Toward Assessing Absolute Environmental Sustainability of Chemical Pollution

Over the past several decades, the number of chemicals on the market has grown with some estimates as high as 350,000 chemicals registered for production and use globally. Chemicals serve as the building blocks of modern society with diverse usage in agriculture, product manufacture, and medicine. However, the growing number of marketed compounds also increases the potential for chemical pollution and negative pressure on human and ecosystem health. For example, pesticides are hazardous by design, have intentional, widespread environmental release, and easily migrate beyond their area of use, which can result in exposure of nontarget organisms and potential bioaccumulation in ecological food webs.

Chemicals can be released into the environment along their entire life cycle, from resource extraction, chemical synthesis, material and product manufacturing, to product use and end-of-life treatment, including recycling. Despite the apparent risk chemicals pose to both human and ecosystem health, the combined chemical pressure exerted on the natural environment by different chemical classes and across the whole chemical universe is unknown. In this article, we propose an absolute environmental sustainability assessment framework for chemical pollution to guide sound chemical use and protect ecosystem health.

Ecology and Climate of the Earth—The Same Biogeophysical System

Ecology and the climate provide two perspectives of the same biogeophysical system at all spatiotemporal scales. More effectively embracing this congruence is an opportunity to improve scientific understanding and predictions as well as for a more effective policy that integrates both the bottom-up community, business-driven framework, and the popular, top-down impact assessment framework.

The objective of this paper is, therefore, to more closely integrate the diverse spectrum of scientists, engineers and policymakers into finding optimal solutions to reduce the risk to environmental and social threats by considering the ecology and climate as an integrated system. Assessments such as performed towards the 2030 Plan for Sustainable Development, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals and its Goal 13 in particular, can achieve more progress by accounting for the intimate connection of all aspects of the Earth’s biogeophysical system.

Lex Capitalocenae: Cheap Nature and the Emergence of Legal Naturalism

This paper aims to address a lacuna in the Transition Debate by reconstructing the origins of international law as a central feature of the formation of the capitalist world-ecology throughout the long sixteenth century (c. 1450-1648). In doing so, this paper bridges a rift in Marxist legal scholarship between the commodity form theorists who emphasize the importance of doctrine and the social property form theorists who stress the determinative role of legal practices. Unacknowledged in this exchange is Wallerstein’s historical-geographic account of the transition and its development by Moore into world-scale political marxism.Through this perspective, I empirically narrate the centrality of legal transformations surrounding property, territoriality, and Naturalism.

The formation of capitalism as a world-ecology, as a way of organizing human and extra-human life, cannot be understood without accounting for the emergence of its legal infrastructure and its dualistic source code—Civilization and Nature—amidst the long sixteenth century. It was only through the failure of the Spanish imperial project that concepts of property, territoriality, and Natural law were revolutionized to create the juridical basis for the capitalist world-ecology and its political structure of nation-states. This geohistorical reconstruction of law, life, and the rise of capitalism allows us to better grasp contemporary debates over planetary law in the climate crisis.

Ecomyopia in the Anthropocene

A major impediment to action on climate change is the deeply entrenched belief that humans are not capable of planetary-scale impacts. Such denialism is less tenable if geologists officially recognize a new epoch called the Anthropocene. Daunting problems for humanity include an unsustainable reliance on fossil fuels, an increasing gap between wealth and poverty and access to food, a stagnation or loss of the buying power of wages, rampant nation-state instability, climate change, and annually consuming more natural resources than the earth can replace.

Acknowledging the full scale of human impacts could catalyze a paradigm shift, paving the way for environmental sustainability. However, significant barriers hinder such a transformation in worldview. A more probable scenario is that the technological hubris driving relentless capitalist exploitation of the biophysical environment persists unchecked, further deepening ecological crises. 

Here, we consider the potential for a paradigm shift by asking whether the Anthropocene as a popular concept may have enough symbolic power to correct ‘ecomyopia’. We define ecomyopia as the tendency for societies to ignore, not recognize, or fail to act on new ecological information that contradicts political arrangements, social norms, or worldviews. The failure to meaningfully address climate change is a spectacular example of ecomyopia.

