Critical realism, environmental learning and social-ecological change
- Price, Leigh, Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Authors: Price, Leigh , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436952 , vital:73319 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: The contemporary social-ecological condition is characterized by power-ful changes in the way that we relate to each other and to the environ-ment. This has led to increased ecological vulnerability, which is also ac-companied by ongoing, and increased societal vulnerability. Nevertheless there remain opportunities for developing new social-ecological rela-tions, and for social-ecological learning and change. This would seem to require a strong project of recovering ontology, and a challenging and broadening of dominant ways of knowing (Mignolo, 2000) that also tend to commit what Bhaskar describes as the ‘epistemic fallacy’, or the ‘the analysis or reduction of being to knowledge of being’ (Bhaskar, 2010, p. 1). In response, Bhaskar (ibid.) suggests critical realism as an alternative that embodies a ‘compatibility of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgmental rationality’. This includes a ‘re-vindication of ontology’ and the possibility of recognizing and accounting for structure, difference and change in the world in ways that escape ontological actu-alism and ontological monovalence or ‘the generation of a purely positive account of reality’ (ibid., p. 15).
- Full Text:
- Authors: Price, Leigh , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436952 , vital:73319 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: The contemporary social-ecological condition is characterized by power-ful changes in the way that we relate to each other and to the environ-ment. This has led to increased ecological vulnerability, which is also ac-companied by ongoing, and increased societal vulnerability. Nevertheless there remain opportunities for developing new social-ecological rela-tions, and for social-ecological learning and change. This would seem to require a strong project of recovering ontology, and a challenging and broadening of dominant ways of knowing (Mignolo, 2000) that also tend to commit what Bhaskar describes as the ‘epistemic fallacy’, or the ‘the analysis or reduction of being to knowledge of being’ (Bhaskar, 2010, p. 1). In response, Bhaskar (ibid.) suggests critical realism as an alternative that embodies a ‘compatibility of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgmental rationality’. This includes a ‘re-vindication of ontology’ and the possibility of recognizing and accounting for structure, difference and change in the world in ways that escape ontological actu-alism and ontological monovalence or ‘the generation of a purely positive account of reality’ (ibid., p. 15).
- Full Text:
Key critical realist concepts for environmental educators
- Authors: Price, Leigh
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437022 , vital:73324 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: This chapter describes aspects of critical realism that are rele-vant to environmental educators. Critical realism acts an un-derlabourer for the sciences and the practices of human emancipation. In its underlabouring role, critical realism chal-lenges the Humean assumption that correlations (constant conjunctions) are the only way to know causation and offers an alternative, which is that causation is based on the layered, deep nature of reality (the real, actual and empirical). Critical realism explains how higher levels of being are emergent from lower levels; therefore society (structure) is emergent from the activities of people (agency). Environmental educators should take an interest in structure and agency, not least because cer-tain approaches offer questionable power strategies to people and particularly governments. One consequence of the critical realist version of causation is that it becomes possible to en-visage an environmental ethics that is based on an axiology that is neither absolutist nor relativist. To provide a full enough account of causation to achieve one’s purposes, Bhaskar has suggested a model, the seven laminations of scale. Bhaskar also differentiates between the transitive and intransitive realms and explains that there are questionable ideological advantages to failing to make this distinction. The intransi-tive/transitive realms have implications for our use of catego-ries: critical realism explains how we can use categories to prevent oppression. Critical realism also argues against a purely positive, rather than a negative, account of the dialectic: thus change is absenting the constraints on absenting ab-sences. Contrary to a frequent assumption made by both non-critical realists and critical realists alike, critical realism is not a return to positivism.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Price, Leigh
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437022 , vital:73324 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: This chapter describes aspects of critical realism that are rele-vant to environmental educators. Critical realism acts an un-derlabourer for the sciences and the practices of human emancipation. In its underlabouring role, critical realism chal-lenges the Humean assumption that correlations (constant conjunctions) are the only way to know causation and offers an alternative, which is that causation is based on the layered, deep nature of reality (the real, actual and empirical). Critical realism explains how higher levels of being are emergent from lower levels; therefore society (structure) is emergent from the activities of people (agency). Environmental educators should take an interest in structure and agency, not least because cer-tain approaches offer questionable power strategies to people and particularly governments. One consequence of the critical realist version of causation is that it becomes possible to en-visage an environmental ethics that is based on an axiology that is neither absolutist nor relativist. To provide a full enough account of causation to achieve one’s purposes, Bhaskar has suggested a model, the seven laminations of scale. Bhaskar also differentiates between the transitive and intransitive realms and explains that there are questionable ideological advantages to failing to make this distinction. The intransi-tive/transitive realms have implications for our use of catego-ries: critical realism explains how we can use categories to prevent oppression. Critical realism also argues against a purely positive, rather than a negative, account of the dialectic: thus change is absenting the constraints on absenting ab-sences. Contrary to a frequent assumption made by both non-critical realists and critical realists alike, critical realism is not a return to positivism.
- Full Text:
Some implications of MetaReality for environmental educators
- Authors: Price, Leigh
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437034 , vital:73325 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: This chapter seeks to illuminate the use of dialectical critical realism in a PhD study that was conducted to explore and expand learning processes in sustain able agriculture work-place contexts (Mukute, 2010). The study was conducted in three case study sites in Leso-tho, South Africa and Zimbabwe. About 80 people in three study sites participated in the multiple case study research. In Zimbabwe the study was located in Hwedza District, St Margaret Primary School and its community that learns, practises and facilitates the learn-ing of Permaculture within the Schools and Colleges Permaculture Programme (SCOPE). In South Africa the study took place in Durban urban and peri-urban areas where a communi-ty of organic farmers, facilitators and entrepreneurs co-ordinated the marketing of their produce through Isidore Farm and Earth Mother Organic and support each other to learn and practise organic farming. In Lesotho the study took place in the Mafeteng and Mohale’s Hoek districts where the focus was on farmers who learn and practise the Machobane Farming System (MFS) and were supported in this by the Rural Self Development As-sociation (RSDA) and the Machobane Agricultural Develop-ment Foundation (MADF ). The other research participants were agricultural extension workers who tend to promote high external input agriculture, sustain able agriculture researchers and organic produce marketers.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Price, Leigh
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437034 , vital:73325 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: This chapter seeks to illuminate the use of dialectical critical realism in a PhD study that was conducted to explore and expand learning processes in sustain able agriculture work-place contexts (Mukute, 2010). The study was conducted in three case study sites in Leso-tho, South Africa and Zimbabwe. About 80 people in three study sites participated in the multiple case study research. In Zimbabwe the study was located in Hwedza District, St Margaret Primary School and its community that learns, practises and facilitates the learn-ing of Permaculture within the Schools and Colleges Permaculture Programme (SCOPE). In South Africa the study took place in Durban urban and peri-urban areas where a communi-ty of organic farmers, facilitators and entrepreneurs co-ordinated the marketing of their produce through Isidore Farm and Earth Mother Organic and support each other to learn and practise organic farming. In Lesotho the study took place in the Mafeteng and Mohale’s Hoek districts where the focus was on farmers who learn and practise the Machobane Farming System (MFS) and were supported in this by the Rural Self Development As-sociation (RSDA) and the Machobane Agricultural Develop-ment Foundation (MADF ). The other research participants were agricultural extension workers who tend to promote high external input agriculture, sustain able agriculture researchers and organic produce marketers.
- Full Text:
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