Embracing Strangeness, but Not Becoming Strangers (Poster 7)

• In Event: Toward a Stranger and More Posthuman Social Studies

Abstract

This presentation presents the idea of being as inherently relational through Buber’s (1923/1996) writing in Ich und Du and makes suggestions about what a relational ontology-oriented social studies might look like. In an inherently relational world, social studies has an important role to play in creating/contributing to a better (more-than-human) world. This idea is also in alignment with the National Council for the Social Studies’ (NCSS) call for social studies to “help young people make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse democratic society in an interdependent world” (NCSS, n.d., para. 1), but also has the potential to build new conceptions and possibilities of what it means to explicitly make those ('informed and reasoned’) decisions.

Author

• Alexander S. Butler, Bowling Green State University
  Presenting Author