Socio-Ecological Systems and Decoloniality
Socio-Ecological Systems and Decoloniality

Author: Deepa Pullanikkatil

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-01-01

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 303115097X

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This contributed volume provides case studies from around the world that feature a convergence of indigenous and western knowledge in an attempt to understand complex socio-ecological systems. The book provides an understanding of socio-ecological systems in an ethical space using a 'Decoloniality' approach (i.e. untangling the production of knowledge from a primarily Eurocentric episteme). The work presented here integrates and merges indigenous knowledge with western science, thereby building on the strengths of each in service of understanding these systems. The editors of this volume approach indigenous communities and scientists as equal knowledge-holders and, in doing so, contributes towards improved understanding of socio-ecological systems and interactions in cross-cultural contexts. This volume will be of interest to scientists, instructors, students and policy makers across disciplines such as environmental sciences, social sciences, interdisciplinary studies, cultural studies, ethnobotany, anthropology and plant genetic resources.

Decolonial Ecology
Decolonial Ecology

Author: Malcom Ferdinand

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-11-11

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1509546243

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The world is in the midst of a storm that has shaped the history of modernity along a double fracture: on the one hand, an environmental fracture driven by a technocratic and capitalist civilization that led to the ongoing devastation of the Earth’s ecosystems and its human and non-human communities and, on the other, a colonial fracture instilled by Western colonization and imperialism that resulted in racial slavery and the domination of indigenous peoples and women in particular. In this important new book, Malcom Ferdinand challenges this double fracture, thinking from the Caribbean world. Here, the slave ship reveals the inequalities that continue during the storm: some are shackled inside the hold and even thrown overboard at the first gusts of wind. Drawing on empirical and theoretical work in the Caribbean, Ferdinand conceptualizes a decolonial ecology that holds protecting the environment together with the political struggles against (post)colonial domination, structural racism, and misogynistic practices. Facing the storm, this book is an invitation to build a world-ship where humans and non-humans can live together on a bridge of justice and shape a common world. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in environmental humanities and Latin American and Caribbean studies, as well as anyone interested in ecology, slavery, and (de)colonization.

Academic Freedom in Africa
Academic Freedom in Africa

Author: Yamikani Ndasauka

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-10-14

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1040152988

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This book leaves no stone unturned in its comprehensive examination of the complex challenges surrounding academic freedom in Africa. Drawing on diverse perspectives and methodologies, it delves into the historical, philosophical, legal, and socio-political dimensions shaping academic freedom across the continent. The authors grapple with colonial legacies, tensions between Western and African notions of intellectual liberty, government authoritarianism, and institutional constraints that hinder open discourse and the pursuit of knowledge. The book highlights systemic obstacles and promising avenues for progress through case studies, comparative analysis, and empirical research, such as constitutional reforms, scholar activism, and regional networks. This thought-provoking volume offers critical insights into the state of academic freedom in Africa, emphasising the necessity of supporting African voices and agencies in the quest for meaningful intellectual autonomy. Academic Freedom in Africa is an essential read for students, scholars, policymakers, and anyone concerned with the future of higher education and democracy on the continent.

Time, Climate Change, Global Racial Capitalism and Decolonial Planetary Ecologies
Time, Climate Change, Global Racial Capitalism and Decolonial Planetary Ecologies

Author: Anna M. Agathangelou

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-06-23

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1000606767

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This book probes the interconnections of time and ecology in order to spark our imagination and inspire us to re-think the planetary, ecology, and otherwise. It presents debates that interrogate and elucidate the anxieties of the known and the unknown of this world and the planetary beyond, sifting through temporal accounts of the Anthropocene, human beings, and climate change. The chapters in this edited volume spur conversations with different thought systems and their underlying assumptions about the composition of structures of time and contingent temporalities. The authors engage rising temperatures in the oceans and air, the consequences, intended and unintended, of investments in various forms of "development", and the potential catastrophe unfolding in real time. Recent temporal strategies such as mitigation and adaptation to the "climate crisis" are challenged as they further compound and commodify the inquiry, the understanding and responses to environmental degradations, extractions, and displacements. Anti-colonial and decolonial debates about the structures of time, the planetary, and ecology are crucial contributions of this volume. Further, privileging the vantage points of the colonized and enslaved, the authors of this volume challenge dominant universal, cyclical, and retrospective structures of time and the planetary. Through research, poetry, art, and popular cultural analyses, the authors attend to the ways that the struggles of the "submerged," indigenous and black communities for climate justice become coded as a global warming crisis. This volume grapples with how racial climate struggles and unrest become mobilized both as a source of paralysis and as an opportunity for further expropriation and expansion of data accumulation markets for settler planetary projects all in the name of global warming. Ultimately, the authors in this volume argue that conventional attempts at exploiting the planetary all depend upon ideas of conquest and the mastery and control of ecologies, global governance, and individual behaviors. In this sense, fears about the unknown future of our planet miss what is at stake in the structures of time, the question of creation and invention. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Globalizations.

