Global Futures 8 Dec 2014 - Judi Marshall Big picture? Responses? Their challenges?

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Rockström, J., Steffen, W. Noone, K. et al. (2009) A safe operating space for humanity.9 ‘planetary systems’ & their boundaries – 3 of which they say we have already exceeded

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Loss of species, habitats, biodiversity – which ‘we’

mostly seem to think is fine – necessary to our survival, well-being and expansion as a species

……. when I ‘speak’, I present examples – eg pictures and info about rainforests' planetary roles and benefits

and invite reactions – operating from inquiry

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Paradigms matter If you imagine God outside and separate from creation, and you have the

idea that you are created in God's image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you claim all

mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will

seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your people against the environment of other social units, other races, and the brutes and vegetables. If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have

an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate

or simply of overpopulation and overgrazing. Gregory Bateson (1987, p468; original 1972)

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Working with the politics of epistemologyIf our approaches to change are within ‘old’ frames, they will replicate those

patterns, at best become layered on top… Eg arguing “the business case” for environmental sustainability and

social justice - futile? co-opted?Could 'better' climate science reinforce positivist dominance?

The more things change the more they stay the same??

What choices is ‘academia’ (in the UK) making right now?Potentially looking the other way, amidst our world of self-created rules and

acquiescence, detached from pressing issues of our times, or repeatedly trying to argue them in ‘mainstream’ languages to achieve our place?

In what ways do we address these issues with our students?Choosing to work with multiple ways of knowing (a shorthand) as a political

act….vs suppressing emotions, intuition, practical k

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Watching Corporate Social Responsibility take shape….1995-2000s..

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How rhetorics are chosen to clarify, attract attention, create a sense of emergency – justify thinking and acting in radical ways

Choosing ‘things’ that can be clearly delineated, measured, counted (implication that relationships can be proven?) – knowing people have a

preference for ‘hard’ dataWith the danger that we come only to value what we can measure and count,

and devalue what we cannotBut then the formulations are often refuted (peak oil?) And the issues

superseded, fade, as their languages get co-opted…. Or become potentially tamed – CSR?? Maybe even ' climate change'?

Perhaps making things this specific and boundaried in a complex, interactive world is bound to produce thinking that cannot hold?

Attempts at CSR, Triple Bottom Line accounting and so on…But leading social & environmental accounting scholars conclude:

‘It looks exceptionally likely that the current form of capitalism is not sustainable – it is, after all, based on private property rights, growth and

expansion, competition, maximizing consumption of non-essentials, maximizing returns to shareholders and directors & so on’

As sustainability is a system concept, it would be ‘profoundly implausible that an individual company could be sustainable (or responsible) in an

unsustainable (or irresponsible) system’ Gray and Milne, 2004, p.73

This is the contested context in which people do CSR – tho many valiantly understand & work for systemic change

Choosing to work with ‘tempered radicals’ (Meyerson & Scully, 1995) and those adopting “responsible careers” (Tams & Marshall, 2011)

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If we believe any of “this”…. or if we want to be sure we should ignore it…

We need to go exploring… to have learning approaches radical enough to live in uncertain, dangerous, political times

I use and offer living life as inquiry - action research of multiple kinds – as ways for people, individually and with others, to take experimental action to promote inquiry and to influence organizations and the world around us for

systemic change (Marshall et al, 2011)

Have sometimes called this taking leadership for sustainability – which all can do wherever they are…..

Incorporating systemic thinking and action, and attention to issues of power…

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Acting for social change requires supportive, critical friends

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Graduates of the MSc in Responsibility & Business Practice, Uni of Bath

Potential gendering of leadership for sustainabilityMultiple potential meanings

EG What do we look for in leaders we can find ‘credible’ in uncertain, contested times?

Tempting not to mention as might cause divisions?

Recent trend, hailing heroic business leaders for CSR

Waiting for top people to have epiphanies?Placing too much on their shoulders?

Very important valiant work. But only part of the storyRestricted by the requirements of systemic patterns – especially the economics of business – as we see when their businesses’ economic

performance is threatened.

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Juxtaposing pioneering leaders of change (Marshall, 2007)

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Ray Anderson, Founder of Interface.Tempered radical with sufficient credentials in mainstream organizational worlds to be able to challenge them radically? But still requiring clarity and courage.

Anita Roddick, Founder of Body Shop Intl.Sector changing. Out-spoken. Integrating emotions,

speaking for society. Potentially 'too much!'?

‘There will be no nature without justice. Nature and justice, contested discursive objects embodied in the material world, will

become extinct or survive together’ (Haraway, 1999, p.333).

‘Feminism or death’ – ‘La Féminisme ou la mort’ (d’Eaubonne, 1974).

Equality is The Natural Steps’ 4th condition for sustainability

Looking to: Contraction and Convergence – Aubrey Meyer

What might make us privileged accept this? Working the background

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Via multiple ways of knowing…..

One of the places I hold dear and seek to answer to: the River Dart &

surrounding woodlands Devon UKClambering four-limbed over the

slippery mossy boulders under low hanging tree branches at the water’s edge - an embodied image of what it

takes to live within the earth community

Who/what do you answer to?What are your embodied images of

living ‘sustainably’?

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References

Bateson, Gregory. “Form, Substance, and Difference.” Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc, 1987: 454-471. Original 1972

D’Eaubonne, F. (1974) La Féminisme ou la mort. Paris: Pierre, Horay.Elkington, J. (1997) Cannibals with Forks: The triple bottom line of 21st Century Business, Oxford: Capstone

Gray, R. and Milne, M. (2004) Toward reporting on the triple bottom line: mirages, methods and myths. In Henriques, A. and Richardson, J. (eds) The Triple Bottom Line: Does It All Add Up? pp. 70–80. London: Earthscan.

Haraway, D. (1992) The promises of monsters: a regenerative politics for inappropriate/d others. In Grossberg, L., Nelson, C. and Treichler, P. (eds) Cultural Studies, pp. 295–337. New York: Routledge.

Marshall, J. (2007) The gendering of leadership in corporate social responsibility. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 20,2, 165–81.

Marshall, J, Coleman, G & Reason R (2011) Leadership for Sustainability: An action research approach, Sheffield: Greenleaf

Meyer, A. (2005?) Contraction and Convergence, Schumacher Briefing.Meyerson, D.E. and Scully, M.A. (1995) Tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change.

Organization Science, 6,5, 585–600.The Prince’s Rainforests Project 2009 www.rainforestSOS.org

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/special-report-catastrophic-drought-in-the-amazon-2203892.html#

Rockström, J., Steffen, W. Noone, K. et al. (2009) A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461,7263, 472–5.Tams, S & Marshall, J (2011) Responsible Careers: Systemic reflexivity in shifting landscapes, Human Relations 64.1:

109-31.

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