Decolonizing Development: Freeing Biocultural Diversities in Egypt to Enhance Regenerative Capacity

• In Event: Vibrant Earth: Bioculturally Embedded Educational Encounters Catalyzing Earth Regenerative Creativities

Abstract

Objectives
The author is positioned as an Egyptian development practitioner who has become a sustainability education researcher with native communities in Egypt living in poverty. In conversation with local biocultural diverse communities in Egypt, this paper elicits place-based and locally inspired responses for biocultural regeneration as a possibility for a more realistic, possible, and emergent pathway for social change. The study focuses on the rural, Nubian and Bedouin biocultures as an entry point to learning from these communities to explore the biocultural regeneration perspective on social evolution in the Egyptian context.

Rationale
As a place-based study, it is concerned with how local communities with different environmental identities and affiliations with nature, different sets of local knowledge, and different biocultural specifics negotiate their options through creativity, regeneration and place making to sustain themselves and their communities in the context of the dominant development paradigm which mainly promotes modernity.

Theoretical frameworks
This research was grounded in the theoretical frameworks of regeneration (Apffel-Marglin, 1998; Apffel-Marglin & Sanchez, 2012; Lyle, 1994), complex creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Montuori, 2003), and indigenous education committed to decolonizing development (Apffel-Marglin, 2010; Bowers, 2005; Chambers, 2010; Escobar, 2010; Stonebanks, 2008).
Methods
This research was a multi-case study (Stake, 2006; Yin, 2003) of rural, Nubian, and Bedouin communities in Egypt. Methods included in depth interviews, focus group discussions, observation, and group discussions.

Data
This research used interview transcripts and field notes in ethnographic encounters with 3 development thinkers, 19 development practitioners, and 27 community members (14 rural, 6 Nubian, and 7 Bedouin). The data collected include knowledge specific to place, natural capital, social capital, economic capital, assets, local knowledge, traditional practices, moral systems, environmental knowledge, and the commons.

Results
See Table 3-1 and Table 3-2 for Visualizations of Findings

Development is a natural phenomenon that was negatively impacted by the simplistic and fragmented thinking typical of modernity, which is ultimately degenerative. It does not sufficiently grasp the complexity of the lives of the poor. This complexity requires the ability to improvise, think and act creatively not only at specific junctures in a lifetime, but oftentimes on a daily basis in order to survive. The improvisational capacity of the poor is a survival strategy that the poor employ effectively on a daily basis to face the force of necessity. The poor, around whom development efforts are centered, traverse daily situations that require creativity and improvisation. They are nonetheless regarded by development planning as passive recipients of plans, ideas and messages.

Significance
This research anticipates that global social evolution would be a canvas of regenerative acts of place making, of biocultural diversities, of people, and of nature. Education that creates life conditions that are conducive to our understanding of our identities, our places, and our environments represents a promising starting point in pursuing this path. It is a starting point to thinking about everyday creativity and regenerative capacity as the main pillars of a conscious and sustainable social evolution.

Author

• Abeer Salem, MSA University