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EDUCATION,
SUSTAINABILITY
AND THE ECOLOGICAL
SOCIAL IMAGINARY
CONNECTIVE EDUCATION AND GLOBAL CHANGE
JEFF BUCKLES
Education, Sustainability and the Ecological
Social Imaginary
Jeff Buckles
Education,
Sustainability and
the Ecological Social
Imaginary
Connective Education
and Global Change
Jeff Buckles
York St John University
York, UK
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International
Publishing AG part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To Liz, Julia and Peter for their love and support.
To Pet and Tom for the raw material, and to Mike Bottery and Julian Stern
for their help and support in shaping it.
Preface
What do the Pope, Paris, ppm and population all have in common?
Apart from the letter p?
The answer is they all acknowledge global change.
• In May 2015 The Pope released the encyclical letter Laudato Si, On
Care for our Common Home (Pope Francis 2015), highlighting the
harmful impact humankind were having upon the Earth, and what
needs to be done to ameliorate that impact.
• In September 2016 it was reported (Betts et al. 2016) that the annual
mean atmospheric CO2 concentrate at Mauna Loa, Hawaii for 2015
was 400.9 parts per million (ppm), the first time this level had been
breached in 4 million years. By February 2018 it had risen to 408ppm
(Scripps 2018). It was likely to stay at or above that level, and was
caused by ‘anthropogenic emissions arising from fossil fuel burning,
deforestation and cement production’ (Betts et al. 2016: 806).
• In November 2016 the Paris Agreement was adopted by the United
Nations Climate Change Conference, the purpose being to limit to
less than 2°C the effects of global warming compared to pre-industrial
levels. So far 197 countries have signed the treaty and 146 ratified it
(UNFCCC 2017).
• According to the United Nations (UN 2017) the World’s population
will have surpassed 7.6 billion people in 2018, with the United Nations
vii
viii Preface
The four examples given are a mixture of hope and despair. Hope, because
as the Pope and Paris suggest, there is growing understanding of the
effects of human activity upon the Earth, and of a willingness to map out
answers. Despair in that human activity appears to be harming the planet
in a way that is threatening to all life, and there may be limited time to
react to this. This book aims to build upon the hope, suggesting that by
changing how humankind views its place upon the Earth, despair can be
overcome. This requires two things to happen. Firstly, for humankind to
recognise and act upon the foundational truth that all life upon Earth
(including human beings) is dependent upon the living and non-living
processes of the Earth. Secondly, that by asking a key ethical question,
‘what kind of planet do we wish to pass on to our children and all living
and non-living things?’ we (that is humankind), can refocus how we live,
so that the planet that we live and depend upon can flourish.
References
Betts RA, Jones CD, Knight JR, Keeling RF, Kennedy JJ (2016) El Niño and a
Record CO2 Rise Nature Climate Change (6) p806–810. http://www.nature.
com/natureclimatechange. Accessed 1 Oct 2016
Pope Francis (2015) Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home [Encyclical].
http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-
francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. Accessed 26 May 2015
Scripps (2018) Scripps Institution of Oceanography The Keeling Curve. https://
scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/. Accessed 20 Feb 2018
UN (United Nations) (2017) Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
Population Division. World Population Prospects 2017. https://esa.un.org/
unpd/wpp/DataQuery/. Accessed 20 Feb 2018
Preface
ix
1 Introduction 1
9 Conclusion 181
xi
xii Contents
R
eferences 189
Index 207
Terms and Conventions
xiii
List of Figures
xv
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Root metaphor of the modern social imaginary and values 37
Table 3.2 Domains and values of the Modern Social Imaginary 46
Table 4.1 Root and educational metaphors 54
Table 4.2 Enlightenment epistemology and education values in the
Modern Social Imaginary 56
Table 5.1 The impact of human activity during the Great
Acceleration (Steffen et al. 2004: 132–3) 80
Table 5.2a Population change in the 21st Century—location (a taken
from UN 2017. b–e taken from UN 2013. All figures
billions unless stated) 83
Table 5.2b Projected populations of the four largest economies
(developed from UN 2017, except third column and
cumulated % UN 2015. All figures billions unless stated) 83
Table 5.3 Temperature rise and decarbonisation (PWC 2012a, b: 9) 88
Table 8.1 Root and educational metaphors 149
Table 8.2 Core ESI values and core educational ideas 171
Table 8.3 Image metaphor—the heart 173
Table 8.4 Image metaphor—the hands 174
Table 8.5 Image metaphor—the head 174
Table 8.6 Image metaphor—the spirit 175
xvii
1
Introduction
Chapters 3 and 4 take us from the past into the present, by looking at
how humankind’s thinking has changed over the last three hundred and
fifty years, and the part that education has played in this. Chapters 5 and 6
look at the present and begin to look towards the future by examining the
evidence for global change, and the different ways in which humankind
can respond to those. Chapters 7 and 8 begin the journey into the future,
by asking how humans need to change their thinking if they are to avert
some of the possible dangers outlined in Chap. 5, and also what educa-
tion might look like if humankind can change the relationship it has with
the planet upon which it lives and depends.