Neoliberalism’s Imagined Futures: Sustainability as Colonialism in Eco-City Design

Climate change, exacerbated by the extractivist logics of late capitalism, has prompted neoliberal actors to devise a cornucopia of imagined technological solutions through which the market will resolve the very crises it has created. A techno-optimistic paradigm of “moonshot” startups, buzzword technologies, and digitally rendered projects have established and consolidated the discourses and imaginations through which future technology will inevitably justify continued exploitation of the present.

The article examines the architectural tropes used in designs which are concurrently branded as sustainable and futuristic, offering a critique of techno-solutionist architectures that have been promoted by the European Union, World Expos, and forward-looking design pedagogy. Through an analysis of the designs of Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut, I observe that such “eco-futurist” images symbolically communicate an association with sustainability through the visible use of “green” technologies and the adoption of highly contextual encounters with greenery, rhetorically prefaced on the ability of techno-science to mediate human–nature relationships, and visually bound within the design tropes of luxury tourist destinations. By intertwining the aspirational futures of sustainable design with the aesthetic sensibilities of the wealthy, I argue that eco-futurism primarily aligns itself with the interests of neoliberal property development and the spatial and social logics of colonialism.

Holistic Eco-Social Imaginaries for a Life-Centered Future

This paper argues that for humanity to deal with the intersecting, existential threats of polycrisis, broad-based narrative changes are needed to make practical and relevant eco-social (or social ecological) imaginaries and related contracts. An imaginary is how people conceive or think about the world around them and their relationship to it. Social contracts are explicit and implicit agreements about how humans structure their social institutions, including rights and obligations, privileges, benefits, and restrictions.

Current imaginaries (and related contracts) are almost solely human-centric, while the shift argued for here is towards eco-social imaginaries, in which both humans and nature are granted rights to flourish. Such new imaginaries have the potential to shift ideas about humans as actors in the world towards life-centric eco-social understandings in which human beings are seen as part of and interdependent with nature, and develop economies and societies oriented towards wellbeing for both humans and nature. While historically social imaginaries and their related social contracts have been human-centric, more ecologically centric imaginaries have been emerging for several decades, and in the early 2020s, as this paper documents, have now begun to become explicit. This paper identifies seven recent efforts to define and make explicit the broad parameters of such eco-social imaginaries that might be widely deployed to begin the difficult and long-term process of systemic change needed to achieve flourishing for humans and nature.

Economic Progressivism and the Return of Great Power War

As an emancipatory political project, cosmopolitanism always invited skepticism. This paper focuses on the economic-progressivist line of critique of cosmopolitanism, which has gained momentum in recent years. This critique is based on real concerns that the economic left must prioritize and integrate into its thinking; however, it is also fatally flawed. Any progressive project that takes seriously strong democratic self-determination for all peoples needs some version of a commitment to a global order that is democratically politically integrated, and this means stronger forms of supranational political integration, not weaker ones.

I argue that the allure of progressive economic statism rests on erroneous assumptions about the character of the Westphalian state system and its relation to the evolution of global capitalism, which give a misleading impression that this system is somehow less friendly than neoliberal globalization to capitalist imperatives for extraction, accumulation, and growth. But there are equally expropriative and violent versions of capitalism that thrive in a closed Westphalian world. With great power rivalry once again emerging as a structuring feature of world order, signs of such versions are already making their appearance today.

The Problem of Knowledge in the Anthropocene

In the XXth century, debates about economic planning were largely shaped by arguments concerning knowledge and information. As the century closed, the dispute almost ended, with an apparent victory of the Austrian side, when a wide spectrum of economists and social scientists accepted that an absolute “problem of knowledge” (Hayek, 1945) made central planning impossible. After decades of liberalization and marketization policies in the shadow of Hayek’s market “spontaneous order,” the tide is turning. Facing the challenge of achieving rapid decarbonization and, more broadly, reducing the material footprint of our economies—along with growing geopolitical and developmental concerns—there is a marked renewal of interest in economic planning with a focus on ecological issues.

In this contribution, we argue that the Austrian premise concerning the ontological superiority of the mobilization of dispersed knowledge over the use of articulated and centralized one to create a successful social order should be revised, considering the rapid escalation of ecological disruptions. As remarked by William Kapp, the current transformation of the environment is no longer an expression of an increasing mastery over the world we live in but is instead a sign of a loss of such mastery. Our incapacity to stabilize the social metabolism epitomizes the faulty institutional framework of our socioeconomic activity. More specifically, it reveals that the prevalent forms of knowledge production and uses are inadequate to guarantee the perpetuation of a safe ecological space for our species.

