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Words, as Wolfgang Sachs has demonstrated in The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge and Power (1982), take on different meanings depending upon the assumptions of the cultural group using them. From the perspective of Third World cultures, words that in the West are associated with  Progress and development represent the language of colonization. When these same words are understood in terms of the assumptions and vital interests of Third World cultures, they take on an entirely different meaning.
The meaning of words used by educational reformers who have as their goals universal Emancipation, a linear form of progress, and the continuation of an anthropocentric understanding of human/Nature relationship is, from an ecojustice and revitalization of the Commons perspective, part of the language that continues the Tradition of Western colonization.
An EcoJustice dictionary is intended to clarify how the words used by emancipatory educational theorists take on an entirely different meaning when used in a discourse that addresses the importance of conserving linguistic and Biodiversity, the commons as sites of resistance to the further spread of the West’s industrial Culture, and the need to introduce reforms in the universities and public schools that contribute to achieving ecojustice for the world’s diverse peoples.
Home  EcoJustice Dictionary
RD Glossary E- EcoJustice
The aspects of ecojustice that should be the focus of educational reforms at both the university and public level are connected with the need to reduce the impact of the industrial/consumer dependent culture on everyday life while at the same time ensuring that people are not impoverished and limited in terms of equal opportunity; the five aspects of ecojustice that have special significance for educational reformers include the following (1) eliminating the causes of eco-racism, (2) ending the North’s exploitation and cultural colonization of the South (Third World cultures), (3) revitalizing the commons in order to achieve a healthier balance between market and non-market aspects of community life, (4) ensure that the prospects of future generations are not diminished by the hubris and ideology that drives the globalization of the West’s industrial culture, (5) reducing the threat to what Vandana Shiva refers to as “eath democracy” –that is, the right of natural systems to reproduce themselves rather than to have their existence contingent upon the demands of humans; ecojustice provides the larger moral and conceptual framework for understanding how to achieve the goals of social justice.
- Ecological Crisis
The accelerating degradation occurring in natural systems that is undermining their ability to reproduce themselves at a sustainable level; caused in large part by human ignorance, greed, use of destructive technologies and economic practices, population pressures, and a lack of knowledge of how to live in a sustainable ways; the immediate and most visible aspects of the ecological crisis include global warming, the depletion of potable water, fisheries, and the loss of topsoil; widespread toxic contamination of the environment is contributing to the acceleration of the loss of species and to an increase number of human diseases.
- Ecology
Ecology comes from the early Greek word oikas which meant managing the daily relationships and activities within the household; currently it refers to the interdependent nature of natural systems—and by extension, the symbolic systems and human activities we refer to as culture; it represents the parts as interdependent with the larger whole such as the interactions between cultural and natural systems; this interdependence of cultural and natural systems was expressed by Gregory Bateson when he wrote that “no system which shows mental characteristics (when differences are the source of information circulating through the entire system) can any part have unilaterial control over the whole” ( 1972, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, p. 316); the opposite of an anthropocentric way of thinking.
- Education
Leads to many forms of learning, including understanding of relationships as well as the culture’s way of understanding the attributes of the participants in these relationships—which in turn involves learning the culture’s moral norms that govern these relationships; involves mentoring relationships and human/Nature relationships that are sustainable; it can reproduce the formulaic thinking handed down from the past by teachers and other sources within the community—included books and the media; it can occur through self discovery, reflection, and embodied experience; it can reproduce the cultures way of knowing and value system that privilege certain groups over others; much of it occurs at a taken-for-granted level of awareness.
- Emancipation
A powerful idea in the West that is based on the assumption that all traditions are obstacles to progress and individual freedom; among its supporting assumptions are the ideas that change is inherently progressive in nature and that individuals, regardless of culture, should seek to emancipate themselves as well as others; it can be a “God-word” that obscures its potential to mask a colonizing intent; when framed in terms of specific abuses and injustices it can lead to important reforms; it becomes a source of colonization when it is represented as a universal good and when there is no consideration given to what need to be conserved and renewed.
- Enclosure
The process of limiting access, use, and democratic decisions about what can be freely shared by members of the community; enclosure both of natural systems (water, forests, plants, animals, airwaves, etc.) and cultural practices and achievements (music, traditions relating to food, healing, entertainment, games, entertainment, craft knowledge, etc.) through the monetization and integration into industrial culture; privatization; expansion of markets; privatization of what were previously public services and maintenance of the commons is the latest expression of enclosure.
- Environmental Crisis
The accelerating degradation occurring in natural systems that is undermining their ability to reproduce themselves at a sustainable level; caused in large part by human ignorance, greed, use of destructive technologies and economic practices, population pressures, and a lack of knowledge of how to live in a sustainable ways; the immediate and most visible aspects of the ecological crisis include global warming, the depletion of potable water, fisheries, and the loss of topsoil; widespread toxic contamination of the environment is contributing to the acceleration of the loss of species and to an increase number of human diseases.
- Evolution
The Darwinian explanation of how the environment selects the better adapted species to pass on its genetic material to future generations; a theory that is now being extended (again) to explain which cultural patterns (memes) are better adapted and thus will survive while other cultures become extinct; an ideology when it involves extrapolations from the realm of biology to the realm of culture; current expressions of this form of scientism represent Western culture as the better adapted and Western scientists as able to predict that computers will replace humans in the process of evolution; cultural extrapolations are good examples of the ethnocentric thinking of Western scientists who stray into scientism.
RD Glossary by Run Digital
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