Richard Kahn
Antioch University Los Angeles, Education, Department Member
- Ecopedagogy, Ecoliteracy, Critical Media Literacy, Total Liberation, Critical Animal Studies, Ecological Literacy, and 46 moreAnarchist Philosophy of Education, Critical Pedagogy, Critical Theory, Popular Education, Transformational Leadership, Standpoint feminist theory, Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Herbert Marcuse, Environmental Education, Cultural Sustainability, Ethics & Social Sustainability, Ecological Justice, Posthumanism, Animal Rights/Liberation, Situationism, Youth Studies, Sustainable Communities, Social Justice in Education, Environmental Studies, Frankfurt School (Philosophy), Subcultures, Drama In Education, Ecopedagogy (Ecology), Social Philosophy, Praxis, Media Studies, Marxism, Internet Studies, Indigenous education, Cultural Studies, Academic Freedom, Transformative Learning, Technoculture, Education, Neoliberalism, Utopian Studies, Education Policy, Environmental Sustainability, Social Movements, Militant Research, Student Protest, Protest Music, Music of Protest, Musical Epistemology (Music As Knowledge), and Traditional Ecological Knowledgeedit
- Richard Kahn is Core Faculty in Education at Antioch University, where he oversees, teaches, and advises for the Mast... moreRichard Kahn is Core Faculty in Education at Antioch University, where he oversees, teaches, and advises for the Master’s in Education, Leadership and Change degree program. He recently completed a three-year term as an elected member of the Executive Council for the American Educational Studies Association, where he is also a Board Member of the journal, Educational Studies. He serves on numerous other journal editorial boards, and has previously served as Co-Editor of Issues in Teacher Education, for the California Council on Teacher Education; as Editor of Green Theory and Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy; and as Book Review Editor for the Journal for Critical Animal Studies (a journal and field he helped to found). He is also the Founding Editor of The International Journal of Illich Studies. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of four recent books, including: the award-winning Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement (Peter Lang, 2010), which has received a new Chinese translation in 2013, and a Korean translation, 2015; Education Out of Bounds: Reimagining Cultural Studies for a Posthuman Age (Palgrave, 2010), which is blurbed by Michael Hardt and is considered a foundational text in education theorizing the political valences of posthumanism for pedagogy; The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination (Lexington Books, 2011), that includes chapters from authors such as Noam Chomsky, Andrea Smith, Vandana Shiva, Ward Churchill, Carl Boggs, Toby Miller, Cary Nelson, and Peter McLaren; and Greening the Academy: Ecopedagogy Through the Liberal Arts (Sense, 2012), that champions the reconstruction of the academy through a reinvigorated and radicalized educational movement for "humanitas" and which includes new work from noted figures such as Bill McKibben, David Greenwood, Timothy Luke, and Greta Gaard. The last two books won AESA Critics Choice Book Awards in 2013.
Working primarily within the traditions of critical theory and critical pedagogy, Kahn’s abiding scholarly interest is in researching the history of social movements as pedagogically generative forces in society, especially as they take the form of a worldwide movement of movements, and then also in critically challenging the role dominant institutions and ideology play in blocking people from teaching and learning in ways that might contribute to the realization of greater planetary freedom, community peace, and happiness-in-diversity.
For more biographical information on this site, also see:
https://www.academia.edu/6388396/Biographical_Interviewedit - J. Cynthia McDermottedit
I have been elected by the California Council on Teacher Education (ccte.org), along with Brad Porfilio of Cal State East Bay, as Co-Editor of the journal, Issues in Teacher Education for the next 3 years. LIke us on Facebook!... more
I have been elected by the California Council on Teacher Education (ccte.org), along with Brad Porfilio of Cal State East Bay, as Co-Editor of the journal, Issues in Teacher Education for the next 3 years.
LIke us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/issuesinteachereducation
LIke us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/issuesinteachereducation
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#PeoplesClimate
https://soundcloud.com/richard-kahn/who-is-going-to-stand-up-and-be-the-earth
What are you doing to help change the climate for meaningful political action on planetary ecocrisis?
https://soundcloud.com/richard-kahn/who-is-going-to-stand-up-and-be-the-earth
What are you doing to help change the climate for meaningful political action on planetary ecocrisis?
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I will be headed back to SFU (Sept 25th-28th) to participate in the follow-up to last year's Loon Lake gathering as a Theme One (Implications of an Active, Agential, Non-human World) member.
Research Interests: Environmental Education, Human-Animal Relations, Philosophy of Education, Critical Pedagogy, Critical Animal Studies, and 16 moreEcological Literacy, Ecoliteracy, Animal Rights/Liberation, Place-based Learning Theory, Human-Animal Studies, Ecosemiotics, Human-Nonhuman Assemblages, Animal Rights, Nonhuman Consciousness, Ecosemiotics, Ecocriticism, Nonhuman Personhood, Human-Nonhuman relations, Place Based Education, Ecological Literacy, Place-Based Education, Arts and Culture, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, and Critical Ecoliteracy
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in Hans Jansen, ed., TIjdschrift Voor Orthopedagogiek (55), 2016: 349-357.
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Afterword, The Educational Significance of Human and Non-human Animal Interactions: Blurring the Species Line by Suzanne Rice and A. G. Rud, eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Research Interests: Human-Animal Relations, Animal Studies, Animal Ethics, Critical Pedagogy, Critical Animal Studies, and 17 moreAnimal Welfare, Animal Rights/Liberation, Ecopedagogy, Human-Animal Relationships, Animals & Society studies, Animal Rights, Animal-Human Interaction, Anti-speciesism, Laboratory Animal Welfare, Speciesism, Vivisection, Total Liberation, Total Liberation Pedagogy, Anti-Vivisection, Animal Rights, Animal Ecology, Animal Studies, Animal Ethics, Animal Cognition, Animal Liberation, Animals in Culture, Philosophy Of Animals, Animals & Society studies, Ethics of Animals, and Laboratory Animal Welfare, Animal Law, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, and Antivivisection
A kind of manifesto statement on the current state of the so-called socio-cultural turn in environmental education and the ecological turn in critical pedagogy, as both move to frameworks of decolonization and hopeful dialogue and... more
A kind of manifesto statement on the current state of the so-called socio-cultural turn in environmental education and the ecological turn in critical pedagogy, as both move to frameworks of decolonization and hopeful dialogue and solidarity with sovereignty activists and indigenous scholars/educators. A call for hope in the form of the "wild jeremiad" is issued.
