing more material on all this (building on what is already available), translating existing material into other langauges/media forms. this is not to displace the agenda that Julia has suggested, only to add a bit to it. Julia, can you pl. send out a reminder and agenda for the 8th July call, with the zoom link? (Additionally to Callie: you absolutely need not apologise for, or feel out of place because of being "only a PhD scholar". This list is about post-development, unconventional, radical learning ... and it is deliberately also called 'academic-activist', to encompass all kinds of people who believe in and/or practice such learning. ANd if it helps (though it is unnecessary), I am not even a PhD scholar, only a 'lowly' masters! Additionally to the additionally, I think you should convert your mail into an article, it has some wonderful insights, and we'd be happy to consider publishing it on www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org website and link it to the Global Tapestry of Alternatives websiite.) 'See' you folks on 8th! Ashish LATEST! Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (thepluriverse.org) and www.globaltapestryofalternatives.org Ashish Kothari Kalpavriksh Apt 5 Shree Datta Krupa 908 Deccan Gymkhana Pune 411004, India Tel: 91-20-25654239; 91-20-25675450 http://kalpavriksh.org www.vikalpsangam.org www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org www.iccaconsortium.org www.acknowlej.org http://ashishkothari51.blogspot.in/ Twitter: @chikikothari On 06/06/20 10:55 am, [email protected] wrote:
Callie, thank you for your detailed reflection, I appreciate all you said. I strongly agree that education/ discussion/ policy making must take place as much outdoors as possible. We are embodied creatures after all. I recall once being in a conference room somewhere in the middle of Delhi where a speaker was taking about green growth, and I was getting increasingly uncomfortable because everything he was saying seemed so divorced from the living, breathing world (not to mention the absurdity of endless growth). There was a pariah kite on the verandah outside, looking in - they are ubiquitous in Delhi, largish birds of prey, very regal-looking - and I thought that among all the things that were missing was the representation of other species in this conversation, not to mention less privileged humans. Nobody took any notice of the kite, except me!
I teach physics at a small public university in the US, and have been experimenting with radical pedagogy, especially in the context of climate change. The university is on a steep hill, with old oak and elm trees in the central quad, which is at the very top of the hill. Sometimes wild turkeys wander through it, and one time, when we were discussing the physics of why some birds walk and others hop, we ran out of the classroom to see the turkeys 'do' the physics, which was both illuminating and fun. Last semester I did an exercise with my students where they had to sit somewhere in the quad (without their phones) and simply be with something not human - a tree, a bush, a rock, for five minutes. They were not enthusiastic at first, but their written reflections after the exercise conveyed - more than anything - surprise that there was so much to see when you really looked - and especially if the looking was 'open,' i.e. you were not trying to answer a particular question, which would have meant looking for one aspect and ignoring the rest. Some students also noted a decrease in stress. I plan to do more of these 'open' exercises when we are able to have face-to-face classes.
I've also done some preliminary work with village kids in a region of the Eastern Himalayas, near Kalimpong, conveying some basic climate science concepts through collaborative theatre. We did this in a building with no walls (just a roof held up by pillars) surrounded by bamboo groves and mixed pine and deciduous trees. I think the setting made the concepts come alive! During the few days I spent there, the kids and their families also shared how quickly the weather and environment in their areas was changing, so we had a potentially useful pairing of global scientific knowledge and deep local knowledge, but with equal weight given to both. In the future I hope to delve deeper into these mutual experiments with communities, and to learn from others on this list already engaged in this important work. I do believe that oral and musical traditions rooted in place can offer opportunities for us to create two-way communication where no form of knowledge is privileged over the other, and where there might be interesting cross-pollination.
Best,
Vandana
------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From: *"Callie Berman" <[email protected]> *To: *"Wendy Harcourt" <[email protected]> *Cc: *"PeDAGoG" <[email protected]>, "Ashish Kothari" <[email protected]> *Sent: *Monday, May 25, 2020 7:15:15 AM *Subject: *Re: [PeDAGoG] Open Discussion and Updates (May 2020)
Dear Ashish and Dear PeDAGoG members,
I would like to especially thank Dr. Harcourt (Wendy, if I may?) for expressing much of what I have been feeling. I’d like to offer my perspective in this string of thoughtful messages for what slowing down has meant for me, especially in regard to teaching. Perhaps the following also can serve as a form of self-introduction to the group as well. I should qualify that I am only a PhD student. So, please accept my apologies if what follow is misplaced or not entirely appropriate as many in this group seem to be full-time professors. However, like many others in the final stages in their PhD careers, contemplating over what an academic career may look like, maybe the following can be of use beyond formal department surveys and course evaluations; to give a sense of how many of us at the early stages of teaching/research careers are thinking about the future of work (what is ‘work’ anymore?) and the kind of life we may be able to have within the university (should we even have the chance to find a position).
For me, my (privileged) slowdown has meant building on my exposure to the culture and ways of others in a more attentive manner, particularly from the land I call home, Turtle Island (the United States). (Re)learning some of the creation stories and rich oral histories and myths has given me even greater pause and interest in learning from others. Contrasting the stories of Turtle Island’s creation with my own creation story (more or less) - the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the USA - to me, says it all. It is no wonder that we face the challenges we do and how desperately we need to learn how to look outside of ourselves.
For those of you in this group who may carry a more rooted beginning and sense of ancestral history that is not of the form of the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story, the nuanced perspectives you bring to your place of livelihood or wherever you call home matter. They matter to those of us who have been able to call ourselves your students. Today, I cannot imagine how I would even be able to conceive of a post-development world had I not had the opportunity to learn from my teachers - professors and mentors alike - how to understand and definitively be shown how the nature-culture dichotomy reproduces itself in life. That it is more than just some abstract concept to theorize with.
I think we should be less afraid to talk about simple things, like food. Having just read the thoughtful comments of Vanada in this string of correspondences, I think it can help us do away with any of the complex scaffolding our modern lives convince us that we need. Maybe in just sitting beside one another for a meal the need for walls won’t even emerge. I think we’ve forgotten how much these so-called simple things say. Speaking with my friends from Azerbaijan about life in the 1990s post-Soviet world, and the arrival of imported food stuffs from the West, glittering with brands and elaborate packaging, my friends told me of how people were confused and frustrated. “None of this tastes like food.” People still produced a lot of their own food locally and there has not historically been the same colonial-led relationship with agricultural pesticides like elsewhere, but this has and is changing. A lot. Of course. Starbucks and Hardrock Café abound in Baku and they are always busy. But what was strikingly different, for me of the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story-type, is that there is still a deep cultural appreciation and connection to real food. How food should taste. To some degree, some communities still have the knowledge with which they can hold food producers accountable if they themselves are not the ones producing this food. Whether and how they have the power to use this knowledge is another matter, but at least they still have it. Talk about food in your classrooms or think about ways of making the classroom a meal. You can’t imagine the kind of learning outcomes from participating in these simple human acts with those you teach. Maybe it could be a starting point to talk less about production rates and supply chains and more about how we become ourselves in a place and with others through how we cultivate, share and embody food.
Speaking for those of us with Declaration of Independence-type beginnings, slowing down for me has meant asking how I can advance this process and give conscious space for these processes to unfold. In academia, this has meant (and still very much is) identifying where our methodologies may be inadequate for knowing because they rely on outdated categories and/or narrow prisms for engagement. I think when we educate ourselves to these things, we can also understand our roles as (future/current) educators and what some of our responsibilities may look like. Granted, I am in a double privileged position in being able to think on some of these things because I don’t have a family to support. I want to at least acknowledge my privilege in this regard as I recognize the kinds of imaginative constraints this puts on far too many people wanting to offer good hearts and minds.
I think much of this process, the education of educators and students alike, does and should take place even more outside of the formal classroom environment, so we can learn how to make our methodologies more equitable for what they purportedly represent. I am grateful to some of my friends of the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes for showing me what this could look like. For example, there is much discussion of bison conservation in the western states. As per standard protocol, much of this discussion transpires in board rooms, via email, etc. Spending time on reservations with bison reintroduction projects, I learned to appreciate that, sure, we can talk about bison in a conference center, but doesn’t it make more sense to talk about these things while standing out in the field /with them/? To let their actions and behaviors guide the conversation? To actual be with them rather than merely talking /about them/? In not being so removed, I think modern management and conservation learns that it doesn’t need as much of itself as it may like to believe. You don’t get to not pay attention to how things actually are. That the natural world functions in remarkably responsive and attuned ways that don’t need to be “protected” via such a heavy human hand. Only certain knowledges thrive in dislocated office spaces. So we need others to show us where we could (re)locate our offices.
A related thought arena I have been pondering amidst my privilege slowdown has been human’s relationship with dance and music. How can dance and music function within the bounds of Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story-type societies and how can I talk about dance and music with students as things that are more than acts of convenient Friday entertainment and quick socializing? That they have historically been legitimate forms of knowing and engaging with the universe? Thinking more deeply about how, for example, characteristics of specific arm movements are meant to represent water movement behavior of a river in some dances, while subtle changes reflect a mimicking of water in an ocean. How the very colors of different ritual dress function to relate in the specific ways to the entities that are being danced to. I could never have learned these things if it wasn’t for the generosity of my teachers from Cuba. I think when we develop better ways of appreciating these things ourselves – how to really talk about music – we can ensure that the paradigm of an educated person of the future is not only a human with IT skills, but a human who also understands the value of protecting other worldviews for the important ways they allow us to access and to think about our relational possibilities with the universe. I think we should meditate profoundly over how we can allow more people and ideas from non-Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story upbringings to the classroom, or perhaps by bringing the classroom to them.
Taking cue from Vanata’s powerful question: why do we have so many walls? I think about a time last year in London’s St. Pancreas train station. Inside is a piano for those who feel inclined to share their talents. This is done in the name of enhancing the well-being of those around, and rightly so. Yet, just outside the train station, was a musician, huddled over with his instrument beside a tin and sign for spare change. Why do his musical acts categorize him as a beggar, while another gets to be perceived as a musician and given a more welcomed place in society?
That being able to ‘slow down is a luxury’ is becoming a bit of a cliche. Of course, this so-called slowdown is all happening in the context of response measures, I think many of us in this group sense, are simply recreating much of the same. That it does not feel good in our hearts, I think, adds to the sense of urgency to act, to direct our attention and our energies quickly and in important directions so the crisis moment will not amount to either more permissible greed or to more good intentions becoming misguided and misused. For sure, the impulse to act, which wells up quite often for me, while being confronted with an interest of wanting to remain cautious and mindful, feels disorienting.
I am very appreciative of Wendy’s words. Especially in writing from Cambridge, one of the historic epicenters for grooming privilege, I think it is key that we use the slowdown that lockdown affords some of us in thoughtful and focused ways. For me, this “slow down” has been a chance to check my commitment. What does it mean to me to not reproduce “more of this same”? How do I not distract myself and ultimately perform more of the same while thinking I am pursuing or contributing to something different? How do I (and can we?) strike a balance between proceeding intelligently in thinking about my potential role as an educator, rather than remaining constrained by the neoliberal conventional teaching model? For me, this has been meditating profoundly on how I educate myself so that I can think about how I can incorporate other ideas and participants to better access or protect the potential for other possibilities. Worldviews that can remind us of very different relationships humans have had to things like rhythm and to fundamental features of the universe. If we are “to think new thoughts” a phrase from Arturo Escobar’s ‘Designs for the Pluriverse’ which, for me, has been a simple yet deeply powerful phrase I have been thinking on these last weeks, how can I contribute to moving things in this direction as a possible teacher in the future? Can I think about these things beyond the confines of what I do in a ‘job’?
Thinking about Wendy’s comment, wanting to do more to listen, maybe listening to how others experience loss could become an avenue for new ways. Based on my observations of growing up in the western part of Turtle Island, loss is still conceived as a decline in natural areas available for recreating or for leisure. We do not yet see this as a death of our very selves because /we do not have the language for it/. Our creation story did not teach us this language. Our elders did not learn the ways of interpreting the dreams of community members nor imparting the steps of the Sun Dance to the next generation to give us the framework for comprehending how our current choices are hurting us all. From my reading for many of the us from the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story mindsets, loss is still equated too much with a loss of where we take our holidays and in an air of inconvenience.
Perhaps slowdown for me has meant a deeper acknowledgement of how too many of us of Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story beginnings are worried that about producing more of the same because we don’t know how to talk about what the actual problems are, at least in a more collective way. I think many of us here recognize that our systems have too strong a tendency of churning up convincing solutions that too many buy into because of a crisis context and lack of exposure to other frameworks for thinking, and that much of this amounts to quick tech fixes and staying power of a few. What we need are stories and experiences from elsewhere of how life can be lived. I write this not to pay lip service to solidarity, but so that we can design our places of education in ways that make sense.
As a final closing thought, (and at the risk of being entirely left-field), reading and reflecting over what other historical social structures have been and how they could offer useful perspectives for us today, it seems to me that children could have a more important role to play in our collective futures. While I do not have children of my own to be able to offer this based on direct experience with what that kind of caregiving looks like, I can appreciate the ways in which, as we often remark at home, “kids can say the darndest things.” To me, this expression says more about us as adults though. I think some societies have retained a greater ability to value the observations of children, and ways to integrate them as wisdom of members of the community. That they haven’t been taught to relinquish imagination might be one bit of it. Maybe, amidst the hope of striking a balance between wanting to act yet not fashioning more of the same, we can notice of how younger souls are in the world. Maybe they could become a larger part of our re-envisioned classrooms.
My warm regards from Cambridge and deep thanks for this group,
Callie
(A final apology for length as I had no intention of spanning so many words! I respect how everyone is exceedingly busy in their own lives and do not wish to abuse the group list nor make this pseudo introduction/thought-share an overkill. I am deeply grateful for all the contributions I have been able to read on this correspondence chain and for being able to connect with so many who are thinking deeply and committedly)
On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 10:29 AM Wendy Harcourt <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Ashish
thank you for the frank message which made me pause to think about how we are all somewhat frantic about communicating in these particular times. I personally think taking it slow, pausing, reflecting, trusting in the connections is also ok. Particularly as pedagogy in the neoliberal academic institutions where I am based and earn my livelihoods is changing far too rapidly I have been deeply appreciative of reading how others are teaching, for years, alternatives, and learning more about otherwise knowledges from the posts. I am appreciate Brandon has encouraged people to post but not too worried that it has not taken off. It is connecting us, slowly but surely.
