Connect
Paul Van Auken
June 3, 2013
Civic Learning and Liberal Education
• They are inextricably linked
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Civic engagement is a contemporary expression of the historic liberal arts mission of
preparing students for public life as citizens and leaders. It entails a commitment to enriching
public discourse on significant questions, responding to the social needs of the local and
global communities in which we live, cultivating effective and ethical public leaders,
encouraging civic imagination and creativity, and otherwise promoting a democratic way of life
in a multicultural and increasingly globalized world.
Teaching can be said to be civically engaged to the degree that it promotes ‘civic learning’.
Civic learning involves cultivating in students the intellectual and practical skills, competencies
and habits of mind necessary for them to become effective citizens and civic leaders in a
multicultural/multicivilizational and increasingly globalized world. At a minimum, these ‘civic
competencies’ include:
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a capacity for critical thinking;
an ability to think and express oneself both rigorously and creatively;
a capacity to address the ‘big’ issues/questions confronting society and to place more specialized knowledge in a broader
historical, social, political, ethical and cultural context;
an appreciation of the challenges confronting the local and global
communities in which we live;
a willingness to address those challenges;
a capacity for responsible participation/leadership in private, associational, and public organizations and institutions;
a capacity to engage in civil discourse and deliberation;
tolerance of the differences that one encounters in a multicultural and globalizing world;
a sense of personal and social responsibility/agency; and
a capacity for life-long learning and civic leadership.
“Liberal Education for Global Citizenship: Renewing Macalester’s Traditions of Public Scholarship and Civic
Learning", Andrew A Latham, 2003
Civic Learning and Liberal Education
• They are inextricably linked
– “[Liberal arts and civic education are] inextricably
linked because the purpose of the liberal arts is to
prepare people for responsible citizenship, and the
best forms of civic engagement are intellectually
challenging; they are the liberal arts in action, or the
liberal arts learned and tested experientially”
• Peter Levine, director of the Center for Information &
Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, February
2013
Civic Learning and Liberal Education
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They are inextricably linked
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Liberal Education for the Examined Life
• To realize, as Augustine wrote of himself, that "I have become a question for
myself" allows, even presses, us to ask more than "Who am I?" Indeed, it can
evoke the weightiest of questions: "Why are we here? What can we believe? What
ought we to do?" In time, the realization that we not only ask but are questions
helps us make sense of the call to lead an examined life, in which questioning is
more than a means to an end. We cannot fill up and close the gap of freedom that
is our consciousness by tossing ever more answers into it.
• If we cannot, or will not, always think about, question, reflect on, and evaluate
afresh what we think we know or can do, we risk failing in attentiveness to others
and to novel situations and experiences. Without reflection, when we choose to act,
we may fail in judgment, in practical wisdom, and in moral response. As John
Dewey wrote in Democracy and Education, "Interest in learning from all the
contacts of life is the essential moral interest" (1997, 360; emphasis added).
• As educators, we should reflect together on the dangers of education that focuses
on content and technique but does not also and always provide practice in the arts
of thinking freely as the conscious, relational beings we are. Such an education not
only fails to prepare our students (and us as educators) to lead the examined life,
but may lessen our chances of moving toward the moral ideal of democracy.
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“Identity, Liberal Learning, Democracy: Reflections”, Elizabeth Minnich, Diversity &
Democracy, 2010
Civic Learning and Liberal Education
• They are inextricably linked
• Five Essential Questions
– Who am I? (knowledge of self)
– Who are we? (communal/collective knowledge)
– What does it feel like to be them? (empathetic
knowledge)
– How do we talk with one another? (intercultural process
knowledge)
– How do we improve our shared lives? (applied,
engaged knowledge)
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Source: Musil, Caryn McTighe. 2009. Civic Engagement in
Higher Education. Jossey-Bass. p. 61- 63
Civic Learning and Liberal Education
• Civic learning and action can help to
reinvent liberal arts education!