A statement on the meaning of this book in its English edition is included, and I consider the state of Chinese society and its educational opportunities from an ecopedagogical perspective, arguing both that the foundations exist for it... more
A statement on the meaning of this book in its English edition is included, and I consider the state of Chinese society and its educational opportunities from an ecopedagogical perspective, arguing both that the foundations exist for it and that they MUST exist because China (like the United States) is now one of the future's crucial educational problems that must be taken up if there is to be anything short of a staggering global collapse. The Deweyan Chinese educational philosopher, Tao Xing-Zi is upheld as a possible forerunner for how ecopedagogy might proceed as culturally relevant within a Chinese framework.
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"WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT GREENING THE ACADEMY The necessity of linking together single issue social justice pursuits cannot be overstated, nor can the crucial role higher education must play in helping to solve international... more
"WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT GREENING THE ACADEMY
The necessity of linking together single issue social justice pursuits cannot be overstated, nor can the crucial role higher education must play in helping to solve international social justice dilemmas. Greening of the Academy provides a much-needed analysis focusing on the importance of these issues as a means to progress global peace and justice issues. A must read for anyone seriously interested in making a difference in the world.
- Craig Rosebraugh, Author of Burning Rage of a Dying Planet
Many of the most important forces for social change in human history have taken root in our universities, and today the academy is a crucial site where scholars are working to integrate ecological sustainability and social justice. Greening the Academy is a clarion call for deep green approaches to thinking, teaching, research, and action that can make a dramatic and positive difference for the future of all species.
- Dr. David Naguib Pellow,
Author of Garbage Wars:
The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago
Critical, crucial, and challenging, this book initiates a dialogue essential to the survival of our planet and all the species on it, including our own. Ignored for far too long by leaders of the major social institutions around the world, this book poses the question of whether the academy will belatedly tackle the urgent policies and actions necessary to ameliorate the ecological destruction wrought by predatory capitalism. University Centers for Teaching and Learning should use this book to generate meaningful discussions of curriculum transformation wherever possible.
- Dr. Julie Andrzejewski,
Co-Director, Social Responsibility Masters Program,
St. Cloud State University
Greening the Academy breaks through barriers that continue to enervate higher education’s contribution to environmental education and ecological justice. By connecting radical “cognitive praxis” and authentic Indigenous perspectives to a variety of relevant topics, it offers educators motivation and maps for helping us all regain our lost balance before it is too late.
- Four Arrows,
Editor of Unlearning the Language of Conquest:
Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America
This is an important and urgent book that represents a landmark for higher education. It is a book that must be heeded, and, more importantly acted upon.
- Dr. Peter McLaren,
Author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution
Higher education plays an increasingly important role globally in determining responses to human-induced environmental change. Greening the Academy shows us that it is crucial that educational policy, curriculum, institutional practice, and scholarly research go beyond greenwashing business as usual and instead engage critically with environmental issues. The book highlights how environmental concerns are not only the purview of the sciences but are centrally a result of cultural and economic practices and priorities, and thus must be engaged interdisciplinarily and in relation to community and place. To change the path we have set for the planet, it will take collaboration and persistence; this book offers hope in moving forward.
- Dr. Marcia McKenzie,
Editor of Fields of Green: Restorying Culture, Environment, and Education
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Bill McKibben
Introduction
Richard Kahn, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Samuel Fassbinder
1. Greening Education - Samuel Fassbinder / 2. Greening Criminology - Piers Beirne and Nigel South / 3. Greening Sociology - Kishi Animashaun Ducre / 4. Greening Political Science - Timothy Luke / 5. Greening Philosophy - Steven Best / 6. Greening Economics - Miriam Kennet and Michele Gale De Oliveira / 7. Greening Geography - Donna Houston / 8. Greening History - Eva Swidler / 9. Greening Anthropology - Brian McKenna / 10. Greening Communication - Tema Milstein / 11. Greening Literature - Corey Lewis / 12. Greening Dis-Ability - Anthony J. Nocella II / 13. Greening Feminism - Greta Gaard
Afterword: Can Higher Education Take Climate Change as Seriously as the CIA and the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London?
David A. Greenwood"
The necessity of linking together single issue social justice pursuits cannot be overstated, nor can the crucial role higher education must play in helping to solve international social justice dilemmas. Greening of the Academy provides a much-needed analysis focusing on the importance of these issues as a means to progress global peace and justice issues. A must read for anyone seriously interested in making a difference in the world.
- Craig Rosebraugh, Author of Burning Rage of a Dying Planet
Many of the most important forces for social change in human history have taken root in our universities, and today the academy is a crucial site where scholars are working to integrate ecological sustainability and social justice. Greening the Academy is a clarion call for deep green approaches to thinking, teaching, research, and action that can make a dramatic and positive difference for the future of all species.
- Dr. David Naguib Pellow,
Author of Garbage Wars:
The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago
Critical, crucial, and challenging, this book initiates a dialogue essential to the survival of our planet and all the species on it, including our own. Ignored for far too long by leaders of the major social institutions around the world, this book poses the question of whether the academy will belatedly tackle the urgent policies and actions necessary to ameliorate the ecological destruction wrought by predatory capitalism. University Centers for Teaching and Learning should use this book to generate meaningful discussions of curriculum transformation wherever possible.
- Dr. Julie Andrzejewski,
Co-Director, Social Responsibility Masters Program,
St. Cloud State University
Greening the Academy breaks through barriers that continue to enervate higher education’s contribution to environmental education and ecological justice. By connecting radical “cognitive praxis” and authentic Indigenous perspectives to a variety of relevant topics, it offers educators motivation and maps for helping us all regain our lost balance before it is too late.
- Four Arrows,
Editor of Unlearning the Language of Conquest:
Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America
This is an important and urgent book that represents a landmark for higher education. It is a book that must be heeded, and, more importantly acted upon.
- Dr. Peter McLaren,
Author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution
Higher education plays an increasingly important role globally in determining responses to human-induced environmental change. Greening the Academy shows us that it is crucial that educational policy, curriculum, institutional practice, and scholarly research go beyond greenwashing business as usual and instead engage critically with environmental issues. The book highlights how environmental concerns are not only the purview of the sciences but are centrally a result of cultural and economic practices and priorities, and thus must be engaged interdisciplinarily and in relation to community and place. To change the path we have set for the planet, it will take collaboration and persistence; this book offers hope in moving forward.
