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Dieses Bild wurde auf Platz 9 in Top 100 bei der Swiss Photo Club Ausstellung ausgewählt.
Es war eine tolle Erfahrung !
Andreea
This image was #9 in Top 100 at the Swiss Photo Club exhibition.
It was a great experience !
Andreea
As I mentioned previously while commenting on some of my photos, my artistic approach is a dynamic process and it will likely last forever. I keep redefining my landscape photography vision simply because I constantly develop in the field and switch sources of inspiration. The same compositions, identical photographic styles, non-changing photographic gurus, screaming colours or static photo locations don’t satisfy my artistic desire. So I am in a constant photographic search. My way of landscape photography execution doesn’t involve going to places and shooting the first appealing composition. Instead I like to take risks and come up with new approaches. Before I start shooting, firstly I need to feel the place. And I mean in it in a holistic approach. Each of my photos is a combination of composition, technical skills and deeper connection with the photographed location. One doesn’t exist with the other. I would never go to the place just to take couple photos, but I frequently go to places and explore them even if I don’t shoot. This photo features Brandywine Falls in BC, near Whistler. Every time when I look at this waterfall I reassure myself that it looks more interesting from its very edge than from the bottom. It was a thrilling and adrenaline boosting experience to shoot there again. By the way, it is 70 metres of that plunge.
Photo taken at the mausoleum of Moulay Ali Cherif in Risani. Considered a holy city, Risani is the birthplace of the Alaouite dynasty, Morocco's ruling family.
There are some weird and wonderful features on the expansive limestone plateau of Scales Moor. You could easily fill an album with the shapes and foreground features in the bedrock and have the fabulous backdrop of one of the Yorkshire Dales three peaks, with Whernside shown here or the more distinctive Ingleborough as a background.
I thought this curious vent like feature provided an acceptable foreground with the erratic like boulders framing Whernside behind. John Bleakley and I spent a pleasurable hour or so around this spot just after the mist and low cloud disappeared.
I'm certain these Scales Moor boulders have featured in many an image, but I'd not seen this vent before.
A warm, calm summer evening where´s haze blurs the line between sea, sky and earth......
Copyright © All rights reserved Peter Vahlersvik! Please do not use this image on websites, blogs or any other media in any way without my explicit written permission
A series called "Holistic Fragments" made with soaked/manipulated new Polaroid film(s).
Soaked Black & Green 600 Film – Duochrome Edition turned blue in the process.
This and more at linktr.ee/ale.di.gangi
Digital art by Debbie Golden. We are co-artists on some works. This is entirely her own.
I gave it a not so great title.
The holistic concept in medical practice, which is distinct from the concept in the alternative medicine, upholds that all aspects of people's needs including psychological, physical and social should be taken into account and seen as a whole. A 2007 study said the concept was alive and well in general medicine in Sweden.[3]
Some practitioners of holistic medicine use alternative medicine exclusively, though sometimes holistic treatment can mean simply that a physician takes account of all a person's circumstances in giving treatment. Sometimes when alternative medicine is mixed with mainstream medicine the result is called "holistic" medicine, though this is more commonly termed integrative medicine.[2]
According to the American Holistic Medical Association it is believed that the spiritual element should also be taken into account when assessing a person's overall well-being. ( Wikipedia)
Compositionally Challenged Week 5 - Fill the Frame with Vibrant Color
Thank you for viewing, faving or commenting on my images, have a great day!
Originally built as a holistic spring water resort in 1927 it functioned in this capacity until its closure in 1986. It reopened in 1997 as a restaurant with interior details such as a 6 foot chandelier, a European style fireplace & furniture imported from France. Exterior features such as a french style gazebo & large water fountains. The restaurant closed for good in 2012.
Night, near full moon, 180 second exposure, handheld light producing device set to blue, orange & white.
The metamorphoses holistics are digital transformations of an only frame.
The result is a dynamism of an alone frame
my web site
GUIDE AND SUPERVISION... Holistic Way, Super Vision, Eye Nutrition...pineal gland create inner light and super vision of your dreams...Lighting is a standout amongst the most imperative components in home stylistic layout. A decent lighting makes a feeling of warmth and inviting interest in the house. It likewise empowers you to perform every day errands well, makes you agreeable and above all outwardly upgrades the room.
Abstract: Sustainability has the potential to provide a holistic framework that can bridge the gap that is often found between socio-economic justice and environmental discourses. However, sustainability and sustainability education have typically accepted the prevailing socio-economic and cultural paradigm. It is my aim in this paper to demonstrate that a truly holistic and visionary sustainability (education) framework ought to demand radical and critical theories and solutions- based approaches to politicize and interrogate the premises, assumptions, and biases linked to the dominant notion of sustainability. If we are to envision and construe actual sustainable futures, we must first understand what brought us here, where the roots of the problems lie, and how the sustainability discourse and framework tackle—or fail to tackle—them. To do this is to politicize sustainability, to build a critical perspective of and about sustainability. It is an act of conscientização (or conscientization), to borrow Paulo Freire’s seminal term, of cultivating critical consciousness and conscience. In lieu of the standard articulation of politics as centralized state administration, ‘critical sustainability studies’ is based on a framing that gives prominence to a more organic, decentralized engagement of conscientious subjects in the creation of just, regenerative eco-social relations. It illuminates the ideological and material links between society, culture, and ecology by devoting particular attention to how knowledge and discourse around and across those realms are generated and articulated. I believe that future scholarship and activism in sustainability and sustainability-related fields would benefit immensely from dialoguing with this framework.
The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.
– Murray Bookchin, The Meaning of Confederalism, 1990
Introduction: Why Sustainability (and Sustainability Education)?