I am perhaps somewhat shy to share from Europe - in the heart of white privilege. I feel my position these days is to learn and listen and change. I am pleased to share more information on some of the pedagogical projects I am involved in with other colleagues. How to share beyond this listserv the outcome of all of these pedagogies would be interesting -perhaps even writing something together?
So dear Ashish I feel your impatience, frustration? I would suggest we let it take time, things will emerge, we need to find ways to connect across many different places and spaces especially in these strange times.
I will overcome my tentativeness and like others confirm that I find this a precious resource that is unfurling slowly, but surely. Please find below some of the collaborations.
warm greetings from Rome
Wendy
Below I share some of the academic projects, though I would consider that the place I working in the most interesting way at the moment is in the local organising committee of the 8th International degrowth conference August 2021- see
https://www.wegoitn.org/wego-in-action/wego-and-degrowth/
As I mentioned earlier the convivial thinking project is a wonderful place to be learning with. https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribu... <https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribution/>
calls, events, conferences – Convivial Thinking <https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribution/> CALL FOR PAPERS. Call for Papers, PERIPHERIE, Issue 161 (to be published in spring 2021): Postcolonial Critique of Globalization. With this Issue, the editors seek to critically complement the state of political science research on the global protest movement and institutional reform processes, e.g. by focusing on colonial continuities and analysing them by means of postcolonial concepts such ... www.convivialthinking.org <http://www.convivialthinking.org>
I have just started teaching on gender approaches to environmental justice looking at viral inequalities and feminist political ecology in covid-19 times - on line - https://www.wegoitn.org/online-learning/resources__trashed/course-materials/
Course materials - WEGO-ITN <https://www.wegoitn.org/online-learning/resources__trashed/course-materials/> Course materials on Feminist Political Ecology by WEGO network and affiliated researchers On these pages WEGO offers free-access to all publicly available material produced by network members such as briefs, papers, presentations, training material and syllabuses. Do check frequently, we … Continue reading "Course materials" www.wegoitn.org <http://www.wegoitn.org>
working also with undisciplined environments
https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/ Undisciplined Environments <https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/> Published by Undisciplined Environments on April 30, 2020 A pandemic of blindness: uneven experiences of rural communities under COVID-19 lockdown in India – Part I By Enid Still, Sandeep Kumar, Irene Leonardelli and Arianna Tozzi A two part series on the uneven experiences and everyday challenges of lockdown conditions in India. undisciplinedenvironments.org <http://undisciplinedenvironments.org>
I have put my post development course on line to start in September - looking at different narratives of the making and unmaking of development - no immediate link yet - but we plan to work on a MOOC from the course ...
The Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity – Innovation Training Network
I am coordinating now has on-line sources as well
https://www.wegoitn.org/research-design/ Research design - WEGO-ITN <https://www.wegoitn.org/research-design/> More videos will be uploaded soon. www.wegoitn.org <http://www.wegoitn.org>
------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of Ashish Kothari <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> *Sent:* 24 May 2020 09:31 *To:* PeDAGoG <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> *Cc:* Ashish Kothari <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> *Subject:* Re: [PeDAGoG] Open Discussion and Updates (May 2020)
Dear colleagues, this mail is to ask your frank opinion on whether this network and list are of use, and needed? I ask this because 'traffic' on it is v. minimal.
Some of us have been posting relevant mails/material on this list, and some have also been putting up v. interesting material on the shared drive https://pad.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/pedagog <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpad.globaltapestryofalternatives.org%2Fpedagog&data=02%7C01%7Charcourt%40iss.nl%7Cc89c9566b1954bf5bf4008d7ffb49a3c%7C715902d6f63e4b8d929b4bb170bad492%7C0%7C0%7C637259024347742149&sdata=y9g3JBuMLszu9SV6lXdYcxZKoyNOQFhl81%2FB3EN9sv0%3D&reserved=0>.
But the enthusiasm with which you all responded to the idea of this global network, does not seem to have translated into more active posting on the above drive, and/or most active discussions on this list. It may be worth asking ourselves, why? Given that most of us have been stuck at home (or where-ever else we found ourselves when COVID hit), maybe we've had a bit more time than usual? Or is it the reverse ... there is so much happening online that we simply don't have the time or energy or inclination to stare at the screen to feed yet another list?
--- PeDAGoG: Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>
--- PeDAGoG: Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>
Very well said, Ashish -- looking forward to discussing all these things on Wednesday. (For those who haven't registered yet, do register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrd-ugpj0pHNZzsKmYwGZAMgPUkRbpnDO... ) I would like to weave together what Ashish said in the first half of his email about different ways of learning and knowing and with what Ashish wrote at the end about formal degree attainment and the inclusivity of PeDAGoG. In my personal opinion, one of the most important pieces of a radical pedagogy is to decolonize our minds of the notion that institutions of formal education and the narrow pathways of degree attainment hold the greatest claims to knowing and learning. Oftentimes, it is quite the contrary! Indeed, much of the inequality of the world today is created and reproduced by the belief the "educated" are the anointed and the "uneducated" are too ignorant to manage their own affairs. I exaggerate, but only slightly. In essence, I take PeDAGoG to be inclusive to "non-scholars" not because we are "open to people at all rungs of the academic ladder," but because we reject the preeminence of such a ladder, if we consider it to be a ladder at all. Given that the majority of members here do hold academic positions, I think such a perspective is important to make PeDAGoG a fully inclusive space in which all members are respected for their contributions, no matter their educational attainment. I'd like to express to anyone who has felt unsure about belonging here: You are welcome here and we are happy that you are here with us. If there's anything I can do to make this space more inclusive (including other dimensions apart from academic qualifications), please message me to let me know. Brandon Le sam. 4 juil. 2020 à 22:39, Ashish Kothari <[email protected]> a écrit :
Dear PeDaGoGians, firstly apologies for such a late response to some truly moving and thought-provoking responses to my 'frustrated' mail, from Wendy, Vandana, Callie, Sujit, Katerina, and others. It has been a rich fare that I have finally managed to read in full, and I feel blessed.
There are so many interesting points that have been made: how to break barriers between academics and rest of world, how to respond flexibly to situations in multiple timescales, crisis as opportunity (so big just now!), introducing the arts/theatre/music/dance into academics, the important of 'slow knowledge' and unlearning, how to deal with multiple identities, dig into deeper roots than conventional teaching tells us, the importance of place-based lives, picking up simple things like food and learning thrugh them, using not only our heads but also our hands, hearts, legs (Mahatma Gandhi's Nai Taleem education approach), getting out of classrooms to learn from the rest of nature and from communities in struggle/doing alternatives, 'thinking new thoughts' and going beyond teaching as a job, learning from children, the importance but complexity of 'translating' material into various formats/media for different audiences/participants, and much more! To these I would add: how do we see 'ordinary' people from commuinities, including so-called 'illiterate', as 'teachers' with their incredible practice-based knowledge and visioning; can we bring the art of dreaming into teaching/learning spaces (what are the youth visioning as their futures?); pickig up on the 'job' point, how can opportunities be created to make teaching/learning again a 'livelihood' rather than the deadlihood it has become for most (see https://www.localfutures.org/from-livelihoods-to-deadlihoods/).
Each of these could be a great session of dialogue and cross-learning!
On the 8th, lets discuss how at least some of the above can be dealt with in PeDAGoG, as earthy (I've stopped using the word 'concrete'!) activities: online dialogues, jointly written articles (Wendy), an international Masters course (Massimo's idea some months back), developing more material on all this (building on what is already available), translating existing material into other langauges/media forms.
this is not to displace the agenda that Julia has suggested, only to add a bit to it. Julia, can you pl. send out a reminder and agenda for the 8th July call, with the zoom link?
(Additionally to Callie: you absolutely need not apologise for, or feel out of place because of being "only a PhD scholar". This list is about post-development, unconventional, radical learning ... and it is deliberately also called 'academic-activist', to encompass all kinds of people who believe in and/or practice such learning. ANd if it helps (though it is unnecessary), I am not even a PhD scholar, only a 'lowly' masters! Additionally to the additionally, I think you should convert your mail into an article, it has some wonderful insights, and we'd be happy to consider publishing it on www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org website and link it to the Global Tapestry of Alternatives websiite.)
'See' you folks on 8th!
Ashish
LATEST! Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (thepluriverse.org) and www.globaltapestryofalternatives.org
Ashish Kothari Kalpavriksh Apt 5 Shree Datta Krupa 908 Deccan Gymkhana Pune 411004, India Tel: 91-20-25654239; 91-20-25675450http://kalpavriksh.orgwww.vikalpsangam.org www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.orgwww.iccaconsortium.orgwww.acknowlej.org http://ashishkothari51.blogspot.in/ Twitter: @chikikothari
On 06/06/20 10:55 am, [email protected] wrote:
Callie, thank you for your detailed reflection, I appreciate all you said. I strongly agree that education/ discussion/ policy making must take place as much outdoors as possible. We are embodied creatures after all. I recall once being in a conference room somewhere in the middle of Delhi where a speaker was taking about green growth, and I was getting increasingly uncomfortable because everything he was saying seemed so divorced from the living, breathing world (not to mention the absurdity of endless growth). There was a pariah kite on the verandah outside, looking in - they are ubiquitous in Delhi, largish birds of prey, very regal-looking - and I thought that among all the things that were missing was the representation of other species in this conversation, not to mention less privileged humans. Nobody took any notice of the kite, except me!
I teach physics at a small public university in the US, and have been experimenting with radical pedagogy, especially in the context of climate change. The university is on a steep hill, with old oak and elm trees in the central quad, which is at the very top of the hill. Sometimes wild turkeys wander through it, and one time, when we were discussing the physics of why some birds walk and others hop, we ran out of the classroom to see the turkeys 'do' the physics, which was both illuminating and fun. Last semester I did an exercise with my students where they had to sit somewhere in the quad (without their phones) and simply be with something not human - a tree, a bush, a rock, for five minutes. They were not enthusiastic at first, but their written reflections after the exercise conveyed - more than anything - surprise that there was so much to see when you really looked - and especially if the looking was 'open,' i.e. you were not trying to answer a particular question, which would have meant looking for one aspect and ignoring the rest. Some students also noted a decrease in stress. I plan to do more of these 'open' exercises when we are able to have face-to-face classes.
I've also done some preliminary work with village kids in a region of the Eastern Himalayas, near Kalimpong, conveying some basic climate science concepts through collaborative theatre. We did this in a building with no walls (just a roof held up by pillars) surrounded by bamboo groves and mixed pine and deciduous trees. I think the setting made the concepts come alive! During the few days I spent there, the kids and their families also shared how quickly the weather and environment in their areas was changing, so we had a potentially useful pairing of global scientific knowledge and deep local knowledge, but with equal weight given to both. In the future I hope to delve deeper into these mutual experiments with communities, and to learn from others on this list already engaged in this important work. I do believe that oral and musical traditions rooted in place can offer opportunities for us to create two-way communication where no form of knowledge is privileged over the other, and where there might be interesting cross-pollination.
Best,
Vandana
------------------------------ *From: *"Callie Berman" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *To: *"Wendy Harcourt" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *Cc: *"PeDAGoG" <[email protected]> <[email protected]>, "Ashish Kothari" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *Sent: *Monday, May 25, 2020 7:15:15 AM *Subject: *Re: [PeDAGoG] Open Discussion and Updates (May 2020)
Dear Ashish and Dear PeDAGoG members,
I would like to especially thank Dr. Harcourt (Wendy, if I may?) for expressing much of what I have been feeling. I’d like to offer my perspective in this string of thoughtful messages for what slowing down has meant for me, especially in regard to teaching. Perhaps the following also can serve as a form of self-introduction to the group as well. I should qualify that I am only a PhD student. So, please accept my apologies if what follow is misplaced or not entirely appropriate as many in this group seem to be full-time professors. However, like many others in the final stages in their PhD careers, contemplating over what an academic career may look like, maybe the following can be of use beyond formal department surveys and course evaluations; to give a sense of how many of us at the early stages of teaching/research careers are thinking about the future of work (what is ‘work’ anymore?) and the kind of life we may be able to have within the university (should we even have the chance to find a position).
For me, my (privileged) slowdown has meant building on my exposure to the culture and ways of others in a more attentive manner, particularly from the land I call home, Turtle Island (the United States). (Re)learning some of the creation stories and rich oral histories and myths has given me even greater pause and interest in learning from others. Contrasting the stories of Turtle Island’s creation with my own creation story (more or less) - the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the USA - to me, says it all. It is no wonder that we face the challenges we do and how desperately we need to learn how to look outside of ourselves.
For those of you in this group who may carry a more rooted beginning and sense of ancestral history that is not of the form of the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story, the nuanced perspectives you bring to your place of livelihood or wherever you call home matter. They matter to those of us who have been able to call ourselves your students. Today, I cannot imagine how I would even be able to conceive of a post-development world had I not had the opportunity to learn from my teachers - professors and mentors alike - how to understand and definitively be shown how the nature-culture dichotomy reproduces itself in life. That it is more than just some abstract concept to theorize with.