- Dr. Marcia McKenzie,
Editor of Fields of Green: Restorying Culture, Environment, and Education
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Bill McKibben
Introduction
Richard Kahn, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Samuel Fassbinder
1. Greening Education - Samuel Fassbinder / 2. Greening Criminology - Piers Beirne and Nigel South / 3. Greening Sociology - Kishi Animashaun Ducre / 4. Greening Political Science - Timothy Luke / 5. Greening Philosophy - Steven Best / 6. Greening Economics - Miriam Kennet and Michele Gale De Oliveira / 7. Greening Geography - Donna Houston / 8. Greening History - Eva Swidler / 9. Greening Anthropology - Brian McKenna / 10. Greening Communication - Tema Milstein / 11. Greening Literature - Corey Lewis / 12. Greening Dis-Ability - Anthony J. Nocella II / 13. Greening Feminism - Greta Gaard
Afterword: Can Higher Education Take Climate Change as Seriously as the CIA and the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London?
David A. Greenwood"
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An introductory source document and some fragmentary notes towards a diagnostic ecopedagogical critique of American music.
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I was invited to say some words for Loyola Marymount University's peace pole planting ceremony in their university learning garden. Vandana Shiva was the noted guest of honor (I was decidedly the undercard!). Here Shiva's work is brought... more
I was invited to say some words for Loyola Marymount University's peace pole planting ceremony in their university learning garden. Vandana Shiva was the noted guest of honor (I was decidedly the undercard!). Here Shiva's work is brought into relationship with the Catholic tradition of education and gardening. I then turn to Occupy and think about its foundations in the Digger movement, not just of the 1960s but at the birth of industrial society -- and how this was a movement of gardening and peace.
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We, the authors of this article, represent a variety of spaces and sites of education (though let us be upfront in saying that we position ourselves as relatively privileged members of U.S. society, navigating our way through lives... more
We, the authors of this article, represent a variety of spaces and sites of education (though let us be upfront in saying that we position ourselves as relatively privileged members of U.S. society, navigating our way through lives predicated upon a particular type of hyperconsumption that is only available to the global few). Jenny‘s research focuses on public pedagogy and popular culture, and the ways in which children, youth, and adults learn (and unlearn) consumerism within these public spaces of education. Richard is a vegan educator and critical theorist of society interested in advancing an ecopedagogy that can subvert the predatory culture industries and create transformative action on the relations of production that quietly gird consumerist excesses. David and Kevin share a background in contemporary art education. David‘s research focuses on the educative dimensions of contemporary art, emerging technologies, and social practices within the public sphere. Kevin‘s research focuses on art education through the lenses of visual culture, critical pedagogy, and cultural studies. We are drawn together through our interest in critical education for social and ecological justice, and particularly through our interest in fostering among learners critical resistance around issues of consumption. We struggle, in both our personal and academic lives, with understanding how we—as educators, citizens, community members, and family members—can create more democratic and sustainable spaces within our classrooms, communities, and societies when we are inundated by materialism, consumption, and economic/social/cultural oppression. In this article we draw from our own research and practice to begin considering what it might mean to create and enact a ―critical pedagogy of consumption.‖ We ask ourselves, and other educators, how do we, in the midst of hypercapitalism, enact critical education? How do we learn to act and think and feel in ways that disrupt the dominant corporate order?
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This is my most cited paper, and is generally considered the de facto citation on the ways in which new media and web 2.0 will influence and be used by social movements and other groups to advance radically democratic and other forms of... more
This is my most cited paper, and is generally considered the de facto citation on the ways in which new media and web 2.0 will influence and be used by social movements and other groups to advance radically democratic and other forms of alternative political arrangements.
I don't include it here because it was more or less updated as Oppositional Politics and the Internet, a paper which is included below.
If you need a copy of this essay though, please contact me and I can provide to you.
I don't include it here because it was more or less updated as Oppositional Politics and the Internet, a paper which is included below.
If you need a copy of this essay though, please contact me and I can provide to you.
Research Interests: Communication, Communication, Media Studies, New Media, Journalism, and 14 moreJournalism, Blogs, Development communication, Development communication, Media Education, Media Literacy, Media, Cultural power and resistance, Critical Media Literacy, Media Research, Social Communication, Media Impact and Effects and Usages, Alterglobalization Movement, and Alternate Media
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Research Interests: Critical Theory, Buckminster Fuller, Ecocriticism, Frankfurt School, Anthropocentrism, and 15 moreEnvironmental movements, Animal Rights, Laboratory Animals, Vivisection, Animal Industrial Complex, Mad Cow Disease, Cesar Chavez, Fur, Chipko, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Chico Mendes, E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, Spaceship Earth, and Kenneth Boulding
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"WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT GREENING THE ACADEMY The necessity of linking together single issue social justice pursuits cannot be overstated, nor can the crucial role higher education must play in helping to solve international... more
"WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT GREENING THE ACADEMY
The necessity of linking together single issue social justice pursuits cannot be overstated, nor can the crucial role higher education must play in helping to solve international social justice dilemmas. Greening of the Academy provides a much-needed analysis focusing on the importance of these issues as a means to progress global peace and justice issues. A must read for anyone seriously interested in making a difference in the world.
- Craig Rosebraugh, Author of Burning Rage of a Dying Planet
Many of the most important forces for social change in human history have taken root in our universities, and today the academy is a crucial site where scholars are working to integrate ecological sustainability and social justice. Greening the Academy is a clarion call for deep green approaches to thinking, teaching, research, and action that can make a dramatic and positive difference for the future of all species.
- Dr. David Naguib Pellow,
Author of Garbage Wars:
The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago
Critical, crucial, and challenging, this book initiates a dialogue essential to the survival of our planet and all the species on it, including our own. Ignored for far too long by leaders of the major social institutions around the world, this book poses the question of whether the academy will belatedly tackle the urgent policies and actions necessary to ameliorate the ecological destruction wrought by predatory capitalism. University Centers for Teaching and Learning should use this book to generate meaningful discussions of curriculum transformation wherever possible.
- Dr. Julie Andrzejewski,
Co-Director, Social Responsibility Masters Program,
St. Cloud State University
Greening the Academy breaks through barriers that continue to enervate higher education’s contribution to environmental education and ecological justice. By connecting radical “cognitive praxis” and authentic Indigenous perspectives to a variety of relevant topics, it offers educators motivation and maps for helping us all regain our lost balance before it is too late.
