Slaying monsters in/through STS, science, and education

• In Event: Science and Technology Studies and Science Education: ‘High’ vs. ‘Low’ Church Tensions (A)

Abstract

In the wake of climate change, increasing environmental disasters, the anti-science Trumpocene, and other longstanding environmental injustice issues, science educators and scientists alike are called on to take on more vocal activist stances and pursuits in the name of justice (Liboiron, 2017; Tolbert & Bazzul, 2017). Truly, “we need a new era of monster slayers” (LaDuke, 2016). Indigenous, anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, feminist, and environmental activists alike are igniting mass movements to disrupt market fundamentalisms and economic/environmental policies that kill, advocating instead for policies “embedded in interdependence rather than hyperindividualism, reciprocity rather than dominance, and cooperation rather than hierarchy" (Klein, 2014). Longtime American Indian and environmental activist Winona LaDuke (2016) writes, “I would like to see an elegant society, not a city of decay, and sorrow” (p. 298, 2016). Activism is an intra-action with science and the sociopolitical, as we strive toward a more “elegant” presentfuture. In this paper and presentation, I describe examples from scholarly and pedagogical efforts to reveal lines of flight and fugitive spaces through youth/teacher participatory action research in science and education. I reflect on how activist approaches to STS, science, and education can “exploit the few remaining ‘cracks’” (p. 227) within increasingly neoliberal university contexts toward the critical transformation of a world-in-common (Russell, 2015).

Author

• Sara Tolbert, University of Arizona