Community Mobilization for Holistic Education

• In Event: Addressing Minoritized Populations in Holistic Education

Abstract

This talk explores the strategy of emergence as outlined by Adrienne Marie Brown in her book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, and its relationship to community organizing and holistic education. At the time of its release in 2017, a significant debate among community organizers was taking place. The question was whether cultural organizing could help people bring their full selves to their organizing? At the heart of this question was a subtle critique of more traditional forms of organizing which were focused on outcomes and used dehumanizing language to describe organizing (e.g., “targets,” “issue cutting,” etc.). Cultural organizers were more focused on the process of organizing and the mental, physical, and spiritual health of organizers. In the effort to find wholeness in organizing, cultural organizers found hope in brown, who argued that in the framework of emergence, “the whole is a mirror of the parts. Existence is fractal—the health of the cell is the health of the species and the planet” (2017, n. p.).

Author

• Brett G. Grant, Cornell University
  Presenting Author