This contribution aims to take stock of the implications of the ecological issue for the problem of knowledge and the possibilities of planning. It investigates Hayek’s theory weaknesses on environmental matters. Then, it examines the pervasiveness of a Hayekian framework in contemporaries’ attempts at green finance and its contradictions. It subsequently explores the new epistemic conditions for planning in the digital age and the permanence of the necessity to accommodate the fundamental diversity and limitation of knowledge in any planning project. Finally, an institutional architecture for ecological planning is sketched, building on the institutional utopias method.

Emancipating Human Rights: Capitalism and the Common Good

This article begins with a study of the political economy of welfare capitalism to demonstrate how the private quest for profit was never going to be undermined by the advance of socio-economic rights. Contrary to the conventional view among human rights lawyers, capital draws power from its rights or welfarism. It is in recognizing the role that socio-economic rights play in serving capitalism that the field of international law concerned with structurally transformative human rights can begin to explore how socio-economic rights inhibit alternative forms of social organization.

This work then turns to recovering property rights through a study of recent evictions and housing rights case law of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that problematizes structural inequities and calls the financialized capitalist system into question. Next this work investigates radical legal positivism in international indigenous rights jurisprudence for how it transcends the private ownership of indigenous lands and control over the means of production. The social function of property rights is then revisited and extended, drawing to a close an article that unearths how socio-economic rights might yet emancipate people from capitalist property relations, alter the underlying structure of the economy, and, in time, sever its concordance with the capitalist welfare state.

The Planetary Commons: A New Paradigm for Safeguarding Earth-Regulating Systems in the Anthropocene

The Anthropocene signifies the start of a no-analogue trajectory of the Earth system that is fundamentally different from the Holocene. This new trajectory is characterized by rising risks of triggering irreversible and unmanageable shifts in Earth system functioning. We urgently need a new global approach to safeguard critical Earth system regulating functions more effectively and comprehensively.

The global commons framework is the closest example of an existing approach with the aim of governing biophysical systems on Earth upon which the world collectively depends. Derived during stable Holocene conditions, the global commons framework must now evolve in the light of new Anthropocene dynamics. This requires a fundamental shift from a focus only on governing shared resources beyond national jurisdiction, to one that secures critical functions of the Earth system irrespective of national boundaries.

We propose a new framework— the planetary commons—which differs from the global commons framework by including not only globally shared geographic regions but also critical biophysical systems that regulate the resilience and state, and therefore livability, on Earth. The new planetary commons should articulate and create comprehensive stewardship obligations through Earth system governance aimed at restoring and strengthening planetary resilience and justice.

Varieties of Indoctrination

In recent years, the entrenchment of autocrats, the rise of populist leaders, and increased polarization in established democracies have led to renewed interest in understanding how political regimes—whether democratic or autocratic—can control and influence public support to maintain power. While studies of political control have primarily focused on coercion and co-optation, this paper joins recent research that highlights indoctrination as an alternative strategy that enables powerholders to induce voluntary compliance and establish support among its citizens.

In this paper, we synthesize literature across disciplines to clarify the concept of indoctrination, focusing particularly on the politicization of education and the media. We then outline how the abstract concept can be operationalized, and introduce and validate an original expert-coded dataset on indoctrination that covers 160 countries from 1945 to the present. The dataset should facilitate a new generation of empirical inquiry on the causes and consequences of indoctrination.

Curation Bubbles

Information on social media is characterized by networked curation processes in which users select other users from whom to receive information, and those users in turn share information that promotes their identities and interests. We argue this allows for partisan “curation bubbles” of users who share and consume content with consistent appeal drawn from a variety of sources.

Yet, research concerning the extent of filter bubbles, echo chambers, or other forms of politically segregated information consumption typically conceptualizes information’s partisan valence at the source level as opposed to the story level. This can lead domain-level measures of audience partisanship to mischaracterize the partisan appeal of sources’ constituent stories—especially for sources estimated to be more moderate. Accounting for networked curation aligns theory and measurement of political information consumption on social media.

