Earth First!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Earth First!

Abbreviation	EF!
Founded	1980
Founder	Dave Foreman Mike Roselle Howie Wolke Bart Koehler
Focus	Environmental protection
Location	Active in over 19 countries
Origins	Southwestern United States
Method	Direct action
Website	earthfirstjournal.org

Earth First! is a radical environmental advocacy group that emerged in the Southwestern United States in 1979. It was founded on April 4, 1980, by Dave Foreman, Mike Roselle, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, and Ron Kezar.

Today there are Earth First! groups in Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, New Zealand, the Philippines, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States,

Inspired by several environmental writings, including Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Aldo Leopold's land ethic, and Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, a small group of environmental activists composed of Dave Foreman, ex-Yippie Mike Roselle, Wyoming Wilderness Society representatives Bart Koehler and Howie Wolke, and Bureau of Land Management employee Ron Kezar, united to form Earth First!. While traveling in Foreman's VW bus from the El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve in northern Mexico to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the group pledged, "No compromise in defense of Mother Earth!".

The co-founders of the group were called to action during the second "Roadless Area Review and Evaluation" (RARE II) by the U.S. Forest Service, which they considered a sell-out by mainstream environmental advocates. The activists envisioned a revolutionary movement, with the goal to set aside multi-million-acre ecological preserves all across the United States. Their ideas drew upon the concepts of conservation biology, which had been developing for over twenty years by notable scientists like E. O. Wilson; however, mainstream environmental groups were slow to embrace the new science. These events and ideologies coalesced after a grueling hike, as the men were headed toward Albuquerque. After "Foreman called out 'Earth First!', Roselle drew a clenched fist logo, passed it up to the front of the van, and there was Earth First!"

Early years

During the group's early years (1979–1986), Earth First! mixed publicity stunts (such as rolling a plastic "crack" down Glen Canyon Dam) with far-reaching wilderness proposals that reportedly surpassed the actions that mainstream environmental groups were willing to take (relying on conservation biology research from a biocentric perspective). The group's proposals were published in a periodical, Earth First! The Radical Environmental Journal, informally known as the Earth First! Journal. Edward Abbey often spoke at early gatherings, and his inspirational writings led him to be revered by the early movement. An annual gathering of the group was known as the Round River Rendezvous, with the name taken from an Ojibwa myth about a continuous river of life flowing into and out of itself and sustaining all relations. The rendezvous is a celebration with art and music, as well as an activist conference with workshops and recounts of past actions. Another project led by the organization at this time was the creation of Earth First! Foundation, a tax-deductible fund which was established to provide financial support for research, advocacy and education by Earth First! activists. The fund was later renamed the Fund for Wild Nature in 1991.

In the spring of 1985, a nationwide call to action against the logging company Willamette Industries, published in the Earth First! Journal brought Earth First! members from around the United States to the Willamette National Forest of Western Oregon. After finding road blockades (carried out by Corvallis-based Cathedral Forest Action Group) were not an efficient form of protection against logging, Marylander Ron Huber and Washingtonian Mike Jakubal devised tree sitting as a more effective civil disobedience alternative.

On May 23, 1985, Mike Jakubal led the first Earth First! tree sit. When U.S. Forest Service law enforcement official Steve Slagowski arrived, Mike Roselle, Ron Huber, and others were arrested for sitting at the base of the tree in support. The first "tree-sitting" lasted less than a day—Jakubal came down in the evening to look over the remains of the forest that had been cut down around him, and was arrested by a hidden Forest Service officer—but the tree-sitting concept was deemed sound by Earth First! members. Huber, Jakubal, and Roselle demonstrated the concept at the June 14 Washington EF Rendezvous; on June 23, a convoy of activists arrived at Willamette National Forest and set up tree platforms in "Squaw/Three timbersale", a location the group thought was threatened with imminent destruction. While at one point, up to a dozen trees were occupied, on July 10 a clash took down all the trees with platforms except for Ron Huber's after the other sitters had left for an overnight meeting elsewhere. Huber remained at his tree, dubbed Yggdrasil, until July 20 when two Linn County sheriff's deputies were lifted in a crane box and wrestled him from the tree.

After 1987, Earth First! became primarily associated with direct action to prevent logging, building of dams, and other forms of development which may cause destruction of wildlife habitats or the despoliation of wild places. The change in direction attracted many new members to Earth First!, some of whom came from a leftist or anarchist political background or were involved in the counterculture. Dave Foreman has suggested that this led to the introduction of activities such as a "puke-in" at a shopping mall, a flag burning, the heckling of Edward Abbey at the 1987 Earth First! rendezvous, and back-and-forth debates in the Earth First! Journal on topics such as anarchism, which Foreman and other Earth First! members did not wish to be associated. Most of the group's older members, including Dave Foreman, Howie Wolke, Bart Koehler, Christopher Manes, George Wuerthner, and Earth First! Journal editor John Davis, became increasingly uncomfortable with this new direction. This tension reportedly led several of the founders to sever their ties to Earth First! in 1990. Many of them went on to launch the magazine, Wild Earth, as well as the environmental group, the Wildlands Project. On the other hand, Roselle, along with activists such as Judi Bari, welcomed the new direct-action tactics and leftist direction of Earth First!. 

Starting in the mid-1980s, Earth First! increasingly promoted and identified with "Deep Ecology", a philosophy put forth by Arne Næss, Bill Devall, and George Sessions, which holds that all forms of life on Earth have equal value in and of themselves, without regard for their utility to human beings.

Since 1990

Since 1990, action within the Earth First! movement has become increasingly influenced by anarchist political philosophy. This change brought a rotation of the primary media organ in differing regions, an aversion to organized leadership or administrative structure, and a new trend of identifying Earth First! as a mainstream movement rather than an organization. In 1992, Earth First!'s push toward the mainstream movement led to the creation of an offshoot group called Earth Liberation Front. The Earth Liberation Front was formally introduced during the 1992 Earth First! Round River Rendezvous, where young activists debated the effectiveness of civil disobedience activism tactics in light of the ever-increasing destruction of the planet by human activity. Elders of the Earth First! movement gave their blessing to this newly formed strike team known as ELF. ELF became the extremists of the environmental movement, just as the Earth First! movement itself had been when it was created a decade earlier. 

Earth First! protests commonly involved occupations of forested timber sale areas and other threatened natural areas. In these protests, dozens of people physically locked their bodies to trees, bulldozers, and desks using specially created lock boxes (metal tubes reinforced with rebar) through which protesters threaded their arms, or using bicycle U-locks in order to lock their necks to other objects.In 1997, as part of the ongoing HeadWaters Redwoods protests, activists locked themselves to a redwood stump which was carried into California Congressman Frank Riggs' office.