– Reduce the influence of "propaganda serving the
interests of state ideology" on education (as in
former USSR);
• Here, what is the state ideology?
– New College Scorecard, students choosing civic learning outcomes as
some of least important reasons for going to college
– Enhance relevancy, integrative learning and
training of generalists, and action orientation
– Apply big questions to issues that matter
• “Deep thought matters when you're contemplating what to
do about things that matter”
– http://www.openideo.com/open/how-might-we-increase-theavailability-of-affordable-learning-tools-educational-forchildren-in-the-developing-world/inspiration/the-world-and-thecommunity-as-a-framework-for-learning
Eisenstein and synthesis
• Example from Honors 175—
Sustainability from the fall 2012
semester
Three Primary
Environmental Sociology Paradigms
Theoretical tradition
Basic causal force
Societal change
Conservativ
e
Managerial
Radical
Durkheim
Weber
Marx
Culture
Power
Class
Change must start
at individual level →
changes in
individual values,
behavior → changes
in collective
consciousness →
changes in societal
patterns/outcomes
Change will only
result from the elites
in power
(government,
business) changing
(laws, policies, etc.)
Change can only
occur by changing
capitalism itself
Humphrey, Lewis, and Buttel 2001.
Group Discussion
• Pick an issue related to sustainability from
the course that really impacts someone in
the group and use the Three Primary
Environmental Sociology Paradigms
framework to analyze the causes and
possible solutions to it.
Assumptions of
HEP vs. NEP
Human Exemptionalism Paradigm
New Ecological Paradigm
1. Humans have a cultural heritage in addition to (and
distinct from) their genetic inheritance and thus are
quite unlike all other animal species
1. Even though humans have exceptional
characteristics (culture, technology, etc.) they are but
one of many species interdependently involved in the
global ecosystem
2. Social and cultural factors (including technology)
are the major determinants of human affairs
2. Human affairs are not only influenced by social and
cultural factors but also by intricate linkages of cause,
effect, and feedback in a web of nature; so, human
actions have many unintended consequences
3. Social and cultural environments are the crucial
contexts for human affairs and the biophysical
environment is largely irrelevant
3. Humans live in and are dependent upon a finite
4. Culture is cumulative; thus technological and social
progress can continue indefinitely, making all social
problems ultimately solvable (because we’re so super
smart)
4. However much the inventiveness of humans or
biophysical environment that imposes potent physical
and biological restraints on human affairs
powers derived from them may seem for a while to
transcend carrying capacity, ecological laws cannot
be repealed (we’re not that smart)
Catton and Dunlap (important pioneers of environmental sociology) (1978)
The High Price of Materialism
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGab38p
Kscw
C-M-C vs. M-C-M
• Bellamy-Foster:
– “Today’s vested interests are counting on this built-in process
of revolutionary technological change coupled with the
proverbial magic of the market to solve the environmental
problem when and where this becomes necessary.”
• What other paradigm does this sound like?
– C-M-C
• Pre-capitalist system of simple commodity production
• Purpose of transactions is use of the commodity, which ends the
process
– M-C-M’
• Is about exchange (profit) rather than use
• Begins and ends with money
– But doesn’t really end because goal is accumulation of money:
“capital by its nature is self-expanding value”
Commodity Fetishism
• How much do you think about where the things you buy were made
and what went into making them?
• Commodity fetishism:
– With the rise of a commodity-driven, market oriented society, social
relations begin to be perceived as relationships between things, such as
between capital and labor
• Rather than social relationships between people
– The true relations are masked due to the “mystical” or “magical” nature of
the commodity.
– The resulting “veil of ignorance” renders the (potentially exploitative and
destructive) relations of production invisible to those outside of them.