Despite conflicting opinions over what the terms ‘sustainability’ and its variant ‘sustainable development’ actually mean, the framework of sustainability has gained a lot of traction in the last two decades. Its Western origins can be traced back to the writings of Western philosophers and seminal environmentalists like John Locke and Aldo Leopold (Spoon, 2013). Redclift (2005) asserts that sustainability as an idea was first used during the ‘limits to growth’ debates in the 1970s and the 1972 UN Stockholm Conference. Perhaps the most commonly quoted definition of sustainable development is that of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) who states that “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987, p. 43).
Sustainability has the potential to provide a holistic framework that can bridge the gap that is often found between socio-economic justice and environmental discourses. After all, recent scholarship indicates that the issue of environmental quality is inevitably linked to that of human equity (Morello-Frosch, 1997; Torras & Boyce, 1998; see Agyeman, Bullard, & Evans, 2002), and thus they need to be thought about together. I hold that an actual sustainable society is one where wider matters of social and economic needs are intrinsically connected to the dynamic limits set by supporting ecosystems and environments.
Sustainability education has emerged as an effort to acknowledge and reinforce these interrelationships and to reorient and transform education along the lines of social and ecological well-being (Sterling, 2001). By being rooted in whole systems thinking, i.e. “the ability to collectively analyze complex systems across different domains (society, environment, and economy) and across different scales (local to global)” (Wiek, Withycombe, & Redman, 2011, p. 207), sustainability education strives to illuminate the complexities associated with the broad, problem-oriented, solution-driven nature of sustainability (Warren, Archambault, & Foley, 2014). If we are to devise cultural systems that are truly regenerative, this “novel” brand of education urges the teaching of the fundamental facts of life by stewarding learning communities that comprehend the adaptive qualities of ecological patterns and principles (Stone, 2012). Sustainability education highlights the centrality of ‘place’ as a unit of inquiry to devise reciprocal—and thus sustainable—relationships where one nourishes and is nourished by their surrounding social and ecological milieus (Williams & Brown, 2012).
Additionally, sustainability and, as a consequence, sustainability education are future- oriented and therefore demand ‘futures thinking’: the ability to assess and formulate nuanced pictures of the future vis-à-vis sustainability predicaments and sustainability problem-solving schemes (Wiek, et al., 2011). In a nutshell, futures thinking suggests that we need to imagine the potential ramifications of past and current human activities by critically analyzing them today if we are to conceive of new, more sustainable futures (Warren et al., 2014). Future studies can therefore help people to pursue their “ontological vocation” as history makers (Freire, 1993, p. 66) and to (re)claim their agency as a means of creating the world in which they wish to live (Inayatullah, 2007).
However, sustainability and sustainability education have typically accepted the prevailing socio-economic and cultural paradigm despite their apparent holistic intent and(theoretical) efforts to reconcile the three pillars of sustainability—equity, environment, and economy. Whether intentionally or not, they have promoted curative solutions instead of reflecting new, critical mindsets that can actually generate meaningful socio-cultural innovation by naming and discursively dismantling the systems and processes that are the root causes of the complex problems we face. And, as Albert Einstein once put it, “no problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.”
It is my aim in this paper to demonstrate that a truly holistic and visionary sustainability (education) framework ought to demand radical (of, relating to, or proceeding from a root) and critical (of, relating to, or being a turning point) theories and solutions-based approaches to politicize and interrogate the premises, assumptions, and biases linked to the dominant notion of sustainability.
Troubling (Monolithic) Sustainability
In order to be able to unveil and critically analyze the propositions and suppositions of what I call ‘the monolithic sustainability discourse,’ it is fundamental to start with the etymology of the word ‘sustainability’ itself. The operationalization of the term can be problematic for it implies prior judgments about what is deemed important or necessary to sustain. While some of these judgements might resonate with an array of environmentalists who perceive that the health of the planet and the well-being of our descendants are being—or are already—compromised by certain human activities, various other perilous premises and assumptions are generally left unacknowledged as a result of the depoliticized character of the dominant discourse of sustainability. Lele and Norgaard (1996) have put forward three questions that can help us to uncover and think more critically about these presuppositions in and across various contexts and scales: (a) what is to be sustained, at what scale, and in what form?; (b) over what time period, with what level of certainty?; (c) through what social process(es), and with what trade-offs against other social goals? (p. 355).
By building on these critical questions and clarifications, we can better understand the nuances of how the destructive and thus unsustainable ethos of dehumanization and socio- ecological exploitation may inform and permeate normative notions and articulations of sustainability. Yet, this is only plausible if sustainability is politicized. To politicize is to engage the existing state of socio-political affairs, to problematize that which is taken for granted, to make explicit the power relations that are an innate part of everyday life and experience (Bailey & Gayle, 2003). In an attempt to comprehend why sustainability is typically depoliticized we ought to examine briefly its discursive history.
The term ‘sustainable development’ became a part of the policy discourse and almost every day language following the release of the Brundtland Commission’s report on the global environment and development in 1987 (Redclift, 2005). While their definition included a very clear social directive, its human and political dimensions have been largely overlooked amongst references to sustainability, which, due to its environmental origins (Lele & Norgaard, 1996) and neoliberal focus on rights rather than needs (Redclift, 2005), have typically focused on bio- physical, ecological issues (Vallance, Perkins, & Dixon, 2011). Social sustainability, which has been conceptualized in response to the failure of the sustainability approach to engender substantial change (Vallance et al., 2011), is the least developed of the three realms and is frequently framed in relation to ecological and/or economic sustainability (Magis & Shinn, 2013). I assert that the reason for this is twofold: first and foremost, the sustainability agenda was conceived by international committees and NGO networks, think tanks, and governmental structures (Agyeman et al., 2002), which makes it a top-down approach and, consequently, less likely to recognize and address themes such as structural poverty, equity, and justice (Colantonio, 2009); and second, because social sustainability is made subservient to economics and the environment, it fails to examine the socio-political circumstances and elements that are needed to sustain a community of people (Magis & Shinn, 2013).