The HeadWaters campaign in Northern California aims to protect the last old-growth redwood forests from logging by the Pacific Lumber Company. The Pacific Lumber Co. was bought out by Maxxim, a hedge fund company that planned to liquidate its assets including these old-growth forests. HeadWaters has been an ongoing protest lasting over 15 years.

In 1990, environmental activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were injured when a pipe-bomb exploded in the car Bari was driving. The FBI arrested Bari and her friends and accused them of planting the bombs. other theories suggest FBI involvement but it remains an open case. A civil case was later brought against the FBI and local police which found Bari's and Cherney's civil rights had been violated.

The largest timber sale in U.S. Forest Service history, the Cove/Mallard Timber Sale, occurred in Idaho from 1992 to 1998. With the aid of a nearby landowner, a former land developer turned activist, Earth First! occupied the forest. As a result, Earth First! succeeded in saving most of the threatened wilderness area. Over 350 people from 12 countries were arrested and the project was reduced from its initial plan of 200 clear-cuts and the construction of seven new roads, to 37 clear-cuts and two new roads. In June 1993, Earth First! halted the construction of the Noble Road by erecting elaborate multi-layered barricades, which included U.S. Forest Service vehicles. These barricades were constructed in one night, during which activists traveled 17 miles through the mountains dodging law enforcement patrols who had been informed of the planned demonstration. The first tripod lockdowns occurred at this incident, which involved three 30 foot logs, tied together and placed upright, with an activist tied to a platform between them 20 feet in the air. The tripod was placed over trenches in which four activists were buried in quick-drying cement. Two additional activists used U-locks to lock their necks to the front axles of responding vehicles. U.S. Forest Service shot at activists and raided the land with a SWAT team armed with M-16s. 27 activists were arrested. 

During Free Cascadia, a mass occupation organized by Earth First! at the Warner Creek timber sale in Oregon, 50-plus activists continuously occupied the burnt forested mountains of Oregon for a year in 1994-1995. They endured bad weather and law enforcement raids. Their barricades which were dug in reinforced trenches, forts with watchtowers, and tree-sits enabled a constant occupation of the land while lawsuits and political actions locally and in Washington D.C., ultimately saved the land. Warner Creek is often seen an example of how the Earth First movement was successful, though most Earth First occupations of timber sales, failed. 

In the summer of 1995, environmental activists attempted to occupy the old-growth timber sale area of Sugarloaf Mountain in Southern Oregon. The Sugarloaf Mountain had been in legal battles for over a decade when the "Rider from Hell" was added in committee to the congressional Crime Bill of 1994, which mandated the logging of thousands of acres of old-growth forest. The United States Forest Service declared an exclusionary zone of 30 square miles in southern Oregon and arrested anyone in the area including a local woman walking her dog. Over 100 federal agents, supported by helicopters and the elite US Army Ranger-trained law enforcement squad known as "Camo-Feddies," arrested hundreds of activists. The environmental activists engaged at all levels of protest with numerous public and illegal demonstrations by Earth First, protests at government offices locally and in Washington D.C., tree-sits in active logging zones, and even an attempted helicopter pad lock-down to immobilise logging helicopters. One tree from Sugarloaf timber sale, which was a four day long tree-sit by a local father and son Earth First team, required 9 log trucks to carry it out in sections. This tree was estimated to be over 400 years old and took twenty-seven minutes to cut down using a 7-foot chainsaw. 

Earth First! responded by immediately occupying the nearby timber sale known as China Left in early October 1995 to defend the old-growth forest and the last wild salmon spawning grounds in Oregon. EF activists used dragon lock-boxes on both ends of the valley's only road to protect the area A female Earth First! activist known as "Ocean" held the road for a day as police attempted to remove this human-and-cement blockade, allowing Earth First! to dig in farther down the valley. This was the start of two-year-long occupation protest, during which a pickup truck was turned into a lock box to block the only bridge to the valley.

Earth First! protesters were often tortured by police, who used pepper spray, pain compliance holds, police dogs, and the threat with guns in attempts to coerce the protesters to abandon their lock downs.

The Earth First! movement has been labelled as a terrorist organization by its opponents. Supporters of the movement disagree, explaining that their cause is one of civil disobedience and honor for the Earth. 

The Earth First! movement engages targets of environmental destruction with civil disobedience actions designed to draw attention and to slow down destruction of threatened wilderness areas, using lock-down techniques to create living blockades.

The first acknowledged death of an Earth First! activist occurred on September 18, 1998, in northern California's Redwood forests. Earth First! activist David Chain attempted to protect the forest by moving around inside the active logging site, thereby creating unsafe conditions for timber harvest. Normally, this would have resulted in the interruption of logging, but a large Redwood, thought to be over 300 years old, was cut down by a Pacific Lumber logger and fell upon Chain, who died instantly.

'Avalon, a member of the Earth Liberation Front, died on the night of Winter Solace 2005 in a prison cell, while in FBI custody, when he was being held for terrorism charges from multiple arson incidents over the last decade, including the Vail Ski resort fire. The rest of his ELF group was also arrested and are currently serving life sentences in federal prison for crimes that involved property damage. 'Avalon was a long term Earth First activist, one of the occupation activists of Warner Creek Oregon and the Cove/Mallard Idaho protests for years and one of 4 who constantly camped out in snow-caves monitoring the only logging of Noble Road in the winter of January to March 1995 in 12-foot deep snow and sub-zero temps. After witnessing the destruction of "America's Amazon Jungle" where for hundreds of miles around was wild untouched mountainous forests, 'Avalon became disenchanted with mere civil disobedience and developed a more radical point of view.

Most activists of Earth First! have previously participated in more moderate forms of environmental and political activism, including protest marches and writing letters to politicians. The Earth First! activist called 'Llama, of the Great Lakes Earth First! chapter in Chicago, had been involved in college activism for years. He traveled to D.C. and other capitols to lobby government officials, and even received a letter from President Clinton thanking him for his "efforts to save the wild lands of America." 'Fawn, another Earth First!er, grew up as a Republican in a middle-class family.

Most members of Earth First! identify as decentralized, locally informed activists whose ideas stem from communitarian ethics. Earth First! adversaries characterize the group akin to terrorists. One of the early critics of Earth First!'s change in tactics later accused the FBI of deliberately introducing the concept of Non-Violence to the group.

In various parts of the country, individual citizens and small groups form the base for grassroots political actions. These may take the form of legal actions, including protests, timber sale appeals, and educational campaigns or civil disobedience, including tree sitting, road blockades, and sabotage (also called "ecotage" by some Earth First! members, who claim it is a form of ecodefense). Often, disruptive direct action is used primarily as a stalling tactic in an attempt to prevent possible environmental destruction while Earth First! lawsuits try to secure long-term victories. Reported tactics include road blockades, activists locking themselves to heavy equipment, tree-sitting, and sabotage of machinery.

