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Socioecological learners as agentic: a posthumanist perspective

Socioecological learners as agentic: a posthumanist perspective

Marianne Logan, Joshua Russell Ferdousi Khatun
Touchstones for deterritorializing socioecological learning : the Anthropocene, Posthumanism and Common Worlds as Creative Milieux, pp.231-262
Palgrave Macmillan
2020
: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12212-6_9

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Socioecological Learners as Agentic: a Posthumanistic Perspective
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Agency Anthropocene More-than-human Posthumanist Power Resistance Humanities and Social Sciences Curriculum and Pedagogy (excl. Economics, Business and Management) Environmental Education and Awareness
Agency, or the ability to act upon others within one's context, is central to sociological activism. The socioecological learner, as an emergent agent, can thus begin to facilitate social, ethical, political, and environmental change. However, in this chapter we challenge the traditional notion of agency and activism by moving beyond a view of human-centredness to encompass the more-than-human. We ackknowledge the power imbalance not only within and between human groups but also etween humans and other inhabitants of the Earth. It is pertinent in the Anthropocene era, where ecological balance is supposedly "regulated by humans" and where all living organisms are impacted, to rethink (or de-imagine) activism as a solely human endeavour and to propose an alternative view that encompasses other beings. This examination first outlines Foucauldian discourse theory that illuminates the possibilities for the disruption of power structures and illustrates the role of socioecological learners as activists before turning from a poststructuralist paradigm towards one rooted in posthumanism. This is complemented by research vignettes to provoke a broader understanding of agency and activism through a posthumanist lens.
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