This book is utopian, in the way that Bussey and Inayatullah (2008: 3)
identify utopias as alternative futures, so that humankind can then choose
different futures (deGeus 2002), rather than just be swept along by forces
seemingly beyond their control. Wright (2010: 25) locates utopias within
‘emancipatory social science’, what he defines as ‘a theory of a journey
from the present to a possible future’. This has three elements: a ‘diagno-
sis and critique of society’ which identifies why humankind would want
to leave their current world; a ‘theory of alternatives’, which identifies
where they would want to go; and ‘a theory of transformation’, which tells
them how to get from the current to the transformed world (Wright
2010: 25). This book is located within the first two elements that Wright
identifies, with Chaps. 3, 4, 5, and 6 consisting of diagnosis and critique,
and Chaps. 7 and 8 outlining an alternative.
For Levitas (2013: 84), models of utopia ‘are explicitly holistic, imagi-
nary, critical, normative, prescriptive and (often) future-orientated.’ They
have three modes: archaeological, which critiques ‘images of the good
society’ in current policy (Levitas 2013: 153); ontological, which looks at
the type of person that will be developed; and architectural, which is
about ‘the imagination of potential alternative scenarios for the future’
(Levitas 2013: 153). This book focuses upon the architectural, with
aspects of the ontological. The former is about imagining ‘alternative
ways of life that would be ecologically and socially sustainable and enable
deeper and wider human happiness than is now possible’ (Levitas 2013:
153). In this way, by identifying the key aspects of a utopian model, they
are ‘open to scrutiny and to public critique’ (Levitas 2013: xvii).
Introduction 3
This book is academic, not in the sense of being obscure or using jar-
gon, but in the sense that it is fully referenced. This is for three reasons.
Firstly, in a ‘post-truth’ world, which is just a euphemism for lying
(Levitin 2017), it is important that readers can see where my arguments
and data are from, and what I have done to them to arrive at the conclu-
sions that I do. Secondly, when there is a concerted political resistance to
the application of science to climate change (Lawson 2006; Hansen
2009), it is important that the reader can see where my data has come
from, who I have read, and how I have used their arguments; and thirdly,
by fully referencing I acknowledge my debt to those who have made this
journey before, and it enables those who wish to continue the journey, or
to veer off, to see where they may go.
Positionality This book engages with what Macy (2007: 140) terms The
Great Turning, ‘the epochal shift from the industrial growth society to a
life-sustaining society’. This turning, she argues, can happen in different
dimensions. The first is what she terms ‘holding actions’ (Macy 2007:
143), where consciousness is raised by activism and protest, such as anti-
fracking, or ‘keep it in the ground’ (Guardian 2016), advocating fossil
fuel divestment. The second dimension is ‘structural change’ (Macy 2007:
144) whereby understanding of power, and the constructing of alterna-
tives occur, ‘from local currencies to consumer cooperatives, from eco-
villages to community-supported agriculture’ (Macy 2007: 145). This
book, however, does not engage with these dimensions, but locates itself
firmly in the third dimension, of ‘shift in consciousness’ (Macy 2007:
145), one that requires ‘a profound change in our perception of reality’.
This chapter sets out the key ideas that are explored within the book: the
examination of the idea of a social imaginary; that a social imaginary can
be organised around three key domains; and that social imaginaries are
responses to challenges faced by societies. Taylor (2007) argues that all
societies live within a social imaginary, which describes and guides how
people view the world. It is the implicit background that shapes people’s
thoughts and actions, that explains their reality. Initially three domains
will be explored to distinguish different social imaginaries; the temporal,
spatial and ontological. This will be re-visited and developed in Chaps. 3
and 7. Finally, there will be an outline of some of the probable challenges
facing humankind in the 21st Century. These challenges will tend to
centre on the effect human activity is having upon the Earth, and will be
briefly outlined, being developed at length in Chap. 5.
