Abstract: This article provides a process-based model of embodied practice to broaden the discourse regarding somatic sustainability. The article provides background regarding the rise of somatic studies in university dance programs and delineates resources that embodied perspectives and somatic concepts can offer. The article provides an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable education and outlines the development of a new curriculum for a university minor in Somatic Sustainability. A common question throughout the minor is: How can we bring about sustainable and positive social change using body-based perspectives and practices? A guided, experiential session is outlined for educators to help students recognize their sense of embodied resiliency. From the Somatics and Sustainable Practices course, an example of a small shifts and quiet practices project is presented. The intersectionality of somatics and sustainability informs the dialogue in each of these fields and offers resources from the often-overlooked body perspective.
Continue ReadingAbstract: In this essay, I discuss the important objectives for education for sustainability, given the challenges that we face, and the serious shortcomings in our knowledge systems. I stress the need to consider sustainability as if both the environment and people matter. I argue that, because a deep understanding of the sustainability challenges can lead to despair, it is important to provide grounds for realistic hope, by showing how positive change is possible, and is being made to happen, across the world. Addressing the sustainability challenge will depend on our ability to enhance human well-being while minimizing material and energy resource flows. Fortunately, the science of well-being shows that, while wealth and consumption contribute to happiness and well-being, rich social relationships, treating everyone with dignity and compassion, and a meaningful, purposeful life, are as important.
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Abstract: Universities are sustainability trailblazers, achieving a more sustainable future through research, community, and education. Critical to their pursuit of sustainability is ensuring that university stakeholders are supportive of university sustainability priorities. As a large stakeholder group, undergraduate students can exert a significant impact on sustainability priorities at the university and thus play a pivotal role in its sustainable development. However, research finds this group is often underutilized in university sustainable development. This paper accordingly examines opportunities to enhance student involvement in university sustainability. Over two research phases, the inquiry explores student evaluations of university sustainability initiatives through a classroom assignment and focus group interviews. Findings reveal that students’ perspectives of the university’s sustainability priorities do not align with what they feel is essential for the student experience. In the focus groups, students provide insight for how to create “buy-in” for university sustainability. The final phase of the inquiry applies the research findings in a service-learning consulting experience. Student teams work on a sustainability consulting project to implement suggestions for connecting university sustainability initiatives to the student experience. The service-learning consulting project allows students to apply their knowledge and skills to real sustainability challenges and, in turn, helps the university connect important sustainability initiatives to the student experience.
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Abstract: Economic globalization has led to the seemingly unstoppable spread of a culture of exploitation and consumption; and both people and planet are suffering as a result of its unintended consequences (Böhm et al. 2015). In light of increasingly startling statistics on climate change, resource depletion, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, we are starting to see a global shift towards conservation and restoration. As more research reveals the complexity of these ecological problems and demonstrates their inextricable connections to socioeconomic instability and poor public health (Cross et al., 2019), practitioners are beginning to employ community- and place-based approaches to restoration and conservation. With a growing consensus in the global conservation community that the participation of local communities is essential for the success of conservation initiatives (United Nations, 2021), there remains a large knowledge gap in how to integrate conservation and community well-being. I propose that a series of community characteristics and project design factors grounded in a biocultural approach can help guide this integration. I present ethnographic and ecological evidence from four communities engaged in community-based conservation in Costa Rica. My main finding was that while each community operates within its own unique social-ecological context, communities engaged in conservation share notable similarities in community characteristics and project design.
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