Compassionate sense of place1 Developing a Compassionate Sense of Place: Environmental and Social...

Compassionate sense of place1

Developing a Compassionate Sense of Place:

Environmental and Social

Conscientization In

Environmental OrganizationsRandolph Haluza- DeLay

Doctoral DissertationSocio-cultural contexts of Education

Joint Ph.D. in EducationUniversity of Western Ontario

January, 29, 2007

Full presentation available as download:http://csopconsulting.tripod.com/dd


Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Project

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change I, II, III

Arctic Climate Impact Assessment

Ecological Footprint of Cnd Cities

PUBLIC AWARENESS, BUT LITTLE CHANGE (or at least, not enough)


LITTLE CHANGE (or at least, not enough)

More Environmental Ed? Governmental regulation? Social Mvmts–new frames/cognitive praxis?

(see “The Death of Environmentalism”) Sociologically robust Not cognitive ONLY Practical (that is, everyday lived practice) Imaginative/evocative (ergo, replace the

“modern social imaginary” – C. Taylor (2004)


Our analyses may be right as rain but they have little or no ability to move people about such a deeply resonant array of experience as are implied in [for example] ‘the relation to nature.’

- Neil Smith (1998)Nature at the millennium: Production and re-enchantment (p. 280)

The goal: “Living environmentally without trying”

- Michael Bell (2004)

Introduction to Environmental Sociology


Getting to the goal of “Living environmentally without trying”

1) Via “a compassionate sense of place” (an environmental “logic” of practice)

2) Investigate “Caring for Place” (with attention to sociological theory)

3) Provide suggestions for social movement organizations as educative.

Today’s talk


A Compassionate Sense of Place

a place-conscious ethos of caring.

a field of care involving the intersection of self-awareness and practical attentiveness to the flourishing of socio-ecological relations.




Developing a Compassionate Sense of Place: Environmental and Social Conscientization In Environmental Organizations

Dissertation: “Integrated Article” format (3 independent articles, a literature review, introduction, expanded

methods & conclusion)

Involved field research in Thunder Bay, Ontario

Draws heavily on the sociological tools of Pierre Bourdieu and his “theory of practice”. For example, the conceptualisation of

“habitus” helps explain why socio-ecological change has been so difficult to generate ALTHOUGH we have heard so much about the decline in environmental conditions.


Integrated article format:

Introduction: Placing the Research Education, social movements and environmental

learning Article1: The practice of environmentalism: Creating

ecological habitus Interlude: Ethnography as method

Article2: Habitus and cognitive praxis among environmentalists

Article3: Caring for place? Possibilities for a compassionate sense of place among environmentalists Caught not taught: Growing a compassionate sense of

place...


Bourdieusian Concepts Bourdieu is “good to think with”

Bourdieu’s theory of practice, includes Field Habitus Logic of Practice (sens pratique) Forms of capital; symbolic power/violence

The theory of action that I propose (with the notion of habitus) amounts to saying that most human actions have as a basis something quite different from intention, that is, acquired dispositions which make it so that an action can and should be interpreted as oriented toward one objective or another without anyone being able to claim that that objective was a conscious design (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 97-98).

People do not “think” their lives: they live them.


The Practice of Environmentalism….

EE research - knowledge and behaviour not well linked.

Cognition only small part of environmental practice.

Nevertheless, EE & “ee” are highly rational & information driven.

OVEREMPHASIS on the cognitive aspects of behaviour.



I don’t know what that [change] is. It’s not like people don’t have the information…. Anything we’re doing or not doing is not because of a lack of information. So

what is it? What’s the key here? (Interview, Chrissy)

I think there’s a social aspect to all this that I just can’t define. In some ways it's advancing because it is socially acceptable to recycle or naturalize your

lawn... [but] I think the social aspect has a hold that's larger than we give it [credit].

(Interview, Brian)


Methods – investigating practice

Analytic Ethnography (Lofland; 1996; Snow, Morrill Anderson, 2000) Theory-driven, NOT “grounded theory”, nor “thick

description.” Enables sustained theorizing across cases

Refinement of “a compassionate sense of place”

Extension of habitus “ecological habitus


Methods Placing the Field -

Thunder Bay The North, far removed from the South Specific issues; local environmentalism


is associated with

ENGO-Envt N

ENGO-Ecosuperior

ENGO-TBFN

ENGO-DU

ENGO-Wind Energy cmttee

ENGO-Chamber of Commerce EnvtalCom..

