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 L- Liberalism
A metaphor that designates a political tradition of thinking that can be traced back to the ideas of John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill; a tradition of thinking that led to many advances over the constraints and inequities of feudal society; a tradition of thinking that still reproduces the silences and misunderstandings of its founding “fathers” such as ignoring human existence as part of a larger ecology of cultural and natural relationships and interdependencies,; the source of support of other Western myths that underlie the Janus nature of science and the Industrial Revolution that is now being globalized; currently the basis of emancipatory theories of educational reform that are being promoted on a global basis and of such organizations as the World Trade Organization; lacks the vocabulary for addressing ecojustice issues and for understanding the importance of the commons as sites of resistance to the spread of a monetized economy that increases wealth for the few while leaving billions of people in impoverished conditions; is often represented as responsible for achieving social justice in the areas of race, gender, labor, and the environment—which in reality represent efforts to create more just, equitable,and sustainable communities (which has been the goal of the philosophical conservatism of Edmund Burke and the environmental conservatism of Wendell Berry).
- Linguistic Diversity
The nearly 6000 languages still spoken (many barely existing) today are now being threatened by economic, technological and ideological globalization; linguistic diversity contributes to biodiversity by encoding in the vocabulary and ways of thinking knowledge of local ecosystems—and thus how to live within their limits and possibilities; linguistic diversity is also the basis of the diversity of the world’s commons which are now being threatened by Western educational reforms that promote a constructivist and transformative approach to learning, and by the combination of liberal ideology and technological development that have as their goal the creation of a world monoculture.
RD Glossary by Run Digital
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