Earth First! was known for providing information in the Earth First! Journal on the practice of tree-spiking and monkeywrenching (or ecotage), which have led to reports of injuries from such tactics, although there is no evidence that Earth First! was involved in related activity. In 1990, Judi Bari convinced Earth First! in the Northern California and Southern Oregon region to renounce these practices, calling them counterproductive to an effort to form a coalition with workers and small logging businesses to defeat large-scale corporate logging in Northern California.

Judi Bari car bombing

In 1990, a bomb exploded in Judi Bari's car, shattering her pelvis and also injuring fellow activist Darryl Cherney. Bari and Cherney were later arrested after police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation suspected that they had been transporting the bomb when it accidentally exploded. Bari contended that extremists opposed to her pro-environmental actions had placed the bomb in her car in order to kill her. The case against them was eventually dropped due to lack of evidence. Bari died in 1997 of cancer, but her federal lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland, California police resulted in a 2002 jury verdict awarding her estate and Darryl Cherney a total of $4.4 million. Eighty percent of the damages were for violation of their First Amendment rights by the FBI and police, who tried to discredit them in the media as violent extremists despite ample evidence to the contrary. The bombing remains unsolved.

A documentary movie about the court case, entitled The Forest for the Trees, was released in 2006. It was directed by Bernadine Mellis, whose father is one of the lawyers featured in the documentary.

The documentary Who Bombed Judi Bari?, directed by Mary Liz Thomson, was released in 2012. The filmmakers are offering a $50,000 reward for information leading the arrest of the bomber.

On March 21, 2011, a U.S. federal judge in California ordered the FBI to preserve evidence related to the car bombing. The FBI was planning to destroy all evidence in the case.

In the United Kingdom

An arrest at the Liverpool docks, with protestors occupying cranes in the background

 

The Earth First! movement in the United Kingdom started in 1990, when a group in Hastings, Sussex organised an action at Dungeness nuclear power station in Kent. It grew rapidly, and many groups formed, with or without the EF! name, over the next years. 

The first major Earth First! actions happened in 1992 and focused around the importation of tropical hardwood. The first major action had happened in December 1991 at Port of Tilbury. The second major action, the Merseyside Dock Action, attracted between 200–600 people who occupied Liverpool docks for two days. This action coincided with the Earth First! roadshow, in which a group of UK & US Earth First!ers toured the country. Other early campaigns also focused on timber-yards, most notably the Timbmet yard in Oxford.

There are now various regional Earth First! groups, the EF! Action Update has been joined by the EF! Action Reports website and a yearly Earth First! national gathering. At the first gathering in Sussex the debate focused on the use of criminal damage as a protest technique. Earth First! decided to neither 'condemn nor condone' criminal damage, instead it focused more on non-violent direct action techniques. Some people at the gathering coined the term Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which became a separate movement which spread back to the US. Actions involving criminal damage did happen often under cover of night and were typically done under an ELF banner and attributed to elves and pixies, or the Earth Liberation Faeries, giving a distinctly British feel to the movement.

Major growth in the direct action movement started with a concurrent focus on roads, and a protest camp at Twyford Down was started, against the M3 in Hampshire. Whilst Earth First! groups still played an essential part, other groups such as the Dongas tribe soon formed. Alongside SchNEWS, such publications as the Earth First! Action Update, and Do or Die were means of communication between the groups. The movement grew to other road protest camps including the Newbury bypass, the A30 and the M11 link road protest in London, where whole streets were squatted in order to slow down the construction work. Later the focus widened to other campaigns including Reclaim the Streets, anti-genetics campaigns, and Rising Tide. More recently, there have been groups such as Peat Alert! and Plane Stupid.

The UK Earth First! groups differed considerably from the U.S. groups as reported in a ten-year retrospective of the Earth First! by two of the founders Jake Bowers and Jason Torrance:

We knew EF! US's original hardline "rednecks for wilderness" attitude wouldn't appeal here, so we set out to build a group that combined radical action and social justice to protect Britain's few remaining natural places.

Seeing ecological and social justice as one and the same, in addition to organizing along anarchist lines and bringing in other radical and militant struggles, mixed with audacious actions and real radicalism spread the EF! ideal to other countries and helped morph the US movement.

Sabotage

Telluride Ski Resort

On August 10, 1991, vandals identifying themselves as members of Earth First! forced the closing of the Telluride Ski Resort in Mountain Village, Colorado using a chemical to write messages on 11 greens, such as "Earth First!", "Hayduke lives" and "Ron you pig". In relation to the incident, the Telluride Times Journal received a letter signed "Earth First" stating that the ski lift had been sabotaged with a welding gas applied to the lift cable that weakens the metal.

Fairfield Snowbowl Ski Resort

Earth First! member Mark Davis pleaded guilty in Federal court to malicious destruction of property at the Fairfield Snowbowl Ski Resort near Flagstaff, Arizona. Davis had been charged with "using a torch to cut around the base of the top pylon of the main chair lift at Snowbowl on Oct. 25, 1988."

Nuclear power and weapons plants

Earth First! member Mark Davis was sentenced to six years in prison for conspiring to damage the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Generating Facility, and the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station.

Documentaries

• Pickaxe, based on the 1990s Earth First!-led "Cascadia Free State"
• In 2009 EF!, along with the ELF, were the subject of a documentary called Green With A Vengeance.
• A 2011 documentary on the ELF and EF!, entitled, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.
• Testify! - Eco-Defense and the Politics of Violence

Liberation psychology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Liberation psychology or liberation social psychology is an approach to psychology that aims to actively understand the psychology of oppressed and impoverished communities by conceptually and practically addressing the oppressive sociopolitical structure in which they exist. The central concepts of liberation psychology include: conscientization; realismo-crítico; de-ideologized reality; a coherently social orientation; the preferential option for the oppressed majorities, and methodological eclecticism.

History

Emergence

The core ideas of liberation psychology emerged in Latin America in the 1970s in response to criticisms of traditional psychology, social psychology specifically. Psychology was criticised for its 1) value neutrality; 2) assertion of universality; 3) societal irrelevance.

1. View of science as neutral – The idea that science was devoid of moral elements was considered a flawed framework.
2. Assertion of universality – Psychological theories were being produced based on research conducted primarily with white, middle class, undergraduate males. Liberationists questioned the notion that such principles were universal and therefore applicable to all individuals without regard to the consideration of contextual factors.
3. Societal irrelevance – Psychology was viewed as failing to generate knowledge that could address social inequalities.

