I’m interested in understanding consciousness as part of a wider dynamic ecology, developed through historical change, because I believe such an analysis is critical to understanding who we are now, what we know, and how to steer ourselves toward alternative futures. I’m interested in studying the particular forms of consciousness that prevail in specific places as well as through media and wider technological communities, because I want to discover the contours of the limitations of our present perceptions, as well as the directions toward superseding these. I call this ecological consciousness because it is about the ecology of consciousness: the structures, relationships, and changes in the very conditions that give rise to particular forms of consciousness, dominant and subversive. This inquiry matters because humanity faces a series of crises, which add up to a global ecological crisis, and to steer our ways out of this predicament, we need to know how to avoid the pitfalls of the patterns of consciousness that have led us to the present, we need to know how to intervene in the conditions of our own consciousness in-the-making, to support self-transformation through transforming the conditions of the world. I’m interested in learning how to intentionally interrupt the path dependencies we face. My sense is that we cannot afford to simply stand by and let the dominant relations of our current forms of consciousness play themselves out; it is important that we learn to intervene in these, if we are to gain any steering power over our own production of the Anthropocene.
So there are two phases in my research. The first is a kind of mapping of dominant social relations of consciousness in a particular place. I’m especially interested in places intentionally designed to prepare a new generation of leaders capable of intervening in the global ecological crisis, to produce alternative, just, and sustainable futures. What are the forms of consciousness that characterize these places? The second phase of my work is about interventions. Having identified certain limitations imposed on consciousness by the dominant institutional contexts, what are the practices and interventions points that could lead to transformation? Here I take a pedagogical approach to small group formation and action, through creating relations that challenge the dominant relations, experimenting with new capacities to critique and offer alternatives.
By repeating these phases in different locations — scholarly, professional, activist, and other places — I hope to identify guiding principles and collective practices that amount to a real strategy for social change.
Of course, there are already in practice different ways of knowing–characterizing these in any given place is a starting point for understanding the contours of current forms of consciousness. In terms of theory, I’m interested in the forms of consciousness associated with historical materialism, systems thinking, Indigenous ways of knowing, and various forms of activist knowledge, since these different theoretical frameworks provide a set of broad building blocks for a vast and rich set of ideas. Then, playing with these different ways of knowing in a particular place, opens new possibilities for altering the dominant configuration. The important part of the strategy is about building a new infrastructure of dissent, a new support structure for alternative forms of consciousness — because without putting a new infrastructure in place, any good ideas are only temporary, they will eventually (quickly) reform themselves in relation to the dominant architecture already in place.
As an academic, I need to carve out a niche for this work — a niche that is at least in part compatible with the expectations of a successful academic career. As long as I can fulfill that niche’s work, I can continue to be employed while working on a bigger project of social change.
Why a focus on consciousness? Well first of all, there is a need to bring an understanding of theories of consciousness to the literature on social transformation and sustainability transitions, where consciousness remains an ill-defined word used in passing or used as a focal point but without sufficient theorizing of its meaning. The dynamics of consciousness are what is missing, primarily: an understanding of the relationships that keep consciousness in one place or allow it to move around. This idea of moving around — a consciousness that has options and can create more options for itself — is something I have worked on through historical materialism, Indigenous ways of knowing, and systems thinking; I would like to revisit this work and more to illustrate the dynamics of consciousness in contrast to the static ways that consciousness is name-dropped currently.
Next, why ecological consciousness? The obvious response is that the global ecological crisis — in all its various local and global manifestations — has been reshaping the world for some time now, and reshaping consciousness too, though in many different directions and clearly there is a lot more work to be done to help humanity (and particular sectors of it) become contributors to just and sustainable transitions. But what is this needed “ecological consciousness” deserves further attention. It is not simply a scientific understanding of global cycles, though this is a part of it. It has a lot to do with transformation and change, with becoming a different kind of people. This becoming a different kind of people has something essential to do with Leanne Simpson’s Indigenous resurgence but again, it is more than that. And it has something to do with Paulo Freire’s critical consciousness, as well as Gregory Bateson’s Steps to the Ecology of Mind. So the point of ecological consciousness is to develop an understanding of consciousness through different ways of knowing, and then use this understanding to re-evaluate the use and strategies of consciousness in debates about ecology and sustainability, because learning how to work on human consciousness is a necessary part of working on global sustainability.
I believe human experiences of consciousness are being locked into place, purposely prevented from developing themselves in ways that are necessary for addressing the global ecological crisis. Learning how this locking into place occurs and how it can be undone is critical. That is my research program. It involves experiments in action-research projects that test different forms of community as options for challenging dominant forms of consciousness. It involves writing up what we learn from these experiments and relating that to certain literatures, academic, activist, policy, scientific. A better understanding of ecological consciousness will allow social transformation to prosper from the bottom up, to put learning-by-doing into policy change — because it’s not just about convincing people of something, it’s about them having opportunities to learn for themselves, to expand their own ecological consciousness.
ecologicalconsciousnessdotorg 