Sustainability, since its inception as a Western construct, has been progressively viewed as a crucial driver in economic development and environmental management worldwide. Nevertheless, as delineated above, its almost universal focus on reconciling the growth model of economics and the environment has served to covertly depoliticize the dominant discourse and therefore render it uncontentious if not intrinsically benign. It is worth further exploring the dynamics of depoliticization for I believe they are at the radicle of the issues sustainability attempts to address in the first place.
Bailey and Gayle (2003) identify a series of acts that can be associated with the dynamics of depoliticization, three of which can be observed when examining the monolithic sustainability discourse: (a) eschewing political discourse; (b) removing from the discourse the recognition that social advantages are given to certain constituent groups; (c) not disclosing underlying viewpoints or values. These processes are enmeshed with intricate ideological instances that help to mask the systemic and/or structural nature of a social or cultural matter (Bailey & Gayle, 2003). Further, as Foucault (1984) has stated, “power is everywhere” (p. 93) and it is embodied and enacted in discourse and knowledge. Hence, possessing the analytical tools to name and unpack these discursive ideological formations and power dynamics ought to be a prerequisite to the development of more holistic and critically conscious understandings and applications of sustainability.
Politicizing Sustainability
If we are to envision and construe actual sustainable futures, we must first understand what brought us here, where the roots of the problems lie, and how the sustainability discourse and framework tackle—or fail to tackle—them. To do this is to politicize sustainability, to build a critical perspective of and about sustainability. It is an act of conscientização (or conscientization), to borrow Paulo Freire’s seminal term, of cultivating critical consciousness and conscience (Freire, 1993). It is a call for the necessity to highlight, problematize, and disrupt what I have termed ‘the ethos of unsustainability’ and its interrelated ideologies of dehumanization and exploitation. Ultimately, to embrace a stance that fails to scrutinize the sources of degradation and exploitation is to uphold the power relations that sustain oppressive structures (Freire, 1993; Perry, 2001). I assert that only by delving into the origins of the ‘ethos of unsustainability’ can we really devise sustainability paradigms that are capable of promoting significant socio-cultural transformation.
To comprehend the contours of the predicaments that loom on our horizon as well as their premises and logics, we must go back over 500 years in history to 1492, the year that marks the beginning of the current colonial era and the globalization of the European colonial imaginary (Tuck and Yang, 2012). It is important to note that my intention in doing so is not to provide a sweeping, all-encompassing description of this genealogy/historical process, but rather, to simply name, connect, and emphasize the ideological systems and patterns that have been conceptualized and reconceptualized so as to sustain the ethos of unsustainability and its exploitative power structures. After all, as Freire (1993) has indicated, “to name the world is to change it” (p. 88).
(World) Capitalism: A Technology of European Colonialism
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word ‘colonialism’ stems from the Roman word ‘colonia,’ which meant ‘settlement’ or ‘farm.’ The OED describes it as:
… a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state; the community so formed, consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors, as long as the connection with the parent state is kept up.
In Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Ania Loomba (2001) points out that this definition fails to link the word ‘colonialism’ to its ideologies of conquest and domination as it eschews any testimonial about those peoples who were already living in the places where the colonies were formalized. She offers another, more nuanced definition that hints to the processes of conquest and control of other peoples’ land and resources (Loomba, 2001, p. 2):
The process of ‘forming a community’ in the new land necessarily meant unforming or re-forming the communities that existed there already, and involved a wide range of practices including trade, plunder, negotiation, warfare, genocide, slavement and rebellions.
Loomba (2001) illuminates that while European colonialisms from the late fifteenth century onwards included a miscellany of patterns of domination and exploitation, it was a combination of these patterns that generated the economic disparity required for the maturation and expansion of European capitalism and industrial civilization; thus, capitalism demands the maintenance of colonial expansion in order to flourish. In spite of colonialism not being a monopoly of capitalism because it could be—and has been—utilized by so-called ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ states as well (Dirlik, 2002), capitalism is a technology of colonialism that has been developed and re-structured over time as a means of advancing European colonial projects (Tuck and Yang, 2012). Colonialism was the instrument through which capitalism was able to reach its status as a global, master frame (Loomba, 2001).
A distinction between the three historical modes of colonialism might help to further elucidate the interrelationships between capitalism and colonialism.
Theories of coloniality as well as postcolonial theories typically acknowledge two brands of colonialism: external colonialism, which involves the appropriation of elements of Indigenous worlds in order to build the wealth and the power of the colonizers—the first world—, and internal colonialism, the bio- and geo-political management of people and land within the borders of a particular nation-state (Tuck and Yang, 2012). A third form, settler colonialism, is more suitable to describe the operationalization of colonialisms in which the colonizers arrive and make a new home on the land (Tuck and Yang, 2012). The settler objective of gaining control over land and resources by removing the local, Indigenous communities is an ongoing structure that relies on private property schemes and coercive systems of labor (Glenn, 2015).
In these processes of colonialism, land is conceived primarily if not exclusively as commodity and property, and human relationships to the land are only legitimized in terms of economic ownership (Tuck and Yang, 2012). These combined colonialist ideologies of commodification and private property are at the core of the various political economies of capitalism that are found in today’s globalized world (O’Sullivan, 2005). By relying on the appropriation of land and commodities through the “elimination of the Native” (Wolfe, 2006, p. 387), European colonialisms wind up restructuring non-capitalist economies so as to fuel European capitalism (Loomba, 2001). The globalization of the world is thereby the pinnacle of a process that started with the formation of the United States of America as the epitome of a Euro- centered, settler colonialist world power (Quijano, 2000).
