Ecology and Existence

Environmental history investigates the interactions between humans and the natural environment over a specific period, exploring how these relationships have shaped ecological systems and human societies. The relationship between nature and humanity is analogous to a tapestry woven thread by thread, emphasising the importance of the depth of the connection between the two. The scholarly neglect of environmental history in the history Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) is increasingly difficult to justify and understand in the face of global land, ecological and climate crises. The history curriculum commits itself to ensuring environmental justice. At the same time, it excludes history which is necessary for achieving this environmental justice, and there are also pressing environmental issues that require immediate attention. This conceptual paper employs a critical inquiry approach to examine the absence of environmental history in the history CAPS and argues for its inclusion in this curriculum. The paper aims to critically interrogate the epistemic exclusions within the CAPS history curriculum and proposes integrating environmental history as a pathway to curricular justice. Using the decolonial and rhizomatic approaches as theoretical frameworks, the argument is developed through conceptual analysis of curriculum policy documents and the broader historical context of epistemic exclusion in the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous (VUCA) world. Environmental history offers learners critical tools to understand the intersection of humans and nature, from colonial land dispossession to contemporary environmental issues. Therefore, this paper argues for including environmental history to promote epistemic, social and environmental justice. Its inclusion will equip learners to critically reflect on the evolving relationship between human societies and the natural environment, fostering environmental consciousness and contextual historical understanding. This would help learners critically engage with Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) and draw insights to address environmental issues.

Environmental histories of Latin America have reached a critical mass. The breadth, depth, and sophistication of this new literature merit comparisons to less conventionally environmental topics, such as labor and politics, and new strands of environmental research, such as environmental justice. While the field of Latin American environmental history for the twentieth century is far from complete or comprehensive, one of its strengths is the simultaneous consideration of social relationships (including struggles for justice) and the natural world. Rather than a need to catch up with other historiographies that have bifurcated environmental history and environmental justice, this integrated model of investigation places recent scholarship in a strategic place to make history more policy relevant. Going forward, scholars should continue to find and fuse environmental history and environmental justice studies and refrain from letting distinctions among subfields conceal rich thematic harmony.

Reviewed by: American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and their Struggle for Social and Political Justice by Albert J. Raboteau Casey Bohlen Albert J. Raboteau, American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and their Struggle for Social and Political Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2016) In American Prophets, historian Albert J. Raboteau provides concise, lucid biographical sketches of seven religious radicals, each of whom contributed to movements for social justice in the 20th-century United States. His subjects include intellectuals and activists from a diverse set of faith traditions, including the familiar faces of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Fannie Lou Hamer, as well as the less well-known Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel, heterodox iconoclast A.J. Muste, Black Protestant intellectual Howard Thurman, and Catholic monk Thomas Merton. Although these individuals hailed from disparate theological backgrounds, Raboteau argues that they were united by a shared religious commitment to social justice, defined by moral solidarity with the socially marginalized and faith in the redemptive power of nonviolent direct action. For readers who are unfamiliar with the history of the mid-century [End Page 339] religious left, this book offers a readable and illustrative introduction to the field, told through the lives of some of its most influential participants. Raboteau's central argument is that members of the religious left have served as a prophetic voice in 20th-century United States politics, blending civic and theological language to develop effective moral arguments against injustice and inspire grassroots movements for social change. Their political vision was defined by what Raboteau dubs "divine pathos" – meaning a heightened sense of compassion for the least among us, derived from a religious belief in the divine dignity of each individual, the spiritual unity of humanity, and categorical opposition to systems rooted in violence and coercion. Inspired by this divine pathos, religious radicals played pivotal roles in a wide variety of social justice movements across the course of the century, ranging from the long civil rights movement to radical labour organizing to anti-war resistance. They mounted campaigns rooted in nonviolent direct action, drew on religious networks to organize activists at the grassroots, and delivered soaring political speeches redolent with religious imagery, appealing to the consciences of their fellow citizens through both word and deed. These appeals were often successful, most notably in the case of the Southern freedom struggle, which unsurprisingly takes centre stage here. But of equal importance, Raboteau argues, they passed their sense of divine pathos on to their audiences, engendering new moral awakenings and sustaining the religious left across generations in a manner that other branches of the United States left have notably failed to do. This combination of interpersonal encounters, flexible moral language, and effective protest tactics have made religious radicals capable of adapting their relatively consistent set of principles and strategies to a diverse set of causes. In doing so, they have had an outsized impact on United States politics over the course of the century. Raboteau delivers this argument episodically, organizing American Prophets into seven independent chapters, each devoted to one of his subjects' intellectual biography and history of social engagement. The book is already succinct, clocking in at just under two-hundred pages, but because each chapter can stand alone, educators might consider exploring Raboteau's overarching argument by assigning excerpts on just one or two of his subjects. His chapter on Thomas Merton is a prime candidate for such treatment. Merton was a Trappist monk whose early writings called on readers to seek God by withdrawing from the world, but who reemerged as a preeminent social critic and political advocate in the 1960s. Raboteau's discussion of him is rife with meaty block quotes, which articulate Merton's seemingly-paradoxical fusion of contemplative life and worldly engagement, his analysis of the relationship between systems of social violence and personal alienation, and his deep skepticism of the ability of white liberals and civil rights legislation to unravel the tangled knots of racial inequality in America. His writing is rich and provocative, and his thinking on race relations feels especially prescient today, marking Merton as one of the most intellectually challenging voices in this collection. Also noteworthy are...