6 J. Buckles
This chapter will open with further exposition of social imaginaries, espe-
cially the distinction between social imaginaries and ideologies. A model
of how social imaginaries change will then be developed based around an
adaptation of Williams’ (1973) idea of residual, dominant and emergent
cultures. The Pre-Modern Social Imaginary was based around transcen-
dent time, community and hierarchy. In the 18th Century, it will be
argued, a new social imaginary emerged, the Modern Social Imaginary.
This is based around a contempocentric (Speth 2008) view of time, the
Nation-State, and humankind as being the centre of reality. This, it is
suggested, is the dominant social imaginary, the one that explains current
perceptions of reality. Central to the Modern Social Imaginary is the idea
of progress through the use of reason and control of the environment for
humankind’s benefit (Sim 2010). The main values of the Modern Social
Imaginary will be mapped out.
The evidence from Chap. 5 will be analysed in order to draw out values
implied by the evidence. If the values identified are congruent with the
values of the Modern Social Imaginary identified in Chap. 3 then it
implies that the Modern Social Imaginary is able to meet those chal-
lenges. If those values are different then it may suggest a new social imagi-
nary. From the analysis a range of possible stances to the challenges will
be identified, with the one that corresponds most closely to the chal-
lenges of the 21st Century outlined.
Chapter 9: Conclusion
References
Anderson-Levitt KM (2005) The Schoolyard Gate: Schooling and Childhood in
Global Perspective. J Soc Hist 38(4):987–1006
Barth R (1990) Improving Schools From Within: Teachers, Parents, and
Principals can Make a Difference. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco
Begon M, Townsend CR, Harper JL (2006) Ecology: From Individuals to
Ecosystems. Blackwell, Oxford
Bottery M (2006) Educational Leaders in a Globalising World: A New Set of
Priorities? Sch Leadersh Manage Formerly Sch Organ 26(1):5–22
Bottery M (2016) Educational Leadership for a More Sustainable World.
Bloomsbury, London
Brand S (2009) Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power,
Transgenic Crops, Restored Wildlands, Radical Science, and Geoengineering
are Necessary. Viking, New York
Bussey M, Inayatullah S (2008) Pathways: Alternative Education Futures.
Reprinted in Bussey M, Inayatullah S, Milojevic I (eds) Alternative
Educational Futures. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam
Chambers N, Simmons C, Wackernagel M (2000) Sharing Nature’s Interest:
Ecological Footprints as an Indicator of Sustainability. Routledge, London
10 J. Buckles
Speth JG (2005) Red Sky at Morning. Yale University Press, New Haven
Speth JG (2008) The Bridge at the End of the World. Yale University Press, New
Haven
Steger MB (2009) The Rise of the Global Imaginary. Oxford University Press,
Oxford
Sterling S (1996) Education in Change. In: Huckle J, Sterling S (eds) Education
for Sustainability. Earthscan Publications, London
Taylor C (2007) Modern Social Imaginaries. Duke University Press, London
The Royal Society (2009) Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Governance
and Uncertainty. Policy Document 10/09. www.royalsociety.org. Accessed
26 Sept 2011
Thiele LP (2011) Indra’s Net and the Midas Touch. MIT Press, Cambridge
Thornes J, Harrison R, Hester R (2014) Geoengineering of the Climate System
(Issues in Environmental Science and Technology), The Royal Society of
Chemistry, Cambridge
Trow M (1973) Problems in the Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education.
http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED091983.pdf. Accessed15 July 2011
Wackernagel M, Kitzes J, Moran D, Goldfinger S, Thomas M (2006) The
Ecological Footprint of Cities and Regions: Comparing Resource Availability
with Resource Demand. Environ Urban 18(1):103–112
Williams R (1973) Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory. New
Left Review I82. http://newleftreview.org/I/82/raymond-williams-base-and-
superstructure-in-marxist-cultural-theory. Accessed 26 Sept 2011
Wright EO (2010) Envisioning Real Utopias. Verso, London
2
Setting the Scene: Domains, Challenges
and the Social Imaginary
2.1 Introduction
This book, whilst investigating the educational implications of develop-
ing a new social imaginary to meet the challenges of the 21st Century,
relies upon, and develops, what will be a number of key ideas. This chap-
ter gives an introduction to these key ideas, which will be developed at
greater length within the book.