ENGO-Earth Home

ENGO-BiNational Forum~

Issue-Cloud Bay

ENGOs-Provincial/National

"J ack"

Issue-Petcoke

ENGO-TB RAP

ENGO TreesTB

CityTB


Methods Placing the Field -

Thunder Bay The North, far removed from the South Specific issues; local environmentalism

Involved for 3 ½ yrs. Deliberate fieldwork from May -November of my last

year. Just under 20 organizations (most ad hoc) Culminated in 24 formal interviews with 27

“environmentally active” people.


Extensive literature on “place”

Diverse literature on “caring”, “love”, “ethic of care”

Lots of theoretical & ecophilosophical writing (especially, ecofeminism)

How does it work in practice? Caring for Place?

Caring for place? Possibilities for a compassionate sense of place among environmentalists


Caring for place?

The assumption:“…grounded in and supports the

development of a love for one´s place.”

- Principles of Successful Place-Based Education

http://www.promiseofplace.org/how_pbe_works/


“Place” Places are very complex – sites of continual

reconfiguration of position, and representation. Thus, Place will be contested and fluid, as actors weight different

values/meanings/practices/positions, and mobilize resources.

Furthermore, places are porously boundaried, a mashup of varied relations, INCLUDING Ecological relations.

“Place” is important as location of lived practice. The goal of environmentalism is to create an effective

environmental logic of practice. “Effective” is effective on the ground, in practice.

ENVIRONMENT north has a “pro-north” perspective, and attempts to represent interests and particular issues of the region.... We think objectives of diversifying the economy while maintaining the natural resource base need to be central in regional practices. In other words, a “sustainable” North, where economic and social decisions contribute to the long-term.

(http://www.environmentnorth.ca/about_us.htm. Punctuation as in original)


Findings – Environmental habitus

Many ways of being an environmentalist Characteristics across these many ways

A) trying to live environmentally

B) awareness of inconsistency


I don't live in an urban setting, or a co-op. I live in the country. My house is surrounded by trees. I don't harvest them. I harvest only what has fallen to the

ground. I don't cut trees off my property although wood-burning [to heat the] house. Only those trees that have reached the end of the life-cycle. My children are the same way. We do promote recycling. Composting.

Vegetable garden. Not enough to keep us going for a year, but we try to practice what we preach. I have

some things that I have not been able to get a handle on. My family is a large consumer of fossil fuels. We

commute back and forth – two vehicles, and a third trip back at some point. Can I do anything about that right

now? Not if I want to live in the country. (Interview, Edward)


Findings – Environmental habitus


A) trying to live environmentally

B) awareness of inconsistency

There is a “feel” for how to live well (environmentally), but people have a hard time doing so.


The FIELD ◄─┐ ↕ → The logic of

PRACTICE(sens pratique)

HABITUS ◄─┘

Bourdieusian Concepts


Findings – Environmental Habitus


A) trying to live environmentallyB) awareness of inconsistencyC) engaged in “self-disposing”D) reflexive

There is a “feel” for how to live well (environmentally), but…

Meisenhelder (1997) says “habitus is naturalized” (p. 166), but the ecological habitus cannot currently be so, because it is NOT “natural” to the field of an unecological society.


FINDINGS - Place Place:

Practical & Performative (meaning-contested) Experiential (site of lived practice, affects

person) Places link/scale up Place Matters:

Environmental dispositions important

(“Place matters” ≠ “place matters

environmentally”)

Habitus needs somewhere to operate.


“Caring” A function of all humans.

Socially shaped; consists of practices rather than emotions.

Attentive: e.g., listens to/for needs. Responsive: becomes practical action.

“Caring for” (close-by relations), but also “caring about” (at a distance, even politicised).


FINDINGS – Caring

Caring Deeply authentic Disposed to action Associated with emotion


Deeply authenticMary: Can't force people to care.Brian: You are seeing [caring] as an end

goal, so the person is beyond respect, and now they are REALLY into it.

Randy: You both are making it sound like respect is good, caring might be better.[Both agreed].

(Interview, Mary & Brian)

Not only does [compassion] keeps us from being strident or judgmental – compassion

can be a fundamental principle that can reorient our relationships with all the world.

(Kane speaking, Fieldnotes, October 29)

Disposed to action[What is more important to my work?] Caring. Because caring implies doing

something about it. Respect is OK, but it's not doing anything. So what?