In response to these criticisms, psychologists sought to create a psychological science that addressed social inequalities both in theory and practical application. It is important to note that liberation psychology is not an area of psychology akin to clinical, developmental, or social psychology. However, it is more of a framework that aims to reconstruct psychology taking into account the perspective of the oppressed (Martín-Baró's "new interlocutor") so the discipline ceases its (often unwitting) complicity with the structures that perpetuate domination, oppression and inequality. Generally, people using this framework would not call themselves "liberation psychologists", although this term is sometimes used to refer to them.

The term "liberation psychology" (or psicología de la liberación) may have first appeared in print in 1976. It was later brought into widespread use by Ignacio Martín-Baró. A number of other Latin American social psychologists have also developed and promoted the approach, including Martiza Montero (Venezuela), Ignacio Dobles (Costa Rica), Bernardo Jiménez Dominguez (Colombia/Mexico), Jorge Mario Flores (Mexico), Edgar Barrero (Colombia) and Raquel Guzzo (Brazil) among others.

Founder

The genesis of liberation psychology began amongst a body of psychologists in Latin America in the 1970s. Ignacio Martín-Baró is credited as the founder of liberation psychology, and it was further developed by others.

Martín-Baró was a Spanish-born Jesuit priest and social psychologist who dedicated his work to addressing the needs of oppressed groups in Latin America, and ultimately was assassinated as a result of his work. His project of constructing a psychology relevant to the oppressed majorities of the American continent was therefore terminated prematurely. The collection of some of his articles in the collection Writings for a Liberation Psychology is a seminal text in the field that discusses the role of psychology as socially transformative. Most of his work still remains untranslated into English. His two major textbooks, Social Psychology from Central America, and his other books are published by a small University publisher, UCA editores in El Salvador with the consequence that the breadth and depth of his work is not well known even in Latin America.

Key concepts

The central concepts of liberation psychology include: concientización; realismo-crítico; de-ideologization; a social orientation; the preferential option for the oppressed majorities, and methodological eclecticism.

Concientización

The intrinsic connectedness of the person's experience and the sociopolitical structure is a fundamental tenet of liberation psychology and is referred to as concientización, a term introduced by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, roughly translatable as the raising of politico-social consciousness. In this process people become more conscious of themselves and their lives as structured by the social reality of oppression, understood structurally, and they thereby become social actors. They change as they begin to act on their social circumstances. Understanding this interconnectedness is of particular importance to understanding the experiences and psychology of oppressed peoples, the power structure to which they are subjugated, and the ways in which this subjugation manifests in their behavior and psychopathology.

A social orientation

Liberation psychology criticises traditional psychology for explaining human behavior independently of the sociopolitical, historical, and cultural context. Martín-Baró argued that a failure of mainstream psychology is the attribution to the individual of characteristics that are found in the societal relations of the group. He argued that individual characteristics are a result of social relations, and to view such individualistically de-emphasizes the role of social structures, incorrectly attributing sociopolitical problems to the individual. Liberation psychology addresses this by reorienting the focus from an individualistic to a social orientation. Using this framework, the behaviour of oppressed people is conceptualized not through intrapsychic processes, but as a result of the alienating environment. 

The social orientation has a particular emphasis on understanding the role of history in shaping current conditions, and the ways in which this history resulted in the oppression of particular communities. Within this orientation, critical examination of social power and its structures is crucial. This is necessary in order to understand political and social power as not being interpersonal, but part of a society's institutional organization.

Preferential option for the oppressed majorities

The development of a psychology that is "from" oppressed people rather than "for" oppressed people is the aim of liberation psychologists. Traditional psychology is understood as Eurocentric and is critiqued for ignoring the unique experiences of oppressed individuals. Martín-Baró made a similar argument, critiquing Latin American psychologists for adopting Eurocentric psychological models that were not informed by the social, political, and cultural environment of the impoverished and oppressed, which was the majority of people in 1980s El Salvador.

Liberation psychology further criticizes traditional psychology for its ivory tower approach to understanding phenomena, following Martín-Baró's call for psychology to turn its attention from its own social and scientific status to the needs and struggles of the popular majority. Unlike traditional approaches, liberation psychology seeks to re-situate the psychologist as part of the emancipatory process for and with oppressed communities.

Realismo-crítico

Martín-Baró contended that theories should not define the problems to be explored, but that the problems generate their own theories. This idea is termed realismo-crítico. This is contrasted to the traditional approach of addressing problems based on preconceived theorization, idealismo-metodológico (methodological idealism). In realismo-crítico, theorization plays a supportive, but not fundamental, role. Martín-Baró's idea of realism-crítico should not be equated with the work of Roy Bhaskar on critical realism. Although the two ideas are conceptually similar in some ways, they have distinct meanings (hence the use of the term here in Spanish, rather than attempting a direct translation).

De-ideologized reality

Martín-Baró emphasized the role of ideology in obscuring the social forces and relations that create and maintain oppression: a key task of psychologists then is to de-ideologize reality, helping people to understand for themselves the nature of social reality transparently rather than obscured by dominant ideology. Ideology, understood as the ideas that perpetuate the interests of hegemonic groups, maintains the unjust sociopolitical environment. Alternatively, a de-ideologized reality encourages members of marginalized populations to endorse ideologies that promote their own interests and not those of the hegemony. Martín-Baró's analysis of supposed Latin American fatalism and the myth of the lazy Latino exemplified his approach as did his use of public opinion surveys to counter the distortion that the then government and military were presenting of the Salvadorian public's views on the war.

Methodological eclecticism

Research with a liberation psychology framework incorporates methodologies from diverse domains. Traditional methodologies, such as surveys and quantitative analyses, are combined with more novel techniques for psychology, such as qualitative analyses, photography, drama, and textual analysis.

Applications

Community psychology

Ignacio Martín-Baró had opposed the introduction of community psychology to El Salvador, on the basis of the ameliorative (asistencialista') approach and limited social perspective of then dominant North American models. Nevertheless, community psychology, and especially the Latin American variants (typically termed community social psychology) is one of the areas most influenced by the concepts of liberation psychology. Moreover, community social psychology in Latin America, which predates liberation psychology, also shares roots in the wider movement of Latin American critical and liberatory praxis (especially dependency theory, philosophy of liberation, liberation theology, critical or popular pedagogy).

Psychotherapeutic applications

Liberation psychology departs from traditional psychological prioritization of the individual and the attribution of an individual's distress to pathology within the individual. Liberation psychology seeks to understand the person within their sociopolitical, cultural, and historical context. Therefore, distress is understood not solely in intrapsychic terms but in the context of an oppressive environment that psychologises and individualises distress. In a psychotherapeutic context, this removes the onus of psychological distress solely from the individual and their immediate circumstances, and reframes the origin of distress as the environment and social structure to which persons are subjugated. Furthermore, this helps people to understand their relationship to the power structure, and the ways in which they participate in it. In liberatory approaches to mental distress the therapy is only a step towards the 're-insertion' of a person into their social milieu, social action and their existential life-project.

