Engaging the Teaching Place with the Anthropocene : A Case for STS Education Through 'Simul-Action'

• In Event: Reflexive Engagements in Climate Engineering

Abstract

How can Environmental Law and Policy education engage with the proposed ‘Age of Humankind’? This paper is largely a speculative attempt to answer the question. Focusing on interdisciplinary pedagogical frameworks in Japan, it considers a course in ‘Science, Technology, Society (STS) and Environmental Governance’ as a possible illustration.
Given in English at the University of Tokyo, this course addresses the need to re-examine governance frameworks for dealing with environmental crises and risks of scientific-technological provenance. Focusing on earth sciences, biotechnology and climate geoengineering, it examines various cases of cross-fertilization between STS (that investigates the relations between science production and policy outcomes) and global environmental governance (where several international institutions and transnational platforms meant to be science-policy interfaces have been established). Through role-play simulations, students scrutinize the relevance of such ‘boundary organizations’ and contemplate their legitimacy regarding the development of negotiated rulemaking processes in environmental regulation. Put in the footsteps of different stakeholders, they envision more distinctly the implications of an understanding of ‘environmental problems’ and ‘risks’ as social constructs.
This paper discusses the practical and theoretical conditions under which integrated syllabi and ‘simul-action’ pedagogical frameworks may help to connect more strongly environmental governance studies with both Disaster STS (as an emergent subfield of inquiry) and the ‘Anthropocene’ scientific proposal, approached at the interface of environmental sciences and environmental humanities. In so doing, it seeks to shed further light on the significance of STS education for the progressive building in post-Fukushima Japan of a transdisciplinary ‘Anthropocene curriculum’.

Author

• Isabelle Juliette Giraudou, The University of Tokyo