- Four Arrows,
Editor of Unlearning the Language of Conquest:
Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America
This is an important and urgent book that represents a landmark for higher education. It is a book that must be heeded, and, more importantly acted upon.
- Dr. Peter McLaren,
Author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution
Higher education plays an increasingly important role globally in determining responses to human-induced environmental change. Greening the Academy shows us that it is crucial that educational policy, curriculum, institutional practice, and scholarly research go beyond greenwashing business as usual and instead engage critically with environmental issues. The book highlights how environmental concerns are not only the purview of the sciences but are centrally a result of cultural and economic practices and priorities, and thus must be engaged interdisciplinarily and in relation to community and place. To change the path we have set for the planet, it will take collaboration and persistence; this book offers hope in moving forward.
- Dr. Marcia McKenzie,
Editor of Fields of Green: Restorying Culture, Environment, and Education
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Bill McKibben
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Introduction
Richard Kahn, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Samuel Fassbinder
1. Greening Education
Samuel Fassbinder
2. Greening Criminology
Piers Beirne and Nigel South
3. Greening Sociology
Kishi Animashaun Ducre
4. Greening Political Science
Timothy Luke
5. Greening Philosophy
Steven Best
6. Greening Economics
Miriam Kennet and Michele Gale D'Oliveira
7. Greening Geography
Donna Houston
8. Greening History
Eva Swidler
9. Greening Anthropology
Brian McKenna
10. Greening Communication
Tema Milstein
11. Greening Literature
Corey Lewis
12. Greening Dis-Ability
Anthony J. Nocella II
13. Greening Feminism
Greta Gaard
Afterword: Can Higher Education Take Climate Change as Seriously as the CIA and the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London?
David A. Greenwood"
The necessity of linking together single issue social justice pursuits cannot be overstated, nor can the crucial role higher education must play in helping to solve international social justice dilemmas. Greening of the Academy provides a much-needed analysis focusing on the importance of these issues as a means to progress global peace and justice issues. A must read for anyone seriously interested in making a difference in the world.
- Craig Rosebraugh, Author of Burning Rage of a Dying Planet
Many of the most important forces for social change in human history have taken root in our universities, and today the academy is a crucial site where scholars are working to integrate ecological sustainability and social justice. Greening the Academy is a clarion call for deep green approaches to thinking, teaching, research, and action that can make a dramatic and positive difference for the future of all species.
- Dr. David Naguib Pellow,
Author of Garbage Wars:
The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago
Critical, crucial, and challenging, this book initiates a dialogue essential to the survival of our planet and all the species on it, including our own. Ignored for far too long by leaders of the major social institutions around the world, this book poses the question of whether the academy will belatedly tackle the urgent policies and actions necessary to ameliorate the ecological destruction wrought by predatory capitalism. University Centers for Teaching and Learning should use this book to generate meaningful discussions of curriculum transformation wherever possible.
- Dr. Julie Andrzejewski,
Co-Director, Social Responsibility Masters Program,
St. Cloud State University
Greening the Academy breaks through barriers that continue to enervate higher education’s contribution to environmental education and ecological justice. By connecting radical “cognitive praxis” and authentic Indigenous perspectives to a variety of relevant topics, it offers educators motivation and maps for helping us all regain our lost balance before it is too late.
- Four Arrows,
Editor of Unlearning the Language of Conquest:
Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America
This is an important and urgent book that represents a landmark for higher education. It is a book that must be heeded, and, more importantly acted upon.
- Dr. Peter McLaren,
Author of Che Guevara, Paulo Freire, and the Pedagogy of Revolution
Higher education plays an increasingly important role globally in determining responses to human-induced environmental change. Greening the Academy shows us that it is crucial that educational policy, curriculum, institutional practice, and scholarly research go beyond greenwashing business as usual and instead engage critically with environmental issues. The book highlights how environmental concerns are not only the purview of the sciences but are centrally a result of cultural and economic practices and priorities, and thus must be engaged interdisciplinarily and in relation to community and place. To change the path we have set for the planet, it will take collaboration and persistence; this book offers hope in moving forward.
- Dr. Marcia McKenzie,
Editor of Fields of Green: Restorying Culture, Environment, and Education
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Bill McKibben
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Introduction
Richard Kahn, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Samuel Fassbinder
1. Greening Education
Samuel Fassbinder
2. Greening Criminology
Piers Beirne and Nigel South
3. Greening Sociology
Kishi Animashaun Ducre
4. Greening Political Science
Timothy Luke
5. Greening Philosophy
Steven Best
6. Greening Economics
Miriam Kennet and Michele Gale D'Oliveira
7. Greening Geography
Donna Houston
8. Greening History
Eva Swidler
9. Greening Anthropology
Brian McKenna
10. Greening Communication
Tema Milstein
11. Greening Literature
Corey Lewis
12. Greening Dis-Ability
Anthony J. Nocella II
13. Greening Feminism
Greta Gaard
Afterword: Can Higher Education Take Climate Change as Seriously as the CIA and the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London?
David A. Greenwood"
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""The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination is a groundbreaking collection of essays by a diverse set of leading scholars who examine the entangled and evolving global array of corporate-state structures of hegemonic power—what... more
""The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination is a groundbreaking collection of essays by a diverse set of leading scholars who examine the entangled and evolving global array of corporate-state structures of hegemonic power—what the editors refer to as “the power complex”—that was first analyzed by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 classic work, The Power Elite. In this new volume edited by Steven Best, Richard Kahn, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Peter McLaren, the power complex is conceived as co-constituted, interdependent and imbricated systems of domination. Spreading insidiously on a global level, the transnational institutional relationships of the power complex combine the logics of capitalist exploitation and profits and industrialist norms of efficiency, control, and mass production, While some have begun to analyze these institutional complexes as separate entities, this book is unique in analyzing them as overlapping, mutually-enforcing systems that operate globally and which will undoubtedly frame the macro-narrative of the 21st century (and perhaps beyond). The global industrial complex—a grand power complex of complexes—thus poses one of the most formidable challenges to the sustainability of planetary democracy, freedom and peace today. But there can be no serious talk of opposition to it until it is more popularly named and understood. The Global Industrial Complex aims to be a foundational contribution to this emerging educational and political project.
At a time when it is increasingly more difficult to find insightful and accessible work challenging the structural and ideological foundations of neoliberal economic savagery, The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination provides a key resource for such a task. This is a wide ranging and thoughtful book that not only critically analyzes the deepening and myriad forms of global market authoritarianism but also offers the theoretical tools to challenge it. A must read for anyone concerned about the promise of a real democracy and the economic, political, and cultural forces subverting it.