The article is devoted to the model of the digital technologies introducing in the region's industry. It takes into account the most important factors, such as the behavior of firms, their attitude to digital technologies and the impact of government subsidies. The object of research is the regional industrial complex as a complex adaptive system. The subject of the research is the economic relations emerging in the process of digital transformation of industry. The purpose of the research is to model the processes of digitalization of industry within the framework of the regional industrial complex. The author has used agent-oriented modeling as a methodological tool of the research. The theoretical basis of the research is the theory of complex systems, game theory, theory of diffusion of innovations. The model is implemented in the Anylogic modern software environment. As a result, an agent-oriented model was created; algorithms for digitalization decision-making by industrial enterprises were implemented. We take into account the effects of collective technological transformation. The created version of the model allows by scenario simulations to assess the significance of factors affecting the intensity of digitalization - an increase in the amount of subsidies for digitalization, taking into account the scale of enterprises, industry characteristics, information impact on the heads of industrial enterprises, etc. The model allows us to observe the dynamics of the digital transformation process, to identify peculiar wave-like effects. The specifics of the model are taking into account limited rationality in the behavior of firms, the information interaction between industrial enterprises, time lags in the introduction of digital technologies. The results can be useful to researchers, specialists of industrial enterprises, representatives of government authorities for the formation of a system of incentives for the digital transformation of industry. The obtained results can become the basis for further development of model tools for digitalization management

This paper will explore the concept of resilience from its roots in ecology to the application of this ecological concept of resilience to social and community resilience in the context of climate change. In this context, resilience is seen as a property of complex adaptive communities rather than of individuals. This paper will explore how this ecological concept of resilience has been taken up both by climate adaptation research and by the Transition Town movement. This ecological concept of resilience is at odds with the individualism of both psychological and economic approaches to resilience in relation to climate change.

As the climate crisis accelerates and disproportionately affects marginalised communities and countries in the global South, the need for power and social justice approaches is particularly important. Community psychology, with a long interest in the impacts of power discrepancies on the well-being of groups and communities, can offer theoretical and practical tools for addressing climate change and environmental problems without reproducing or intensifying existing inequalities and injustices. This special issue looks at communities' struggles for climate and environmental justice by focusing on how they resist, contest and overcome power inequalities. The issue consists of one perspective and six empirical articles. Most contributions come from high climate vulnerable countries and regions in the global South. Authors address current and relevant environmental and climate change issues such as renewable energy and natural resource extraction, social transformations and extreme weather events, the links between poverty, rurality and climate change, youth empowerment, and racism in climate activism. Inspired by their contributions, community psychology approaches and interdisciplinary research on environmental and climate justice, we discuss a research and intervention agenda for a community psychology of climate change.

Drawing on and responding to the articles in this special collection, this provocation makes the case that realising justice in education requires a focus on the processes and politics of justice-oriented reform in postcolonial, low- and middle-income counties (LMICs). In implementing reform, it is argued that it is crucial to take account of similarities and differences in context between LMICs. At the heart of reform must be a holistic, coherent and systemic approach at the level of the education system of the institution. Key priorities include reforming the curriculum, investing in educators as agents of change and developing endogenous system leadership that can drive justice-oriented reform. Here, however, it is necessary to engage with the politics of justice-oriented reform, including challenging global, neoliberal agendas, democratising the governance of education and engaging with popular struggles for social, epistemic, transitional and environmental justice.