Rethinking Democratic Subversion

We make history, Karl Marx famously wrote, yet not under conditions of our own making. In comparative politics, we study political regimes, yet not under conditions of our own making. Our changing agenda reflects changing realities. Over the past 50 years, our subsequent thematic waves followed the moves and moods of the time: the breakdown of democracies, transitions to democracy, democratic consolidation, the spread of electoral authoritarianism, and now democratic regressions in “the third wave of autocratization”. In these thematic shifts, we sometimes accumulate knowledge and sometimes squander it. Sometimes we keep weaving threads of debate and sometimes we lose or abandon them. In this contribution, I wish to connect two strands of research that have become strangely disconnected, despite their structural affinities: the study of transitions to and from electoral authoritarianism. The terminology to describe such authoritarian transitions is still unsettled. To emphasize their defining element of agency, I will refer to them as processes of “democratic subversion”, which implies, unconventionally but appropriately, the designation of governments as subversive agents.

The literature on democratic subversion has been resolutely actor centric. It has laid much emphasis on the causal weight of actors. At the same time, however, it has been ignoring the perspective of actors. By looking at democratic subversion through the lens of democratic transitions, we can bring participant perspectives back into the picture. And by putting ourselves in the shoes of actors, we hope to shed fresh light on some simple, basic questions: What are the limits of structural approaches to the measurement and explanation of democratic subversion? How do we recognize a democratic crisis when we see one? How do we recognize processes of democratic subversion and their protagonists when we see them? And how should we think about resistance against democratic subversion?

Critical Climate Justice

Climate change has had unequal and uneven burdens across places whereby the planetary crisis involves a common but differentiated responsibility. The injustices of intensifying climate breakdown have laid bare the fault lines of suffering across sites and scales. A climate justice framework helps us to think about and address these inequities. Climate justice fundamentally is about paying attention to how climate change impacts people differently, unevenly, and disproportionately, as well as redressing the resultant injustices in fair and equitable ways.

Critical climate justice as a praxis of solidarity and collective action benefits from greater engagement with intersectional and international feminist scholarship. Incorporating insights from feminist climate justice bolsters solidarity praxis while enriching and reframing dominant climate change discussions for more impactful and accountable action.

Ecology as New Enlightenment

In this article, the author argues that the prevailing societal paradigm, characterized by the domination of both nature and other humans, has led to the current ecological and social crises. The author posits that this “Scheme of Domination” is rooted in a dual amputation of reason: first, the reduction of reason to instrumental calculation, devoid of moral considerations; and second, the separation of civilization from nature, fostering an anthropocentric worldview that justifies the exploitation of the natural world.

To counter this destructive paradigm, the author proposes a “Scheme of Consideration,” grounded in an eco-phenomenology that recognizes the interconnectedness of all beings and the importance of respecting planetary limits. This framework calls for a new social contract that extends the common good to future generations, other cultures, and non-human species.

The author contends that ecology, when understood as the wisdom of dwelling on Earth and cohabiting with others, becomes an emancipatory force. It necessitates a critical reflection on our practices and a shift away from consumerism and the predatory attitude towards nature. 

Making Resource Democracy Radically Meaningful for Stakeowners

This paper has a three-fold purpose: to challenge the current conceptualization of firm-stakeholder engagement, to popularize ‘allemansrätten’, the Scandinavian social innovation tradition for environmental value creation and environmental governance for ensuring ecological balance, and to introduce the concept of usufructual rights and the tutelage of natural resources for promoting human dignity. We underscore the deficiencies in the current stakeholder paradigm by pinpointing the specific essential catalysts that move the stakeholder theory to a new paradigm of a universal stakeownership. This is a quest to ensure the preservation and sustainability of natural resources and life support systems within specific institutional orders.

We employ an adaptive research approach based on the Finnish/Nordic ecological case with a focus on the concept of ‘everyman’s right’: Everyone has the freedom to enjoy Finland’s/Scandinavia’s forests and lakes but with that also comes every man’s responsibility to preserve the country’s nature for future generations. We argue that uncritically valorizing the universalized position of the current understanding of stakeholdership, with its flourish of contradictory and inaccurate characterization of global sustainability, retroactively aborts our ecological ideals from the uterus of preferred futures at the expense of humanity as a whole for the benefit of a few speculators and profiteers. Thus, we are woven into an ecological and economic tapestry whose present and future the current generation is accountable for in the era of universal stakeownership for a crucial evolutionary adaptation. This, however, cannot come about without fundamentally ‘democratizing’ resource democracy from the grassroots and questioning the global power structure that decides on the distributive effects of resources.