— Henry Giroux, McMaster University and author of Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism: Global Uncertainty and The Challenge of the New Media
An excellent, well-researched, and richly informed compendium on the nature of global exploitation and power, a nourishing corrective to the vapid evasions we are usually fed.
— Michael Parenti, author of The Face of Imperialism (2011) and God and His Demons (2010)
Table of Contents
Introduction by Steven Best
Chapter One: Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours by Noam Chomsky
Chapter Two: The Corporate War Economy by Carl Boggs
Chapter Three: The Security Industrial Complex by Ward Churchill
Chapter Four: The Media-Military Industrial Complex by Toby Miller
Chapter Five: The Criminal (Justice) Industrial Complex by Mechthild Nagel
Chapter Six: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: The Non-Profit Industrial Complex by
Andrea Smith
Chapter Seven: Higher Education's Industrial Model by Cary Nelson
Chapter Eight: The Agricultural Industrial Complex by Vandana Shiva
Chapter Nine: Origins and Consequences of the Animal Industrial Complex by David Nibert
Chapter Ten: Bad For Your Health: The U.S. Medical Industrial Complex Goes Global by
Asif Ismail
Chapter Eleven: College Sports: It's All About the Money! by Earl Smith and Angela Hattery
Chapter Twelve: Driving to Carmageddon: Capitalism, Transportation, and the Logic of
Planetary Crisis by Michael Dawson
Afterword by Peter McLaren""
At a time when it is increasingly more difficult to find insightful and accessible work challenging the structural and ideological foundations of neoliberal economic savagery, The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination provides a key resource for such a task. This is a wide ranging and thoughtful book that not only critically analyzes the deepening and myriad forms of global market authoritarianism but also offers the theoretical tools to challenge it. A must read for anyone concerned about the promise of a real democracy and the economic, political, and cultural forces subverting it.
— Henry Giroux, McMaster University and author of Beyond the Spectacle of Terrorism: Global Uncertainty and The Challenge of the New Media
An excellent, well-researched, and richly informed compendium on the nature of global exploitation and power, a nourishing corrective to the vapid evasions we are usually fed.
— Michael Parenti, author of The Face of Imperialism (2011) and God and His Demons (2010)
Table of Contents
Introduction by Steven Best
Chapter One: Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours by Noam Chomsky
Chapter Two: The Corporate War Economy by Carl Boggs
Chapter Three: The Security Industrial Complex by Ward Churchill
Chapter Four: The Media-Military Industrial Complex by Toby Miller
Chapter Five: The Criminal (Justice) Industrial Complex by Mechthild Nagel
Chapter Six: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: The Non-Profit Industrial Complex by
Andrea Smith
Chapter Seven: Higher Education's Industrial Model by Cary Nelson
Chapter Eight: The Agricultural Industrial Complex by Vandana Shiva
Chapter Nine: Origins and Consequences of the Animal Industrial Complex by David Nibert
Chapter Ten: Bad For Your Health: The U.S. Medical Industrial Complex Goes Global by
Asif Ismail
Chapter Eleven: College Sports: It's All About the Money! by Earl Smith and Angela Hattery
Chapter Twelve: Driving to Carmageddon: Capitalism, Transportation, and the Logic of
Planetary Crisis by Michael Dawson
Afterword by Peter McLaren""
Research Interests: Globalization, Fascism, Imperialism, Peter McLaren, Vandana Shiva, and 24 moreAndrea Smith, Chomsky, Military Industrial Complex, Academic Industrial Complex, Media Industrial Complex, Financial Industrial Complex, Animal Industrial Complex, Agricultural Industrial Complex, Nonprofit Industrial Complex, Criminal Justice Industrial Complex, Transportation Industrial Complex, Security Industrial Complex, Medical Industrial Complex, Global Industrial Complex, Sports Industrial Complex, Ward Churchill, Cary Nelson, Toby Miller, David Nibert, Steven Best, Carl Boggs, One-Dimensional Society, Totally Administered Society, and New World Order
In Education Out of Bounds, Lewis and Kahn argue for a new critical theory of the monster as an imaginary "other" on the margins of the human and the animal. Through a unique combination of critical, posthumanist, and educational... more
In Education Out of Bounds, Lewis and Kahn argue for a new critical theory of the monster as an imaginary "other" on the margins of the human and the animal. Through a unique combination of critical, posthumanist, and educational theories, the authors engage in a surreal journey into how social movements are renegotiating the boundaries of community through expressions of posthuman love. Their cultural studies experiments both extend and challenge the critical theories of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Giorgio Agamben, Paulo Freire, and others concerned with questions of teaching and learning beyond the global cultural logic of capitalism. Part philosophy of imagination, part political theory, and part pedagogical critique, this book is a twenty-first century bestiary--a catalog to navigate the monstrous world in which we live.
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction
These Monstrous Times: From Bestiary to
Posthumanist Pedagogy 1
Intermezzo
Marxism and the Bestiary 17
1 Victor, The Wild Child: Humanist Pedagogy and
the Anthropological Machine 41
2 The Reptoid Hypothesis: Exopedagogy
and the UFOther 73
3 Faery Faiths: Altermodernity and the Divine
Violence of Exopedagogy 101
Conclusion
A Monstrous Love Affair:
The Ethics of Exopedagogy 129
Notes 151
Bibliography 165
Index 179
From the inside flap:
The Boarman
This guy's no tame pig.
No even-toed ungulate or woodsy
grubber, he's the spear-skinned
hound, the boar-dog root and thistle
who kills the young and carries
mourning, hung cross a stick.
He looks at you and his Neptune
eye is a bent spoon of absinthe,
a gilled shadow that sees--then,
whorls ear and pupil into one. His
fossil jaw is the mollusk-dyed shade
of Tyrian emperor, ornate bruise pig-
ment, violet and feathered grackle.
The swine's got snout. He's all
beetle root and bone, horned with
the forest beard, a spiral of moth bristle,
victim of the crimson hog typhoid.
When he sleeps, tonight, in his bed
or sty, listen for the human moan
of dream, a purred sorrow, wet air
loosed from fang lock.