I think we should be less afraid to talk about simple things, like food. Having just read the thoughtful comments of Vanada in this string of correspondences, I think it can help us do away with any of the complex scaffolding our modern lives convince us that we need. Maybe in just sitting beside one another for a meal the need for walls won’t even emerge. I think we’ve forgotten how much these so-called simple things say. Speaking with my friends from Azerbaijan about life in the 1990s post-Soviet world, and the arrival of imported food stuffs from the West, glittering with brands and elaborate packaging, my friends told me of how people were confused and frustrated. “None of this tastes like food.” People still produced a lot of their own food locally and there has not historically been the same colonial-led relationship with agricultural pesticides like elsewhere, but this has and is changing. A lot. Of course. Starbucks and Hardrock Café abound in Baku and they are always busy. But what was strikingly different, for me of the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story-type, is that there is still a deep cultural appreciation and connection to real food. How food should taste. To some degree, some communities still have the knowledge with which they can hold food producers accountable if they themselves are not the ones producing this food. Whether and how they have the power to use this knowledge is another matter, but at least they still have it. Talk about food in your classrooms or think about ways of making the classroom a meal. You can’t imagine the kind of learning outcomes from participating in these simple human acts with those you teach. Maybe it could be a starting point to talk less about production rates and supply chains and more about how we become ourselves in a place and with others through how we cultivate, share and embody food.
Speaking for those of us with Declaration of Independence-type beginnings, slowing down for me has meant asking how I can advance this process and give conscious space for these processes to unfold. In academia, this has meant (and still very much is) identifying where our methodologies may be inadequate for knowing because they rely on outdated categories and/or narrow prisms for engagement. I think when we educate ourselves to these things, we can also understand our roles as (future/current) educators and what some of our responsibilities may look like. Granted, I am in a double privileged position in being able to think on some of these things because I don’t have a family to support. I want to at least acknowledge my privilege in this regard as I recognize the kinds of imaginative constraints this puts on far too many people wanting to offer good hearts and minds.
I think much of this process, the education of educators and students alike, does and should take place even more outside of the formal classroom environment, so we can learn how to make our methodologies more equitable for what they purportedly represent. I am grateful to some of my friends of the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes for showing me what this could look like. For example, there is much discussion of bison conservation in the western states. As per standard protocol, much of this discussion transpires in board rooms, via email, etc. Spending time on reservations with bison reintroduction projects, I learned to appreciate that, sure, we can talk about bison in a conference center, but doesn’t it make more sense to talk about these things while standing out in the field *with them*? To let their actions and behaviors guide the conversation? To actual be with them rather than merely talking *about them*? In not being so removed, I think modern management and conservation learns that it doesn’t need as much of itself as it may like to believe. You don’t get to not pay attention to how things actually are. That the natural world functions in remarkably responsive and attuned ways that don’t need to be “protected” via such a heavy human hand. Only certain knowledges thrive in dislocated office spaces. So we need others to show us where we could (re)locate our offices.
A related thought arena I have been pondering amidst my privilege slowdown has been human’s relationship with dance and music. How can dance and music function within the bounds of Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story-type societies and how can I talk about dance and music with students as things that are more than acts of convenient Friday entertainment and quick socializing? That they have historically been legitimate forms of knowing and engaging with the universe? Thinking more deeply about how, for example, characteristics of specific arm movements are meant to represent water movement behavior of a river in some dances, while subtle changes reflect a mimicking of water in an ocean. How the very colors of different ritual dress function to relate in the specific ways to the entities that are being danced to. I could never have learned these things if it wasn’t for the generosity of my teachers from Cuba. I think when we develop better ways of appreciating these things ourselves – how to really talk about music – we can ensure that the paradigm of an educated person of the future is not only a human with IT skills, but a human who also understands the value of protecting other worldviews for the important ways they allow us to access and to think about our relational possibilities with the universe. I think we should meditate profoundly over how we can allow more people and ideas from non-Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story upbringings to the classroom, or perhaps by bringing the classroom to them.
Taking cue from Vanata’s powerful question: why do we have so many walls? I think about a time last year in London’s St. Pancreas train station. Inside is a piano for those who feel inclined to share their talents. This is done in the name of enhancing the well-being of those around, and rightly so. Yet, just outside the train station, was a musician, huddled over with his instrument beside a tin and sign for spare change. Why do his musical acts categorize him as a beggar, while another gets to be perceived as a musician and given a more welcomed place in society?
That being able to ‘slow down is a luxury’ is becoming a bit of a cliche. Of course, this so-called slowdown is all happening in the context of response measures, I think many of us in this group sense, are simply recreating much of the same. That it does not feel good in our hearts, I think, adds to the sense of urgency to act, to direct our attention and our energies quickly and in important directions so the crisis moment will not amount to either more permissible greed or to more good intentions becoming misguided and misused. For sure, the impulse to act, which wells up quite often for me, while being confronted with an interest of wanting to remain cautious and mindful, feels disorienting.
I am very appreciative of Wendy’s words. Especially in writing from Cambridge, one of the historic epicenters for grooming privilege, I think it is key that we use the slowdown that lockdown affords some of us in thoughtful and focused ways. For me, this “slow down” has been a chance to check my commitment. What does it mean to me to not reproduce “more of this same”? How do I not distract myself and ultimately perform more of the same while thinking I am pursuing or contributing to something different? How do I (and can we?) strike a balance between proceeding intelligently in thinking about my potential role as an educator, rather than remaining constrained by the neoliberal conventional teaching model? For me, this has been meditating profoundly on how I educate myself so that I can think about how I can incorporate other ideas and participants to better access or protect the potential for other possibilities. Worldviews that can remind us of very different relationships humans have had to things like rhythm and to fundamental features of the universe. If we are “to think new thoughts” a phrase from Arturo Escobar’s ‘Designs for the Pluriverse’ which, for me, has been a simple yet deeply powerful phrase I have been thinking on these last weeks, how can I contribute to moving things in this direction as a possible teacher in the future? Can I think about these things beyond the confines of what I do in a ‘job’?
Thinking about Wendy’s comment, wanting to do more to listen, maybe listening to how others experience loss could become an avenue for new ways. Based on my observations of growing up in the western part of Turtle Island, loss is still conceived as a decline in natural areas available for recreating or for leisure. We do not yet see this as a death of our very selves because *we do not have the language for it*. Our creation story did not teach us this language. Our elders did not learn the ways of interpreting the dreams of community members nor imparting the steps of the Sun Dance to the next generation to give us the framework for comprehending how our current choices are hurting us all. From my reading for many of the us from the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story mindsets, loss is still equated too much with a loss of where we take our holidays and in an air of inconvenience.
Perhaps slowdown for me has meant a deeper acknowledgement of how too many of us of Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story beginnings are worried that about producing more of the same because we don’t know how to talk about what the actual problems are, at least in a more collective way. I think many of us here recognize that our systems have too strong a tendency of churning up convincing solutions that too many buy into because of a crisis context and lack of exposure to other frameworks for thinking, and that much of this amounts to quick tech fixes and staying power of a few. What we need are stories and experiences from elsewhere of how life can be lived. I write this not to pay lip service to solidarity, but so that we can design our places of education in ways that make sense.
As a final closing thought, (and at the risk of being entirely left-field), reading and reflecting over what other historical social structures have been and how they could offer useful perspectives for us today, it seems to me that children could have a more important role to play in our collective futures. While I do not have children of my own to be able to offer this based on direct experience with what that kind of caregiving looks like, I can appreciate the ways in which, as we often remark at home, “kids can say the darndest things.” To me, this expression says more about us as adults though. I think some societies have retained a greater ability to value the observations of children, and ways to integrate them as wisdom of members of the community. That they haven’t been taught to relinquish imagination might be one bit of it. Maybe, amidst the hope of striking a balance between wanting to act yet not fashioning more of the same, we can notice of how younger souls are in the world. Maybe they could become a larger part of our re-envisioned classrooms.
My warm regards from Cambridge and deep thanks for this group,
Callie
(A final apology for length as I had no intention of spanning so many words! I respect how everyone is exceedingly busy in their own lives and do not wish to abuse the group list nor make this pseudo introduction/thought-share an overkill. I am deeply grateful for all the contributions I have been able to read on this correspondence chain and for being able to connect with so many who are thinking deeply and committedly)
On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 10:29 AM Wendy Harcourt <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Ashish
thank you for the frank message which made me pause to think about how we are all somewhat frantic about communicating in these particular times. I personally think taking it slow, pausing, reflecting, trusting in the connections is also ok. Particularly as pedagogy in the neoliberal academic institutions where I am based and earn my livelihoods is changing far too rapidly I have been deeply appreciative of reading how others are teaching, for years, alternatives, and learning more about otherwise knowledges from the posts. I am appreciate Brandon has encouraged people to post but not too worried that it has not taken off. It is connecting us, slowly but surely.
I am perhaps somewhat shy to share from Europe - in the heart of white privilege. I feel my position these days is to learn and listen and change. I am pleased to share more information on some of the pedagogical projects I am involved in with other colleagues. How to share beyond this listserv the outcome of all of these pedagogies would be interesting -perhaps even writing something together?
So dear Ashish I feel your impatience, frustration? I would suggest we let it take time, things will emerge, we need to find ways to connect across many different places and spaces especially in these strange times.
I will overcome my tentativeness and like others confirm that I find this a precious resource that is unfurling slowly, but surely. Please find below some of the collaborations.
warm greetings from Rome
Wendy
Below I share some of the academic projects, though I would consider that the place I working in the most interesting way at the moment is in the local organising committee of the 8th International degrowth conference August 2021- see
https://www.wegoitn.org/wego-in-action/wego-and-degrowth/
As I mentioned earlier the convivial thinking project is a wonderful place to be learning with. https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribu...
<https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribution/> calls, events, conferences – Convivial Thinking <https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribution/> CALL FOR PAPERS. Call for Papers, PERIPHERIE, Issue 161 (to be published in spring 2021): Postcolonial Critique of Globalization. With this Issue, the editors seek to critically complement the state of political science research on the global protest movement and institutional reform processes, e.g. by focusing on colonial continuities and analysing them by means of postcolonial concepts such ... www.convivialthinking.org
I have just started teaching on gender approaches to environmental justice looking at viral inequalities and feminist political ecology in covid-19 times - on line -
https://www.wegoitn.org/online-learning/resources__trashed/course-materials/
Course materials - WEGO-ITN <https://www.wegoitn.org/online-learning/resources__trashed/course-materials/> Course materials on Feminist Political Ecology by WEGO network and affiliated researchers On these pages WEGO offers free-access to all publicly available material produced by network members such as briefs, papers, presentations, training material and syllabuses. Do check frequently, we … Continue reading "Course materials" www.wegoitn.org working also with undisciplined environments
https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/ Undisciplined Environments <https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/> Published by Undisciplined Environments on April 30, 2020 A pandemic of blindness: uneven experiences of rural communities under COVID-19 lockdown in India – Part I By Enid Still, Sandeep Kumar, Irene Leonardelli and Arianna Tozzi A two part series on the uneven experiences and everyday challenges of lockdown conditions in India. undisciplinedenvironments.org
I have put my post development course on line to start in September - looking at different narratives of the making and unmaking of development - no immediate link yet - but we plan to work on a MOOC from the course ...
The Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity – Innovation Training Network
I am coordinating now has on-line sources as well
https://www.wegoitn.org/research-design/ Research design - WEGO-ITN <https://www.wegoitn.org/research-design/> More videos will be uploaded soon. www.wegoitn.org
------------------------------ *From:* [email protected] < [email protected]> on behalf of Ashish Kothari < [email protected]> *Sent:* 24 May 2020 09:31 *To:* PeDAGoG <[email protected]> *Cc:* Ashish Kothari <[email protected]> *Subject:* Re: [PeDAGoG] Open Discussion and Updates (May 2020)
Dear colleagues, this mail is to ask your frank opinion on whether this network and list are of use, and needed? I ask this because 'traffic' on it is v. minimal.
Some of us have been posting relevant mails/material on this list, and some have also been putting up v. interesting material on the shared drive https://pad.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/pedagog <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpad.globaltapestryofalternatives.org%2Fpedagog&data=02%7C01%7Charcourt%40iss.nl%7Cc89c9566b1954bf5bf4008d7ffb49a3c%7C715902d6f63e4b8d929b4bb170bad492%7C0%7C0%7C637259024347742149&sdata=y9g3JBuMLszu9SV6lXdYcxZKoyNOQFhl81%2FB3EN9sv0%3D&reserved=0>.
But the enthusiasm with which you all responded to the idea of this global network, does not seem to have translated into more active posting on the above drive, and/or most active discussions on this list. It may be worth asking ourselves, why? Given that most of us have been stuck at home (or where-ever else we found ourselves when COVID hit), maybe we've had a bit more time than usual? Or is it the reverse ... there is so much happening online that we simply don't have the time or energy or inclination to stare at the screen to feed yet another list? --- PeDAGoG: Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>
--- PeDAGoG: Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> List help: <https://riseup.net/lists> <https://riseup.net/lists>
_______________________________________________ GTA-PeDAGoG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ourproject.org/mailman/listinfo/gta-pedagog
For Ashish and Brandon, thank you for your efforts in creating these spaces and an abode for compassionate thinking. My toeing of the formality line shows I simply hadn't taken the time to familiarize myself with the group more! In which case, and to everyone connecting through this group, I am very much looking forward to meeting those of you who can attend on the 8th. Should be a wonderful opportunity to hear some of your stories and to discuss learning across the wealth of life experiences. Hasta miércoles, Callie On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 6:45 PM Brandon Liu <[email protected]> wrote:
Very well said, Ashish -- looking forward to discussing all these things on Wednesday. (For those who haven't registered yet, do register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrd-ugpj0pHNZzsKmYwGZAMgPUkRbpnDO... )
I would like to weave together what Ashish said in the first half of his email about different ways of learning and knowing and with what Ashish wrote at the end about formal degree attainment and the inclusivity of PeDAGoG. In my personal opinion, one of the most important pieces of a radical pedagogy is to decolonize our minds of the notion that institutions of formal education and the narrow pathways of degree attainment hold the greatest claims to knowing and learning. Oftentimes, it is quite the contrary! Indeed, much of the inequality of the world today is created and reproduced by the belief the "educated" are the anointed and the "uneducated" are too ignorant to manage their own affairs. I exaggerate, but only slightly.