Moving liberation psychology forward

Since the late 1990s, international congresses on liberation psychology have been held, primarily at Latin American universities. These congresses have been attended by hundreds of professionals and students, and have been crucial in perpetuating the social justice message of liberation psychology.

Specific congress themes include human rights, social justice, democratization, and creating models for liberation psychology in psychological practice and pedagogy. In recent years, these meetings have become increasingly focused on addressing issues related to poverty and economic inequality.

International congresses on liberation psychology include:

• 1st, 1998 in Mexico City, Mexico
• 2nd, 1999 in San Salvador, El Salvador
• 3rd, 2000 in Cuernavaca, Mexico
• 4th, 2001 in Guatemala City, Guatemala
• 5th, 2002 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
• 6th, 2003 in Campinas, Brazil
• 7th, 2005 in Liberia, Costa Rica
• 8th, in Santiago de Chile
• 9th, 2008 in Chiapas, Mexico
• 10th, 2010 in Caracas, Venezuela
• 11th, 2012 in Bogotá, Colombia
• 12th, 2014 in Cusco, Peru congress web page
• 13th, 2016 in Cuernavaca, Mexico conference web page

Liberation psychology is not limited to Latin America. The term was used by Philippine psychologist Virgilio Enríquez, apparently independently of Martín-Baró. Elsewhere there have been explicit attempts to apply the approach to practice in other regions. In 2011 an English language liberation psychology network was established by the British psychologist Mark Burton. It has an international membership which reflects interest in liberation psychology from psychologists who do not read Spanish or Portuguese. Moreover, not all liberatory praxis in psychology goes under the name "liberation psychology".

Examples

Black psychology

Some scholars argue that the liberation psychology framework is central to black psychology. The interconnectedness of the personal and political, a fundamental tenet of liberation psychology, is central to black psychology. Furthermore, black psychology is thought of as inherently liberationist as it argues that addressing the psychology of black persons necessitates understanding, and addressing, the history and sociopolitical power structure that has resulted in the global oppression of individuals of African descent.

Proponents of black psychology operate within the social orientation of liberation psychology, contending that Eurocentric ideologies of traditional psychology lack relevance when dealing with black communities. Therefore, an Afrocentric conceptualization that recognizes the unique history of individuals of African-descent is necessary when dealing with such communities. Using a liberation psychology framework, black psychology argues that simply recognizing the distinctiveness of the black experience is inadequate if the psychological theorization used does not come from the communities to which they are applied. Such a position is consistent with Martín-Baró's assertion that the use of Eurocentric psychological methods is incongruent with the lived experiences of oppressed communities.

Liberation psychology and LGBT psychotherapy

Recent work in North America has sought to understand the applied use of liberation psychology in psychotherapy with LGBT individuals. Unlike traditional psychotherapeutic interventions, this approach reframes LGBT individuals' psychological issues as resulting from an understandable incorporation of the homonegative attitudes characteristic of the social structures within which gay and transgender people live. 

Traditional psychotherapy typically recognises the effect of homophobia and its impact on LGBT people, but often fails to clear the person of the blame for embracing such views. However, a liberationist psychological approach aims to facilitate the freeing the individual of the blame for adopting the homonegative views of the society. Instead, the onus is on the social environment, understanding that persons are themselves constituted as persons in their social context. Such an approach understands 'psychological' issues as inextricably linked to the societal context. 

This may free the LGBT person from feeling flawed for harboring homonegative ideas. They are then able to examine how they are a participant in the social environment and the ways in which they can take responsibility for future actions. Additionally, using the concept of concientización, people can examine how changing themselves can challenge the oppressive nature of the larger sociopolitical system, although in most liberation psychology there is a more dialectical relationship between personal and social change where personal change does not have to precede social liberation.

Critical pedagogy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that has developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture. Advocates of critical pedagogy view teaching as an inherently political act, reject the neutrality of knowledge, and insist that issues of social justice and democracy itself are not distinct from acts of teaching and learning. The goal of critical pedagogy is emancipation from oppression through an awakening of the critical consciousness, based on the Portuguese term conscientização. When achieved, critical consciousness encourages individuals to effect change in their world through social critique and political action.

Background

The concept of critical pedagogy can be traced back to Paulo Freire's best-known 1968 work, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire, a professor of history and the philosophy of education at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil, sought in this and other works to develop a philosophy of adult education that demonstrated a solidarity with the poor in their common struggle to survive by engaging them in a dialogue of greater awareness and analysis. Although his family had suffered loss and hunger during the Great Depression, the poor viewed him and his formerly middle-class family "as people from another world who happened to fall accidentally into their world". His intimate discovery of class and their borders "led, invariably, to Freire's radical rejection of a class-based society".

The influential works of Freire made him arguably the most celebrated critical educator. He seldom used the term "critical pedagogy" himself when describing this philosophy. His initial focus targeted adult literacy projects in Brazil and later was adapted to deal with a wide range of social and educational issues. Freire's pedagogy revolved around an anti-authoritarian and interactive approach aimed to examine issues of relational power for students and workers. The center of the curriculum used the fundamental goal based on social and political critiques of everyday life. Freire's praxis required implementation of a range of educational practices and processes with the goal of creating not only a better learning environment but also a better world. Freire himself maintained that this was not merely an educational technique but a way of living in our educative practice.

Freire endorses students' ability to think critically about their education situation; this way of thinking is thought by practitioners of critical pedagogy to allow them to "recognize connections between their individual problems and experiences and the social contexts in which they are embedded".^[4] Realizing one's consciousness ("conscientization", "conscientização") is then a needed first step of "praxis", which is defined as the power and know-how to take action against oppression while stressing the importance of liberating education. "Praxis involves engaging in a cycle of theory, application, evaluation, reflection, and then back to theory. Social transformation is the product of praxis at the collective level."

Critical pedagogue Ira Shor, who was mentored by and worked closely with Freire from 1980 until Freire's death in 1997, defines critical pedagogy as:

Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse. (Empowering Education, 129)

Critical pedagogy explores the dialogic relationships between teaching and learning. Its proponents claim that it is a continuous process of what they call "unlearning", "learning", and "relearning", "reflection", "evaluation", and the effect that these actions have on the students, in particular students whom they believe have been historically and continue to be disenfranchised by what they call "traditional schooling".

The educational philosophy has since been developed by Henry Giroux and others since the 1980s as a praxis-oriented "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop a consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action". Freire wrote the introduction to his 1988 work, Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning. Another leading critical pedagogy theorist who Freire called his "intellectual cousin", Peter McLaren, wrote the foreword. McLaren and Giroux co-edited one book on critical pedagogy and co-authored another in the 1990s. Among its other leading figures in no particular order are bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins), Joe L. Kincheloe, Patti Lather, Antonia Darder, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Peter McLaren, Joe L. Kincheloe, Khen Lampert, Howard Zinn, Donaldo Macedo, Sandy Grande, Michael Apple, and Stephanie Ledesma. Educationalists including Jonathan Kozol and Parker Palmer are sometimes included in this category. Other critical pedagogues known more for their Anti-schooling, unschooling, or deschooling perspectives include Ivan Illich, John Holt, Ira Shor, John Taylor Gatto, and Matt Hern. 

