Eco-progressivism

From WildWiki

Eco-Progressivism

The term Eco-Progressive or Eco-Progressivism has recently developed as a way to describe the relationship between environmental concerns and human culture, broadly construed. The use of the pre-fix "eco" denotes the interest and focus on ecological and environmental issues. The term "progressive" draws both from the more general progressive movement as well as the more specific Progressivism used in the field of education and schooling (derived in large part from the work of John Dewey). The emphasis in both cases is on social change and the belief that social institutions (like schooling) can bring about a better, more just, world. Because of the newness of the term, usage and meanings vary significantly. It appears currently to be most employed within certain elements of "green" business and social activism as well as those writing in the field of environmental education.

Ideological connections can be made between eco-progressivism and other environmental movements such as eco-justice, eco-literacy, and place-based education. In each of these environmental positions, the emphasis is on moving the environmental movement away from an exclusive focus on natural processes divorced from human (or cultural) processes. In this regard, social justice concerns such as poverty, racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression are seen as interwoven with environmental or ecological problems. In addition, in opposition to what might be termed "eco-conservatism," eco-progressivism seeks to find ways to act pragmatically toward social change without discounting the appropriate use of science, technology, capitalism, and other elements of our cultural landscape that have typically been derided by certain strands of environmentalism. In other words, while an eco-progressive stance may be wary of the ways in which technology, science, and even "progress" itself have been employed to degrade the natural world, it does not exclude such ways of thinking in imagining a new way forward.

History of the term

The first evidence of the term that I have found is in an essay by Dr. Dennis Carlson in the book , Leaving Safe Harbors (2002), entitled “A Cyborg’s Education: Heidegger and Eco-Progressivism”:

"Eco-progressive forms of education…question the taken-for-granted character of technology and the way the dominant technology frames the way we dwell upon the earth and relate to others. Eco-progressivism also needs to be about introducing young people to counter-narratives and counter-technologies, ones that can be used to help stitch together a new techne, a saving techne…[t]he currently dominant form of techne, with its objectifying, commodifying, and ordering logic, has a destiny of its own making, its own projection" (2002, 174).

This has led to a small line of work in the field of educational theory that attemtps to draw this concept into discussions of school reform: Education, Eco-Progressivism, and the Nature of School Reform.