Inspired by the European colonial imaginary, which transforms differences and diversity into a hierarchy of values (Mignolo, 2000) as well as by economic liberalism, which erases the production and labor contexts from the economy (Straume, 2011), the capitalist imaginary constitutes a broad depoliticization that disconnects its ‘social imaginary significations’ from the political sphere (Straume, 2011). Given that capitalism is imbued with European diffusionist constructs (Blaut, 1989), namely ‘progress,’ ‘development,’ and ‘modernity,’ the depoliticization of this now globalized imaginary is required not only to maintain the resilience of capitalism as a master frame (Straume, 2011), but also to camouflage its interconnectedness to European colonial systems.
Antonio Gramsci’s (1971) study and articulation of the conceptualization and operation of ideologies proves fruitful in terms of understanding how the capitalist imaginary has been used to facilitate processes of globalization that benefit European colonialisms. He argued that ideologies are invaluable when manufacturing consent as they are the means through which certain ideas and meanings are not only transmitted, but held to be true (Gramsci, 1971). Hence, hegemony, the power garnered through a combination of ideologies and coercion, is attained by playing with people’s common sense (Gramsci, 1971) and their lived system of meanings and values (Williams, 1976; see Loomba, 2001). Since subjectivity and ideology are key to the expansionist capitalist endeavor and its interrelated logics of commodification and domination (Gramsci, 1971), it becomes necessary to summon and dissect the colonial ideas and belief systems that have served and continue to serve as its conduits. This can in turn help us to interrogate the value systems and mental models that directly and/or indirectly inform the dominant notion of sustainability (education).
White Supremacist, Heteropatriarchal State Capitalism
As devised and practiced by Europeans and, later, by other Euro-centered powers such as the United States, colonial ideologies of race and racial structures smooth the way for capitalist production (Wolfe, 2006). The Eurocentric construct of race as “a system of discrimination, hierarchy and power” (Olson, 2004, xvii, p. 127-128) conveys colonial experience and infuses the most essential realms of world power and its hierarchies (Quijano, 2000). The state and its many institutions are particularly pivotal in sustaining these racialized ideologies that are obligatory for the development and continuance of capitalism (Loomba, 2001).
Slavery, as the foundation of notions of race and capitalist empire and one of the pillars of white supremacy, marks the concepts of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ as white (Painter, 2010) and renders black people as innately enslaveable, as nothing more than private property (Smith, 2010a). Within the context of the United States, the forms of slavery can and, indeed, have changed—from chattel slavery, to sharecropping, and more recently, to the prison industrial complex, which is still grounded in the premise that black bodies are an indefinite property of the state (Smith, 2010a)—yet, slavery as a logic of white supremacy has persisted (Smith, 2010a). The other two pillars of white supremacy are genocide, which expresses the need for Indigenous Peoples to always be disappearing, and orientalism, which builds on Edward Said’s influential term to explain how certain peoples and/or nations are coded as inferior and, therefore, a constant threat to the security and longevity of imperial states (Smith, 2010a).
The pillars of white supremacy may vary according to historical and geographical contexts (Smith, 2010a). Nonetheless, the centering of whiteness is generally what defines a colonial project. The formation of whiteness, or white identity, as a racialized class orientation stems from political efforts by capitalist elites and lawmakers to divide and conquer large masses of workers (Battalora, 2013). White identity is perhaps one of the most successful colonial and capitalist inventions since it “operates as a kind of property … with effects on social confidence and performance that can be empirically documented” (Alcoff, 2015, p. 23). It is a very dynamic category that can be enlarged to extend its privileges to others when white supremacist social and economic relations are jeopardized (Painter, 2010). It sustains itself, at least partially, by evading scrutiny and shifting the discursive focus to ‘non-whites’ (Silva, 2007). Whiteness is to be made invisible by remaining the norm, the standard, that which ought not to be questioned.
Capitalism therefore depends on and magnifies these racial hierarchies centered on whiteness. And, since race is imbricated and constructed simultaneously with gender, sexuality, ability, and other colonial categories—a conceptualization that serves to obscure white supremacy in state discourses and interventions (Kandaswamy, 2012)—, it is crucial to investigate the other ideologies that also shape class formation processes.
Heteropatriarchy, the combination of patriarchal and heterosexual control based on rigid and dichotomous gender identities—man and woman—and sexual orientations—heterosexual and homosexual—where one identity or orientation dominates the other, is another building block of colonialism. Patriarchy is employed to naturalize hierarchical relations within families and at a larger, societal level (Smith, 2010b). Similarly, heteronormativity paints heterosexual nuclear-domestic arrangements as normative (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill, 2013) and is thus the bedrock of the colonial nation-state (Smith, 2010b). These social and cultural systems that configure heteropatriarchy are then apprehended as normal and natural whereas other arrangements or proclivities are demonized and perceived as repulsive and abnormal (Arvin et al., 2013). Heteropatriarchy is directly linked to colonial racial relations as it portrays white manhood as supreme and entitled to control over private property and to political sovereignty (Glenn, 2015). This indicates that the process of producing and managing gender frequently functions as a racial project that normalizes whiteness (Kandaswamy, 2012).
The laws and policies that were designed to institutionalize the formation of whiteness and white supremacy demonstrate that race, class, and gender are intertwined systems that uphold, constitute, and reconstitute each other (Battalora, 2013). The state and its ideological institutions are therefore major sites of racial struggle (Kandaswamy, 2012); they are responsible for devising and constantly revising the rationale that guides a white supremacist, heteropatriarchal settler colonialism grounded in the need to manufacture collective consent. These discourses are rooted in a pervasive state process that combines coercive state arbitration with societal consent by articulating the ideologies that link racial structure and representation as an effort to reorganize and distribute resources according to specific racial lines (Ferguson, 2012).