Critical pedagogy has several other strands and foundations. Postmodern, anti-racist, feminist, postcolonial, and queer theories all play a role in further expanding and enriching Freire's original ideas about a critical pedagogy, shifting its main focus on social class to include issues pertaining to religion, military identification, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, and age. Much of the work also draws on anarchism, György Lukács, Wilhelm Reich, postcolonialism, and the discourse theories of Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci, Gilles Deleuze (rhizomatic learning) and Michel Foucault. Radical Teacher is a magazine dedicated to critical pedagogy and issues of interest to critical educators. Many contemporary critical pedagogues have embraced Postmodern, anti-essentialist perspectives of the individual, of language, and of power, "while at the same time retaining the Freirean emphasis on critique, disrupting oppressive regimes of power/knowledge, and social change".

Developments

Like critical theory itself, the field of critical pedagogy continues to evolve. Contemporary critical educators, such as bell hooks and Peter McLaren, discuss in their criticisms the influence of many varied concerns, institutions, and social structures, "including globalization, the mass media, and race/spiritual relations", while citing reasons for resisting the possibilities to change. McLaren has developed a social movement based version of critical pedagogy that he calls revolutionary critical pedagogy, emphasizing critical pedagogy as a social movement for the creation of a democratic socialist alternative to capitalism.

Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg have created the Paulo and Nita Freire Project for International Critical Pedagogy at McGill University. In line with Kincheloe and Steinberg's contributions to critical pedagogy, the project attempts to move the field to the next phase of its evolution. In this second phase, critical pedagogy seeks to become a worldwide, decolonizing movement dedicated to listening to and learning from diverse discourses of people from around the planet. Kincheloe and Steinberg also embrace Indigenous knowledges in education as a way to expand critical pedagogy and to question educational hegemony. Joe L. Kincheloe, in expanding on the Freire's notion that a pursuit of social change alone could promote anti-intellectualism, promotes a more balanced approach to education than postmodernists.

We cannot simply attempt to cultivate the intellect without changing the unjust social context in which such minds operate. Critical educators cannot just work to change the social order without helping to educate a knowledgeable and skillful group of students. Creating a just, progressive, creative, and democratic society demands both dimensions of this pedagogical progress.

One of the major texts taking up the intersection between critical pedagogy and Indigenous knowledge(s) is Sandy Grande's, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). In agreement with this perspective, Four Arrows, aka Don Trent Jacobs, challenges the anthropocentrism of critical pedagogy and writes that to achieve its transformative goals there are other differences between Western and Indigenous worldview that must be considered. Approaching the intersection of Indigenous perspectives and pedagogy from another perspective, critical pedagogy of place examines the impacts of place.

In the classroom

Ira Shor, a professor at the City University of New York, provides for an example of how critical pedagogy is used in the classroom. He develops these themes in looking at the use of Freirean teaching methods in the context of the everyday life of classrooms, in particular, institutional settings. He suggests that the whole curriculum of the classroom must be re-examined and reconstructed. He favors a change of role of the student from object to active, critical subject. In doing so, he suggests that students undergo a struggle for ownership of themselves. He states that students have previously been lulled into a sense of complacency by the circumstances of everyday life and that through the processes of the classroom, they can begin to envision and strive for something different for themselves. 

Of course, achieving such a goal is not automatic nor easy, as he suggests that the role of the teacher is critical to this process. Students need to be helped by teachers to separate themselves from unconditional acceptance of the conditions of their own existence. Once this separation is achieved, then students may be prepared for critical re-entry into an examination of everyday life. In a classroom environment that achieves such liberating intent, one of the potential outcomes is that the students themselves assume more responsibility for the class. Power is thus distributed amongst the group and the role of the teacher becomes much more mobile, not to mention more challenging. This encourages the growth of each student's intellectual character rather than a mere "mimicry of the professorial style."

Teachers, however, do not simply abdicate their authority in a student-centred classroom. In the later years of his life, Freire grew increasingly concerned with what he felt was a major misinterpretation of his work and insisted that teachers cannot deny their position of authority.

Critical teachers, therefore, must admit that they are in a position of authority and then demonstrate that authority in their actions in supports of students... [A]s teachers relinquish the authority of truth providers, they assume the mature authority of facilitators of student inquiry and problem-solving. In relation to such teacher authority, students gain their freedom--they gain the ability to become self-directed human beings capable of producing their own knowledge.

— Joe L. Kincheloe, Critical Pedagogy Primer p. 17

And due to the student-centeredness that critical pedagogy insists upon, there are inherent conflicts associated with the "large collections of top-down content standards in their disciplines".^[8] Critical pedagogy advocates insist that teachers themselves are vital to the discussion about Standards-based education reform in the United States because a pedagogy that requires a student to learn or a teacher to teach externally imposed information exemplifies the banking model of education outlined by Freire where the structures of knowledge are left unexamined. To the critical pedagogue, the teaching act must incorporate social critique alongside the cultivation of intellect.

Joe L. Kincheloe argues that this is in direct opposition to the epistemological concept of positivism, where "social actions should proceed with law-like predictability". In this philosophy, a teacher and their students would be served by Standards-based education where there is "only be one correct way to teach" as "[e]veryone is assumed to be the same regardless of race, class, or gender". Donald Schön's concept of "indeterminate zones of practice" illustrates how any practice, especially ones with human subjects at their center, are infinitely complex and highly contested, which amplify the critical pedagogue's unwillingness to apply universal practices.

Furthermore, bell hooks, who is greatly influenced by Freire, points out the importance of engaged pedagogy and the responsibility that teachers, as well as students, must have in the classroom:

Teachers must be aware of themselves as practitioners and as human beings if they wish to teach students in a non-threatening, anti-discriminatory way. Self-actualisation should be the goal of the teacher as well as the students.

Resistance from students

Students sometimes resist critical pedagogy. Student resistance to critical pedagogy can be attributed to a variety of reasons. Student objections may be due to ideological reasons, religious or moral convictions, fear of criticism, or discomfort with controversial issues. Kristen Seas argues: "Resistance in this context thus occurs when students are asked to shift not only their perspectives, but also their subjectivities as they accept or reject assumptions that contribute to the pedagogical arguments being constructed." Karen Kopelson asserts that resistance to new information or ideologies, introduced in the classroom, is a natural response to persuasive messages that are unfamiliar.