Firstly it will be argued that humankind live within a reality that is
made up of three domains, of space, time and matter, in that all things
are made of matter and exist in space and time. How humankind’s under-
standing of these domains, and thus reality, has changed over time will be
discussed, with the suggestion that this is due to humankind having fal-
lible knowledge of these domains.
This is due to the second key idea, that how humankind knows, inter-
prets and lives within that reality is through the construction of a social
imaginary, which reflects humankind’s understanding of that reality, and
within the social imaginary, education plays a key part in forming, legiti-
mating and perpetuating the social imaginary. The social imaginary can
be seen as a response to challenges faced by humankind.
The way in which one set of ideas supersedes another shows that
humankind’s understanding of the world changes; it must thus be fallible
(Kuhn 2012). Popper (1983) advocates solving problems by ‘the method
of conjecture and refutation’. There would be a starting problem, fol-
lowed by a tentative theory. This would then be tested in order to elimi-
nate errors, which would then lead to a new problem situation (Popper
1972: 164). Central to this process is not to prove that a theory is correct,
but to accept that ‘the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its
falsifiability, or refutability, or testability’ (Popper 1963: 4). In this way
humankind’s understanding of reality is constantly tested and critiqued,
and because of this may change.
The implications of this are, firstly, the centrality of the three domains
of space, time and matter to humankind’s understanding of the world in
which they live. Secondly, that humankind’s understanding of space, time
and matter changes, and is thus fallible, and dependent upon their extant
knowledge of the world. Thirdly, that ideas change over time, and that
these changes enable humankind to know, interpret and live within the
world, and that how humans know, interpret and live within the world at
any point in time can be explained by the idea of the social imaginary.
‘real’, and for most humans it defines the limits of thought and action. It
becomes ‘this is how we do things’ and ‘why we do these things’, so defin-
ing expectations. It thus fuses values and actions, generally in an unques-
tioned manner.
This is done through ‘a language of signs and meanings’ (Taylor 2007:
168), so that ‘all social imaginaries consist of a series of interrelated and
mutually dependent narratives, visual prototypes, metaphors and con-
ceptual framings’ (Steger 2009: 13). It is through the language that
human’s use, along with the explanatory metaphors, that humans are
enabled to imagine their existence. It is also imaginary, in the sense that
being background it is not explicit.
It is also both ‘active and contemplative. It expands the repertory of
collective action, and also that of objective analysis’ (Taylor 2007: 167).
The social imaginary provides an explanation for how humans interact,
and is also reproduced by that interaction. The practical nature of the
imaginary moves it beyond a social theory (although it is that as well)
(Kavoulakos 2000).
Although the social imaginary explains and reproduces human interac-
tion, it is not static, and is susceptible to change as human knowledge
changes, meaning that how humans know, interpret and live in the world
is not a constant.
Social imaginaries enable humankind to make sense of the world in
which they live, as current knowledge is used to interpret the domains. In
this way social imaginaries are made up of a spatial domain, a temporal
domain, and a domain that expresses humankind’s current understand-
ing of matter, what will, for the purposes of this book, be called the onto-
logical domain (Adams et al. 2015; Vanheeswijck 2015). If reality is seen
as the workings of the will of a Supreme Being, then matter will be inter-
preted in that context.
Language: English
SURVEY OF LONDON
ISSUED BY THE JOINT PUBLISHING
GREATER LONDON
Committee)
VOLUME V.
(Part II.)
Chairman.
E. L. MEINERTZHAGEN.
GRANVILLE-SMITH, R. W.
JOHNSON, W. C.
MEINERTZHAGEN, E. L.
TAYLOR, ANDREW T.
GODFREY, WALTER H.
LOVELL, PERCY.
NORMAN, PHILIP.
MEMBERS OF THE SURVEY COMMITTEE
DURING THE PERIOD OF THE WORK.
President.
C. R. Ashbee.
Oswald Barron, F.S.A.
A. H. Blake.
W. W. Braines.
A. E. Bullock, A.R.I.B.A.
G. H. Chettle.
A. W. Clapham, F.S.A.
George Clinch, F.G.S., F.S.A., Scot.