(Interview, Stan)


Disposed to action

Randy: Do you have any examples [of caring]?Roger: (rattled off several). I care for Lake Superior

very strongly.... And I cared enough to bring the two parties [together]. The government was getting nowhere and I did some secret negotiations with [name deleted] and [worked out a deal that helped protect the lake.]

Randy: And you said that's because you care about Lake Superior?

Roger: Right, if I didn't care – who cares? If I didn't care that it was a beautiful body of water and we have to get this crap out of the lake? And we did that.


Caring as emotion

“Love/compassion has to take on structures or they are just emotions.”

(Sam, Interview)

Mary said they wished to use reason, facts, “logic and technical soundness” rather than something like

caring.

Chrissy, describing her little plot of land, and a desire to take care of it well, got embarrassed.

“I never lost my sense of how beautiful that was and how I did not want to see that beauty destroyed in

any way. Cutting down a tree hurt my feelings. [laughs] Talk about a tree hugger!”


FINDINGS – Caring Caring

Deeply authentic Disposed to action Associated with emotion

Caring for whom/what? More than self-interest, family, close-by. Could extend to socio-ecological actants/relations of the

place (including the other-than-human). Caring involved specifics, but could recognize that

places were linked to other places


Caring involved specifics, but could recognize that places were linked to other places:Roger [carefully]: Caring for the issues that affect the

planet, the biosphere.Randy: So caring more about particular issues or caring

for—Roger: [Talking over me, speeding up] – You can't

really look at the whole world, you have to pick something that contributes to the whole world. Anyone says they’re going to look after the whole world – the question is how? There are millions of issues out there that but if anyone took on a few issues to care and to advance, then the whole planet is positively affected. You can't really say ‘Well, I'm gonna save the whole planet.’


FINDINGS – Caring

Caring Deeply authentic Disposed to action Associated with emotion

Caring for whom/what?

Perceived as politically ineffectual Too emotional; not reason/rationality Over people’s heads (TOO deep)


Caring as “too deep”

No, I don’t think [describing environmental work as caring] will work because I don’t

think most people are there. You’re talking over their heads or you’re talking a foreign

language.(Interview, Richard)

Caring as “too emotional”

All in all, I don't think we try to appeal much to the emotional side of these issues… [And ] as an

organization... we've avoided that term [environmentalist]. In a lot of ways,

environmentalists are seen as emotionalists, and that is why we've taken a distinctly

different tack, to try to keep things logical and so forth. Because the minute you get

emotional, then it's personal. (Interview, Mary)


FINDINGS - Environmental Organizations

The ENGO became a site for socialization of the habitus, as well as for the maintenance of a more ecological

habitus.

Environmental discourse extends the bounds of attentiveness to include other components of the place.

ENGOs concentrated response. HERE, an environmentally-oriented way-of-being is

OK.

Your behaviour does change. I think your level of awareness, understanding – it's education in a way. I mean that's

obvious you work at a job for a couple of years and you're gonna learn something and I think you do. I can't speak for Mary (she is agreeing). but I do think your behaviour does change as a result of some of the things that do go on. I

think those are positive changes. (Interview, Brian)


ENGOs ◄─┐

↕ → An eco-logical “logic of practice”?

(required a reflexive component)

Ecological ◄─┘HABITUS


Sustainable society◄─┐ “Living well

(environmentally)

↕ → without trying”

Ecological ◄─┘Habitus (includes dispositions of caring)

Sustainable society◄─┐ “Living well

(environmentally)

↕ → without trying”

Ecological ◄─┘Habitus (includes dispositions of caring)


Caring and Place

Both Caring and Place are practice-based logics Therefore, attentive to particularity, they challenge

universalizing rationality and rule-oriented practice.

Ethos, not ethic

Both are performative, experiential, operating at multiple scales & valid outside of strictly human domains (e.g., socio-ecological places).


(Fieldnotes, December 19, talking with Stan)

Why does do this stuff? Is it because he is in Thunder Bay? He said, maybe he would do it if elsewhere.

Also it's the stage in life [he’s at]. His kids are grown. Maybe [he would do it] if elsewhere–.

Then he said, “Sure, if I was in another community, if I felt a connection to the community and wasn’t just a

transient... hmmm, I can see the benefits of your labour.”


Caught not taught: Growing a compassionate sense of place...

Caring can be commended as a possible orientation for an eco-logic of practice, but with reservations….

Caring habituates (a deeply authentic orientation) Caring disposes to action Action occurs in a place (potentially scaled up.)