Scaling Deep through Transformative Learning in Public Sector Innovation Labs 

Transformative learning transforms problematic frames of reference, habits of mind, perspectives, and assumptions that no longer serve a person or situation in order to make them more open, reflective, and able to change.

This article explores scaling deep through transformative learning in Public Sector Innovation Labs (PSI labs) as a pathway to increase the impacts of their work. Using literature review and participatory action research with two PSI labs in Vancouver and Auckland, we provide descriptions of how they enact transformative learning and scaling deep. A shared ambition for transformative innovation towards social and ecological wellbeing sparked independent moves towards scaling deep and transformative learning which, when compared, offer fruitful insights to researchers and practitioners. The article includes a PSI lab typology and six moves to practice transformative learning and scaling deep.

Indigenous–Corporate Relationships in Renewable Energy Industries in Australia

Around the world Indigenous communities are involved in the renewable energy industries. Relationships with for-profit corporations are integral to this development. Indigenous communities are entering into partnership with renewable energy corporations or developing their own renewable energy corporations. Relying on doctrinal, desk and case study methodologies, this article analyses six case studies and identifies three Indigenous–corporate relationships in the renewable energy sector in Australia. These include (1) Renewable energy corporations that have proposed partial agreements with Indigenous communities; (2) Indigenous-led partnerships with non-Indigenous corporations; and (3) Indigenous-owned renewable energy projects.

We interrogate these Indigenous–corporate relations in the context of energy justice with a focus on fairness in procedure, recognition, and distribution of benefits. We conclude by highlighting the gaps in energy justice in the current practices of Indigenous–corporate relations in renewable energy industries in Australia. Accordingly, this article is significant because it fills a gap in the scholarly literature on Indigenous and corporate relationships. Furthermore, it sheds light on the practices in the field that play an important role in government and community policy development centered around the improvement of Indigenous and corporate relationships – and settler colonial interactions more generally.

The Social Provisioning Process and Heterodox Economics

The social provisioning process is how heterodox economists define economics in general. Instead of having a narrow definition of what constitutes economics, such as the mainstream has with its allocation of scarce resources among competing ends via the price mechanism, heterodox economists have opted for a much more expansive definition that permits different theoretical explanations for ways in which the provisioning process can take place in different types of economies in different historical contexts. In this chapter, we first examine the changes in the definition of economics from classical political economy to neoclassical and heterodox economics.

The comparison between classical political economy and neoclassical economics manifests a clear distinction in view of economy and economics. The second section substantiates the meaning of the social provisioning process. In doing so we make a case that, first, defining heterodox economics as the study of the social provisioning process positions heterodox economics as an alternative to neoclassical economics, and, second, that such an expansive definition of economics has potential to synthesize various heterodox theoretical frameworks in a constructive manner.

Institutional Design in Commons-Based Sharing Economies: Platform, Care and Place

This paper presents an analytical mapping of institutional design possibilities for alternative ways for digital platforms to institutionalise property and corporate form. It builds on the institutional imagination catalysed by three vignettes of experimental sharing economy initiatives presented towards the start of the paper, each of which highlights the imbrication and interdependence between economic and social dimensions of the sharing economy.

The paper then interrogates the vignettes through three analytical entry points to the institutional design of commons-based sharing economies: platform, care and place. By remapping the vignettes’ practices around these three entry points, the paper shows how they help constitute the incipient formalisation of commons-based approaches to the sharing economy. The prospects for carrying out a redesign of property and corporate forms more generally thereby become more visible, providing a sound foundation for more in-depth empirical and historical work on alternative trajectories of the sharing economy in the future.

Cosmolocalism Against Platform Capitalism

The rise of digital commons has expanded shared resources and addressed some challenges of traditional commons. However, this expansion has created new boundaries, forming a complex paradigm that challenges platform capitalism and demands alternative governance models. This study conceptualises shared resources within the framework of cosmolocalism, examining their formation, the processes of enclosure under platform capitalism, and potential pathways for de-embedding.

Platform capitalism utilises legal frameworks and opaque algorithmic systems to appropriate resources and dominates digital labour markets, manifesting a contemporary tragedy of the commons characterised by exploitation and profit maximisation. Using ridesharing as a case study, this research highlights the dynamic nature of cosmolocalism and proposes strategies to counter exploitation. By integrating platform cooperativism and social common capital, this study offers sustainable, equitable resource management solutions, supported by a comparative analysis of business models.