In essence, I take PeDAGoG to be inclusive to "non-scholars" not because we are "open to people at all rungs of the academic ladder," but because we reject the preeminence of such a ladder, if we consider it to be a ladder at all. Given that the majority of members here do hold academic positions, I think such a perspective is important to make PeDAGoG a fully inclusive space in which all members are respected for their contributions, no matter their educational attainment.
I'd like to express to anyone who has felt unsure about belonging here: You are welcome here and we are happy that you are here with us. If there's anything I can do to make this space more inclusive (including other dimensions apart from academic qualifications), please message me to let me know.
Brandon
Le sam. 4 juil. 2020 à 22:39, Ashish Kothari <[email protected]> a écrit :
Dear PeDaGoGians, firstly apologies for such a late response to some truly moving and thought-provoking responses to my 'frustrated' mail, from Wendy, Vandana, Callie, Sujit, Katerina, and others. It has been a rich fare that I have finally managed to read in full, and I feel blessed.
There are so many interesting points that have been made: how to break barriers between academics and rest of world, how to respond flexibly to situations in multiple timescales, crisis as opportunity (so big just now!), introducing the arts/theatre/music/dance into academics, the important of 'slow knowledge' and unlearning, how to deal with multiple identities, dig into deeper roots than conventional teaching tells us, the importance of place-based lives, picking up simple things like food and learning thrugh them, using not only our heads but also our hands, hearts, legs (Mahatma Gandhi's Nai Taleem education approach), getting out of classrooms to learn from the rest of nature and from communities in struggle/doing alternatives, 'thinking new thoughts' and going beyond teaching as a job, learning from children, the importance but complexity of 'translating' material into various formats/media for different audiences/participants, and much more! To these I would add: how do we see 'ordinary' people from commuinities, including so-called 'illiterate', as 'teachers' with their incredible practice-based knowledge and visioning; can we bring the art of dreaming into teaching/learning spaces (what are the youth visioning as their futures?); pickig up on the 'job' point, how can opportunities be created to make teaching/learning again a 'livelihood' rather than the deadlihood it has become for most (see https://www.localfutures.org/from-livelihoods-to-deadlihoods/).
Each of these could be a great session of dialogue and cross-learning!
On the 8th, lets discuss how at least some of the above can be dealt with in PeDAGoG, as earthy (I've stopped using the word 'concrete'!) activities: online dialogues, jointly written articles (Wendy), an international Masters course (Massimo's idea some months back), developing more material on all this (building on what is already available), translating existing material into other langauges/media forms.
this is not to displace the agenda that Julia has suggested, only to add a bit to it. Julia, can you pl. send out a reminder and agenda for the 8th July call, with the zoom link?
(Additionally to Callie: you absolutely need not apologise for, or feel out of place because of being "only a PhD scholar". This list is about post-development, unconventional, radical learning ... and it is deliberately also called 'academic-activist', to encompass all kinds of people who believe in and/or practice such learning. ANd if it helps (though it is unnecessary), I am not even a PhD scholar, only a 'lowly' masters! Additionally to the additionally, I think you should convert your mail into an article, it has some wonderful insights, and we'd be happy to consider publishing it on www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org website and link it to the Global Tapestry of Alternatives websiite.)
'See' you folks on 8th!
Ashish
LATEST! Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (thepluriverse.org) and www.globaltapestryofalternatives.org
Ashish Kothari Kalpavriksh Apt 5 Shree Datta Krupa 908 Deccan Gymkhana Pune 411004, India Tel: 91-20-25654239; 91-20-25675450http://kalpavriksh.orgwww.vikalpsangam.org www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.orgwww.iccaconsortium.orgwww.acknowlej.org http://ashishkothari51.blogspot.in/ Twitter: @chikikothari
On 06/06/20 10:55 am, [email protected] wrote:
Callie, thank you for your detailed reflection, I appreciate all you said. I strongly agree that education/ discussion/ policy making must take place as much outdoors as possible. We are embodied creatures after all. I recall once being in a conference room somewhere in the middle of Delhi where a speaker was taking about green growth, and I was getting increasingly uncomfortable because everything he was saying seemed so divorced from the living, breathing world (not to mention the absurdity of endless growth). There was a pariah kite on the verandah outside, looking in - they are ubiquitous in Delhi, largish birds of prey, very regal-looking - and I thought that among all the things that were missing was the representation of other species in this conversation, not to mention less privileged humans. Nobody took any notice of the kite, except me!
I teach physics at a small public university in the US, and have been experimenting with radical pedagogy, especially in the context of climate change. The university is on a steep hill, with old oak and elm trees in the central quad, which is at the very top of the hill. Sometimes wild turkeys wander through it, and one time, when we were discussing the physics of why some birds walk and others hop, we ran out of the classroom to see the turkeys 'do' the physics, which was both illuminating and fun. Last semester I did an exercise with my students where they had to sit somewhere in the quad (without their phones) and simply be with something not human - a tree, a bush, a rock, for five minutes. They were not enthusiastic at first, but their written reflections after the exercise conveyed - more than anything - surprise that there was so much to see when you really looked - and especially if the looking was 'open,' i.e. you were not trying to answer a particular question, which would have meant looking for one aspect and ignoring the rest. Some students also noted a decrease in stress. I plan to do more of these 'open' exercises when we are able to have face-to-face classes.
I've also done some preliminary work with village kids in a region of the Eastern Himalayas, near Kalimpong, conveying some basic climate science concepts through collaborative theatre. We did this in a building with no walls (just a roof held up by pillars) surrounded by bamboo groves and mixed pine and deciduous trees. I think the setting made the concepts come alive! During the few days I spent there, the kids and their families also shared how quickly the weather and environment in their areas was changing, so we had a potentially useful pairing of global scientific knowledge and deep local knowledge, but with equal weight given to both. In the future I hope to delve deeper into these mutual experiments with communities, and to learn from others on this list already engaged in this important work. I do believe that oral and musical traditions rooted in place can offer opportunities for us to create two-way communication where no form of knowledge is privileged over the other, and where there might be interesting cross-pollination.
Best,
Vandana
------------------------------ *From: *"Callie Berman" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *To: *"Wendy Harcourt" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *Cc: *"PeDAGoG" <[email protected]> <[email protected]>, "Ashish Kothari" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *Sent: *Monday, May 25, 2020 7:15:15 AM *Subject: *Re: [PeDAGoG] Open Discussion and Updates (May 2020)
Dear Ashish and Dear PeDAGoG members,
I would like to especially thank Dr. Harcourt (Wendy, if I may?) for expressing much of what I have been feeling. I’d like to offer my perspective in this string of thoughtful messages for what slowing down has meant for me, especially in regard to teaching. Perhaps the following also can serve as a form of self-introduction to the group as well. I should qualify that I am only a PhD student. So, please accept my apologies if what follow is misplaced or not entirely appropriate as many in this group seem to be full-time professors. However, like many others in the final stages in their PhD careers, contemplating over what an academic career may look like, maybe the following can be of use beyond formal department surveys and course evaluations; to give a sense of how many of us at the early stages of teaching/research careers are thinking about the future of work (what is ‘work’ anymore?) and the kind of life we may be able to have within the university (should we even have the chance to find a position).
For me, my (privileged) slowdown has meant building on my exposure to the culture and ways of others in a more attentive manner, particularly from the land I call home, Turtle Island (the United States). (Re)learning some of the creation stories and rich oral histories and myths has given me even greater pause and interest in learning from others. Contrasting the stories of Turtle Island’s creation with my own creation story (more or less) - the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the USA - to me, says it all. It is no wonder that we face the challenges we do and how desperately we need to learn how to look outside of ourselves.
For those of you in this group who may carry a more rooted beginning and sense of ancestral history that is not of the form of the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story, the nuanced perspectives you bring to your place of livelihood or wherever you call home matter. They matter to those of us who have been able to call ourselves your students. Today, I cannot imagine how I would even be able to conceive of a post-development world had I not had the opportunity to learn from my teachers - professors and mentors alike - how to understand and definitively be shown how the nature-culture dichotomy reproduces itself in life. That it is more than just some abstract concept to theorize with.
I think we should be less afraid to talk about simple things, like food. Having just read the thoughtful comments of Vanada in this string of correspondences, I think it can help us do away with any of the complex scaffolding our modern lives convince us that we need. Maybe in just sitting beside one another for a meal the need for walls won’t even emerge. I think we’ve forgotten how much these so-called simple things say. Speaking with my friends from Azerbaijan about life in the 1990s post-Soviet world, and the arrival of imported food stuffs from the West, glittering with brands and elaborate packaging, my friends told me of how people were confused and frustrated. “None of this tastes like food.” People still produced a lot of their own food locally and there has not historically been the same colonial-led relationship with agricultural pesticides like elsewhere, but this has and is changing. A lot. Of course. Starbucks and Hardrock Café abound in Baku and they are always busy. But what was strikingly different, for me of the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story-type, is that there is still a deep cultural appreciation and connection to real food. How food should taste. To some degree, some communities still have the knowledge with which they can hold food producers accountable if they themselves are not the ones producing this food. Whether and how they have the power to use this knowledge is another matter, but at least they still have it. Talk about food in your classrooms or think about ways of making the classroom a meal. You can’t imagine the kind of learning outcomes from participating in these simple human acts with those you teach. Maybe it could be a starting point to talk less about production rates and supply chains and more about how we become ourselves in a place and with others through how we cultivate, share and embody food.
Speaking for those of us with Declaration of Independence-type beginnings, slowing down for me has meant asking how I can advance this process and give conscious space for these processes to unfold. In academia, this has meant (and still very much is) identifying where our methodologies may be inadequate for knowing because they rely on outdated categories and/or narrow prisms for engagement. I think when we educate ourselves to these things, we can also understand our roles as (future/current) educators and what some of our responsibilities may look like. Granted, I am in a double privileged position in being able to think on some of these things because I don’t have a family to support. I want to at least acknowledge my privilege in this regard as I recognize the kinds of imaginative constraints this puts on far too many people wanting to offer good hearts and minds.
I think much of this process, the education of educators and students alike, does and should take place even more outside of the formal classroom environment, so we can learn how to make our methodologies more equitable for what they purportedly represent. I am grateful to some of my friends of the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes for showing me what this could look like. For example, there is much discussion of bison conservation in the western states. As per standard protocol, much of this discussion transpires in board rooms, via email, etc. Spending time on reservations with bison reintroduction projects, I learned to appreciate that, sure, we can talk about bison in a conference center, but doesn’t it make more sense to talk about these things while standing out in the field *with them*? To let their actions and behaviors guide the conversation? To actual be with them rather than merely talking *about them*? In not being so removed, I think modern management and conservation learns that it doesn’t need as much of itself as it may like to believe. You don’t get to not pay attention to how things actually are. That the natural world functions in remarkably responsive and attuned ways that don’t need to be “protected” via such a heavy human hand. Only certain knowledges thrive in dislocated office spaces. So we need others to show us where we could (re)locate our offices.
A related thought arena I have been pondering amidst my privilege slowdown has been human’s relationship with dance and music. How can dance and music function within the bounds of Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story-type societies and how can I talk about dance and music with students as things that are more than acts of convenient Friday entertainment and quick socializing? That they have historically been legitimate forms of knowing and engaging with the universe? Thinking more deeply about how, for example, characteristics of specific arm movements are meant to represent water movement behavior of a river in some dances, while subtle changes reflect a mimicking of water in an ocean. How the very colors of different ritual dress function to relate in the specific ways to the entities that are being danced to. I could never have learned these things if it wasn’t for the generosity of my teachers from Cuba. I think when we develop better ways of appreciating these things ourselves – how to really talk about music – we can ensure that the paradigm of an educated person of the future is not only a human with IT skills, but a human who also understands the value of protecting other worldviews for the important ways they allow us to access and to think about our relational possibilities with the universe. I think we should meditate profoundly over how we can allow more people and ideas from non-Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story upbringings to the classroom, or perhaps by bringing the classroom to them.
Taking cue from Vanata’s powerful question: why do we have so many walls? I think about a time last year in London’s St. Pancreas train station. Inside is a piano for those who feel inclined to share their talents. This is done in the name of enhancing the well-being of those around, and rightly so. Yet, just outside the train station, was a musician, huddled over with his instrument beside a tin and sign for spare change. Why do his musical acts categorize him as a beggar, while another gets to be perceived as a musician and given a more welcomed place in society?
That being able to ‘slow down is a luxury’ is becoming a bit of a cliche. Of course, this so-called slowdown is all happening in the context of response measures, I think many of us in this group sense, are simply recreating much of the same. That it does not feel good in our hearts, I think, adds to the sense of urgency to act, to direct our attention and our energies quickly and in important directions so the crisis moment will not amount to either more permissible greed or to more good intentions becoming misguided and misused. For sure, the impulse to act, which wells up quite often for me, while being confronted with an interest of wanting to remain cautious and mindful, feels disorienting.
I am very appreciative of Wendy’s words. Especially in writing from Cambridge, one of the historic epicenters for grooming privilege, I think it is key that we use the slowdown that lockdown affords some of us in thoughtful and focused ways. For me, this “slow down” has been a chance to check my commitment. What does it mean to me to not reproduce “more of this same”? How do I not distract myself and ultimately perform more of the same while thinking I am pursuing or contributing to something different? How do I (and can we?) strike a balance between proceeding intelligently in thinking about my potential role as an educator, rather than remaining constrained by the neoliberal conventional teaching model? For me, this has been meditating profoundly on how I educate myself so that I can think about how I can incorporate other ideas and participants to better access or protect the potential for other possibilities. Worldviews that can remind us of very different relationships humans have had to things like rhythm and to fundamental features of the universe. If we are “to think new thoughts” a phrase from Arturo Escobar’s ‘Designs for the Pluriverse’ which, for me, has been a simple yet deeply powerful phrase I have been thinking on these last weeks, how can I contribute to moving things in this direction as a possible teacher in the future? Can I think about these things beyond the confines of what I do in a ‘job’?