A Companion to Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies
A Companion to Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies

Author: Luis I. Prádanos

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2023-01-17

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 1855663694

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An exploration of how writers, artists, and filmmakers expose the costs and contest the assumptions of the Capitalocene era that guides readers through the rapidly developing field of Spanish environmental cultural studies. From the scars left by Franco's dams and mines to the toxic waste dumped in Equatorial Guinea, from the cruelty of the modern pork industry to the ravages of mass tourism in the Balearic Islands, this book delves into the power relations, material practices and social imaginaries underpinning the global economic system to uncover its unaffordable human and non-human costs. Guiding the reader through the rapidly emerging field of Spanish environmental cultural studies, with chapters on such topics as extractivism, animal studies, food studies, ecofeminism, decoloniality, critical race studies, tourism, and waste studies, an international team of US and European scholars show how Spanish writers, artists, and filmmakers have illuminated and contested the growth-oriented and neo-colonialist assumptions of the current Capitalocene era. Focussed on Spain, the volume also provides models for exploring the socioecological implications of cultural manifestations in other parts of the world.

Contemporary Ecocritical Methods
Contemporary Ecocritical Methods

Author: Camilla Brudin Borg

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2024-04-30

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1666937894

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Ecocriticism has grown into one of the most innovative and urgent fields of the humanities, and many useful ecocritical approaches for addressing our environmental crisis have been developed, discussed, and reconsidered during the last decade. From various perspectives, ecocriticism both adopts and criticizes traditional analytical and theoretical models, resulting in an impressive methodological diversity, pushing the boundaries of the humanities. Contemporary Ecocritical Methods exemplifies this methodological variety and serves as a practical entry into the field. Fourteen chapters, written by scholars from various ecocritical sub-fields of environmental humanities, introduce a rich set of perspectives and their analytical tools.

Doing Theology in the New Normal
Doing Theology in the New Normal

Author: Jione Havea

Publisher: SCM Press

Published: 2021-07-30

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0334060648

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Responses to the recent pandemic have been driven by fear, with social distancing and locking down of communities and borders as the most effective tactics. Out of fear and strategies that separate and isolate, emerges what has been described as the “new normal” (which seems to mutate daily). Truly global in scope, with contributors from across the world, this collection revisits four old responses to crises – assure, protest, trick, amend – to explore if/how those might still be relevant and effective and/or how they might be mutated during and after a global pandemic. Together they paint a grounded, earthy, context-focused picture of what it means to do theology in the new normal.

Degrowth Decolonization and Development
Degrowth Decolonization and Development

Author: Milica Kočović De Santo

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-03-20

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 3031259459

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Degrowth Decolonization and Development reveals common underlying cultural roots to the multiple current crises. It shows that culture is an essential sphere to initiate fundamental changes and solutions as it brings about transformative imaginaries on a theoretical, political and practical level. The book focusses on the interplay between culture and the environment, society and the economy. It provides a critique of concepts associated with the term “Development” and reveals knowledge and theories outside the comfort zone of the mainstream Western theoretical landscape, which will certainly be instrumental in the decolonization of both development theories and practices. The book convincingly reveals the large array of domains, which, when interpreted from a decolonization and Degrowth perspective, can be managed through logics of environmental justice, social equity and equality, and generate societally more desirable outcomes. The book presents a multidisciplinary perspective on the contemporary global crises and features interdisciplinary analyses thereof through the lenses of cultural studies, critical development studies, political economy, eco-feminist political ecology, anthropology and sociology. Degrowth Decolonization and Development unveils the fundamental role of the dichotomies characterizing the Western modern development paradigm in shaping today’s actions, and especially the dichotomies of Global North and Global South, Centre and Periphery, Developed and Developing/Underdeveloped, Man and Nature. Degrowth Decolonization and Development addresses all researchers and activists interested in sustainability transformation and decolonization processes in Development studies. Degrowth Decolonization and Development is structured as a collection of seven original case studies. These are authored by researchers who met when presenting their work in Decolonization and Degrowth panels from the ISEE-ESEE-Degrowth Conference, Manchester, July 5-8, 2021, and the 8th International Degrowth Conference in The Hague, Netherlands, August 24-28, 2021. The concluding chapter proposes a synthesis identifying key concepts and steps in cultural change for the decolonization of the Western worldview towards “pluriverse” alternatives. The book traces future imaginaries for modelling future new systemic solutions and a needed radical change.

Decolonizing Social Work
Decolonizing Social Work

Author: Mel Gray

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 1317153731

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Riding on the success of Indigenous Social Work Around the World, this book provides case studies to further scholarship on decolonization, a major analytical and activist paradigm among many of the world’s Indigenous Peoples, including educators, tribal leaders, activists, scholars, politicians, and citizens at the grassroots level. Decolonization seeks to weaken the effects of colonialism and create opportunities to promote traditional practices in contemporary settings. Establishing language and cultural programs; honouring land claims, teaching Indigenous history, science, and ways of knowing; self-esteem programs, celebrating ceremonies, restoring traditional parenting approaches, tribal rites of passage, traditional foods, and helping and healing using tribal approaches are central to decolonization. These insights are brought to the arena of international social work still dominated by western-based approaches. Decolonization draws attention to the effects of globalization and the universalization of education, methods of practice, and international ’development’ that fail to embrace and recognize local knowledges and methods. In this volume, Indigenous and non-Indigenous social work scholars examine local cultures, beliefs, values, and practices as central to decolonization. Supported by a growing interest in spirituality and ecological awareness in international social work, they interrogate trends, issues, and debates in Indigenous social work theory, practice methods, and education models including a section on Indigenous research approaches. The diversity of perspectives, decolonizing methodologies, and the shared struggle to provide effective professional social work interventions is reflected in the international nature of the subject matter and in the mix of contributors who write from their contexts in different countries and cultures, including Australia, Canada, Cuba, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and the USA.