Toward Eco-Social Transition: Community Regeneration Indicators Respond to the Polycrisis

This paper, prepared in the context of Community-Led Local Development, discussed the relationships between the adaptive capacity of cities and the latest participatory governance approaches to identify new tools for ecosocial transition. The Polycrisis is an opportunity to reflect upon strategies to mitigate environmental, social and economic waste.

The adoption of a systemic, circular and reiterative methodology considers stakeholders as promoters and drivers of human-centered development processes. From the intercontinental empirical comparison of case studies, the experimentation proposes Community Regeneration Indicators to monitor and evaluate the processes of recovery and adaptation of the built heritage, generating a replicable ecosocial co-design transition model.

Urban Commons in the Techno-Economic Paradigm Shift

The commons concept has evolved in multiple ways after the publication of Ostrom’s seminal work in 1990, which emphasized the evolution of resource management institutions and the usefulness of self-governance. As we move into the 21st century, one of the institutional transformations is catalyzed by the emergence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a techno-economic paradigm shift and the epochal creation of a new online social structure. However, there is a lack of understanding about the impact of ICT on common resource management, particularly in urban settings, that is urban commons. This study presents a systematic literature review of ICT-enabled urban commons with particular attention to its application to climate-related issues such as climate mitigation/adaptation in order to improve our collective ability to leverage ICT for building a more sustainable and resilient city.

Our findings identified three key contributions of ICT to innovate climate-resilient solutions: 1) to redefine role of resource user as co-producer, co-designer, and co-monitor; 2) to enable real-time data-driven urban planning; 3) to improve resource efficiency and effectiveness. In other words, in a time of insufficient and limited public resources, the public sector can leverage the power of technology to harness public support and engage non-traditional stakeholders to make cities more sustainable and resilient while allowing policy-making to be big data-driven to tackle new urban problems that cannot be otherwise uncovered without the aid of ICT. The results provide directions to rethink the city based on collective action to diversity modes to govern common resources.

Education and the Concept of Commons

This paper explores the concepts of commons and commoning from an educational vantage point. These concepts point to places and activities that are shared, communal and un-privatised, in other words they point to places and practices not yet enclosed or appropriated by capital and market logics. Education is certainly a place and an activity that is increasingly being enclosed and appropriated by these logics, but at the same time education seems to always find ways of escaping this enclosure, and teachers and students find ways of being that escapes appropriation.

Exploring the concepts of commons and commoning from an educational vantage point is thus an attempt at describing schooling as an activity that takes place in common and makes something common. By sharing and introducing a subject matter to the students, the teacher offers a shared space of exploration and study that can escape the instrumental and proprietarian framework of the neoliberal education agenda.

Models of Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production at Universities

The main objective of this study is to better understand the challenges of transdisciplinary knowledge production processes and its institutionalisation at universities. Transdisciplinary research is considered a collaborative and integrative praxis grounded in different ways of knowing, acting and being. However, transdisciplinary research practices differ significantly in the relations between institutions and actors. These differences have an impact on how transdisciplinarity is institutionalised. There is a need to incorporate them into a larger framework of ongoing transformations of scientific timescales and spaces at universities.

We present the results of a case study developed at Babes-Bolyai University (Romania). We discuss it against the background of three models of transdisciplinary knowledge production and two approaches of transdisciplinary problem-solving research. We apply a qualitative methodology of micro level analysis that explores research practices and their embeddedness in the institutional environment. We analyse conditions that enable transdisciplinary knowledge production and show how transdisciplinary institutionalisation can be better understood using the proposed framework applied to the case study. It could be shown that taking into consideration the differences in the models of transdisciplinary knowledge production proved to be useful to gain a deeper understanding of processes of institutionalising transdisciplinarity at universities.

Toward More-Than-Tourism (Studies)

The field of tourism studies has entered an epoch of manifold vulnerabilities, a period in which the academic community will have to respond to the environmental and planetary crises and consider the wellbeing of not just humans but also nonhumans and multispecies. In these momentous times, it is imperative not to overlook tourism studies’ ontological, epistemological, and axiological vulnerabilities and to survey the potential viabilities. Although the blossoming criticalities in the field have greatly fuelled the urgency to correct, rectify, and recalibrate existing relational arrangements and replace these by more sustainable, just, and inclusive visions for/versions of tourism, there is still a pressing need for more conceptually, theoretically, and philosophically malleable architecture.

