Re-Thinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis

by Bowers, C. A.; Apffel-Marglin, Frédérique; Apffel-Marglin, Frederique; Bowers, Chet A.

• ISBN13: 9780805851144
• ISBN10: 0805851143
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-10-11
• Publisher: Lawrence Erlbau

Summary

This landmark collection of essays by Third World activists highlights two major world changes which, they argue, have been neglected by Freire and his many followers: the Third World grass-roots cultural resistance to economic globalization, and the ecological crisis. One source of the activist-authors' criticisms of Freire's pedagogy is rooted in their attempts to combine consciousness raising with literacy programs in such diverse cultural settings as Bolivia, Peru, India, Southern Mexico, and Cambodia, where they discovered that Freire's pedagogy is based on western assumptions that undermine indigenous knowledge systems. Equally important, these authors make the case in various ways that a major limitation with Freire's ideas, and which is reproduced in the writings of his followers, is that he did not recognize the cultural implications of the world's ecological crisis. Several essays in the collection focus directly on how the cultural assumptions Freire took for granted were also the assumptions that gave conceptual and moral legitimacy to the Industrial Revolution--and continue to be the basis of the thinking behind economic globalization. The essays also explain why cultural diversity is essential to the preservation of biological diversity, and how intergenerational knowledge and patterns of mutual aid within different cultures provide alternatives to a consumer dependent lifestyle. In his Afterword, C.A. Bowers addresses the need to adopt a more ecological way of thinking--one that recognizes the many ways the individual is nested in the interdependent networks of culture and how diverse cultures are nested in natural systems. It also stresses that one of the tasks of educators is to help students recognize the patterns and relationships of everyday life, and to assess them in terms of their contribution to less consumer dependent relationships and activities. As the essays in this volume affirm, this involves facilitating students' awareness of differences between cultures, the impact of consumerism on ecosystems, and the connections between hyper-consumerism and environmental racism and the colonizing relationship of the South by the North.Re-Thinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisisis a major contribution to this critical endeavor.

Author Biography

C.A. Bowers is the author of over 90 articles and 16 books that address how the educational process reproduces the cultural roots of the ecological crisis. He has taught at the University of Oregon, Portland State University, and has been a guest lecturer at 28 foreign universities. His most recent books include Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture (1995), The Culture of Denial (1997), Let Them Eat Data (2000), Educating for Eco-Justice and Community (2001), and Detras de la Apariencia: Hacia la descolonizacion de la educacion (2002), and Mindful Conservatism: Re-thinking the Ideological and Educational Basis of an Ecologically Sustainable Future (2003). Bowers is currently writing a book on "Revitalizing the Commons: Cultural and Educational Sites of Resistance and Affirmation."
Frederique Apffel-Marglin is Professor of Anthropology at Smith College, and coordinator of the Centers for Mutual Learning, which involves collaboration with PRATEC in Peru, and with scholar/activists in India and the United States. Among the many books she has authored and co-authored are Purity and Auspiciousness in Indian Society (1985), Wives of the God-King: The Rituals of Devadasis of Puri (1985), Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture, and Resistance (1990), Who Will Save the Forest? (1993), Decolonizing Knowledge: From Development to Dialogue (1996), and The Spirit of Regeneration: Andean Culture Confronting Western Notions of Development (1998).

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
About the Editors and Contributors	xv
Introduction	1	(12)
C. A. Bowers
From a Pedagogy for Liberation to Liberation From Pedagogy	13	(18)
Gustavo Esteva
Dana L. Stuchul
Madhu Suri Prakash
Nurturance in the Andes	31	(18)
Grimaldo Rengifo Vasquez
Who Are the Oppressed?	49	(20)
Barbara Loyda
Sanchez Bejarano
Vernacular Education for Cultural Regeneration: An Alternative to Paulo Freire's Vision of Emancipation	69	(14)
Gustavo Teran
From Conscientization to Interbeing: A Personal Journey	83	(18)
Siddhartha
Whose Oppression Is This? The Cultivation of Compassionate Action in Dissolving the Dualistic Barrier	101	(14)
Phyllis Robinson
Cease to Do Evil, Then Learn to Do Good (A Pedagogy for the Oppressor)	115	(18)
Derek Rasmussen
How the Ideas of Paulo Freire Contribute to the Cultural Roots of the Ecological Crisis	133	(18)
C. A. Bowers
Afterword	151	(42)
C. A. Bowers
Author Index	193	(4)
Subject Index	197