Re-Entrenching Sociologies with Ecopedagogies for University Students' Praxis to Disrupt (Super) Wicked Environmental Problems: Countering Neoliberalization and Apoliticization of Academia

• In Event: Learning Environments, Well-Being, and Climate Resilience

Proposal

The global disappearance and perversion of sociologies in higher education (HE) curricula to entrench neoliberal goals hinders effective praxis to tame wicked (environmental) problems emergent from HE teaching. Sociologies are essential to untangle the inherent messiness between acts of social and environmental injustices with our interactions with the rest of Nature, which designates them as “(super) wicked.”(1) HE has an essential role within public spheres (i.e., local-to-global) to help ending environmental crises that involves teaching to better critically read the politics of human acts leading to environmental violence – problematizing why are unsustainable environmental actions done, who benefits and who suffers from them, what are the (false) justifications for them, and what are the politics behind all these inquiries (Misiaszek and Rodrigues, 2023, Misiaszek et al., 2011, Misiaszek, 2020b).
Neoliberal trends and influences that de-radicalize higher education into false apolitical spaces negate the roles of HE within public spheres and teach through hidden curricula that deprioritize and delegitimize activism against hegemony grounded upon injustices, violence, and unsustainability. Such spaces are “false” because, as Freire emphasized, apolitical (higher) education spaces are impossible, as well as non-transformative (Freire, 1970, 1998). This paper will specifically unpack how neoliberal globalization has lead HE to frequently over-prioritize STEM and technocratic vocationalization of teaching, mono-disciplinarity, and teaching through epistemologies of the North (founded in coloniality, patriarchy, and capitalism (Santos, 2018)). In turn, such politics of HE inhibit students’ praxis towards solving our world’s wicked problems that affect all of Earth (i.e., all of Nature).
In this paper, I will specifically focus on HE’s roles in solving our planet’s wicked problems that intensify socio-environmental injustices and planetary unsustainability. I will argue that teaching diverse sociologies with ecopedagogical teaching and research is essential for environmental activism to emerge from HE teaching. Ecopedagogies are grounded in the popular education work of Paulo Freire to unpack the inseparable but systematically hidden connections between social and environmental violence, and critically determining who benefits and who suffers from humans’ acts of environmental violence (who includes all of Nature, beyond humans) (Gadotti, 2008; Gutiérrez & Prado, 1989; Misiaszek, 2012, 2020a). This includes teaching students to critically read the politics of environmental violence (i.e., ecopedagogical literacy) and why these lessons are too-frequently (mis/un)taught (Misiaszek, 2020b). The paper will argue that HE’s roles and, in turn, responsibilities of students’ environmental praxis, including activism is being neglected by shallow environmental teaching (i.e., opposite of ecopedagogical teaching), and systematically deprioritizing sociology and absences of sociologies (e.g., sociologies grounded in epistemologies of the South (see Santos, 2018)). Deprioritizing and delegitimizing sociology in HE through neoliberal globalization of HE diminishes societies’ ability to tame (super) wicked problems by removing a discipline that is essential to untangle the inherent messiness between acts of social and environmental injustice. Global attacks on the discipline have also included perverting sociology, as well as environmental teaching, into neoliberal, (neo)colonial tools that at best ignore and at worst justify hegemony, socio-historical oppressions (e.g., racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity), injustices, inequalities, universal commodification, planetary unsustainability, and anthropocentricism. Achieving the inherent roles of HE in the public spheres to counter these negative aspects requires, as this paper will argue, transdisciplinary teaching and research approaches grounded in sociology, especially through emergences of sociologies (a la Santos (2018)).
These roles themselves -- bettering the world and sustaining Earth by actively addressing wicked problems -- are challenged by neoliberal politics, which further calls for the need to utilize sociologies to radically (de/re)construct HE. This paper will focus on HE’s roles within the largest public sphere, the planetary sphere, which comprises all of Nature (including humans), towards achieving the utopic goal of globally all-inclusive socio-environmental justice and planetary sustainability. The need to (re)entrench sociologies within HE towards this overarching ecopedagogical goal (see Misiaszek, 2020a) will be unpacked to counter the politics of attacking sociologies and teaching to ecopedagogically read humans’ anti-environmental acts as political acts needing active resistance.
I conclude by re-emphasizing that the attacking of sociologies in HE severely hampers our world, as the metaphoric frog, to have the foresight to escape the slowly heated-up water before the frog’s death. Thus, recognizing and actively addressing the world’s (i.e., frog’s) demise from environmental destruction (i.e., water's rising temperature). Inherently anti-environmental logic that attacks sociology in HE further instills dehumanizing and deplanetarizing ideologies by eliminating cognitive tools for such foresight. In other words, attacks on sociology remove our ability to (ecopedagogically) read (super)wicked environmental problems necessary to determine praxis for taming the problems. In turn, actions to remove and/or thin sociologies have HE negligent in performing their roles of locally-to-planetarily advancing justice, peace, and sustainability. Transformative sociological with ecopedagogical teaching must be thickened throughout HE rather than thinned for achieving these roles.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.
Freire, P. (1998). Politics and education. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications.
Gadotti, M. (2008). Education for sustainability: A critical contribution to the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. São Paulo, Brazil: University of São Paulo, Paulo Freire Institute
Gutiérrez, F., & Prado, C. (1989). Ecopedagogia e cidadania planetária. (Ecopedagogy and planetarian citizenship). São Paulo: Cortez.
Misiaszek, G. W. (2012). Transformative environmental education within social justice models: Lessons from comparing adult ecopedagogy within North and South America. In D. N. Aspin, J. Chapman, K. Evans, & R. Bagnall (Eds.), Second international handbook of lifelong learning (Vol. 26, pp. 423-440). London: Springer.
Misiaszek, G. W. (2020a). Ecopedagogy: Critical environmental teaching for planetary justice and global sustainable development. London: Bloomsbury.
Misiaszek, G. W. (2020b). Ecopedagogy: Teaching critical literacies of ‘development’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘sustainable development’. Teaching in Higher Education, 25(5), 615-632. doi:10.1080/13562517.2019.1586668
Santos, B. d. S. (2018). The end of the cognitive empire: The coming of age of epistemologies of the South. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

(1) “Earth” and “Nature” will be upper-cased to not ecolinguistically objectify either. In addition, the article “the” will not be written with “Earth” for the same reason.

Author

• Greg William Misiaszek, Tohoku University