Resistance is often, at the least, understandably protective: As anyone who can remember her or his own first uneasy encounters with particularly challenging new theories or theorists can attest, resistance serves to shield us from uncomfortable shifts or all-out upheavals in perception and understanding-shifts in perception which, if honored, force us to inhabit the world in fundamentally new and different ways.

Kristen Seas further explains: "Students [often] reject the teacher's message because they see it as coercive, they do not agree with it, or they feel excluded by it." Karen Kopelson concludes "that many if not most students come to the university in order to gain access to and eventual enfranchisement in 'the establishment,' not to critique and reject its privileges." To overcome student resistance to critical pedagogy, teachers must enact strategic measures to help their students negotiate controversial topics.

Critical pedagogy of teaching

The rapidly changing demographics of the classroom in the United States has resulted in an unprecedented amount of linguistic and cultural diversity. In order to respond to these changes, advocates of critical pedagogy call into question the focus on practical skills of teacher credential programs. "[T]his practical focus far too often occurs without examining teachers' own assumptions, values, and beliefs and how this ideological posture informs, often unconsciously, their perceptions and actions when working with linguistic-minority and other politically, socially, and economically subordinated students." As teaching is considered an inherently political act to the critical pedagogue, a more critical element of teacher education becomes addressing implicit biases (also known as implicit cognition or implicit stereotypes) that can subconsciously affect a teacher's perception of a student's ability to learn.

Advocates of critical pedagogy insist that teachers, then, must become learners alongside their students, as well as students of their students. They must become experts beyond their field of knowledge, and immerse themselves in the culture, customs, and lived experiences of the students they aim to teach.

History

During South African apartheid, legal racialization implemented by the regime drove members of the radical leftist Teachers' League of South Africa to employ critical pedagogy with a focus on nonracialism in Cape Town schools and prisons. Teachers collaborated loosely to subvert the racist curriculum and encourage critical examination of religious, military, political, and social circumstances in terms of spirit-friendly, humanist, and democratic ideologies. The efforts of such teachers are credited with having bolstered student resistance and activism.

Criticism

Philosopher John Searle characterizes the goal of Giroux's form of critical pedagogy "to create political radicals", thus highlighting the antagonistic moral and political grounds of the ideals of citizenship and "public wisdom." These varying moral perspectives of what is "right" are to be found in what John Dewey has referred to as the tensions between traditional and progressive education. Searle argues that critical pedagogy's objections to the Western canon are misplaced and/or disingenuous:

Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked.

Maxine Hairston takes a hard line against critical pedagogy in the first year college composition classroom and argues, "everywhere I turn I find composition faculty, both leaders in the profession and new voices, asserting that they have not only the right, but the duty, to put ideology and radical politics at the center of their teaching." Hairston further confers,

When classes focus on complex issues such as racial discrimination, economic injustices, and inequities of class and gender, they should be taught by qualified faculty who have the depth of information and historical competence that such critical social issues warrant. Our society's deep and tangled cultural conflicts can neither be explained nor resolved by simplistic ideological formulas.

Sharon O'Dair (2003) says that today compositionists "focus [...] almost exclusively on ideological matters", and further argues that this focus is at the expense of proficiency of student writing skills in the composition classroom. To this end, O'Dair explains that "recently advocated working-class pedagogies privilege activism over" language instruction." Jeff Smith argues that students want to gain, rather than to critique, positions of privilege, as encouraged by critical pedagogues. There are a wide variety of views in opposition to critical pedagogy in the first year composition classroom, these are but a few.

Ecopedagogy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The ecopedagogy movement is an outgrowth of the theory and practice of critical pedagogy, a body of educational praxis influenced by the philosopher and educator Paulo Freire. Ecopedagogy's mission is to develop a robust appreciation for the collective potentials of humanity and to foster social justice throughout the world. It does so as part of a future-oriented, ecological and political vision that radically opposes the globalization of ideologies such as neoliberalism and imperialism, while also attempting to foment forms of critical ecoliteracy. Recently, there have been attempts to integrate critical eco-pedagogy, as defined by Greg Misiaszek with Modern Stoic philosophy to create Stoic eco-pedagogy.

 

One of ecopedagogy's goals is the realization of culturally relevant forms of knowledge grounded in normative concepts such as sustainability, planetarity (i.e. identifying as an earthling) and biophilia (i.e. love of all life).

Early history

The ecopedagogy movement began in a Latin American educational context, growing out of discussions at the second Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.  Educators desired to present a theory and discourse about the interrelationship between society and the environment, a statement would eventually be ratified as the Earth Charter in 2000. In 1999 the First International Symposium on the Earth Charter in the Perspective of Education was held by the Instituto Paulo Freire, Brasil directed by Moacir Gadotti and in collaboration with the Earth Council and UNESCO. This was soon followed by the First International Forum on Ecopedagogy. As a result of these conferences, the Ecopedagogy Charter was also formed, launching the spread of ecopedagogy seminars and programs around the world. 

Objectives and aims

Ecopedagogy's primary goal is to create a "planetary consciousness" through revolutionary teaching and learning. The movement aims to create educational programs that interrogate the intersection of social, political, economic and environmental systems. As an outgrowth of critical pedagogy, ecopedagogy critiques environmental education and education for sustainable development as vain attempts by mainstream forms of pedagogy seeking to appear relevant regarding current issues of environmental degradation. It is critical of mainstream representations of nature that are potentially informed by racist, sexist, and classist values, and wary of the tendency of "greenwashing" of environmental terminology. 

While members of the ecopedagogy movement recognize that environmental education can accomplish some positive change, they question the ways in which environmental education (especially within global north) is often reduced to forms of experiential pedagogy and outdoor education without questioning the mainstream experience of nature as pristine wilderness. Ecopedagogy points out that environmental education is often tethered to state and corporate-sponsored science and social studies standards or fails to articulate the political necessity for widespread understanding of the unsustainable nature of modern lifestyles. However, ecopedagogy has tried to utilize the ongoing United Nations Decade of Educational for Sustainable Development (2005–2015) to make strategic interventions on behalf of the oppressed, using it as an opportunity to unpack and clarify the concept of sustainable development.

 

Ecopedagogy scholar Richard Kahn describes the three main goals of the ecopedagogy movement to be:

1. Creating opportunities for the proliferation of ecoliteracy programs, both within schools and society.
2. Bridging the gap of praxis between scholars and the public (especially activists) on ecopedagogical interests.
3. Instigating dialogue and self-reflective solidarity across the many groups among educational left, particularly in light of the existing planetary crisis.

Angela Antunes and Moacir Gadotti (2005) wrote:

"Ecopedagogy is not just another pedagogy among many other pedagogies. It not only has meaning as an alternative project concerned with nature preservation (Natural Ecology) and the impact made by human societies on the natural environment (Social Ecology), but also as a new model for sustainable civilization from the ecological point of view (Integral Ecology), which implies making changes on economic, social, and cultural structures."