--Anne Keefe
From the Back Cover
"By engaging an encyclopedic range of figures from the philosophical tradition and popular culture, Lewis and Kahn lead us on a fascinating journey to discover the monsters that populate our posthuman world. We are confronted by horrible and fearsome beasts of violence, exploitation, and destruction, but we also recognize ourselves in creative monsters that blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman life. Most impressively, Lewis and Kahn propose paths to train the monsters of our world, a monstrous education, a pedagogy for the beautiful monsters we can become."
--Michael Hardt, co-author of Commonwealth
"Our cultural fascinations with the monstrous and its omnipresence in our contemporary Western imaginings play center-stage in this provocative exploration of a zoöphilic exopedagogy. From the feral, to the alien, to the faery, Tyson Lewis and Richard Kahn put pressure on our affective comfort zones by asking us what it means to love the monstrous amidst and within us. The answer comes through their theoretically vast and conceptually rich exploration of a radical democratic pedagogy of the unrepresentable."
--Davide Panagia, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies, Trent University, Co-Editor of Theory and Event, and author of The Political Life of Sensation
About the Authors
Tyson E. Lewis is an Assistant Professor of Educational Philosophy at Montclair State University. He is the co-editor of Marcuse's Challenge to Education (2008), and his articles have appeared in journals such as Rethinking Marxism, Culture, Theory, & Critique and Educational Theory. He is also author of a forthcoming book on aesthetics and education.
Richard Kahn is the author of Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement (Peter Lang, 2010), as well as of the forthcoming, Ecopedagogy: Educating for Sustainability in Schools and Society (Routledge, 2011); and he is the Founding Editor of Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy. His work has been collected in a wide variety of books and journals, including The Critical Pedagogy Reader (2nd edition); The Blackwell Companion to Globalization; and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. He is Core Faculty in Education at Antioch University Los Angeles. For more information about him and an archive of many of his writings, visit: richardkahn.org."
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction
These Monstrous Times: From Bestiary to
Posthumanist Pedagogy 1
Intermezzo
Marxism and the Bestiary 17
1 Victor, The Wild Child: Humanist Pedagogy and
the Anthropological Machine 41
2 The Reptoid Hypothesis: Exopedagogy
and the UFOther 73
3 Faery Faiths: Altermodernity and the Divine
Violence of Exopedagogy 101
Conclusion
A Monstrous Love Affair:
The Ethics of Exopedagogy 129
Notes 151
Bibliography 165
Index 179
From the inside flap:
The Boarman
This guy's no tame pig.
No even-toed ungulate or woodsy
grubber, he's the spear-skinned
hound, the boar-dog root and thistle
who kills the young and carries
mourning, hung cross a stick.
He looks at you and his Neptune
eye is a bent spoon of absinthe,
a gilled shadow that sees--then,
whorls ear and pupil into one. His
fossil jaw is the mollusk-dyed shade
of Tyrian emperor, ornate bruise pig-
ment, violet and feathered grackle.
The swine's got snout. He's all
beetle root and bone, horned with
the forest beard, a spiral of moth bristle,
victim of the crimson hog typhoid.
When he sleeps, tonight, in his bed
or sty, listen for the human moan
of dream, a purred sorrow, wet air
loosed from fang lock.
--Anne Keefe
From the Back Cover
"By engaging an encyclopedic range of figures from the philosophical tradition and popular culture, Lewis and Kahn lead us on a fascinating journey to discover the monsters that populate our posthuman world. We are confronted by horrible and fearsome beasts of violence, exploitation, and destruction, but we also recognize ourselves in creative monsters that blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman life. Most impressively, Lewis and Kahn propose paths to train the monsters of our world, a monstrous education, a pedagogy for the beautiful monsters we can become."
--Michael Hardt, co-author of Commonwealth
"Our cultural fascinations with the monstrous and its omnipresence in our contemporary Western imaginings play center-stage in this provocative exploration of a zoöphilic exopedagogy. From the feral, to the alien, to the faery, Tyson Lewis and Richard Kahn put pressure on our affective comfort zones by asking us what it means to love the monstrous amidst and within us. The answer comes through their theoretically vast and conceptually rich exploration of a radical democratic pedagogy of the unrepresentable."
--Davide Panagia, Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies, Trent University, Co-Editor of Theory and Event, and author of The Political Life of Sensation
About the Authors
Tyson E. Lewis is an Assistant Professor of Educational Philosophy at Montclair State University. He is the co-editor of Marcuse's Challenge to Education (2008), and his articles have appeared in journals such as Rethinking Marxism, Culture, Theory, & Critique and Educational Theory. He is also author of a forthcoming book on aesthetics and education.
Richard Kahn is the author of Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement (Peter Lang, 2010), as well as of the forthcoming, Ecopedagogy: Educating for Sustainability in Schools and Society (Routledge, 2011); and he is the Founding Editor of Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy. His work has been collected in a wide variety of books and journals, including The Critical Pedagogy Reader (2nd edition); The Blackwell Companion to Globalization; and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. He is Core Faculty in Education at Antioch University Los Angeles. For more information about him and an archive of many of his writings, visit: richardkahn.org."
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Education, Critical Pedagogy, Critical Animal Studies, and 17 moreMarcuse, Critical Posthumanism, Imagination, Ecopedagogy, Environmental Sustainability, Frankfurt School, Agamben, Utopia, Monster, Animal Liberation, Posthuman, Total Liberation, Exocultural Studies, Haraway, Monstrous, Hardt, and Negri
"We live in a time of unprecedented planetary ecocrisis, one that poses the serious and ongoing threat of mass extinction. What role can critical pedagogy play in the face of such burgeoning catastrophe? Drawing upon a range of... more
"We live in a time of unprecedented planetary ecocrisis, one that poses the serious and ongoing threat of mass extinction. What role can critical pedagogy play in the face of such burgeoning catastrophe? Drawing upon a range of theoretical influences including Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Herbert Marcuse, traditional ecological knowledge, and the cognitive praxis produced by today's grassroots activists in the alter-globalization, animal and earth liberation, and other radical social movements this book offers the foundations of a philosophy of ecopedagogy for the global north. In so doing, it poses challenges to today's dominant ecoliteracy paradigms and programs, such as education for sustainable development, while theorizing the needed reconstruction of critical pedagogy itself in light of our presently disastrous ecological conditions. Students and teachers of critical pedagogy at all levels, as well as those involved in environmental studies and various forms of sustainability education, will find this book a powerful provocation to adjust their thinking and practice to better align with those who seek to abolish forms of culture predicated upon planetary extermination and the domination of nature.