Thinking about Wendy’s comment, wanting to do more to listen, maybe listening to how others experience loss could become an avenue for new ways. Based on my observations of growing up in the western part of Turtle Island, loss is still conceived as a decline in natural areas available for recreating or for leisure. We do not yet see this as a death of our very selves because *we do not have the language for it*. Our creation story did not teach us this language. Our elders did not learn the ways of interpreting the dreams of community members nor imparting the steps of the Sun Dance to the next generation to give us the framework for comprehending how our current choices are hurting us all. From my reading for many of the us from the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story mindsets, loss is still equated too much with a loss of where we take our holidays and in an air of inconvenience.
Perhaps slowdown for me has meant a deeper acknowledgement of how too many of us of Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story beginnings are worried that about producing more of the same because we don’t know how to talk about what the actual problems are, at least in a more collective way. I think many of us here recognize that our systems have too strong a tendency of churning up convincing solutions that too many buy into because of a crisis context and lack of exposure to other frameworks for thinking, and that much of this amounts to quick tech fixes and staying power of a few. What we need are stories and experiences from elsewhere of how life can be lived. I write this not to pay lip service to solidarity, but so that we can design our places of education in ways that make sense.
As a final closing thought, (and at the risk of being entirely left-field), reading and reflecting over what other historical social structures have been and how they could offer useful perspectives for us today, it seems to me that children could have a more important role to play in our collective futures. While I do not have children of my own to be able to offer this based on direct experience with what that kind of caregiving looks like, I can appreciate the ways in which, as we often remark at home, “kids can say the darndest things.” To me, this expression says more about us as adults though. I think some societies have retained a greater ability to value the observations of children, and ways to integrate them as wisdom of members of the community. That they haven’t been taught to relinquish imagination might be one bit of it. Maybe, amidst the hope of striking a balance between wanting to act yet not fashioning more of the same, we can notice of how younger souls are in the world. Maybe they could become a larger part of our re-envisioned classrooms.
My warm regards from Cambridge and deep thanks for this group,
Callie
(A final apology for length as I had no intention of spanning so many words! I respect how everyone is exceedingly busy in their own lives and do not wish to abuse the group list nor make this pseudo introduction/thought-share an overkill. I am deeply grateful for all the contributions I have been able to read on this correspondence chain and for being able to connect with so many who are thinking deeply and committedly)
On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 10:29 AM Wendy Harcourt <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Ashish
thank you for the frank message which made me pause to think about how we are all somewhat frantic about communicating in these particular times. I personally think taking it slow, pausing, reflecting, trusting in the connections is also ok. Particularly as pedagogy in the neoliberal academic institutions where I am based and earn my livelihoods is changing far too rapidly I have been deeply appreciative of reading how others are teaching, for years, alternatives, and learning more about otherwise knowledges from the posts. I am appreciate Brandon has encouraged people to post but not too worried that it has not taken off. It is connecting us, slowly but surely.
I am perhaps somewhat shy to share from Europe - in the heart of white privilege. I feel my position these days is to learn and listen and change. I am pleased to share more information on some of the pedagogical projects I am involved in with other colleagues. How to share beyond this listserv the outcome of all of these pedagogies would be interesting -perhaps even writing something together?
So dear Ashish I feel your impatience, frustration? I would suggest we let it take time, things will emerge, we need to find ways to connect across many different places and spaces especially in these strange times.
I will overcome my tentativeness and like others confirm that I find this a precious resource that is unfurling slowly, but surely. Please find below some of the collaborations.
warm greetings from Rome
Wendy
Below I share some of the academic projects, though I would consider that the place I working in the most interesting way at the moment is in the local organising committee of the 8th International degrowth conference August 2021- see
https://www.wegoitn.org/wego-in-action/wego-and-degrowth/
As I mentioned earlier the convivial thinking project is a wonderful place to be learning with. https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribu...
<https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribution/> calls, events, conferences – Convivial Thinking <https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribution/> CALL FOR PAPERS. Call for Papers, PERIPHERIE, Issue 161 (to be published in spring 2021): Postcolonial Critique of Globalization. With this Issue, the editors seek to critically complement the state of political science research on the global protest movement and institutional reform processes, e.g. by focusing on colonial continuities and analysing them by means of postcolonial concepts such ... www.convivialthinking.org
I have just started teaching on gender approaches to environmental justice looking at viral inequalities and feminist political ecology in covid-19 times - on line -
https://www.wegoitn.org/online-learning/resources__trashed/course-materials/
Course materials - WEGO-ITN <https://www.wegoitn.org/online-learning/resources__trashed/course-materials/> Course materials on Feminist Political Ecology by WEGO network and affiliated researchers On these pages WEGO offers free-access to all publicly available material produced by network members such as briefs, papers, presentations, training material and syllabuses. Do check frequently, we … Continue reading "Course materials" www.wegoitn.org working also with undisciplined environments
https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/ Undisciplined Environments <https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/> Published by Undisciplined Environments on April 30, 2020 A pandemic of blindness: uneven experiences of rural communities under COVID-19 lockdown in India – Part I By Enid Still, Sandeep Kumar, Irene Leonardelli and Arianna Tozzi A two part series on the uneven experiences and everyday challenges of lockdown conditions in India. undisciplinedenvironments.org
I have put my post development course on line to start in September - looking at different narratives of the making and unmaking of development - no immediate link yet - but we plan to work on a MOOC from the course ...
The Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity – Innovation Training Network
I am coordinating now has on-line sources as well
https://www.wegoitn.org/research-design/ Research design - WEGO-ITN <https://www.wegoitn.org/research-design/> More videos will be uploaded soon. www.wegoitn.org
------------------------------ *From:* [email protected] < [email protected]> on behalf of Ashish Kothari < [email protected]> *Sent:* 24 May 2020 09:31 *To:* PeDAGoG <[email protected]> *Cc:* Ashish Kothari <[email protected]> *Subject:* Re: [PeDAGoG] Open Discussion and Updates (May 2020)
Dear colleagues, this mail is to ask your frank opinion on whether this network and list are of use, and needed? I ask this because 'traffic' on it is v. minimal.
Some of us have been posting relevant mails/material on this list, and some have also been putting up v. interesting material on the shared drive https://pad.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/pedagog <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpad.globaltapestryofalternatives.org%2Fpedagog&data=02%7C01%7Charcourt%40iss.nl%7Cc89c9566b1954bf5bf4008d7ffb49a3c%7C715902d6f63e4b8d929b4bb170bad492%7C0%7C0%7C637259024347742149&sdata=y9g3JBuMLszu9SV6lXdYcxZKoyNOQFhl81%2FB3EN9sv0%3D&reserved=0>.
But the enthusiasm with which you all responded to the idea of this global network, does not seem to have translated into more active posting on the above drive, and/or most active discussions on this list. It may be worth asking ourselves, why? Given that most of us have been stuck at home (or where-ever else we found ourselves when COVID hit), maybe we've had a bit more time than usual? Or is it the reverse ... there is so much happening online that we simply don't have the time or energy or inclination to stare at the screen to feed yet another list? --- PeDAGoG: Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>
--- PeDAGoG: Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> List help: <https://riseup.net/lists> <https://riseup.net/lists>
_______________________________________________ GTA-PeDAGoG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ourproject.org/mailman/listinfo/gta-pedagog
_______________________________________________ GTA-PeDAGoG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ourproject.org/mailman/listinfo/gta-pedagog
I meant to send this before our meeting, but anyway here it is: a piece about alternative pedagogies and universities in the course of which I learned so much. I almost mentioned PeDAGoG but didn't think I was quite ready to try to present it well. Another reason to look forward to our meeting! abrazos a todes, John On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 6:15 PM Callie Berman <[email protected]> wrote:
For Ashish and Brandon, thank you for your efforts in creating these spaces and an abode for compassionate thinking. My toeing of the formality line shows I simply hadn't taken the time to familiarize myself with the group more! In which case, and to everyone connecting through this group, I am very much looking forward to meeting those of you who can attend on the 8th. Should be a wonderful opportunity to hear some of your stories and to discuss learning across the wealth of life experiences.
Hasta miércoles,
Callie
On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 6:45 PM Brandon Liu <[email protected]> wrote:
Very well said, Ashish -- looking forward to discussing all these things on Wednesday. (For those who haven't registered yet, do register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrd-ugpj0pHNZzsKmYwGZAMgPUkRbpnDO... )
I would like to weave together what Ashish said in the first half of his email about different ways of learning and knowing and with what Ashish wrote at the end about formal degree attainment and the inclusivity of PeDAGoG. In my personal opinion, one of the most important pieces of a radical pedagogy is to decolonize our minds of the notion that institutions of formal education and the narrow pathways of degree attainment hold the greatest claims to knowing and learning. Oftentimes, it is quite the contrary! Indeed, much of the inequality of the world today is created and reproduced by the belief the "educated" are the anointed and the "uneducated" are too ignorant to manage their own affairs. I exaggerate, but only slightly.
In essence, I take PeDAGoG to be inclusive to "non-scholars" not because we are "open to people at all rungs of the academic ladder," but because we reject the preeminence of such a ladder, if we consider it to be a ladder at all. Given that the majority of members here do hold academic positions, I think such a perspective is important to make PeDAGoG a fully inclusive space in which all members are respected for their contributions, no matter their educational attainment.
I'd like to express to anyone who has felt unsure about belonging here: You are welcome here and we are happy that you are here with us. If there's anything I can do to make this space more inclusive (including other dimensions apart from academic qualifications), please message me to let me know.
Brandon
Le sam. 4 juil. 2020 à 22:39, Ashish Kothari <[email protected]> a écrit :
Dear PeDaGoGians, firstly apologies for such a late response to some truly moving and thought-provoking responses to my 'frustrated' mail, from Wendy, Vandana, Callie, Sujit, Katerina, and others. It has been a rich fare that I have finally managed to read in full, and I feel blessed.
There are so many interesting points that have been made: how to break barriers between academics and rest of world, how to respond flexibly to situations in multiple timescales, crisis as opportunity (so big just now!), introducing the arts/theatre/music/dance into academics, the important of 'slow knowledge' and unlearning, how to deal with multiple identities, dig into deeper roots than conventional teaching tells us, the importance of place-based lives, picking up simple things like food and learning thrugh them, using not only our heads but also our hands, hearts, legs (Mahatma Gandhi's Nai Taleem education approach), getting out of classrooms to learn from the rest of nature and from communities in struggle/doing alternatives, 'thinking new thoughts' and going beyond teaching as a job, learning from children, the importance but complexity of 'translating' material into various formats/media for different audiences/participants, and much more! To these I would add: how do we see 'ordinary' people from commuinities, including so-called 'illiterate', as 'teachers' with their incredible practice-based knowledge and visioning; can we bring the art of dreaming into teaching/learning spaces (what are the youth visioning as their futures?); pickig up on the 'job' point, how can opportunities be created to make teaching/learning again a 'livelihood' rather than the deadlihood it has become for most (see https://www.localfutures.org/from-livelihoods-to-deadlihoods/).
Each of these could be a great session of dialogue and cross-learning!
On the 8th, lets discuss how at least some of the above can be dealt with in PeDAGoG, as earthy (I've stopped using the word 'concrete'!) activities: online dialogues, jointly written articles (Wendy), an international Masters course (Massimo's idea some months back), developing more material on all this (building on what is already available), translating existing material into other langauges/media forms.
this is not to displace the agenda that Julia has suggested, only to add a bit to it. Julia, can you pl. send out a reminder and agenda for the 8th July call, with the zoom link?
(Additionally to Callie: you absolutely need not apologise for, or feel out of place because of being "only a PhD scholar". This list is about post-development, unconventional, radical learning ... and it is deliberately also called 'academic-activist', to encompass all kinds of people who believe in and/or practice such learning. ANd if it helps (though it is unnecessary), I am not even a PhD scholar, only a 'lowly' masters! Additionally to the additionally, I think you should convert your mail into an article, it has some wonderful insights, and we'd be happy to consider publishing it on www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org website and link it to the Global Tapestry of Alternatives websiite.)
'See' you folks on 8th!
Ashish
LATEST! Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (thepluriverse.org) and www.globaltapestryofalternatives.org
Ashish Kothari Kalpavriksh Apt 5 Shree Datta Krupa 908 Deccan Gymkhana Pune 411004, India Tel: 91-20-25654239; 91-20-25675450http://kalpavriksh.orgwww.vikalpsangam.org www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.orgwww.iccaconsortium.orgwww.acknowlej.org http://ashishkothari51.blogspot.in/ Twitter: @chikikothari
On 06/06/20 10:55 am, [email protected] wrote:
Callie, thank you for your detailed reflection, I appreciate all you said. I strongly agree that education/ discussion/ policy making must take place as much outdoors as possible. We are embodied creatures after all. I recall once being in a conference room somewhere in the middle of Delhi where a speaker was taking about green growth, and I was getting increasingly uncomfortable because everything he was saying seemed so divorced from the living, breathing world (not to mention the absurdity of endless growth). There was a pariah kite on the verandah outside, looking in - they are ubiquitous in Delhi, largish birds of prey, very regal-looking - and I thought that among all the things that were missing was the representation of other species in this conversation, not to mention less privileged humans. Nobody took any notice of the kite, except me!
I teach physics at a small public university in the US, and have been experimenting with radical pedagogy, especially in the context of climate change. The university is on a steep hill, with old oak and elm trees in the central quad, which is at the very top of the hill. Sometimes wild turkeys wander through it, and one time, when we were discussing the physics of why some birds walk and others hop, we ran out of the classroom to see the turkeys 'do' the physics, which was both illuminating and fun. Last semester I did an exercise with my students where they had to sit somewhere in the quad (without their phones) and simply be with something not human - a tree, a bush, a rock, for five minutes. They were not enthusiastic at first, but their written reflections after the exercise conveyed - more than anything - surprise that there was so much to see when you really looked - and especially if the looking was 'open,' i.e. you were not trying to answer a particular question, which would have meant looking for one aspect and ignoring the rest. Some students also noted a decrease in stress. I plan to do more of these 'open' exercises when we are able to have face-to-face classes.
