Soil not Oil: Seven Grassroots Revolutions Growing at Odds With the Academy

• In Event: Roundtable Session 96
  In Roundtable Session: Try and Try Again: Reflections on the Uncertainties of Living Out an Ecological Ethic in Academe

Abstract

Poisonous plastics pervade the context of the classroom and the university where I conduct my courses and engage in research, writing and publication. Elegant garbage separation units in every corner of the university (clearly seeking to educate for responsible deposits of recyclables and non-recyclables), notwithstanding, our academy’s institutional dependence on the proliferation of poisonous plastics has not decreased since the last two decades. This growing dependency exacerbates the tension of teaching courses my colleagues and I have conceived and implemented: bringing center stage ecologists and environmentalists sounding the alarm for the implications of these plastics on the health of peoples, plants, animals and our planetary web of life. Their poisonous nature is part of the reasons why the ecological footprint of students and faculty of the academy has not decreased in these two decades of vast information disseminated on and off the world wide web. One of the implications of this cancerous growth is our growing dependence on oil, coal and other energy sources for promoting pollution by plastics.

My research, publications and classroom professing focus on and fully celebrate seven green revolutions common people have launched at the grassroots to create more soil and decrease our dependence on oil. Clearly, what I profess, publish and promote is highly at odds with the context of the academy which pays my passion for greening the planet.

This paper will begin by examining the nature of the seven contemporary revolutions that seek to wean us from oil dependency while regenerating cultures of soil. What defines and distinguishes these peoples’ movements as promoting “soil, not oil?” Where are these movements growing? Who are the leaders and visionaries offering light and inspiration for the people daring to swim against the 21st century social currents in order to promote “soil, not oil” philosophies of living and learning?

After exploring the nature of the most radical and revolutionary contemporary grassroots movements that constitute the core of my research, publications, and teaching, I will next explore the impediments the academy places for these movements to make inroads into the dominant educational institutions of the 21st century. Trapped by the tensions that define and distinguish the context of where I teach and profess, and the socio-political ideals and ideas that I celebrate in my publications, this paper will tentatively identify some escape routes or piece-meal resolutions for making daily peace in what is experienced as personal and social schizophrenia.

Author

• Madhu Suri SURI Prakash, The Pennsylvania State University