According to social movement theorists Ron Ayerman and Andrew Jamison, there are three broad dimensions of environmentally related movements: cosmological, technological, and organizational. In ecopedagogy, these dimensions are outlined by Richard Kahn (2010) as the following:

• The cosmological dimension focuses on how ecoliteracy, i.e. understanding the natural systems that sustain life, can transform people’s worldviews. For example, assumptions about society’s having the right to exploit nature can be transformed into understanding of the need for ecological balance to support society in the long term. The success of such ‘cosmological’ thinking transformations can be assessed by the degree to which such paradigm shifts are adopted by the public.
• The technological dimension is two-fold: critiquing the set of polluting technologies that have contributed to traditional development as well as some which are used or misused under the pretext of sustainable development; and promoting clean technologies that do not interfere with ecological and social balance.
• The organizational dimension emphasizes that knowledge should be of and for the people, thus academics should be in dialogue with public discourse and social movements. 

Discussion of term in literature

Ecopedagogy is not the collection of theories or practices developed by any particular set of individuals. Rather, akin to the World Social Forum and other related forms of contemporary popular education strategies, it is a worldwide association of critical educators, theorists, non-governmental and governmental organizations, grassroots activists and concerned citizens who engage in ongoing dialogue and political action. This process attempts to develop ecopedagogical praxis in relation to the needs of particular places, groups and time periods.

The earliest use of the term "ecopedagogy" may have been by de Haan (1984) in a now little known German text. Shortly thereafter, in the first known English use of the term, Gronemeyer (1987) described ecopedagogy as the merging of environmentalist politics and adult education. Ecopedagogy has also been discussed by Ahlberg (1998; Jardine (2000); Petrina (2000); Yang & Hung (2004); and Payne (2005). The work of Lummis (2002)  shares some sympathies, such as a critical theory approach. 

Ironically, at the same time it was coined by Freire's friend-cum-critic Ivan Illich (1988) to describe an educational process in which educators and educands become inscribed in abstract pedagogical systems, resulting in pedagogy as an end and not a means. As used by Illich, ecopedagogy is represented by forms of education that seek the total administration of life through mandatory pedagogical experiences of systemization. As such, he believed that the movements for lifelong education and the creation of global classrooms (Illich & Verne, 1981) by bureaucratic educational institutions exemplified such approaches. However, he was also critical of popular environmentalist pedagogy attempting to mobilize people's sentiments for solutions to problems such as global warming, hunger, and rainforest destruction. Illich's point was that such an ecopedagogy works on a problems/solutions axis that implies a global managerialism that is abhorrent to truly sustainable living in the world. This is a different idea from the way the term and concept is being defined and utilized in critical education circles today, though it is potentially of great importance for the future development of the ecopedagogy movement on the whole.

Paulo Freire was himself at work on a book of ecopedagogy upon his death in 1997, parts of which are included in his posthumous Pedagogy of Indignation (2004). Other influential books include: Francisco Gutierrez and Cruz Prado's Ecopedagogy and Planetary Citizenship (1999), Moacir Gadotti's Pedagogy of the Earth (2000),  and Richard Kahn's Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement. 

Criticisms

Both supporters and critics of ecopedagogy agree that historically, critical educators in the West have been largely unsuccessful at addressing environmental issues in their classrooms. However, much disagreement still exists between critics and supporters of ecopedagogy on the ethics, theoretical approach, and methodology of this pedagogical style.

The strongest criticisms of ecopedagogy begins with the idea that Paulo Freire, critical pedagogy's founding figure, was unconscious of ecological challenges. The well-known collection, Rethinking Freire, includes strong criticisms of many aspects of critical pedagogy by Illichan and eco-literacy teachers, criticisms that necessarily include the ecopedagogy movement. One critic, C.A. Bowers, argues that if ecopedagogy (and the larger critical pedagogy of Freire and Gadotti) were universally adopted, it would contribute to the hegemonic spread of Western culture and systems, thereby choking out non-Western ways of thinking, viewing, and interacting with the human and built environments. Bowers further argues that adoption of Freirean ecopedagogy would hasten the existence of a world monoculture and would fail to address the systemic roots of the current ecological crisis and fail to protect the commons from further exploitation. In this view, ecopedagogy is akin to an educational Trojan horse that is little more than a vehicle for transmitting Western culture and domination. 

Moderate critics of ecopedagogy argue that the critical lens of ecopedagogy can be useful, but that its adherents must be actively critical of ecopedagogy itself. They argue that without a constant focus on understanding and fostering diversity in thought, culture, and ecosystem, ecopedagogy is meaningless and could be counter-productive to its aims. Ecopedagogy (and critical pedagogy) has also been heavily criticized for not being critical of the categories that underlie its work. Here, critics argue that in valuing individualism, ecopedagogy fails to attend to traditional eco-centered cultures' already deep connection to the non-human world. Moreover, some scholars from the eco- and critical pedagogical traditions fail to recognize how the "primary categories in classical liberal thought may operate in the discourse of critical pedagogy".

Ecopedagogy in action

Ecopedagogy emphasizes the necessity of praxis alongside theory. Besides the specific ecopedagogy degree programs and Paulo Freire Institutes, there are many instances of ecological education that not only teach people the critical thinking of ecopedagogy but also engage them in learning through action. For example, a study conducted with 10-year-old children in West Scotland concluded that interactive dramatic education was successful in engaging students in ecological, social, and political dimensions of global problems such as solid waste and deforestation. The dramatic exercises required to make a decision or take a stance, thus strengthening their understanding and conviction of the issues. And ecopedagogy is not limited to formal students; in Turkey, for example, participatory action research showed that an outdoor community-based ecopedagogy program for university professors was successful in the "promotion of public participation, the engagement of students, teacher and parents in local environmental issues, and the development of social capital to achieve environmental sustainability. By situating local knowledge within critical pedagogy and social activism, these projects can help universities to bridge the gap between academia and society."

Greta Gaard outlines the necessity for children's environmental literature to encompass the following core aspects of ecopedagogy:

• praxis
• teaching ABOUT the social and natural environment
• teaching IN the social and natural environment
• teaching THROUGH the social and natural environment
• teaching the connections of sustainability
• urgency 

The question of technology had become increasingly pertinent. While the production and consumption of technology largely has a negative effect on the environment and certain aspects of society-environment relations, technology still provides certain new avenues in ecopedagogy. For example, more people have access to information and collaboration through the internet and thus can engage in informal ecological education faster and in wider spheres. Similarly, community projects to install solar panels or wind turbines or simple technology that help farms to transition to agroecology are examples of the uses of technology in ecopedagogy.