This article investigates the anti-lithium mining resistance in Covas do Barroso, Portugal, through the frameworks of feminist political ecology and care ethics. As lithium becomes central to Europe’s green energy agenda, the proposed mine in Barroso threatens not only local ecosystems and livelihoods but also the communal lifeways that define the region. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews (n = 15), the study explores how care is mobilized as a political practice that resists extractivism while sustaining community. Rather than viewing care as an apolitical or individualized practice, the thematic analysis foregrounds the role of care in shaping collective governance, emotional resilience, artistic expression, and solidarity networks. The resistance, organized under the association Unidos em Defesa do Barroso [United in the Defense of Barroso], embodies an alternative vision of sustainability rooted in reciprocity, self-determination, and ecological stewardship. Findings suggest that care functions as both the fabric and force of resistance, enabling communities not only to endure environmental and political pressures but to cultivate alternative modes of development that challenge dominant growth logics. The Barroso case thus contributes to broader conversations on degrowth, environmental justice, and post-extractivist futures, revealing care as a vital, generative force in the struggle for climate and social justice.

This chapter discusses struggles over power and knowledge among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements contesting capitalist globalization. Building on a review of an emerging body of critical literature on NGOs’ implications in capitalist relations and the professionalization of social change, and the author’s activist engagement, it argues that processes of NGOization and professionalization, and hierarchies of power and knowledge within “alternative” milieus often reproduce rather than challenge dominant practices and power relations, and serve elite economic and political interests instead of constituencies which these organizations claim to represent. It identifies and questions aspects of hegemonic NGO practices, primarily among “civil society” networks contesting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)1 forum in the 1990s, in which I was an activist. In interrogating “alternatives to globalization” advocacy positions advanced by nongovernmental actors ostensibly committed to social transformation, I argue that critical attention to texts and actual practices reveals that many NGOs are tied to what I refer to as an ideology of pragmatism which normalizes and reinforces dominant ideologies of liberalism and liberal democratic nation-states with regard to their current and historical implication in colonialism and global capitalist relations. In contending that many such “alternative” actors claim a positional superiority for a small, professionalized NGO/activist elite, this chapter highlights how NGO texts and actual practices can socially organize, conceptually coordinate, fragment and compartmentalize struggles for social and environmental justice, undermining or constraining more critical systemic analysis.

In the wake of the September 11th attacks on the United States and the bombing of Afghanistan, those engaged in struggles for social and environmental justice are faced with a number of emerging problems and challenges.

Critical literature on David Chariandy's Soucouyant has explored the dementia suffered by the protagonist's mother, Adele, as a metaphor for the erasure of Black experience from cultural memory and dominant historical narratives and as a response to the traumatic effects of imperialism. This essay builds on these critical insights using a postcolonial ecocritical lens to argue that in Chariandy's novel, dementia is both an effect and symptom of the multiple sites of chemical exposure that disproportionately impact low-income communities of color. From Adele's and her husband Roger's origins in Trinidad to their home and work environments in Canada, the family's multiple encounters with byproducts of industrial production are inseparably linked to legacies of colonialism and racism. This reading traces the roots of Adele's trauma to environmental and cultural disruptions wrought by the United States' military occupation of Trinidad during World War II. We also examine SoucouyantS critique of Canada's discourse of neoliberal multiculturalism as well as the novel's relevance to Indigenous-Black solidarity movements against racism, white supremacy, and injustices in Canada. In its attention to epistemologies of memory and the multigenerational effects of (neo)colonialism, Soucouyant is a literary intervention in support of local and global decolonization struggles for social, environmental, and ecological justice.

