Solastalgia and Hope: Learning Through a Time of Rapid Change

• In Event: Death, Hope, and Educational Frankensteins: Biocapital and Domestic Thinkeries

Abstract

As the effects of climate change impact more people, and as floods and droughts make beloved places unrecognizable, more people suffer the physical and psychic consequences, even finding it difficult to guide the next generation or make decisions about their own futures . The ideas of Ivan Illich on planning, expectation, and hope, can provide a framework for a new stance toward the future and a relationship with the next generation in a time of rapid and threatening change. Illich’s ideas are applied to current situations in two drought-stricken areas. In particular, the responses of participants in a research project in New South Wales are contrasted with the unsolicited advice of an elder in a rural community in Kenya.

Author

• Maylan A. Dunn-Kenney, Northern Illinois University