Transcript The Practice of Environmentalism: Creating Ecological Habitus (American Sociology Association August 11, 2006)

The Practice of Environmentalism:
Creating Ecological Habitus
Randolph Haluza-DeLay
The King’s University College
Edmonton, Alberta
(American Sociology Association
August 11, 2006)
The Practice of Environmentalism….
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Social movements are “insurgent realities”
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“collective challenges to mainstream
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(Lofland, 1996).
conceptions of how society ought to be
organized and how people ought to live.”
Environmentalism:
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Failing to Challenge?
Failing the Environment?
How could it work better?
The Practice of Environmentalism….
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This paper:
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Draws on the sociological thought of
Bourdieu;
Uses “habitus” towards explaining why socioenvironmental change has been difficult;
Examines “cognitive praxis” in a theory of
practice;
Considers social mvmts as sites of “learning;”
Asks What is the potential for the
‘learning’ of an ecological habitus?
The Practice of Environmentalism….
Can environmental
social movement
organizations “teach”
an alternate “logic of
practice” sufficient for
socio-ecological
change?
The Practice of Environmentalism….
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Social Movements (theories of):
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Political opportunists.
Resource mobilizers.
Cultural change (values, symbols, meanings, etc.)
Insurgent realities?
Producers of cognitive praxis.
The Practice of Environmentalism….
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Cognitive Praxis
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SMs are distinguished by the new thinking that
they bring.
SMs are “producers of knowledge”/innovators.
E.g. environmentalism:
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“The movement provided, we might say, the social
context for a new kind of knowledge to be practiced.
There was no talk, before the environmental
movement began to put its ecological cosmology into
practice, of ecological living or ecological lifestyles...
The movement made the space for those types of
knowledge and experience to be able to emerge”
(Eyerman & Jamison, p. 73).
Learning in Social Movements
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Considerable research & theorizing in the field of Adult
Education.
SMs do educational programmes, but…
focus of this paper is the “informal” and “incidental”.
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Research has tended to be ethnographic.
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Adult educators // Social movement scholars
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Hall (2006) – extensive “State of the Field” report.
http://www.unb.ca/ALKCSymposium/alkc-sof.html
Learning in Social Movements
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Review yields four Conclusions:
1)
2)
3)
4)
Not yet a comprehensive understanding of these
learning environments or outcomes.
Research has typically focused on activists.
“Learning” has become that which is conscious to
the participants themselves.
Careful ethnography shows a tacit dimension to
learning in social movements.
Learning in Social Movements
Experiential Learning Theory
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Learning is an action on the part of the learner
Emphasizes reflection-on-experience
Learning is socially situated
Internalisation of Reflection?
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Learning “must be understood as the gradual
transformation of knowledge into knowing,
and part of that transformation involves a
deepening internalisation to the point that
people and their ‘knowing’ are totally
integrated one with the other” (Le Cornu, 2005, p.
175, emphasis added).
….Creating an Ecological Habitus
Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice
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Field
Habitus
Logic of Practice (sens pratique)
The theory of action that I propose (with the notion of
habitus) amounts to saying that most human actions have as
a basis something quite different from intention, that is,
acquired dispositions which make it so that an action can and
should be interpreted as oriented toward one objective or
another without anyone being able to claim that that objective
was a conscious design (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 97-98).
Forms of Capital/Symbolic Violence
….Creating an Ecological Habitus
Observations/Criticisms
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Transformation of individual habitus (e.g., more
ecological) will be difficult apart from the field.
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Progressive social change – conservative habitus
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“[habitus] tends to ensure its own constancy and its
defense against change through the selection it makes
within new information by rejecting information capable of
calling into question its accumulated information”
(Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 167).
Habitus is overly deterministic?
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NO, but
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We are constrained by our circumstances
Habitus is generative, creative, inertial.
The Practice of Environmentalism:
Creating an Ecological Habitus
Environmentalism will be
challenged in a field
centred around
hegemonic versions of
realities that are
generally contrary to its
goals.
It will struggle to articulate
its frames in contention
with dominant logics in
which it “does not make
sense.”
The Practice of Environmentalism:
Creating an Ecological Habitus
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An ecological sens pratique negotiating an
un-ecological society will need:
1)
2)
3)
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Details of ecologically sound lifestyle practices;
A critique of the social structures that inhibit
ecological lifestyle;
An understanding of how social relations
generate resistance to an ecological worldview
and lifestyle;
An ecological habitus will thrive only in a social
field that supports its maintenance.
The Practice of Environmentalism:
Creating an Ecological Habitus
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What is an Ecological Habitus?
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Cue Bourdieu’s relational sociology:
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(Social relations are situated, and embodied beings are
located; the habitus is conditioned in its field.)
Question: What are all the relations of a place?
An ecological habitus is an expertise that generates a
practical logic of how to live well in this place.
Therefore, an ecological habitus is described backwards
from the practices of living well (socio-ecologically) in a
place.
The Practice of Environmentalism:
Creating an Ecological Habitus
It will not be easy.
The Practice of Environmentalism:
Creating an Ecological Habitus
It will not be easy.
The Practice of Environmentalism:
Creating an Ecological Habitus
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CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS
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There is a theoretical potential for environmental
organizations to provide opportunities for this transformation
of habitus.
To be effective, environmental SMOs would do well to include
an intentionally experiential and transformative pedagogy as
part of its movement praxis.
Too few studies have focused on the everyday practices of
people rather than activists.
Bourdieu’s theory of practice does advance social movement
theory.
Environmental SMs are engaged in a struggle for ecological
praxis.
The Practice of Environmentalism:
Creating an Ecological Habitus