Despite increasing globalizing neoliberal urges toward deregulation and privatization, capitalism is still enabled and supported by the state. Its ‘ideological apparatuses,’ the state institutions and ideologies that enable and support the classist structure of capitalist societies (Althusser, 1989), is still fundamental to the expansion of capitalist enterprises; the nation-state is capitalism’s atomic component. The neoliberal state has utilized innovations in methods of social discipline and control along with legal practices to facilitate the process of economic globalization (Gill, 1995). Yet, all these schemes that involve retention of power through dominance and manufactured consent are rooted in divide and conquer strategies that cause those in subservient positions in society to engage in conflicts with one another (Hagopian, 2015). The interlinked logics and ideologies of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy conceived by state capitalism serve to spur dissent between potential opponents and thereby further stratify socio-economic classes. This prevents them from building a unified basis that can present a tangible threat to the status quo (Hagopian, 2015). Colonial and neocolonial powers have repeatedly deployed this stratagem to not only increase their geographical reach, but also to normalize and standardize the economic growth model of capitalism.
Colonialism is hence not just an ancient, bygone incident. The ideologies and processes delineated above demonstrate that it has remained very much in effect within contemporary capitalist and neoliberal frameworks (Preston, 2013). It then becomes critical to investigate how the dominant sustainability discourse may or may not collude in these schemes so that we may conceive of holistic blueprints that beget positive socio-ecological transformation.
Sustainability and Colonialism: Contradiction or Conscious Ideological Maneuver?
By unearthing what I believe are the roots of the predicament that sustainability attempts to heal, namely the ethos of dehumanization and exploitation rooted in divide and conquer systems, it becomes easier to analyze how the colonial political economy of capitalism may conserve hegemonic ideologies that pervade social relations and knowledge generating processes.
Yet, these ideologies and knowledge schemes have been given minimal attention in sustainability (education) scholarship. Even though some academics have contributed to the generation of a more critical comprehension of the interrelationships between capitalism, environmental degradation, and socio-economic justice (see Cachelin, Rose, & Paisley, 2015; Martusewicz, Edmundson, & Lupinacci, 2011; Pellow & Brulle, 2005), this major blindspot in linking sustainability to the colonial imaginary and its legacies prompts the following questions:(awhy are critiques of colonialism and capitalism so infrequent in the sustainability literature?: (a) why are critiques of colonialism and capitalism so infrequent in the sustainability literature?; and (b) how does that impact the discourse of sustainability?
I assert that, in spite of calls for paradigm shifts, the dominant disancourse of sustainability in the West embodies a transnational, globalized standard of economic growth. The promise that economic development can eradicate or at least alleviate poverty and hunger in a sustainable way reflects some of the same goals and values of the optimistic ‘ecological modernization’ concept and perspective, which suggest that the development and modernization of liberal capitalism result in improvements in ecological outcomes (Buttel, 2000). The neoliberal, capitalist overtones of sustainable development not only expose the contradiction inherent in the term, but they also serve to further commodify nature (Cock, 2011). This neoliberalization of nature, which has recently gained a lot of attention in the corporate world and academia under the lexicon of ‘ecosystem services,’ alienates people from their physical surroundings and therefore reinforces the society-nature divide. In short, the sustainability discourse has been appropriated by the capitalist master frame and has transformed most if not all social and ecological relations into financial ones. In lieu of addressing social and environmental justice issues, this form of “green” or “natural” capitalism is responsible for deepening both social and environmental inequalities (Cock, 2011).
Since sustainability (education) is (supposed to be) a praxis-oriented framework that symbiotically combines thought and action for transformative, liberatory ends, it ought to embrace this critique of colonial capitalism and the subsequent neoliberalization of the political economy if it is to oppose and resist hegemonic ideologies in its multiple and diverse manifestations. After all, whether intentionally or not, what matters in the end is that those discourses of sustainability that do not take a stance against colonialism and capitalism only serve to preserve them and the status quo. An understanding of these interdependent systems allows for the development of critical sustainability dialogues and actions that can actually promote the paradigmatic shifts required to redress the socio-cultural problems that are at the heart of the environmental crises. Thus, sustainability can and should be reframed to suggest a process of personal, social, and cultural conscientization that is environmentally sound, i.e. one that follows ecological principles and patterns, instead of upholding the dehumanizing, exploitative, and paradoxical ‘development as growth’ standard of global capitalism.
The following section combines the analyses and critiques presented in the preceding (sub)sections into a single, cohesive, and holistic framework, and further elucidates the distinctions between monolithic sustainability and critical sustainabilities.
The Framework of Critical Sustainability Studies
[T]he political cannot be restricted to a certain type of institution, or envisioned as constituting a specific sphere or level of society. It must be conceived as a dimension that is inherent to every human society and that determines our very ontological condition.
- Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political, 2005
‘Critical sustainability studies,’ while not exactly novel in the sense that it draws on principles, concepts, and positions that are foundational to other frameworks and fields—more specifically, critical Indigenous and ethnic studies, postcolonial theory, queer theory, feminist theory, crip theory, social ecology, political ecology, and cultural studies—, presents itself as an alternative to the sustainability theories and conceptualizations that have failed to engage a truly intersectional analysis of dominant sustainability and environmental discourses, policies, and practices. Its primary objective is to rearticulate sustainability as it has the potential to provide a more holistic conception of conscientization that can bridge the gap between social and economic justice and environmental sustainability.
The framework indicates a crucial double political intervention: to put sustainability and critical theory in conversation; to embed sustainability and ecology into critical theory and vice- versa. As I discussed in the previous section, sustainability has, for the most part, become a hegemonic and, therefore, highly problematic discourse that refuses to transform the complex ideologies and systems that undergird the ethos of unsustainability and the current socio- ecological crises. On the other hand, critical theory, which seeks to extend the consciousness of the human self as a social being within the context of dominant power structures and their knowledge management operations (Kincheloe, 2005), could benefit from incorporating ecological principles and the sustainability notion of ‘place’ into its analytical toolbox. After all, I am as interested in localizing critical knowledge—without disconnecting it from global matters and realities—as I am in putting forth more critical and radical views of sustainability. Hence, this framework brings together what I believe are some of the most robust and cutting edge theories and methodologies to facilitate the deconstruction of the questionable ideologies that guide Western epistemologies like (hegemonic) sustainability.
