Venturing sustainability: Political lessons from civic engagement and transformative learning in Asia

Abstract

Current studies on civic engagement offer a critical examination of global civil society's struggles for a sustainable future. The liberal conception of civic engagement sees citizens as voluntary and participatory political subjects in their capacity to achieve a sustainability agenda. In Asia, such conceptions meet with the complex nature of power relations. Using a Gramscian approach and interpretive analysis, this paper draws on the struggles for hegemony, where power relations manifest subtly in state policy, market economy and civil society domains. Learning from the transformative learning experiences of various civil society actors, this study argues that in Asian realities, civic engagement is deeply concerned with the underlying structure of power, forms of negotiation and power dynamics. Political asymmetry is often made implicit by the privileged or uncritically internalized in civic life. There is a need to examine civic engagement as part of "the political", in which antagonism and contradiction are constitutive to social change. Furthermore, civic engagement can, and does, stimulate citizens' deliberate and concerted action against inequality, injustice and indignity.

Co-production of knowledge and transformative learning towards a sustainable Asia

“…The chapters address topics such as resilient cities and sustainable urban planning, natural resources management and social enterprise, social and religious harmony, disaster mitigation and human trafficking, capacity building and networking support for civil society groups, knowledge creation and sharing, and leadership sharing (Vannarith et al, 2020). The diversity of issues was displayed through reflections on indigenous peoples and local communities, youth, women, artisans, volunteers, labour workers, teachers, students and religious communities, characterized by multiyear collaborative knowledge production and civic activism (Hapsari, Sofjan, & Mayer, 2021).…”

“…This places it within a current renaissance of appreciation for community-based environmental management, which is fast becoming prominent as a key way for societies to adapt to climate change and ecological chaos. "As pointed out byHapsari et al (2021), civic engagement is, after all, a political project that calls for the ability to deal with both structural and cultural challenges to the sustainability agenda, of which civil society actors provide an important lever. In effect, civic engagement in sustainability can provide a strong nexus of ideas and discourses as long as platforms are continually built around the subject matter.…”