BOOK NEWS REVIEW: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Critical+pedagogy,+ecoliteracy,+and+planetary+crisis%3B+the+ecopedagogy...-a0225460110"
BOOK NEWS REVIEW: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Critical+pedagogy,+ecoliteracy,+and+planetary+crisis%3B+the+ecopedagogy...-a0225460110"
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Social Movements, New Media, Educational Technology, Science Education, and 13 moreCritical Pedagogy, Herbert Marcuse, Ecoliteracy, Paulo Freire, Science, Ivan Illich, Ecopedagogy, Environmental Sustainability, Cosmology, Technoliteracy, Antonia Darder, Douglas Kellner, and Cognitive Praxis
Instituto McLaren de Pedagogía Crítica, Foro Académico Internacional: "Crisis Sistémica y Medio Ambiente, la Alternativa Pedagógica," July 25, 2015, Ensenada, Baja California
Research Interests:
I found this draft of the lecture I was invited to give to the University of Oslo a few years back for their 200th anniversary, by the UiO, UiO Sustainability in Research, Education & Operation office.
Research Interests:
"2010 Scholarly Forum - Tuesday 9 March at 12 noon Lecture Bowl, Memorial Union Dean's Lecture Series Speaker - Dr. Richard Kahn Education as the Avatar of Sustainability? "Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not... more
"2010 Scholarly Forum - Tuesday 9 March at 12 noon
Lecture Bowl, Memorial Union
Dean's Lecture Series Speaker - Dr. Richard Kahn
Education as the Avatar of Sustainability?
"Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action....The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to doand how one is always being prevented and then do nothing." --Soren Kierkegaard
Sustainability is fast becoming a defining buzzword of our current moment. As scholars, we increasingly bear witness to the greening of the academy. Campuses everywhere now trumpet their institutional commitment to realizing smaller carbon or ecological footprints, and fields such as environmental science are growing in disciplinary power. As citizens, corporations and politicians routinely bombard us with messages of sustainable development as a guiding policy norm; and our consumer lives have begun to steadily take on the appearance of being informed by a sustainability ethos whether it is through the purchase of hybrid vehicles, organic foodstuffs, energy-efficient light bulbs, non-toxic housecleaning solutions, or socially responsible investment portfolios. Still, we live in a time of unprecedented planetary ecocrisis, a period that poses the serious and burgeoning threat of mass extinction and widespread social disaster across the globe. The writer H. G. Wells once remarked, History is a race between education and catastrophe. If the finish line is our sustainable future, could it be that we presently are on course to finish last? In consideration of this question, my talk will offer some general remarks about the need to conceive of sustainability as beyond technical solutions and as a moral challenge that demands the radical reconstruction of education and society.
---
Dr. Richard Kahn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations & Research at UND. To learn more about Dr. Kahn's academic interests, visit his web page or read his recent contribution to Teaching Thursday."
Lecture Bowl, Memorial Union
Dean's Lecture Series Speaker - Dr. Richard Kahn
Education as the Avatar of Sustainability?
"Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action....The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to doand how one is always being prevented and then do nothing." --Soren Kierkegaard
Sustainability is fast becoming a defining buzzword of our current moment. As scholars, we increasingly bear witness to the greening of the academy. Campuses everywhere now trumpet their institutional commitment to realizing smaller carbon or ecological footprints, and fields such as environmental science are growing in disciplinary power. As citizens, corporations and politicians routinely bombard us with messages of sustainable development as a guiding policy norm; and our consumer lives have begun to steadily take on the appearance of being informed by a sustainability ethos whether it is through the purchase of hybrid vehicles, organic foodstuffs, energy-efficient light bulbs, non-toxic housecleaning solutions, or socially responsible investment portfolios. Still, we live in a time of unprecedented planetary ecocrisis, a period that poses the serious and burgeoning threat of mass extinction and widespread social disaster across the globe. The writer H. G. Wells once remarked, History is a race between education and catastrophe. If the finish line is our sustainable future, could it be that we presently are on course to finish last? In consideration of this question, my talk will offer some general remarks about the need to conceive of sustainability as beyond technical solutions and as a moral challenge that demands the radical reconstruction of education and society.
---
Dr. Richard Kahn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations & Research at UND. To learn more about Dr. Kahn's academic interests, visit his web page or read his recent contribution to Teaching Thursday."
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Philosophy of Education, Critical Pedagogy, Sustainability in Higher Education, Holistic Education, and 6 moreEcopedagogy, Sustainability Education, Avatar, Philosophy of Education, Critical Pedagogy, Environmental Ethics, Political Theory, Culture Theory, People's History, and Critical Ecopedagogy
The new Obama administration enters into our political reality promising change as it seeks to solve some of our political problems. The tradition of critical pedagogy, however, envisions change as occurring not through problem solving (a... more
The new Obama administration enters into our political reality promising change as it seeks to solve some of our political problems. The tradition of critical pedagogy, however, envisions change as occurring not through problem solving (a Deweyian method) but through problem posing. Specifically, Paulo Freire theorized that people must enter into the conscientization process through a careful realization of the limits of action in conjunction with organized and courageous attempts to transgress those limits as part of the political project of occupying the space of "untested feasibility." Many identify with Obama as himself occupying such a political space. My challenge, though, is that even if this is true it does not absolve people of themselves supporting his own transgression of historical limits, but rather we too must seek to move beyond our comfort zones. Moreover, in so doing, I want to argue that we will need to make strategic demands of the Obama administration if it is to remain a trustee of progressive interests and not simply a representative of more powerful classes. In this, the Obama administration will take its place alongside those of LBJ, Kennedy, FDR, and Lincoln as administrations that granted important political goods to the disenfranchised -- not because it was inherently politically feasible to do so, but because the people themselves tested the zones of feasibility and produced a new interzone of political possibilities.
I'm a philosopher of education whose work takes many forms -- in the streets, in affinity groups, in books and essays, in conferences, in classrooms and faculty meetings, in poetry shared amongst friends, in the woods and on the seashore,... more
I'm a philosopher of education whose work takes many forms -- in the streets, in affinity groups, in books and essays, in conferences, in classrooms and faculty meetings, in poetry shared amongst friends, in the woods and on the seashore, the mountain top and desert. I hail and descend from the American transcendentalist counterculture. I believe in teaching about it and inquiring into it. I advocate what I call a Descendentalist approach.
My philosophy is the opposite of a mantra or slogan. But if I were to reduce it to a few ideas:
1) Sustainability is the emergent act of re-covering our humanity.