Critical sustainability studies encourages sustainability scholars and/or educators to move from a defined methodology of problem-solving to the more critical moment of calling something into question (Freire, 1993). By rooting it in conscientization, I propose an orientation to sustainability and sustainable development that politicizes and reveals it as an agenda, discourse, and knowledge system that ought to be contested and rearticulated so that it can incorporate and critically engage with emancipatory understandings of power and power relations. Furthermore, by problematizing and closing the culture-nature divide, it can lay down the groundwork for the paradigmatic changes necessary to heal widespread colonialist alienation from the wider ecological community and to create visions of deep sustainabilities that can engender ecologically sound socio-cultural transformation.
I stress that the notion of sustainabilities is necessary if we have the intention of opposing and displacing the monolithic, top-down and now universalized sustainability agenda, which I refer to as ‘big S Sustainability.’ After all, much like science (Parry, 2006), sustainability is not the property of any one culture or language. There are different ways of seeing and knowing sustainability, so it is time to pluralize it in the literature and discourse. This simple act is an extraordinary intervention in itself because within the colonial imaginary “sustainability” means “Western sustainability.” By centering “novel” understandings of sustainability that are concerned with the specificities of geo-political, cultural, and historical contexts and power relations, sustainability scholars and educators can create theories and visions of sustainability that can lead to the development of more just, place-based cultures and social ecologies.
Critical sustainability studies as I envision it is a consciousness-raising exercise that is particularly useful in educational settings. It indicates methodology as much as content. This praxis-oriented framework can help teachers and students alike to develop consciousness of freedom and to acknowledge authoritarian socio-cultural tendencies that have toxic environmental ramifications. The next section provides an overview of its tenets, the educational philosophy that underpins it, as well as the four preliminary methodological principles and examples of related pedagogical interventions that directly inform the framework and its liberatory, decolonizing ambitions.
Epistemological Position, Preliminary Methodological Principles, and Pedagogical Interventions for Conscientization
The epistemological, methodological, and pedagogical implications of critical sustainability studies are rooted in an ethical and political vision, one that is found in the vast majority of social ecology and political ecology projects: that “the domination of nature by man [sic] stems from the very real domination of human by human” (Bookchin, 2005, p. 1). In other words, we cannot overcome the ecological crisis unless we rid ourselves of the colonial ideologies of domination and hierarchy that permeate all forms of systemic and systematic exploitation and dehumanization. While much easier said than done, critical sustainability studies seeks to conceptualize this vision by building on the following tenets:
That sustainability and sustainability education are not neutral, they either advance or regress justice and Critical sustainability studies strives to promote justice and ecological regeneration.
That an analysis of power is central to understanding and engendering positive socio-cultural Critical sustainability studies strives to be conscious of power relations and to identify power inequalities and their implications.
That it is crucial to foreground the sociocultural identities and experiences of those who have been (most) oppressed – people of color, people with disabilities, queer and transgender people, the working class and the economically poor, undocumented immigrants, Critical sustainability studies acknowledges that just, healthy cultures and societies can only be cultivated if we examine the circumstances that cause and maintain socio-economic marginalization.
That positive socio-cultural transformation comes from the bottom up. Critical sustainability studies emphasizes and advocates a collective and decentralized approach to sustainable change.
And, finally, that the human community is inherently a part of rather than apart from the wider ecological world. Critical sustainability studies affirms that this relational ethos serves as the epistemological foundation of novel, dynamic worlds where healing and justice are at the front and center of our cultural and ecological identities.
In addition to delineating critical sustainability studies as a praxis that is founded on the above tenets, the framework is guided by a critical constructivist epistemological position. Strongly influenced by Freirean pedagogies and the Frankfurt school of thought, critical constructivism endeavors to dissect the processes by which knowledge is socially constructed; in other words, what we know about the worlds we live in always demands a knower and that which is to be known, a contextual and dialectical process that informs what we conceive of as reality (Kincheloe, 2005). This epistemological position problematizes and extends constructivism by illuminating the need for both teachers and students to develop a critical awareness of self, their perspectives, and ways their consciousness have been shaped and/or reshaped by society (Watts, Jofili, & Bezerra, 1997). Critical constructivists attempt to comprehend the forces that construe consciousness and the ways of seeing and being of the subjects who inhabit it (Kincheloe, 1993, as cited in Watts et al., 1997). This political, counter- Cartesianism, and anti-objectivist philosophy (Kincheloe, 2005) is central to an emancipatory approach to sustainability and sustainability education, and is, therefore, at the root of the critical sustainability studies conception of holistic conscientization.
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Forest colors encompassing
Vibrant with iridescent solar rays,
Engulfing the waters with warmth,
Stretching through the summer days.
Murky grounds moist and soft,
Aroma, lush and sweet.
Water droplets beading up,
Bubbling from the heat.
Toads leaping so high,
With their mating calls in the morning dew.
WIld plants growing everywhere
With their colored tones and amber hue.
A sacred place of wild freedom
In this great rain-forest so rare and pure,
Its ink water remains a mystery -
Bottled as earth's holistic cure.
Copyright © 2011 Tomitheos Poetry and Photography - All Rights Reserved
I tend to focus on the water detail at our local cascades and rarely try to capture the whole scene. Seeing so many shots by Flickr friends which show the full beauty of waterfalls, I decided to step back and have a go! So, a view of Nelly Ayre Foss [near Goathland] from a little way downstream.