The Fruit Tree-Based Intercropped Milpa System (MIAF) is characterized by its systemic approach, which considers the interactions among the biological, physical, and socioeconomic components of the agroecosystem. The objective of this research was to analyze the MIAF system as a complex productive model, integrating into Rolando García’s theoretical framework of complex systems the agroecological principles underlying its design, as well as its conceptualization from complexity sciences and contemporary soil science theories. An information search was conducted, consisting of a state-of-the-art analysis and bibliometric maps of Complex Agrarian Systems (CAS) and the MIAF concept using the Scopus platform and VOSviewer. A total of 591 documents were found for the concept of Complex Agrarian System, and 53 for MIAF. For the first concept, it was found that it has been used from 1974 to 2024, primarily in 10 countries, with 65.5% being scientific articles and spanning 11 thematic areas. Meanwhile, the second concept has been used from 1985 to 2025 in 10 countries, with 90.6% being scientific articles and covering 11 thematic areas. Eighteen philosophers and 66 theories dating back to 1900, inherent to the Galilean tradition and focused on the MIAF system, were identified. Additionally, five concepts that have surpassed agroecology in contemporary discourse were identified and described. It is concluded that MIAF stands as a successful agroecological model by integrating traditional knowledge and technical innovation, enhancing biodiversity, food security, and climate resilience. Its study, framed within Rolando García’s and Bertalanffy’s complex systems theories, reveals that its sustainability depends on biological, physical, and socioeconomic interactions. Bibliometric analyses highlight a gap between the concepts of “Complex Agrarian System” and “MIAF,” pointing to opportunities for future research linking them. Therefore, INIFAP continues to advance its research while adopting the CAS framework to strengthen MIAF implementation, as this system not only represents an agroecological solution but also a practical example of the adaptability of systemic theories in sustainable agriculture.

Reviewed by: Writing in Real Time: Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital by Paul Jaussen Heather A. Love Writing in Real Time: Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital. Paul Jaussen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 239. $99.00 (cloth); $80.00 (eBook). The opening pages of Paul Jaussen's Writing in Real Time introduce readers to "emergence," a concept borrowed from systems theory wherein "small, local actions or actors can produce large, global, and unexpected effects" (2). The "complex adaptive systems" that demonstrate this principle at work range from the shifting, swooping shape of a flock of birds in flight to the evolving, adaptable aesthetics of the long poem—the latter being the focus of this book. Within these systems, Jaussen explains, "first-order actions produce unexpected second-order effects," and those effects in turn "redirect the behavior of the first order, transforming the system as a whole and shaping its encounters with the environment" (2). In centering its analytic framework on a term like "emergence," one of this study's main goals is to "demonstrate the broad flexibility of systems thinking for analyzing poetry" (37). Jaussen's ambitions towards this end are twofold: on the one hand, to show how "systems theory offers us a powerful alternative for thinking about the relationship between form and content, poiesis and history, creativity and change," and, on the other, to posit that "literary texts may be a neglected yet crucial site for apprehending the concepts of scientific discourse, including systems theory" (25, 2). In and of itself, this overall premise—that the disciplines of systems theory and literary study can be productively brought into contact with each other—represents one of the book's most compelling features. If we look to recent trends in modernist literary studies, the argument reads as an innovative addition not only to the extensive body of existing scholarship that reads early twentieth-century literature alongside technological development but also to the more recent embrace of media studies as a productive framework for considering this literature as part of wider historical, technical, and communicative contexts. As Jaussen convincingly demonstrates throughout Writing in Real Time, systems theory generates terminology and conceptual frameworks that open up new and productive conversations between individual texts and the world around them, and also point to transhistorical textual affiliations that literary critics have not previously considered. The specific texts that provide the material "core" of Jaussen's argument are all examples of the long poem, a genre he proclaims a "formal misfit" within literary scholarship, as it has faced "neglect" by movements ranging from New Criticism, structuralism, and the Frankfurt School to deconstruction and even "the latest revival in critical interest in literary form" (signaled by Marjorie Levinson's 2007 PMLA essay "What is New Formalism?") (6–7). By setting up a backdrop of lyric-centric critical discourse, Jaussen presents his more targeted goal as "an attempt to respect the dynamism, the creativity, and the continued timeliness of the long poem" (37). In terms that clearly bring the book's broad and narrow goals together, he proposes that [End Page 853] "long poems persistently reflect on the challenges of transformation within time, quite often anticipating the discourse of complex adaptive systems," and that, as a result, "systems theory and the long poem may be not-so-distant cousins, sharing a family resemblance of concerns" (5). Jaussen pitches his approach as a strategy that avoids the either/or debates around historicist and formalist interpretive practice, as he is simultaneously attentive to formal structures and aware of poetry's embeddedness in its historical moment and place of origin. "In many of the poems I consider," he explains "one cannot cleanly separate formal adaptation from unexpected historical events because the poem's … form becomes the framework through which the environmental event is experienced as an event" (4; emphasis in original). Or, as he puts it in chapter two (on Whitman), he is "not proposing a formalist reading at the exclusion of historicizing or theorizing interpretations. Instead, an emergent model of form shows history, form, and theory as themselves networked, structurally coupled, and mutually illuminating" (43). The book's sustained interest in poetry's responsiveness...