– If commodities (like coffee) are fetishized, then negative externalities
cannot be seen by the consumer
– Peculiar to the capitalist system
• In other systems, production has been an explicitly social process
Externality
• A cost or benefit that's not included in the market price of a good
because it's not included in the supply price or the demand price
– i.e: A cost or benefit that's a side effect of an action or investment,
affecting people or groups of people who have not directly
contributed to the investment
– Not necessarily unintended consequences
• Unaccounted-for-costs (could be shifted onto others in a very intentional
way)
• Can be positive or negative
• Positive:
– E.g. Jobs created to produce the good resulting in more spending in
community
• Negative:
– E.g. Pressure of economic growth means that people and
environment get compromised in the process, through externalities
like pollution
What is Sustainability?
• What is similar and different about these two images?
• Which seems to better capture the concept of
sustainability?
Eisenstein and the High Price of Materialism
• General reactions?
• How do they connect with each other?
• Relate these pieces to:
– Commodity fetishism
– C-M-C vs. M-C-M economies
• Do they allude to Dr. Barnhill’s big question about the purpose of
an economy?
– Commoditization and barbarism
– The 3 Primary Environmental Sociology Paradigms
• How do the ideas presented here compare to the way you have
generally thought of the idea of happiness?
– How might it look in reality?
• http://www.newdream.org/resources/videos/time-trade-circle
– How does it fit with our discussion of community?
• Does he reduce community to an issue about commodities (gifts), falling
into the trap of the system he criticizes?
Community
 Recent definition: “a set of interconnected social relationships that occur in a space”
(Flaherty & Brown, 2010, p. 506)
 Extended ITC*-based draft definition attempt to make it bioregional:
 A set of interconnected relationships that develop in a particular place
 through a process of
 repeated social interaction (around issues of common interest**) in
local society, which is shaped by (and shapes) the landscape it
inhabits.
* Interactional Theory of Community
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“Extended” by replacing Wilkinson’s abstract, space-based territory with the concrete,
placed-based landscape
These ideas and working definitions stem from my dissertation and ongoing work in
this regard. Here is one example:
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Van Auken, Paul M. 2010. “Seeing, Not Participating: Viewscape Fetishism in American and
Norwegian Amenity Areas.” Human Ecology 38 (4): 521-537.
** Could be viewed, at least in part, in terms of fulfilling needs, working together with
neighbors, as stressed by Eisenstein and Kunstler in World Made By Hand
Extended ITC
Interaction
Local Society
Community Field
Land
Landscape
Meaning
Practices
Communit
y
Local
Society
Interaction
Community
Field
Landscape
Land
Meaning
Practices
Community
• What does it have to do with sustainability?
Community
 True community is always working towards inclusion and equity
 But opportunities to build community are influenced by local
power relations, individual interests and sentiments
 Rooted in particular local landscapes, local society, local activity
 But strongly influenced by extra-local factors
 E.g. global economy, state policies, broader cultural trends,
climate change
 The process can result in:
 Common ties and identity
 Interdependence and cooperation
 Ability to collectively address local problems and
opportunities
Community – some other perspectives
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“Communities do not have to be geographically bounded; they can represent
ideologies that connect geographically and socially distinct individuals or groups”
(DeChaine 2005, Feagan 2007; see Lacy 2000 for comparison). Linton, April.
2012. Fair Trade from the Ground Up, p. 103.
 There are communities of place and communities of interest (which could
connect online or only occasionally in person) – Flora and Flora 2012, etc.
 Extended ITC take on it:
 People and organizations can create strong, meaningful connections with communitylike features
 But this may align better with concepts like social solidarity and interest groups (just as all
interactions in local social fields do not necessarily build community)
 Further, place-based communities may also have solidarity with one another
 Likely an important goal for people who view community as key to sustainability
 But community itself is a unique phenomenon that is rooted in particular places, as
outlined above
The Idea of a Local Economy
• Wendell Berry:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/ar
ticles/article/299/
• How does the Total Economy work?
– The Story of Stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAY
Xp8
The Total vs. the Local Economy
• Going Big Box vs. Going
Local:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D
CRsAG7qAdU