Conscientisation and Communities of Compost: Rethinking management pedagogy in an age of climate crises

Abstract

The unprecedented scale of the climate crisis has led to a questioning of conventional approaches to sustainability in management education, centred around business case for sustainability narratives. Such critique gives rise to serious questions around how we approach teaching the universality of the climate crisis, species extinction and biodiversity loss differently. Working with Freire’s stress on the political role of the educator, action rooted in the concrete and the interconnections he establishes between pedagogy and political organisation, our contribution is to connect these interventions with Haraway’s call to stay ‘with the trouble’ and generate Communities of Compost – that is, collective more than human communities of multi-species flourishing. In doing so, we propose threading together ecocentric and political economy approaches in management education, to present an alternative to corporate sustainability solutionism and to politically rethink scalar mismatches – that is when problems and proposed ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis apply to different sets of relations. As a way of addressing this, we develop pedagogical practices around Haraway’s multi-species Communities of Compost and combine this with the political movement of La Via Campesina – focusing on its campaigns for agroecology and food sovereignty.

Politicizing and humanizing management learning and education with Paulo Freire

“…Freire’s problematization is also especially salient given the new demands emerging from the widespread use of artificial intelligence tools in all interactions including in the organization of work, recruitment, and new jobs, together with the educational and societal changes that they are bringing forward (Barros et al, 2023). Adopting Freire’s notions of problematization and generative themes, management education can focus on grand challenges such as long-term sustainability, which would allow students to engage with ground up actionable interventions participating in actual practices and organizations as illustrated in Dallyn et al (2023) in this special issue. Freire also invites us to question existing paradigms, engage in ethical reasoning, and consider not only the broader societal implications of business practices and the implications of their actions, but also our place in the world.…”

“…In “Conscientisation and communities of compost: Rethinking management pedagogy in an age of climate crises,” Sam Dallyn et al (2023) invoke Freire’s concepts of political organization and action to develop a pedagogy undergirded in “collective, community orientated ecocentric approaches.” Such approaches as the authors observe, are critically needed to respond to the ever pressing challenge of climate change. They further interweave Donna Haraway’s ideas of “staying with the trouble” and “Communities of Compost” with Freire’s arguments to illuminate how local practices can potentially subvert the disconcerting progressive of climate warming.…”