The ambiguousness of technical civilization and necessity of environmental preservation at the terms of deep ecological crisis actualize the question of safety of humanity. This question became the result of aggressive and selfish relation of man to nature. This question has an important value for Ukraine which had the biggest ecocatastrophe in history- an accident at the Chornobyl atomic station. The purpose of the article consists in research of structural potential of altruism in the decision of modern ecological problems. A man can not exist without nature. An ecological crisis does not embrace only the separate regions of our planet, but it also acquires global, planetary character. Appearance of ecological crisis is the result of selfish way of thinking. In opinion of modern researchers an ecological crisis is the appropriate consequence of development of West-European philosophy. In the system - each of parties influences on others. An ecological danger grows into the newest social question. The problem of guard requires the search of ways to provide ecological defence of separate countries and humanity on the whole. Exploitation of nature accentuates contradiction between the developed countries (first world) and countries which develop (third world). In strategies of prevention of ecological crisis the classic pattern of «friend-enemy» and model of ecological discourse coexist on principles of communicative action theory of Yu. Gabermas and ecological communication of N. Luman. The first pattern distributes societies and separate people on enemies and friends of nature which creates an original selfish monopoly not only on strategy of guard of environment, but also on correct ecological thought which can result into application of repressive practices in nature protection activity. In history of humanity the question of ecological safety, responsibility of man for maintenance of the biological kind has never stood so critically , thus, there was not responsibility for existence of future generations. Freedom rights of nature have to be protected similarly as freedom rights of man, Justice in relation to nature means foremost to grant nature the possibility to operate after the own laws, and the man - after his. Important for forming of national ecological policy and development of ecolaw is ecological justice. An ecological function is acknowledged by one of basic functions of the Ukrainian state. Altruism is description of human conduct, mine-out during the evolution of homo sapiens. Through love to nature an altruist opens itself to the world and at the same time realizes itself the same. Public associations, public and ungovernmental organizations, carry out control after government institutions, come forward with initiations of bill etc. Mental senses of the Ukrainian culture assist the forming of altruism as component of ecological ethics of Ukrainian. Altruism can promote the forming of organic solidarity of our society. Organization of the system also needs drastic alternations. A modern generation in an ecological plane must adhere to principle of justice in relation to future generations, leave after itself for descendants the stored nature. Moral and legal norms regulate mainly the relationships of people with each other concerning nature, in fact nature traditionally was a less costed category. Overcoming of ecological crisis needs collective efforts of all society.This task forces philosophy to actualize the problem of general, planetary responsibility of society in relation to nature. Society must treat nature with kind regards, respect her dignity and rights.

Worldwide, vulnerable neighbourhoods of large cities are often the scene of collective violent conflicts linked with migration and ethnic minorities’ struggles for social justice. However, urban conflicts of this kind have not taken place in Spanish cities with high immigration rates, even though the country has been deeply affected by two recent socioeconomic crises (2009 and 2020). This article reports findings of a study aimed at understanding what lies behind this apparent social peace. The research methodology was based on an analysis of secondary socio-economic and socio-relational data from the Spanish Institute of Statistics and from key national surveys and reports. Results confirmed that immigrant population living in the country are strongly segregated in the lower strata of the labour and socioeconomic structure and have been disproportionately affected by the crises. However, research findings also pointed to the existence of strong closed support networks where social capital has been effective at palliating members’ disadvantage and unrest. Drawing on the Theory of Rupture Frames, we argue that this is a fragile and unsustainable social peace, rooted in social injustice, and anticipate that unless actively prevented, uncontrolled conflict will eventually emerge in main cities’ neighbourhoods in Spain.