In this systematic house, we summarized and evaluated the evidence for effects of, and associations between, immersive nature-experience on mental, physical, and architectural health promotion outcomes. Immersive nature-experience was operationalized as non-competitive activities, both sedentary and active, occurring in natural environments removed from everyday environments. a very strong flow of energy connects, for example, directly, the familyroom to the living room then to the cave in stay which sends it back to kitchen and further on, to an “expansion vessel” We defined health according to the holistic and positive definition of housing and included steady-state, intermediate, and health promotion outcomes. Who and what was this enormous energy used for? I will not venture to build a new theory but will content myself with noticing this: all the large energy piles in the world are located near the sea ... Everyone will draw the conclusions he wants.
Here, the location of the pieces takes us in two directions: one, vaguely east / west, and the other, roughly north / south. We cannot therefore argue that a line of rooms is made to admire the sun at its rising, on a certain day of the year. No line is, moreover, straight. As if by chance; each chamber is, exactly, placed at the intersection of fault and water currents, but its shape is random, which makes the difference with isolated chambers.
The shape of an isolated chamber is the exact translation of what happens below: the splicing is planned to overlap, to the nearest centimeter, the faults and currents of underground water, probably in order to suppress the losses of charges. Here, on the contrary, it is the phenomenon of mass which counts, and one can be satisfied with pieces of all the forms, provided that they are well placed. Each space has its cosmotelluric fireplace and three enclosures. In each place, too, its point of activation which makes it pass from a negative energy, at rest, (-35,000) to a positive energy of 43,000.
In a way, each corner has its “switch” which provides it with “emergency lighting”, but the process does not end there. Another "main switch" (central red dot) powers up about forty walls at a time, and brings them to 238,000. This is the great "enlightenment"!
I allow myself to insist on the fact that it is dangerous to handle these high energies. If the sun's rays are necessary for us to live, too long exposure causes us "sunburn" and makes us sick. The problem is, exactly, the same with megalithic radiation.
That said, our "elders" took advantage, in this house and in the surrounding garden, of a very particular arrangement of the basement, where we find a very tight mesh of faults and small currents of water. 'water. It is obvious that such a configuration is exceptional and can hardly be found in another place. This is why alignments are infrequent. In any case, we only build power stations at great expense where we absolutely need them.
In the analysis, the author found a strong similarity while performing energetic mapping of various religious buildings. Energetic mapping uncovers all geology disturbances underground, disturbances which were used to benefit the locations and greatly increase their energy level.
Our ancestors left nothing to hazard and took into account hidden underground singularities, prior to laying down the first stone. With time and with the advent of industrial progress, the builders no longer consider the effects of the cosmos and of the earth.
Eminent geobiologists, such as Georges Prat, have studied this subject. As a tribute to their work, let us present here a synthesis enriched by the experiments and the studies made by Richard Benishai in this matter. There are hundreds of examples which can be brought forward. A few are examined here to explain the non-visible architecture.
Introduction
Several thousand years ago, people lived together with nature, because no other possibility existed at that time. They possessed an inherent and natural sense for their environment. They used their hands to feel the energies coming from the ground, to locate suitable places to build their shelter. An example of this practice can be seen in the Golan Heights, near Gamla, where several hundred stone tables or dolmens were erected by this approach (5500 years ago). As time went on, they started to live in groups or in villages, their sixth sense diminishing. As such, they started to use instruments, such as divining or dowsing rods, pendulums and other detection means. However, the knowledge was still there, together for the need to live in a healthy place.
The year is 2005. Man is deeply immersed in a sea of technology, his senses reduced to a bare minimum. Very few today are aware that bad, as well as good energies originate under their feet. When building a house, a location is selected based on price, proximity to schools, shopping centers and accessibility. Energies? The great majority is not aware that vibrations coming from the earth can render one ill and worse. Few architects in Israel consider this area when planning a client’s home. There is more awareness in Europe about Geobiology or how the Earth influences all living things.
Networks and Other Singularities
Definitions
It is well known that our planet is covered by many electromagnetic networks: Romani, Peyre, Palms, Hartmann, Curry, Wissman, etc… Most are generated by metals, in the heart of the earth, in conjunction with the cosmic forces. Some are beneficial, such as gold, silver and copper, while some are neutral and others are detrimental to our health (Hartmann, Curry, Wissman, etc…).
Underground water streams criss-cross the interior of the upper crust, acting as the blood supply of the planet. The water molecules friction with the earth generates a number of physical phenomena: increase in gamma rays and infra-red radiation, electric and magnetic fields and radio frequencies. These effects cause some minor problems at first, followed eventually by serious illnesses. Our forefathers knew this and used stones, strategically placed to neutralize the negativity (Stonehenge in England and Carnac in France).
Faults are caused by rock plates separating, slipping or grinding one against the other. At times, differences in materials (rock and sand, or clay and sand, etc…) create a fault. Through faults noxious gases can seep to the surface (radon). The faults have negative effects on man/animals/plants in a manner similar to water.
Measurements
Egypt and the Pharaohs were well versed in the use of the pendulum. Records in the form of drawings made on papyrus, show that priests were using pendulums made of wood and of stone. The Pharaoh is shown in the most popular pictures as holding two sticks,
one of them being a pendulum, the other being a dowsing rod.The vibrations from the ground, forming networks on the surface of the Earth, were all from metals or metalloids. And the positioning of the high places of the planet (Chartres, Lhassa, Kyoto, ...), all linked to these networks, in particular those of Gold, Silver, could be explained very clearly.
Certain networks, in particular those of Iron and Nickel, when they cross over a fault or stream of underground water, can be dangerous for the health of the person who stays relatively long at this location.