But, “Caring” devalued

THEREFORE, We need PRACTICE in “caring” We need a better language for “caring,” “love,”

“compassion” Must be “politicised” (not sentimentalized)


Darder, Freire: Critical Pedagogy is founded on love:

Love is... an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to other men. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause – the cause of

liberation.... As an act of bravery, love cannot be sentimental.... It must generate other acts of freedom; otherwise, it is not

love....(Freire, 1983, pp. 78-79)


A Compassionate Sense of Place

A “logic of practice”



Living well in a place




Getting to the goal: “Living environmentally without trying”

1) Via “a compassionate sense of place” (an environmental “logic” of practice)

2) Investigate “Caring for Place” (with attention to sociological theory)

3) Provide suggestions for social movement organizations as educative.

Today’s talk



Can environmental social

movement

organizations “teach”

an alternate “logic of

practice” sufficient for

socio-ecological

change?

Fortunately, a reflexive component can be a part of the habitus.

This gives hope to pedagogical efforts.

BUT it’s not about “knowledge” only.


Learning in Social Movements Careful ethnographies show a tacit dimension to

learning in social movements.

Internalisation of experience, within a situated context

Learning “must be understood as the gradual transformation of knowledge into knowing, and part

of that transformation involves a deepening internalisation to the point that people and their

‘knowing’ are totally integrated one with the other” (Le Cornu, 2005, p. 175, emphasis added).

This understanding fits the notion of a reflexive, ecological habitus.

CAUGHT not TAUGHT


The Practice of Environmentalism: Creating an Ecological

HabitusAn ecological sens pratique negotiating an un-

ecological society will need:

1) Details: of ecologically sound lifestyle practices;

2) Analysis: of the social structures that inhibit ecological lifestyle;

3) Understanding: how social relations resist an ecological worldview and lifestyle;

4) Internalisation: an ecological habitus will thrive only in a social field where it is “sensible”. CAUGHT not TAUGHT.


IN CONCLUSION: Bourdieu’s theory of practice does advance social

movement theory, AND movement praxis.

To be effective, ESMOs would do well to Address “field” and “habitus” concurrently See themselves differently: as “fields of practice” in

which “living environmentally without trying” begins to “make sense”.

Be fields which operationalize a compassionate sense of place.

There IS potential for environmental organizations to provide opportunities for transformation of the habitus.

JUST THE START (for me)!


Caught not taught: Growing a compassionate sense of place...

Full presentation and all papers (including an extended piece on “transformative imagining and movement intellectuals”) available as downloads:

http://csopconsulting.tripod.com/dd

MERCI BEAUCOUP Go Forth, and LIVE WELL (without trying)


Observations

How will Socio-ecological improvement happen? The Bourdieusian answer: Transformation of

individual habitus difficult apart from the field.

Progressive social change, but habitus is conservative?

Habitus is overly deterministic? NO, but “inertial”.

Fortunately, a reflexive component can be a part of the habitus. (and this gives hope to pedagogical elements!)

“[habitus] tends to ensure its own constancy and its defense against change through the selection it makes within new information by rejecting information capable of calling into question its accumulated information” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 167).


I find that with a lot of activists, they’re too far down the road. Maybe they partially live in the changed world but it hasn’t changed yet. So they develop plans and programs and stuff that don’t work because the people that are in there [municipal government or other positions of influence] aren’t ready for them.

(Interview, Richard)


The Practice of Environmentalism: Creating an Ecological

Habitus

Environmentalism will be challenged in a field

centred around hegemonic versions of

realities that are generally contrary to its

goals.

It will struggle to articulate its frames in contention with dominant logics in which it “does not make

sense.”

Fortunately, a reflexive component can be a part of the habitus.

(and this gives hope to pedagogical efforts!)


I don’t think where I live has driven my opinions. And I don’t think that if I lived in

Malawi, London or Toronto, I would have a fundamentally different approach towards

my politics. Maybe what I’m arguing is I don’t know how much place matters to why people

come to politics, or come to activism.

(interview, Christoff)

So my sense of place drives specifics but my overall interest in politics, my overall interest

in being involved in the political and the decision making process of society, I think,

is a bit more fundamental to ME [with emphasis], as opposed to being to the

location or the locale that I’m in.

At some level or another things are global and you have to address that... But you also

have to have some level of recognition that people locally have to deal with their

issues.... And that’s where the local driving the priorities is reality. I’m not saying it’s

perfect .... But you have to at some degree focus on what you know and what you feel

you can directly get your hands around.

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