Inspired by Donna Haraway’s scholarship on broader planetary matters, this contribution offers ‘kinmaking’ as a critico-creative, disruptive space and fitting thoughtscape for transitioning into more-than-tourism (studies). Among the key ideas covered in this paper are the dangers of epistemocentricism, the necessity for sympoietic approaches, the rise of postdisciplinary and posthuman acumen, and the overall ripeness of tourism studies to become a domain of critical relationalities.

Privatization: Education and Commodity Forms

Privatization in education is not essentially about education. It is about the development of capitalism and the deepening of the rule of capital in particular institutions (schools, colleges, universities etc.) in contemporary society.

Of course, this is not how the situation appears in the relevant academic literature. Privatization in and of education is typically framed within a discourse regarding whether it ‘works,’ or not; or whether aspects of education—standards, equity and efficiency in particular—are enhanced or threatened by privatization in educational institutions. Focus on the marketization of education is particularly to the fore in writing and research on educational privatization. Finally, and politically significant, is that privatization is posited as a threat to public, state-financed education. The very ‘publicness’ of education is at issue.

The Psychology of Neoliberalism and the Neoliberalism of Psychology

In this article, we approach the relationship between neoliberalism and psychological science from the theoretical perspective of cultural psychology. In the first section, we trace how engagement with neoliberal systems results in characteristic tendencies—including a radical abstraction of self from social and material context, an entrepreneurial understanding of self as an ongoing development project, an imperative for personal growth and fulfillment, and an emphasis on affect management for self-regulation—that increasingly constitute the knowledge base of mainstream psychological science.

However, as we consider in the second section, psychological science is not just an observer of neoliberalism and its impact on psychological experience. Instead, by studying psychological processes independent of cultural–ecological or historical context and by championing individual growth and affective regulation as the key to optimal well-being, psychological scientists reproduce and reinforce the influence and authority of neoliberal systems. Rather than a disinterested bystander, hegemonic forms of psychological science are thoroughly implicated in the neoliberal project.

The Transformational Indigenous Praxis Model

The article provides a step-by-step framework for educators to transform their practices, a framework that not only challenges Eurocentric knowledge bases but also was designed to scrutinize the foundations of the current dominant Western educational models. It also serves as a catalyst for critical thinking conversations about reclaiming Indigenous education. It is crucial to note that this model is not designed to “diagnose” an individual’s “condition” but rather to provide terminologies that support educators to transform their practices as they articulate their experiences, the stages of the model that they aspire to embody, and the obstacles and promoters that actualize their collective hopes and visions.

We begin this study with an introduction to our praxis and agency as scholars of Indigenous education. Next, we offer a brief history of Indigenous education and depict the impact of systemic racism on Indigenous children and educators in U.S. schools. We discuss the challenges presented by the adoption of neoliberal multiculturalism in whitestream educational systems and reframe our resistance to this context within our respective teaching settings. We explain the theoretical frameworks that grew from our praxis and how those frameworks helped us develop the TIPM and then describe the TIPM, which reflects multiple stages of critical thinking development. We also discuss resistance to each stage and antidotes to that resistance.

Relationship with Place: A Transformative and Sustainable Pedagogy for the Planet

The central hypothesis of this conceptual commentary is that place-based educational approaches that use local environments as the learning context could not only provide needed educational reforms but also sow the seeds of sustainable behaviors of future generations. Furthermore, natural environments are offered as an optimal context for the emotional and sensory-rich needs of learning experiences that transform eco-paradigms and develop land ethics. The supporting literature examines the nexus of environmental education, place-based approaches, benefits of nature experience, and transformational learning.

Breaking barriers of current economic, political, and educational institutions requires integrative approaches—head, hand, and heart—to transform eco-paradigms. A conceptual diagram is offered to visualize this holistic approach. The rich context of a natural place enhances the esthetic quality of a learning experience and is dependent on the relationships within the community of learners, sensory interaction with the learning context or place, the emotion that arouses, thoughts derived from reflection on the experience, and the depth of engagement and behavior change that ensues. I support the power of place as a learning context through personal narrative. Although place-based education can be applied in any community and educational setting, I offer my own cultural perspective as an American with a critique of the consumer culture of the place in which I reside and the effect of rigid institutions on eco-values. Place-based educational reforms could develop caring for local environments leading to young people striving to preserve the places in which they have learned and come to care about.