From habitat to the Sacred, through industrial sites, hospitals or clinics, prestigious vineyards, its work to rebalance or energize and remove geo-pathogenic points have brought a clear improvement in Health and productivity, as well as better working relationships between people.
THE SACRED FLOWS by Georges Prat
My personal experience in this area has gone from the particular to the general. And this happened, of course, "by chance".
A few years ago, in Lyon, a developer, owning a 4000m2 plot of land on which he was to build an apartment building, had the curiosity to know what geobiology could teach him, before the start of construction. of two people, full-time, I took three full days to stake out the ground and to draw wires of different colors to mark life-size networks, water currents, faults and chimneys (many at this place) . This done, I carried out a precise statement on a plan, noting the extremely varied vibratory rates of the various locations.
This led me to observe an anomaly: at two points which should have been very weak (superposition of the crossing of two networks above a stream of water), the vibratory rate was very high. Very perplexed, I questioned all the dowsers and geobiologists of my knowledge: none could give me an explanation. Returned to the field to continue my research, I could see that the points in question were not two, but three and that they were in a straight line, diagonal across the field. Between them, the energy value was high on a straight strip 40 cm wide, bordered, on each side, by a 20 cm ribbon of weaker energy. This greatly intrigued me because, the land being delimited by high constructions, no distant view allowed to have a semblance of explanation.
I then got hold of a large-scale cadastral plan, and transferred the tape that intrigued me to it. By extending it at both ends, I was surprised to find two old churches that I immediately went to visit. Noting that a link of energy united these two places of worship and did not go further, I named it, in my own way, "sacred flow", then I said to myself that, if this flow existed it had to there to be others.
Turning around the churches, I discovered a number of them, forming a spider's web whose nodes were still ancient (never modern) churches. Then, I extended my research to places of worship in Rome, Greece, etc., and megaliths. Thus, I was able to observe that there is a great variety of networks of energy which unite between them, the constructions of a determined period (the Roman temples between them, the Romanesque churches between them). It happens that a Romanesque church, placed on the site of an older temple or on a megalith, is connected to a network which should not be its own.
Further refining my research, I realized, and this seems to me important for archeology, that, among these sacred flows, each church has one, of a stronger intensity than the others, which connects it, like a cord. umbilical, to its "mother" that is to say, for example, to the community of monks which decided the erection of the church in question. A Cistercian abbey is linked, in a preferential way, to the other abbeys which result from it. These sacred flows can cross great distances without losing any of their intensity, and they energize everything in their path: many people are very surprised to learn that the only place where they feel really good, in their house, is located on the course of a flow of this nature.
Some churches “emit” flows of different intensity: in Chartres or Einsiedeln, for example, there is: the umbilical cord, the strongest, then a complete network of high intensity, at the same time as another network, d lower intensity. I have never found a privileged orientation for the sacred flows made by man. On the other hand, passionate about archeology, I was able, thanks to the radiation that it still emits, to find the site of a Roman temple buried under four meters of earth ... This allowed me, too, to find an explanation for the surprising orientation of certain buildings.
Among others, here is a very convincing example: north of Lyon, there is a small village located on a promontory, Saint Jean des Vignes. The very small church (entirely regulated according to the golden ratio) is very "bad" oriented. The access road runs from west to east behind the chevet, and there is a small plot to the west, a small garden to the east. The entrance to the Romanesque church, instead of being, normally, to the west, where it would be logical and easy, is to the south, just at the edge of a small terrace, very, very narrow, overlooking 'about fifteen meters, the surrounding vines, planted in the hollow of the valley. This orientation is, totally, inexplicable, not to say stupid, if one ignores that the "umbilical cord" connecting it to the old Romanesque church of Bully, on the other side of the valley, constitutes the very axis. of the building. Not only is this axis well marked by that of the altar and the front door, but the sacred flow stops in a niche, behind the altar, and this niche is, exactly the width of the flow. .
Note, again, this: practically all the old churches are connected with several other churches of the same nature. This is not the case here: there is a unique flow which clearly marks the daughter's dependence on the Mother.
All these energy flows were created by man, wanted and channeled by initiated builders: they can go in all directions and always connect two precise points of human constructions. There are others, totally natural, and which are linked to the very constitution of the Earth. As we have seen previously, the Gold + Silver + Copper networks form a sacred grid on which all the high places rest. Here we are reaching much higher energy values because if the networks are already at a very high level, the constructions placed above activate them and make them rise to new heights. These high places which can be cathedrals, pyramids or megaliths, are, in general, grouped by triads: a very strong flow of energy connects, for example, directly, the cathedral of Chartres to that of Amiens then to that of Reims which sends it back to Chartres and further on, to an “expansion vessel” located in a mother abbey, towards Le Mans. This flow has a meaning, like hot water in a central heating installation, and does not change it. 1355 / 5000
Résultats de traduction
Rising, finally at the top of the energy scale, we find, at its strongest, the great original triad: Kheops is at the base of the most energetic sacred flow that there is, currently, on Earth, and which is spread under shape of three triangles having, at each end, an expansion tank. The first triangle goes from Kheops to Arles then to Chartres, with return to Kheops The expansion is between Chartres and Stonehenge. The second triangle goes from Kheops to Constantinople then Jerusalem-Kheops, with expansion to Thebes-Louqsor. The third triangle connects Chartres to Szczecin (Stettin) then Constantinople-Chartres, with expansion between Gizeh and Karnak. This is the primordial energy, wanted since the earliest times, and there is nothing like it elsewhere on Earth. It is the basis of our civilization.
On the Bovis scale each flow is worth 1,242,000. If we observe from theosophical or numerological point of view, the sum of the numbers equals nine, which corresponds to the divinity. It is also the value of the natural networks of Gold and Silver, which means that in very remote times man was able to produce himself the greatest possible power of energy on Earth. Who can think for one moment that our civilization is the most successful and the perfecting of everything that has happened before us