A. O. Collard, F.R.I.B.A.
F. T. Dear.
William Doddington.
H. W. Fincham.
Matt. Garbutt.
Walter H. Godfrey.
Mrs. Ernest Godman.
T. Frank Green, A.R.I.B.A.
Edwin Gunn, A.R.I.B.A.
Osborn C. Hills, F.R.I.B.A.
E. W. Hudson.
T. Gordon Jackson, Licentiate R.I.B.A.
Max Judge.
P. K. Kipps, A.R.I.B.A.
Gilbert H. Lovegrove.
Ernest A. Mann, Licentiate R.I.B.A.
E. T. Marriott, M.A.
Cecil G. McDowell.
W. Monk, R.E.
Sydney Newcombe.
E. C. Nisbet.
Robert Pearsall.
A. Wyatt Papworth, A.R.I.B.A.
Francis W. Reader.
Ernest Railton.
John Ravenshaw.
Francis R. Taylor, Licentiate R.I.B.A.
George Trotman.
Miss E. M. B. Warren.
W. A. Webb, A.R.I.B.A.
A. P. Wire.
W. Wonnacott, A.R.I.B.A.
E. L. Wratten, A.R.I.B.A.
Edward Yates.
W. P. Young.
Philip Norman, F.S.A., LL.D., Editor of the Committee.
E. L. Meinertzhagen, J.P., Treasurer of the Committee.
Percy Lovell, B.A., A.R.I.B.A.,
Secretary of the Committee, 27, Abingdon Street, Westminster,
S.W.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
GENERAL TITLE PAGE i
SPECIAL TITLE PAGE iii
MEMBERS OF THE JOINT PUBLISHING COMMITTEE iv
MEMBERS OF THE SURVEY COMMITTEE v
DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES ix
PREFACE xv
THE SURVEY OF ST. GILES-IN-THE-FIELDS:—
Boundary of the Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields 1
High Holborn, from the Parish Boundary to Little
Turnstile 3
Nos. 3 and 4, Gate Street 10
High Holborn, between Little Turnstile and Kingsway 13
No. 211, High Holborn 16
Smart’s Buildings and Goldsmith Street 18
Nos. 181 and 172, High Holborn 23
Site of Rose Field (Macklin Street, Shelton Street,
Newton Street (part) and Parker Street (part)) 27
No. 18, Parker Street 33
Great Queen Street (general) 34
No. 2, Great Queen Street 38
Nos. 26 to 28, Great Queen Street 40
Nos. 55 and 56, Great Queen Street 42
Freemasons’ Hall 59
Markmasons’ Hall 84
Great Queen Street Chapel 86
Site of Weld House 93
Nos. 6 and 7, Wild Court 98
No. 16, Little Wild Street 99
No. 1, Sardinia Street 100
Site of Lennox House 101
Nos. 24 and 32, Betterton Street 104
No. 25, Endell Street 105
North of Short’s Gardens 106
Site of Marshland (Seven Dials) 112
The Church of All Saints, West Street 115
Site of the Hospital of St. Giles 117
Church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields 127
Nos. 14 to 16, Compton Street 141
Nos. 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11, Denmark Street 142
North of Denmark Place 144
Site of The Rookery 145
Nos. 100, 101 and 102, Great Russell Street 147
Bedford Square (General) 150
No. 1, Bedford Square 152
Nos. 6 and 6A, Bedford Square 154
No. 9, Bedford Square 157
No. 10, Bedford Square 158
No. 11, Bedford Square 161
No. 13, Bedford Square 163
No. 14, Bedford Square 164
No. 15, Bedford Square 165
No. 18, Bedford Square 166
No. 23, Bedford Square 167
No. 25, Bedford Square 168
No. 28, Bedford Square 170
No. 30, Bedford Square 171
No. 31, Bedford Square 172
No. 32, Bedford Square 174
No. 40, Bedford Square 176
No. 41, Bedford Square 177
No. 44, Bedford Square 178
No. 46, Bedford Square 179
No. 47, Bedford Square 180
No. 48, Bedford Square 181
No. 50, Bedford Square 183
No. 51, Bedford Square 184
Nos. 68 and 84, Gower Street 185
North and South Crescents and Alfred Place 186
House in rear of No. 196, Tottenham Court Road 188
INDEX
PLATES Nos. 1 to 107
MAP OF THE PARISH