Transdisciplinary Engagement With Enforced Dependency: Addressing Crises in Employment, Sustainability, and Democracy in Technological Society

• In Event: 51.063 - Education and Technological Unemployment: Dilemmas and Possibilities

Abstract

With continued development of artificial intelligence and robotics, increasing technological displacement of human labor is a concern for, not only low-skilled laborers who complete routine tasks, but professionals whose thinking work has been assumed by many to be irreplaceable. At the same time, socio-ecological sustainability crises threaten both life systems and democracy globally. Appropriately prepared humans are uniquely capable of addressing these complex challenges, and higher education content and processes should assist in preparing graduates to do so.

Education in science, technology, engineering, and math is insufficient on its own for ensuring the long-term employability of graduates or resolving pressing socio-ecological issues of industrial society. To prepare students for long-term employability and for addressing these challenges, educators must foster creativity, transdisciplinary synthesis of ideas and practices, context-sensitive sense making, discernment, empathy, and humility – as yet, uniquely human capabilities. Drawing upon educational, social, economic, and political theory and research and testing her ideas against both her experience as a sustainability educator and her recent grounded-theory-based research on generating and maintaining hope and agency in sustainability education, the author suggests appropriate responses for higher education given the challenges capitalist technological society poses to employment, socio-ecological health, and democratic engagement.
Synthesizing insights from world-system, economic, political, and social theories in this theory-based paper, the author explicates the context from which the converging sustainability, employment, and democracy crises have emerged. Enforced dependency serves as the author’s central heuristic for identifying enduring themes for education that make it both robot-proof and apt for addressing pressing issues of our time. Enforced dependency is a form of reliance upon external resources or externally created conditions that undermines self-sufficiency and resilience of the dependent person, community, institution, or government, making the dependent party increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. Recognizing enforced dependency serves as a useful platform for identifying and selecting competencies to teach, discuss, and learn as students pursue socio-ecological sustainability that fosters autonomy, the well-being of people and nature, community vibrancy, meaning, and beauty.
Transdisciplinary studies are perhaps most directly suited to the twin purposes of preparing graduates for both long-term relevance in the workplace and effective engagement in social change. They build upon, integrate, and enhance study based in traditional disciplines through focusing student attention on complex issues in direct and concrete ways and engaging them in relevant project work. Transdisciplinary work is beyond integrative. It not only calls upon the domain knowledge of various disciplines but also takes into account the epistemological framing of disciplines themselves, pointing to the strengths and weaknesses each field brings to addressing a given issue. Transdisciplinary engagement, the author argues, should serve as the thematic center of gravity for education that will remain relevant and prepare graduates to address complex socio-ecological challenges in technological society. Readings and project assignments drawn from the author’s course in sustainable economics demonstrate effective engagement of students in developing competencies relevant for securing and maintaining meaningful livelihoods while also contributing to the long-term health and integrity of their communities and the natural world.

Author

• Tina Lynn Evans, Colorado Mountain College