I've also done some preliminary work with village kids in a region of the Eastern Himalayas, near Kalimpong, conveying some basic climate science concepts through collaborative theatre. We did this in a building with no walls (just a roof held up by pillars) surrounded by bamboo groves and mixed pine and deciduous trees. I think the setting made the concepts come alive! During the few days I spent there, the kids and their families also shared how quickly the weather and environment in their areas was changing, so we had a potentially useful pairing of global scientific knowledge and deep local knowledge, but with equal weight given to both. In the future I hope to delve deeper into these mutual experiments with communities, and to learn from others on this list already engaged in this important work. I do believe that oral and musical traditions rooted in place can offer opportunities for us to create two-way communication where no form of knowledge is privileged over the other, and where there might be interesting cross-pollination.
Best,
Vandana
------------------------------ *From: *"Callie Berman" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *To: *"Wendy Harcourt" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *Cc: *"PeDAGoG" <[email protected]> <[email protected]>, "Ashish Kothari" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *Sent: *Monday, May 25, 2020 7:15:15 AM *Subject: *Re: [PeDAGoG] Open Discussion and Updates (May 2020)
Dear Ashish and Dear PeDAGoG members,
I would like to especially thank Dr. Harcourt (Wendy, if I may?) for expressing much of what I have been feeling. I’d like to offer my perspective in this string of thoughtful messages for what slowing down has meant for me, especially in regard to teaching. Perhaps the following also can serve as a form of self-introduction to the group as well. I should qualify that I am only a PhD student. So, please accept my apologies if what follow is misplaced or not entirely appropriate as many in this group seem to be full-time professors. However, like many others in the final stages in their PhD careers, contemplating over what an academic career may look like, maybe the following can be of use beyond formal department surveys and course evaluations; to give a sense of how many of us at the early stages of teaching/research careers are thinking about the future of work (what is ‘work’ anymore?) and the kind of life we may be able to have within the university (should we even have the chance to find a position).
For me, my (privileged) slowdown has meant building on my exposure to the culture and ways of others in a more attentive manner, particularly from the land I call home, Turtle Island (the United States). (Re)learning some of the creation stories and rich oral histories and myths has given me even greater pause and interest in learning from others. Contrasting the stories of Turtle Island’s creation with my own creation story (more or less) - the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the USA - to me, says it all. It is no wonder that we face the challenges we do and how desperately we need to learn how to look outside of ourselves.
For those of you in this group who may carry a more rooted beginning and sense of ancestral history that is not of the form of the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story, the nuanced perspectives you bring to your place of livelihood or wherever you call home matter. They matter to those of us who have been able to call ourselves your students. Today, I cannot imagine how I would even be able to conceive of a post-development world had I not had the opportunity to learn from my teachers - professors and mentors alike - how to understand and definitively be shown how the nature-culture dichotomy reproduces itself in life. That it is more than just some abstract concept to theorize with.
I think we should be less afraid to talk about simple things, like food. Having just read the thoughtful comments of Vanada in this string of correspondences, I think it can help us do away with any of the complex scaffolding our modern lives convince us that we need. Maybe in just sitting beside one another for a meal the need for walls won’t even emerge. I think we’ve forgotten how much these so-called simple things say. Speaking with my friends from Azerbaijan about life in the 1990s post-Soviet world, and the arrival of imported food stuffs from the West, glittering with brands and elaborate packaging, my friends told me of how people were confused and frustrated. “None of this tastes like food.” People still produced a lot of their own food locally and there has not historically been the same colonial-led relationship with agricultural pesticides like elsewhere, but this has and is changing. A lot. Of course. Starbucks and Hardrock Café abound in Baku and they are always busy. But what was strikingly different, for me of the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story-type, is that there is still a deep cultural appreciation and connection to real food. How food should taste. To some degree, some communities still have the knowledge with which they can hold food producers accountable if they themselves are not the ones producing this food. Whether and how they have the power to use this knowledge is another matter, but at least they still have it. Talk about food in your classrooms or think about ways of making the classroom a meal. You can’t imagine the kind of learning outcomes from participating in these simple human acts with those you teach. Maybe it could be a starting point to talk less about production rates and supply chains and more about how we become ourselves in a place and with others through how we cultivate, share and embody food.
Speaking for those of us with Declaration of Independence-type beginnings, slowing down for me has meant asking how I can advance this process and give conscious space for these processes to unfold. In academia, this has meant (and still very much is) identifying where our methodologies may be inadequate for knowing because they rely on outdated categories and/or narrow prisms for engagement. I think when we educate ourselves to these things, we can also understand our roles as (future/current) educators and what some of our responsibilities may look like. Granted, I am in a double privileged position in being able to think on some of these things because I don’t have a family to support. I want to at least acknowledge my privilege in this regard as I recognize the kinds of imaginative constraints this puts on far too many people wanting to offer good hearts and minds.
I think much of this process, the education of educators and students alike, does and should take place even more outside of the formal classroom environment, so we can learn how to make our methodologies more equitable for what they purportedly represent. I am grateful to some of my friends of the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes for showing me what this could look like. For example, there is much discussion of bison conservation in the western states. As per standard protocol, much of this discussion transpires in board rooms, via email, etc. Spending time on reservations with bison reintroduction projects, I learned to appreciate that, sure, we can talk about bison in a conference center, but doesn’t it make more sense to talk about these things while standing out in the field *with them*? To let their actions and behaviors guide the conversation? To actual be with them rather than merely talking *about them*? In not being so removed, I think modern management and conservation learns that it doesn’t need as much of itself as it may like to believe. You don’t get to not pay attention to how things actually are. That the natural world functions in remarkably responsive and attuned ways that don’t need to be “protected” via such a heavy human hand. Only certain knowledges thrive in dislocated office spaces. So we need others to show us where we could (re)locate our offices.
A related thought arena I have been pondering amidst my privilege slowdown has been human’s relationship with dance and music. How can dance and music function within the bounds of Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story-type societies and how can I talk about dance and music with students as things that are more than acts of convenient Friday entertainment and quick socializing? That they have historically been legitimate forms of knowing and engaging with the universe? Thinking more deeply about how, for example, characteristics of specific arm movements are meant to represent water movement behavior of a river in some dances, while subtle changes reflect a mimicking of water in an ocean. How the very colors of different ritual dress function to relate in the specific ways to the entities that are being danced to. I could never have learned these things if it wasn’t for the generosity of my teachers from Cuba. I think when we develop better ways of appreciating these things ourselves – how to really talk about music – we can ensure that the paradigm of an educated person of the future is not only a human with IT skills, but a human who also understands the value of protecting other worldviews for the important ways they allow us to access and to think about our relational possibilities with the universe. I think we should meditate profoundly over how we can allow more people and ideas from non-Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story upbringings to the classroom, or perhaps by bringing the classroom to them.
Taking cue from Vanata’s powerful question: why do we have so many walls? I think about a time last year in London’s St. Pancreas train station. Inside is a piano for those who feel inclined to share their talents. This is done in the name of enhancing the well-being of those around, and rightly so. Yet, just outside the train station, was a musician, huddled over with his instrument beside a tin and sign for spare change. Why do his musical acts categorize him as a beggar, while another gets to be perceived as a musician and given a more welcomed place in society?
That being able to ‘slow down is a luxury’ is becoming a bit of a cliche. Of course, this so-called slowdown is all happening in the context of response measures, I think many of us in this group sense, are simply recreating much of the same. That it does not feel good in our hearts, I think, adds to the sense of urgency to act, to direct our attention and our energies quickly and in important directions so the crisis moment will not amount to either more permissible greed or to more good intentions becoming misguided and misused. For sure, the impulse to act, which wells up quite often for me, while being confronted with an interest of wanting to remain cautious and mindful, feels disorienting.
I am very appreciative of Wendy’s words. Especially in writing from Cambridge, one of the historic epicenters for grooming privilege, I think it is key that we use the slowdown that lockdown affords some of us in thoughtful and focused ways. For me, this “slow down” has been a chance to check my commitment. What does it mean to me to not reproduce “more of this same”? How do I not distract myself and ultimately perform more of the same while thinking I am pursuing or contributing to something different? How do I (and can we?) strike a balance between proceeding intelligently in thinking about my potential role as an educator, rather than remaining constrained by the neoliberal conventional teaching model? For me, this has been meditating profoundly on how I educate myself so that I can think about how I can incorporate other ideas and participants to better access or protect the potential for other possibilities. Worldviews that can remind us of very different relationships humans have had to things like rhythm and to fundamental features of the universe. If we are “to think new thoughts” a phrase from Arturo Escobar’s ‘Designs for the Pluriverse’ which, for me, has been a simple yet deeply powerful phrase I have been thinking on these last weeks, how can I contribute to moving things in this direction as a possible teacher in the future? Can I think about these things beyond the confines of what I do in a ‘job’?
Thinking about Wendy’s comment, wanting to do more to listen, maybe listening to how others experience loss could become an avenue for new ways. Based on my observations of growing up in the western part of Turtle Island, loss is still conceived as a decline in natural areas available for recreating or for leisure. We do not yet see this as a death of our very selves because *we do not have the language for it*. Our creation story did not teach us this language. Our elders did not learn the ways of interpreting the dreams of community members nor imparting the steps of the Sun Dance to the next generation to give us the framework for comprehending how our current choices are hurting us all. From my reading for many of the us from the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story mindsets, loss is still equated too much with a loss of where we take our holidays and in an air of inconvenience.
Perhaps slowdown for me has meant a deeper acknowledgement of how too many of us of Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story beginnings are worried that about producing more of the same because we don’t know how to talk about what the actual problems are, at least in a more collective way. I think many of us here recognize that our systems have too strong a tendency of churning up convincing solutions that too many buy into because of a crisis context and lack of exposure to other frameworks for thinking, and that much of this amounts to quick tech fixes and staying power of a few. What we need are stories and experiences from elsewhere of how life can be lived. I write this not to pay lip service to solidarity, but so that we can design our places of education in ways that make sense.
As a final closing thought, (and at the risk of being entirely left-field), reading and reflecting over what other historical social structures have been and how they could offer useful perspectives for us today, it seems to me that children could have a more important role to play in our collective futures. While I do not have children of my own to be able to offer this based on direct experience with what that kind of caregiving looks like, I can appreciate the ways in which, as we often remark at home, “kids can say the darndest things.” To me, this expression says more about us as adults though. I think some societies have retained a greater ability to value the observations of children, and ways to integrate them as wisdom of members of the community. That they haven’t been taught to relinquish imagination might be one bit of it. Maybe, amidst the hope of striking a balance between wanting to act yet not fashioning more of the same, we can notice of how younger souls are in the world. Maybe they could become a larger part of our re-envisioned classrooms.
My warm regards from Cambridge and deep thanks for this group,
Callie
(A final apology for length as I had no intention of spanning so many words! I respect how everyone is exceedingly busy in their own lives and do not wish to abuse the group list nor make this pseudo introduction/thought-share an overkill. I am deeply grateful for all the contributions I have been able to read on this correspondence chain and for being able to connect with so many who are thinking deeply and committedly)
On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 10:29 AM Wendy Harcourt <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Ashish
thank you for the frank message which made me pause to think about how we are all somewhat frantic about communicating in these particular times. I personally think taking it slow, pausing, reflecting, trusting in the connections is also ok. Particularly as pedagogy in the neoliberal academic institutions where I am based and earn my livelihoods is changing far too rapidly I have been deeply appreciative of reading how others are teaching, for years, alternatives, and learning more about otherwise knowledges from the posts. I am appreciate Brandon has encouraged people to post but not too worried that it has not taken off. It is connecting us, slowly but surely.
I am perhaps somewhat shy to share from Europe - in the heart of white privilege. I feel my position these days is to learn and listen and change. I am pleased to share more information on some of the pedagogical projects I am involved in with other colleagues. How to share beyond this listserv the outcome of all of these pedagogies would be interesting -perhaps even writing something together?
So dear Ashish I feel your impatience, frustration? I would suggest we let it take time, things will emerge, we need to find ways to connect across many different places and spaces especially in these strange times.
I will overcome my tentativeness and like others confirm that I find this a precious resource that is unfurling slowly, but surely. Please find below some of the collaborations.
warm greetings from Rome
Wendy
Below I share some of the academic projects, though I would consider that the place I working in the most interesting way at the moment is in the local organising committee of the 8th International degrowth conference August 2021- see
https://www.wegoitn.org/wego-in-action/wego-and-degrowth/
As I mentioned earlier the convivial thinking project is a wonderful place to be learning with. https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribu...
<https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribution/> calls, events, conferences – Convivial Thinking <https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribution/> CALL FOR PAPERS. Call for Papers, PERIPHERIE, Issue 161 (to be published in spring 2021): Postcolonial Critique of Globalization. With this Issue, the editors seek to critically complement the state of political science research on the global protest movement and institutional reform processes, e.g. by focusing on colonial continuities and analysing them by means of postcolonial concepts such ... www.convivialthinking.org
I have just started teaching on gender approaches to environmental justice looking at viral inequalities and feminist political ecology in covid-19 times - on line -
https://www.wegoitn.org/online-learning/resources__trashed/course-materials/
Course materials - WEGO-ITN <https://www.wegoitn.org/online-learning/resources__trashed/course-materials/> Course materials on Feminist Political Ecology by WEGO network and affiliated researchers On these pages WEGO offers free-access to all publicly available material produced by network members such as briefs, papers, presentations, training material and syllabuses. Do check frequently, we … Continue reading "Course materials" www.wegoitn.org working also with undisciplined environments
https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/ Undisciplined Environments <https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/> Published by Undisciplined Environments on April 30, 2020 A pandemic of blindness: uneven experiences of rural communities under COVID-19 lockdown in India – Part I By Enid Still, Sandeep Kumar, Irene Leonardelli and Arianna Tozzi A two part series on the uneven experiences and everyday challenges of lockdown conditions in India. undisciplinedenvironments.org
I have put my post development course on line to start in September - looking at different narratives of the making and unmaking of development - no immediate link yet - but we plan to work on a MOOC from the course ...
The Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity – Innovation Training Network
I am coordinating now has on-line sources as well
https://www.wegoitn.org/research-design/ Research design - WEGO-ITN <https://www.wegoitn.org/research-design/> More videos will be uploaded soon. www.wegoitn.org
------------------------------ *From:* [email protected] < [email protected]> on behalf of Ashish Kothari < [email protected]> *Sent:* 24 May 2020 09:31 *To:* PeDAGoG <[email protected]> *Cc:* Ashish Kothari <[email protected]> *Subject:* Re: [PeDAGoG] Open Discussion and Updates (May 2020)
Dear colleagues, this mail is to ask your frank opinion on whether this network and list are of use, and needed? I ask this because 'traffic' on it is v. minimal.
Some of us have been posting relevant mails/material on this list, and some have also been putting up v. interesting material on the shared drive https://pad.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/pedagog <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpad.globaltapestryofalternatives.org%2Fpedagog&data=02%7C01%7Charcourt%40iss.nl%7Cc89c9566b1954bf5bf4008d7ffb49a3c%7C715902d6f63e4b8d929b4bb170bad492%7C0%7C0%7C637259024347742149&sdata=y9g3JBuMLszu9SV6lXdYcxZKoyNOQFhl81%2FB3EN9sv0%3D&reserved=0>.
But the enthusiasm with which you all responded to the idea of this global network, does not seem to have translated into more active posting on the above drive, and/or most active discussions on this list. It may be worth asking ourselves, why? Given that most of us have been stuck at home (or where-ever else we found ourselves when COVID hit), maybe we've had a bit more time than usual? Or is it the reverse ... there is so much happening online that we simply don't have the time or energy or inclination to stare at the screen to feed yet another list? --- PeDAGoG: Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>
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Greetings! It was great to be with you for even a short while today. I look forward to unfolding our chapter! This is a little about me... Grounded in movement work throughout my life, at this time I am co-chair of the Board of May First Movement Technology Board https://mayfirst.coop/en/ https://techandrev.org/ and working with People's Strike at the national level, as co-rep of the International Committee and with the related NYC Fight for Our Lives coalition. https://peoplesstrike.org/ https://peoplesstrike.org/peoples-strike-and-the-uprising-an-open-letter/ I am a Professor, Sociology at Adelphi University / Research Fellow of the University of South Africa. My focus has been on coloniality-decoloniality, white supremacy, nation and nationalism and solidarity economies. http://www.adelphi.edu/faculty/profiles/profile.php?PID=0338 There are several ways I'm hoping to connect with others in the network. 1) Collaborative teaching e.g. in the fall I teach courses on Community, Love and Justice / The Role of Race in Contemporary US and Global Society and Sociology of Power. I would love an opportunity either to have reciprocal presence in classes OR to have students work together, as in a course I will teach in the spring that I ran with someone from UNISA last year. 2) Considering the bridge between the community based educational spaces (study groups, people's assemblies etc) and that which occurs in University settings. I need to catch up on reading the threads - so I hope what I've shared here is in line with the "asks". Glad to make your acquaintance : - ) On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 4:47 PM John Foran <[email protected]> wrote:
I meant to send this before our meeting, but anyway here it is: a piece about alternative pedagogies and universities in the course of which I learned so much.
I almost mentioned PeDAGoG but didn't think I was quite ready to try to present it well.
Another reason to look forward to our meeting!
abrazos a todes,
John
On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 6:15 PM Callie Berman <[email protected]> wrote:
For Ashish and Brandon, thank you for your efforts in creating these spaces and an abode for compassionate thinking. My toeing of the formality line shows I simply hadn't taken the time to familiarize myself with the group more! In which case, and to everyone connecting through this group, I am very much looking forward to meeting those of you who can attend on the 8th. Should be a wonderful opportunity to hear some of your stories and to discuss learning across the wealth of life experiences.
Hasta miércoles,
Callie
On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 6:45 PM Brandon Liu <[email protected]> wrote:
Very well said, Ashish -- looking forward to discussing all these things on Wednesday. (For those who haven't registered yet, do register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrd-ugpj0pHNZzsKmYwGZAMgPUkRbpnDO... )
I would like to weave together what Ashish said in the first half of his email about different ways of learning and knowing and with what Ashish wrote at the end about formal degree attainment and the inclusivity of PeDAGoG. In my personal opinion, one of the most important pieces of a radical pedagogy is to decolonize our minds of the notion that institutions of formal education and the narrow pathways of degree attainment hold the greatest claims to knowing and learning. Oftentimes, it is quite the contrary! Indeed, much of the inequality of the world today is created and reproduced by the belief the "educated" are the anointed and the "uneducated" are too ignorant to manage their own affairs. I exaggerate, but only slightly.
In essence, I take PeDAGoG to be inclusive to "non-scholars" not because we are "open to people at all rungs of the academic ladder," but because we reject the preeminence of such a ladder, if we consider it to be a ladder at all. Given that the majority of members here do hold academic positions, I think such a perspective is important to make PeDAGoG a fully inclusive space in which all members are respected for their contributions, no matter their educational attainment.
I'd like to express to anyone who has felt unsure about belonging here: You are welcome here and we are happy that you are here with us. If there's anything I can do to make this space more inclusive (including other dimensions apart from academic qualifications), please message me to let me know.
Brandon
Le sam. 4 juil. 2020 à 22:39, Ashish Kothari <[email protected]> a écrit :
Dear PeDaGoGians, firstly apologies for such a late response to some truly moving and thought-provoking responses to my 'frustrated' mail, from Wendy, Vandana, Callie, Sujit, Katerina, and others. It has been a rich fare that I have finally managed to read in full, and I feel blessed.
There are so many interesting points that have been made: how to break barriers between academics and rest of world, how to respond flexibly to situations in multiple timescales, crisis as opportunity (so big just now!), introducing the arts/theatre/music/dance into academics, the important of 'slow knowledge' and unlearning, how to deal with multiple identities, dig into deeper roots than conventional teaching tells us, the importance of place-based lives, picking up simple things like food and learning thrugh them, using not only our heads but also our hands, hearts, legs (Mahatma Gandhi's Nai Taleem education approach), getting out of classrooms to learn from the rest of nature and from communities in struggle/doing alternatives, 'thinking new thoughts' and going beyond teaching as a job, learning from children, the importance but complexity of 'translating' material into various formats/media for different audiences/participants, and much more! To these I would add: how do we see 'ordinary' people from commuinities, including so-called 'illiterate', as 'teachers' with their incredible practice-based knowledge and visioning; can we bring the art of dreaming into teaching/learning spaces (what are the youth visioning as their futures?); pickig up on the 'job' point, how can opportunities be created to make teaching/learning again a 'livelihood' rather than the deadlihood it has become for most (see https://www.localfutures.org/from-livelihoods-to-deadlihoods/).
Each of these could be a great session of dialogue and cross-learning!
On the 8th, lets discuss how at least some of the above can be dealt with in PeDAGoG, as earthy (I've stopped using the word 'concrete'!) activities: online dialogues, jointly written articles (Wendy), an international Masters course (Massimo's idea some months back), developing more material on all this (building on what is already available), translating existing material into other langauges/media forms.
this is not to displace the agenda that Julia has suggested, only to add a bit to it. Julia, can you pl. send out a reminder and agenda for the 8th July call, with the zoom link?
(Additionally to Callie: you absolutely need not apologise for, or feel out of place because of being "only a PhD scholar". This list is about post-development, unconventional, radical learning ... and it is deliberately also called 'academic-activist', to encompass all kinds of people who believe in and/or practice such learning. ANd if it helps (though it is unnecessary), I am not even a PhD scholar, only a 'lowly' masters! Additionally to the additionally, I think you should convert your mail into an article, it has some wonderful insights, and we'd be happy to consider publishing it on www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org website and link it to the Global Tapestry of Alternatives websiite.)
'See' you folks on 8th!
Ashish
LATEST! Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (thepluriverse.org) and www.globaltapestryofalternatives.org
Ashish Kothari Kalpavriksh Apt 5 Shree Datta Krupa 908 Deccan Gymkhana Pune 411004, India Tel: 91-20-25654239; 91-20-25675450http://kalpavriksh.orgwww.vikalpsangam.org www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.orgwww.iccaconsortium.orgwww.acknowlej.org http://ashishkothari51.blogspot.in/ Twitter: @chikikothari
On 06/06/20 10:55 am, [email protected] wrote:
Callie, thank you for your detailed reflection, I appreciate all you said. I strongly agree that education/ discussion/ policy making must take place as much outdoors as possible. We are embodied creatures after all. I recall once being in a conference room somewhere in the middle of Delhi where a speaker was taking about green growth, and I was getting increasingly uncomfortable because everything he was saying seemed so divorced from the living, breathing world (not to mention the absurdity of endless growth). There was a pariah kite on the verandah outside, looking in - they are ubiquitous in Delhi, largish birds of prey, very regal-looking - and I thought that among all the things that were missing was the representation of other species in this conversation, not to mention less privileged humans. Nobody took any notice of the kite, except me!
I teach physics at a small public university in the US, and have been experimenting with radical pedagogy, especially in the context of climate change. The university is on a steep hill, with old oak and elm trees in the central quad, which is at the very top of the hill. Sometimes wild turkeys wander through it, and one time, when we were discussing the physics of why some birds walk and others hop, we ran out of the classroom to see the turkeys 'do' the physics, which was both illuminating and fun. Last semester I did an exercise with my students where they had to sit somewhere in the quad (without their phones) and simply be with something not human - a tree, a bush, a rock, for five minutes. They were not enthusiastic at first, but their written reflections after the exercise conveyed - more than anything - surprise that there was so much to see when you really looked - and especially if the looking was 'open,' i.e. you were not trying to answer a particular question, which would have meant looking for one aspect and ignoring the rest. Some students also noted a decrease in stress. I plan to do more of these 'open' exercises when we are able to have face-to-face classes.
I've also done some preliminary work with village kids in a region of the Eastern Himalayas, near Kalimpong, conveying some basic climate science concepts through collaborative theatre. We did this in a building with no walls (just a roof held up by pillars) surrounded by bamboo groves and mixed pine and deciduous trees. I think the setting made the concepts come alive! During the few days I spent there, the kids and their families also shared how quickly the weather and environment in their areas was changing, so we had a potentially useful pairing of global scientific knowledge and deep local knowledge, but with equal weight given to both. In the future I hope to delve deeper into these mutual experiments with communities, and to learn from others on this list already engaged in this important work. I do believe that oral and musical traditions rooted in place can offer opportunities for us to create two-way communication where no form of knowledge is privileged over the other, and where there might be interesting cross-pollination.
Best,
Vandana
------------------------------ *From: *"Callie Berman" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *To: *"Wendy Harcourt" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *Cc: *"PeDAGoG" <[email protected]> <[email protected]>, "Ashish Kothari" <[email protected]> <[email protected]> *Sent: *Monday, May 25, 2020 7:15:15 AM *Subject: *Re: [PeDAGoG] Open Discussion and Updates (May 2020)
Dear Ashish and Dear PeDAGoG members,
I would like to especially thank Dr. Harcourt (Wendy, if I may?) for expressing much of what I have been feeling. I’d like to offer my perspective in this string of thoughtful messages for what slowing down has meant for me, especially in regard to teaching. Perhaps the following also can serve as a form of self-introduction to the group as well. I should qualify that I am only a PhD student. So, please accept my apologies if what follow is misplaced or not entirely appropriate as many in this group seem to be full-time professors. However, like many others in the final stages in their PhD careers, contemplating over what an academic career may look like, maybe the following can be of use beyond formal department surveys and course evaluations; to give a sense of how many of us at the early stages of teaching/research careers are thinking about the future of work (what is ‘work’ anymore?) and the kind of life we may be able to have within the university (should we even have the chance to find a position).
For me, my (privileged) slowdown has meant building on my exposure to the culture and ways of others in a more attentive manner, particularly from the land I call home, Turtle Island (the United States). (Re)learning some of the creation stories and rich oral histories and myths has given me even greater pause and interest in learning from others. Contrasting the stories of Turtle Island’s creation with my own creation story (more or less) - the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the USA - to me, says it all. It is no wonder that we face the challenges we do and how desperately we need to learn how to look outside of ourselves.
For those of you in this group who may carry a more rooted beginning and sense of ancestral history that is not of the form of the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story, the nuanced perspectives you bring to your place of livelihood or wherever you call home matter. They matter to those of us who have been able to call ourselves your students. Today, I cannot imagine how I would even be able to conceive of a post-development world had I not had the opportunity to learn from my teachers - professors and mentors alike - how to understand and definitively be shown how the nature-culture dichotomy reproduces itself in life. That it is more than just some abstract concept to theorize with.
I think we should be less afraid to talk about simple things, like food. Having just read the thoughtful comments of Vanada in this string of correspondences, I think it can help us do away with any of the complex scaffolding our modern lives convince us that we need. Maybe in just sitting beside one another for a meal the need for walls won’t even emerge. I think we’ve forgotten how much these so-called simple things say. Speaking with my friends from Azerbaijan about life in the 1990s post-Soviet world, and the arrival of imported food stuffs from the West, glittering with brands and elaborate packaging, my friends told me of how people were confused and frustrated. “None of this tastes like food.” People still produced a lot of their own food locally and there has not historically been the same colonial-led relationship with agricultural pesticides like elsewhere, but this has and is changing. A lot. Of course. Starbucks and Hardrock Café abound in Baku and they are always busy. But what was strikingly different, for me of the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story-type, is that there is still a deep cultural appreciation and connection to real food. How food should taste. To some degree, some communities still have the knowledge with which they can hold food producers accountable if they themselves are not the ones producing this food. Whether and how they have the power to use this knowledge is another matter, but at least they still have it. Talk about food in your classrooms or think about ways of making the classroom a meal. You can’t imagine the kind of learning outcomes from participating in these simple human acts with those you teach. Maybe it could be a starting point to talk less about production rates and supply chains and more about how we become ourselves in a place and with others through how we cultivate, share and embody food.