2) The greatest form of protest is the total liberation of suffering amor fati.
3) We need to pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
4) Music and song have everything to do with these three ideas.
5) My life has fundamentally transformed in multiple and radical, yet also at times in superficial and ubiquitous, ways through the influence of music. My best times during my life have always been experienced as sounds. But some of my worst moments have been the experience of bad sounds also.
6) Music is therefore political and historical (spiritual) and so re-covering our humanity means one is involved in the pedagogical activity that the revolutionary educator Paulo Freire termed the "humanization of the world."
7) The best music is zoöphilic. In this way it constitutes an entheogenic dimension of the conscious imagination. Such music can take many forms, but experiential phenomena such as Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, synaesthesia, and spontaneous love/friendship acts between people in the form of community building/empowerment are possible keystone responses to this type of musical experience.
8) Conservation of the world's music is a fundamental literacy task associated with the movement for planetary sustainability today. Every language arts program should be infused with this message and experience and music education should make available, on the one hand, knowledge and respect of the musical traditions of the people involved but also knowledge and respect for musical traditions beyond the life experiences of those who constitute the musical community.
9) The degradation and disrespect of music is symptomatic of the degradation and disrespect of humanity (and more radically: nature). The degradation and disrespect of music in education constitutes the degradation and disrespect of education. To disrespect and degrade education is to actively dehumanize the world.
10) Silence is music in its most utopian form.
As a performer, my musical education is founded largely in the blues, traditional ballad, and how these have influenced the Woody Guthrie school of folk protest song. For years, I played only Dylan, some Van Morrison, a Joni Mitchell song or two, Leonard Cohen, various blues, CSN&Y, Led Zeppelin particularly poorly, the Grateful Dead and my own stuff (both solo and with a group called the Degenerates that cut something along the lines of 10+ albums and easily 100 sessions of material). When I moved to Los Angeles, an early walk up Sunset rewarded me with a pristine copy of Woody Guthrie's Songs. Then I more seriously committed to next Generation-styled bluegrass in the style of Old and in the Way and the music of Jerry Garcia. Ultimately, though, always with an eye to how this work informed the tradition of protest song...less a genre, but more an awakening that the act of song is itself inherently a protest under present social conditions. Thus, receiving the Woody book was an especially important moment for me as a musician and student. I think I am very much still under the influence of that moment, and decidedly remain a student in my identity as a performer. However, within the last couple years I have moved to integrate my music with the rest of my everyday life--particularly my pedagogical work as a teacher and co-learner with others in decolonized and reinhabited liberatory spaces. Initially, I took this up as a Teaching Fellow in the Global Environment program at UCLA from 2005-2007, then at a major keynote I provided on behalf of the social sciences and humanities faculty for the University of North Dakota in 2010. More recently, this has led to me playing before concert audiences for Earth Day keynote talks at Santa Monica College and the Maharishi University of Management, in lectures early 2012 at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria, in various performances at the American Educational Research Association, at the 2011 International Marcuse Society Bi-Annual Conference in Philadelphia, in my classes at Antioch University Los Angeles, and for Vandana Shiva and the University Garden community at Loyola Marymount University (during their International Peace Pole planting ceremony).
My philosophy is the opposite of a mantra or slogan. But if I were to reduce it to a few ideas:
1) Sustainability is the emergent act of re-covering our humanity.
2) The greatest form of protest is the total liberation of suffering amor fati.
3) We need to pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
4) Music and song have everything to do with these three ideas.
5) My life has fundamentally transformed in multiple and radical, yet also at times in superficial and ubiquitous, ways through the influence of music. My best times during my life have always been experienced as sounds. But some of my worst moments have been the experience of bad sounds also.
6) Music is therefore political and historical (spiritual) and so re-covering our humanity means one is involved in the pedagogical activity that the revolutionary educator Paulo Freire termed the "humanization of the world."
7) The best music is zoöphilic. In this way it constitutes an entheogenic dimension of the conscious imagination. Such music can take many forms, but experiential phenomena such as Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, synaesthesia, and spontaneous love/friendship acts between people in the form of community building/empowerment are possible keystone responses to this type of musical experience.
8) Conservation of the world's music is a fundamental literacy task associated with the movement for planetary sustainability today. Every language arts program should be infused with this message and experience and music education should make available, on the one hand, knowledge and respect of the musical traditions of the people involved but also knowledge and respect for musical traditions beyond the life experiences of those who constitute the musical community.
9) The degradation and disrespect of music is symptomatic of the degradation and disrespect of humanity (and more radically: nature). The degradation and disrespect of music in education constitutes the degradation and disrespect of education. To disrespect and degrade education is to actively dehumanize the world.
10) Silence is music in its most utopian form.
As a performer, my musical education is founded largely in the blues, traditional ballad, and how these have influenced the Woody Guthrie school of folk protest song. For years, I played only Dylan, some Van Morrison, a Joni Mitchell song or two, Leonard Cohen, various blues, CSN&Y, Led Zeppelin particularly poorly, the Grateful Dead and my own stuff (both solo and with a group called the Degenerates that cut something along the lines of 10+ albums and easily 100 sessions of material). When I moved to Los Angeles, an early walk up Sunset rewarded me with a pristine copy of Woody Guthrie's Songs. Then I more seriously committed to next Generation-styled bluegrass in the style of Old and in the Way and the music of Jerry Garcia. Ultimately, though, always with an eye to how this work informed the tradition of protest song...less a genre, but more an awakening that the act of song is itself inherently a protest under present social conditions. Thus, receiving the Woody book was an especially important moment for me as a musician and student. I think I am very much still under the influence of that moment, and decidedly remain a student in my identity as a performer. However, within the last couple years I have moved to integrate my music with the rest of my everyday life--particularly my pedagogical work as a teacher and co-learner with others in decolonized and reinhabited liberatory spaces. Initially, I took this up as a Teaching Fellow in the Global Environment program at UCLA from 2005-2007, then at a major keynote I provided on behalf of the social sciences and humanities faculty for the University of North Dakota in 2010. More recently, this has led to me playing before concert audiences for Earth Day keynote talks at Santa Monica College and the Maharishi University of Management, in lectures early 2012 at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria, in various performances at the American Educational Research Association, at the 2011 International Marcuse Society Bi-Annual Conference in Philadelphia, in my classes at Antioch University Los Angeles, and for Vandana Shiva and the University Garden community at Loyola Marymount University (during their International Peace Pole planting ceremony).
