To Know the World

A New Vision for Environmental Learning

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Paperback
$30.00 US
On sale Nov 03, 2020 | 288 Pages | 978-0-262-53982-1
Why environmental learning is crucial for understanding the connected challenges of climate justice, tribalism, inequity, democracy, and human flourishing.

How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time—migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy—connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that.

Mixing memoir, theory, mindfulness, pedagogy, and compelling storytelling, Thomashow discusses how to navigate the Anthropocene's rapid pace of change without further separating psyche from biosphere; why we should understand migration both ecologically and culturally; how to achieve constructive connectivity in both social and ecological networks; and why we should take a cosmopolitan bioregionalism perspective that unites local and global. Throughout, Thomashow invites readers to participate as educational explorers, encouraging them to better understand how and why environmental learning is crucial to human flourishing.

Part One: Why Environmental Learning Matters
1 The Past and Future of Environmental Learning
2 Memory Forever Unfolding
Part Two: Environmental Learning in the Anthropocene
3 The Tides of Change
4 Is the Anthropocene Blowing Your Mind?
Part Three: The Future of Environmental Learning
5 Constructive Connectivity (Ecological and Social Networks)
6 Migration (The Movement of People and Species)
7 Cosmopolitan Bioregionalism
Part Four: To Know the World
8 Improvisational Excellence
9 Perceptual Reciprocity
Mitchell Thomashow is the author of Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist, Bringing the Biosphere Home: Learning to Perceive Global Environmental Change, and The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus (all published by the MIT Press).

About

Why environmental learning is crucial for understanding the connected challenges of climate justice, tribalism, inequity, democracy, and human flourishing.

How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time—migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy—connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that.

Mixing memoir, theory, mindfulness, pedagogy, and compelling storytelling, Thomashow discusses how to navigate the Anthropocene's rapid pace of change without further separating psyche from biosphere; why we should understand migration both ecologically and culturally; how to achieve constructive connectivity in both social and ecological networks; and why we should take a cosmopolitan bioregionalism perspective that unites local and global. Throughout, Thomashow invites readers to participate as educational explorers, encouraging them to better understand how and why environmental learning is crucial to human flourishing.

Table of Contents

Part One: Why Environmental Learning Matters
1 The Past and Future of Environmental Learning
2 Memory Forever Unfolding
Part Two: Environmental Learning in the Anthropocene
3 The Tides of Change
4 Is the Anthropocene Blowing Your Mind?
Part Three: The Future of Environmental Learning
5 Constructive Connectivity (Ecological and Social Networks)
6 Migration (The Movement of People and Species)
7 Cosmopolitan Bioregionalism
Part Four: To Know the World
8 Improvisational Excellence
9 Perceptual Reciprocity

Author

Mitchell Thomashow is the author of Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist, Bringing the Biosphere Home: Learning to Perceive Global Environmental Change, and The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus (all published by the MIT Press).

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