Speaking for those of us with Declaration of Independence-type beginnings, slowing down for me has meant asking how I can advance this process and give conscious space for these processes to unfold. In academia, this has meant (and still very much is) identifying where our methodologies may be inadequate for knowing because they rely on outdated categories and/or narrow prisms for engagement. I think when we educate ourselves to these things, we can also understand our roles as (future/current) educators and what some of our responsibilities may look like. Granted, I am in a double privileged position in being able to think on some of these things because I don’t have a family to support. I want to at least acknowledge my privilege in this regard as I recognize the kinds of imaginative constraints this puts on far too many people wanting to offer good hearts and minds.
I think much of this process, the education of educators and students alike, does and should take place even more outside of the formal classroom environment, so we can learn how to make our methodologies more equitable for what they purportedly represent. I am grateful to some of my friends of the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes for showing me what this could look like. For example, there is much discussion of bison conservation in the western states. As per standard protocol, much of this discussion transpires in board rooms, via email, etc. Spending time on reservations with bison reintroduction projects, I learned to appreciate that, sure, we can talk about bison in a conference center, but doesn’t it make more sense to talk about these things while standing out in the field *with them*? To let their actions and behaviors guide the conversation? To actual be with them rather than merely talking *about them*? In not being so removed, I think modern management and conservation learns that it doesn’t need as much of itself as it may like to believe. You don’t get to not pay attention to how things actually are. That the natural world functions in remarkably responsive and attuned ways that don’t need to be “protected” via such a heavy human hand. Only certain knowledges thrive in dislocated office spaces. So we need others to show us where we could (re)locate our offices.
A related thought arena I have been pondering amidst my privilege slowdown has been human’s relationship with dance and music. How can dance and music function within the bounds of Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story-type societies and how can I talk about dance and music with students as things that are more than acts of convenient Friday entertainment and quick socializing? That they have historically been legitimate forms of knowing and engaging with the universe? Thinking more deeply about how, for example, characteristics of specific arm movements are meant to represent water movement behavior of a river in some dances, while subtle changes reflect a mimicking of water in an ocean. How the very colors of different ritual dress function to relate in the specific ways to the entities that are being danced to. I could never have learned these things if it wasn’t for the generosity of my teachers from Cuba. I think when we develop better ways of appreciating these things ourselves – how to really talk about music – we can ensure that the paradigm of an educated person of the future is not only a human with IT skills, but a human who also understands the value of protecting other worldviews for the important ways they allow us to access and to think about our relational possibilities with the universe. I think we should meditate profoundly over how we can allow more people and ideas from non-Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story upbringings to the classroom, or perhaps by bringing the classroom to them.
Taking cue from Vanata’s powerful question: why do we have so many walls? I think about a time last year in London’s St. Pancreas train station. Inside is a piano for those who feel inclined to share their talents. This is done in the name of enhancing the well-being of those around, and rightly so. Yet, just outside the train station, was a musician, huddled over with his instrument beside a tin and sign for spare change. Why do his musical acts categorize him as a beggar, while another gets to be perceived as a musician and given a more welcomed place in society?
That being able to ‘slow down is a luxury’ is becoming a bit of a cliche. Of course, this so-called slowdown is all happening in the context of response measures, I think many of us in this group sense, are simply recreating much of the same. That it does not feel good in our hearts, I think, adds to the sense of urgency to act, to direct our attention and our energies quickly and in important directions so the crisis moment will not amount to either more permissible greed or to more good intentions becoming misguided and misused. For sure, the impulse to act, which wells up quite often for me, while being confronted with an interest of wanting to remain cautious and mindful, feels disorienting.
I am very appreciative of Wendy’s words. Especially in writing from Cambridge, one of the historic epicenters for grooming privilege, I think it is key that we use the slowdown that lockdown affords some of us in thoughtful and focused ways. For me, this “slow down” has been a chance to check my commitment. What does it mean to me to not reproduce “more of this same”? How do I not distract myself and ultimately perform more of the same while thinking I am pursuing or contributing to something different? How do I (and can we?) strike a balance between proceeding intelligently in thinking about my potential role as an educator, rather than remaining constrained by the neoliberal conventional teaching model? For me, this has been meditating profoundly on how I educate myself so that I can think about how I can incorporate other ideas and participants to better access or protect the potential for other possibilities. Worldviews that can remind us of very different relationships humans have had to things like rhythm and to fundamental features of the universe. If we are “to think new thoughts” a phrase from Arturo Escobar’s ‘Designs for the Pluriverse’ which, for me, has been a simple yet deeply powerful phrase I have been thinking on these last weeks, how can I contribute to moving things in this direction as a possible teacher in the future? Can I think about these things beyond the confines of what I do in a ‘job’?
Thinking about Wendy’s comment, wanting to do more to listen, maybe listening to how others experience loss could become an avenue for new ways. Based on my observations of growing up in the western part of Turtle Island, loss is still conceived as a decline in natural areas available for recreating or for leisure. We do not yet see this as a death of our very selves because *we do not have the language for it*. Our creation story did not teach us this language. Our elders did not learn the ways of interpreting the dreams of community members nor imparting the steps of the Sun Dance to the next generation to give us the framework for comprehending how our current choices are hurting us all. From my reading for many of the us from the Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story mindsets, loss is still equated too much with a loss of where we take our holidays and in an air of inconvenience.
Perhaps slowdown for me has meant a deeper acknowledgement of how too many of us of Declaration-of-Independence-creation-story beginnings are worried that about producing more of the same because we don’t know how to talk about what the actual problems are, at least in a more collective way. I think many of us here recognize that our systems have too strong a tendency of churning up convincing solutions that too many buy into because of a crisis context and lack of exposure to other frameworks for thinking, and that much of this amounts to quick tech fixes and staying power of a few. What we need are stories and experiences from elsewhere of how life can be lived. I write this not to pay lip service to solidarity, but so that we can design our places of education in ways that make sense.
As a final closing thought, (and at the risk of being entirely left-field), reading and reflecting over what other historical social structures have been and how they could offer useful perspectives for us today, it seems to me that children could have a more important role to play in our collective futures. While I do not have children of my own to be able to offer this based on direct experience with what that kind of caregiving looks like, I can appreciate the ways in which, as we often remark at home, “kids can say the darndest things.” To me, this expression says more about us as adults though. I think some societies have retained a greater ability to value the observations of children, and ways to integrate them as wisdom of members of the community. That they haven’t been taught to relinquish imagination might be one bit of it. Maybe, amidst the hope of striking a balance between wanting to act yet not fashioning more of the same, we can notice of how younger souls are in the world. Maybe they could become a larger part of our re-envisioned classrooms.
My warm regards from Cambridge and deep thanks for this group,
Callie
(A final apology for length as I had no intention of spanning so many words! I respect how everyone is exceedingly busy in their own lives and do not wish to abuse the group list nor make this pseudo introduction/thought-share an overkill. I am deeply grateful for all the contributions I have been able to read on this correspondence chain and for being able to connect with so many who are thinking deeply and committedly)
On Sun, May 24, 2020 at 10:29 AM Wendy Harcourt <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Ashish
thank you for the frank message which made me pause to think about how we are all somewhat frantic about communicating in these particular times. I personally think taking it slow, pausing, reflecting, trusting in the connections is also ok. Particularly as pedagogy in the neoliberal academic institutions where I am based and earn my livelihoods is changing far too rapidly I have been deeply appreciative of reading how others are teaching, for years, alternatives, and learning more about otherwise knowledges from the posts. I am appreciate Brandon has encouraged people to post but not too worried that it has not taken off. It is connecting us, slowly but surely.
I am perhaps somewhat shy to share from Europe - in the heart of white privilege. I feel my position these days is to learn and listen and change. I am pleased to share more information on some of the pedagogical projects I am involved in with other colleagues. How to share beyond this listserv the outcome of all of these pedagogies would be interesting -perhaps even writing something together?
So dear Ashish I feel your impatience, frustration? I would suggest we let it take time, things will emerge, we need to find ways to connect across many different places and spaces especially in these strange times.
I will overcome my tentativeness and like others confirm that I find this a precious resource that is unfurling slowly, but surely. Please find below some of the collaborations.
warm greetings from Rome
Wendy
Below I share some of the academic projects, though I would consider that the place I working in the most interesting way at the moment is in the local organising committee of the 8th International degrowth conference August 2021- see
https://www.wegoitn.org/wego-in-action/wego-and-degrowth/
As I mentioned earlier the convivial thinking project is a wonderful place to be learning with. https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribu...
<https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribution/> calls, events, conferences – Convivial Thinking <https://www.convivialthinking.org/index.php/collaboration/calls-for-contribution/> CALL FOR PAPERS. Call for Papers, PERIPHERIE, Issue 161 (to be published in spring 2021): Postcolonial Critique of Globalization. With this Issue, the editors seek to critically complement the state of political science research on the global protest movement and institutional reform processes, e.g. by focusing on colonial continuities and analysing them by means of postcolonial concepts such ... www.convivialthinking.org
I have just started teaching on gender approaches to environmental justice looking at viral inequalities and feminist political ecology in covid-19 times - on line -
https://www.wegoitn.org/online-learning/resources__trashed/course-materials/
Course materials - WEGO-ITN <https://www.wegoitn.org/online-learning/resources__trashed/course-materials/> Course materials on Feminist Political Ecology by WEGO network and affiliated researchers On these pages WEGO offers free-access to all publicly available material produced by network members such as briefs, papers, presentations, training material and syllabuses. Do check frequently, we … Continue reading "Course materials" www.wegoitn.org working also with undisciplined environments
https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/ Undisciplined Environments <https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/> Published by Undisciplined Environments on April 30, 2020 A pandemic of blindness: uneven experiences of rural communities under COVID-19 lockdown in India – Part I By Enid Still, Sandeep Kumar, Irene Leonardelli and Arianna Tozzi A two part series on the uneven experiences and everyday challenges of lockdown conditions in India. undisciplinedenvironments.org
I have put my post development course on line to start in September - looking at different narratives of the making and unmaking of development - no immediate link yet - but we plan to work on a MOOC from the course ...
The Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity – Innovation Training Network
I am coordinating now has on-line sources as well
https://www.wegoitn.org/research-design/ Research design - WEGO-ITN <https://www.wegoitn.org/research-design/> More videos will be uploaded soon. www.wegoitn.org
------------------------------ *From:* [email protected] < [email protected]> on behalf of Ashish Kothari < [email protected]> *Sent:* 24 May 2020 09:31 *To:* PeDAGoG <[email protected]> *Cc:* Ashish Kothari <[email protected]> *Subject:* Re: [PeDAGoG] Open Discussion and Updates (May 2020)
Dear colleagues, this mail is to ask your frank opinion on whether this network and list are of use, and needed? I ask this because 'traffic' on it is v. minimal.
Some of us have been posting relevant mails/material on this list, and some have also been putting up v. interesting material on the shared drive https://pad.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/pedagog <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpad.globaltapestryofalternatives.org%2Fpedagog&data=02%7C01%7Charcourt%40iss.nl%7Cc89c9566b1954bf5bf4008d7ffb49a3c%7C715902d6f63e4b8d929b4bb170bad492%7C0%7C0%7C637259024347742149&sdata=y9g3JBuMLszu9SV6lXdYcxZKoyNOQFhl81%2FB3EN9sv0%3D&reserved=0>.
But the enthusiasm with which you all responded to the idea of this global network, does not seem to have translated into more active posting on the above drive, and/or most active discussions on this list. It may be worth asking ourselves, why? Given that most of us have been stuck at home (or where-ever else we found ourselves when COVID hit), maybe we've had a bit more time than usual? Or is it the reverse ... there is so much happening online that we simply don't have the time or energy or inclination to stare at the screen to feed yet another list? --- PeDAGoG: Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> List help: <https://riseup.net/lists>
--- PeDAGoG: Post-Development Academic-Activist Global Group To unsubscribe: <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> List help: <https://riseup.net/lists> <https://riseup.net/lists>
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-- ............................................. Rod Bush: Lessons from a Radical Black Scholar on Liberation, Love, and Justice Open access download for teaching purposes <http://bit.ly/RodBushLessons> https://rodbush.org/ *********************************************************************** Tensions in the American Dream: Rhetoric, Reverie or Reality <http://tupress.temple.edu/book/0399> Author proceeds go to Cooperation Jackson <https://cooperationjackson.org/> .......................................... Everyday Forms of Whiteness: Understanding Race in a "Post-Racial" World <https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742599994/Everyday-Forms-of-Whiteness-Understanding-Race-in-a-'Post-Racial'-World-Second-Edition> *Eternal and infinite love for you, yours & the ongoing struggle * *for dignity, justice, wisdom and peace.*
dear post-developmental co-activists, I did not really appear here in the mailing list as there was so much writing (and e-mailing) to do, really overwhelming. I am excited that this group exists and I am looking forward to the exchange tomorrow. I am a writer, philosopher and biologist, and I am part-time teaching ecophilosophy at the university of the arts in berlin, germany. my latest online publications in english are here: https://in.boell.org/en/nourishing-community-pandemic-times https://www.thenatureofcities.com/2020/05/03/covid-has-upended-all-the-norma... and another: https://www.humansandnature.org/being-nature see you tomorrow, andreas Dr. Andreas Weber Westendallee 111 D-14052 Berlin + 49 170 811 84 92 +49 30 30 20 10 74 www.autor-andreas-weber.de www.biologyofwonder.org @biopoetics NEW BOOKS https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/enlivenment https://nicolai-publishing.com/collections/unsere-bucher/products/indigenial...
participants (6)
-
Ashish Kothari -
Brandon Liu -
Callie Berman -
Dr. Andreas Weber -
John Foran -
Melanie Bush