Landscape, memory and learning to change in changing worlds:Contemplating intergenerational learning and traditional knowledge practices within social-ecological landscapes of change

Abstract

The core paper and collection of short papers from Mexico, Africa (Zambia and South Africa), India and Sweden that make up this study on social-ecological landscapes developed as a South-South collaboration that was extended to include a case in the North. Our concern was to explore how situated, intergenerational knowledge commonly takes a back seat to the conceptual propositions that the environmental sciences have developed around matters of concern like biodiversity loss. In this way, scientific propositions have become the conceptual capital for informing future sustainability through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). In response to this, a more situated turn has developed to engage both intergenerational practices and the institutional sciences, but the playing fields are seldom level and deliberations are often rife with misunderstandings. Current trajectories of social-ecological change were already evident at the turn of the 20th century where one found the colonial oppression of indigenous peoples and early manifestations of accelerating environmental degradation. The latter escalated into biodiversity loss as a global concern that both underpins and resonates with the current complex of global risks. This concern has shaped education imperatives towards learning-led change so as to reduce the risk of catastrophic problems such as climate change and ocean acidification, for example. These and other critical sustainability concerns have developed as planetary limits are being exceeded on a widening scale. The associated patterns of change and escalating risk in the modern era have played out in each of the regions where our teams of authors have researched their short papers on social-ecological change and intergenerational learning. The papers are intended as contributions that might better situate indigenous peoples on their intergenerational lands in reflexive learning within a rich mix of ancient and modern scientific ideas and ideals. Each contributing team of writers offered to develop a short case study to illustrate how intergenerational patterns of practice have shaped long-term sustainable landscapes in their regions. We noted how much of the intergenerational knowledge was marginalised during colonial modernity, which generally denigrated and discounted the knowledge of the oppressed against the dominant institutional hegemonies and the omnipotent objectivity of the sciences. To inform our work, we loosely drew on the 'history of the present' processes of Tom Popkewitz (1988), who points to how education imperatives to change The Other developed in ways that RESEARCH PAPER 3 Landscape, memory and learning to change in changing worlds

Transition Process of Landscape Through Changing Tropical Gardens from Productive Function into Recreational Purpose

“…Despite the contradictive ideas on the traditional form of gardens in the context of Africa, the available gardens in the context probably could demonstrate the specification of gardens with respect to the time and location. However, the current study emphasizes that the landscape concept is going to change in the changing world (O'Donoghue, Sandoval-Rivera, & Payyappallimana, 2019). (Morris, 1979) (unspecified) Spiritual Greece Garden (Wolschke-Bulmahn & Groening, 1992) (unspecified) Political, ideological, economic, and social Ideology and patriotism (Mazrui, 1993) (Owusu, 1993) Destruction of natural form in Africa…”

Towards an Eco-decolonial Museology: A critical realist analysis of the crises of South African museums

“…"Museums … are founded on positivist notions of certainty" (Cameron, 2015a, p. 348), and like Education for Sustainable Development (see, for instance, O'Donoghue et al, 2019), the eco-decolonial seeks to generate relationality between the historical divisions that have been set up by positivism and empirical realism. Museology, like ESD, can benefit from a relational perspective on western and intergenerational perspectives on place, ecological change and biodiversity, and the eco-decolonial mode can potentially accomplish this through engagements with situated knowledge.…”

Hand-Print CARE: Towards Ethics-led Action Learning for ESD in School Subject Disciplines

“…Despite imperial colonial injustices, many aspects of the modernizing periods of global expansion have enhanced human health, peacefulness and well-being (Pinker, 2018) but within expanding inequalities and a continuing abjection of ethnic minorities. To achieve modern expansion and many of the benefits of modernity, socialecological landscapes have been modified in ways that people, other living things and natural landscapes are not always being well cared for (O'Donoghue et al, 2019). Today, many of our modern ways of being and doing things in the world are no longer sustainable, and we are creating all sorts of problems for ourselves and other living things.…”