Fritjof Capra's work rests on a common premise that, "To build a sustainable society for our children and future generations, we need to fundamentally redesign many of our technologies and social institutions so as to bridge the wide gap between human design and the ecologically sustainable systems of nature" (pp.98-99). This kind of broad statement raises a lot questions for me: how did current technologies and social institutions get built? who was included/excluded? who will be included/excluded from future attempts to redesign systems? how might 'our' understanding of "sustainable systems of nature" be spatially and temporaly particular? how do gender, race, class, age, and ethnicity factor into the way "sustainability" is framed?
My notes so far:
- The subtitlte is "Integrating the biological, cognitive, and social dimensions of life into a science of sustainability." This "science of sustainability" refers to the application of systems thinking to an understanding of life that connects "form, matter, process, and meaning" by means of one concept: the network.
- Goal: to build organizations that mirror life's adaptability, diversity, creativity. How would you know if these organizations were fundamentally different from existing ones?
- How to balance "community" with openness to the outside world?
- Questions of authenticity
- Companies need to foster communities of practices within their structures, but do communities of practice need companies (e.g. think of relationship between Arts TA and Ryerson)?
- Is it possible to communicate experiential knowledge? How does this "tacit knowledge" change when it becomes "a thing to be replicated, transferred, quantified, and traded" (116)? Think of Freire's discussion of agrotechnology.
- To what extent is Capra fundamentally transforming or reproducing global capital relations? A shift from computer time to biological time, from profit to sustainability (as guiding value), but how did profit become the guiding value and how will that change?
- Biotechnology can work when it "respects" nature. Who defines "nature"? pp. 201-202
- why do academics adopt positions not supported by existing research? (e.g. Carl Wieman's attack on the "lecutre" and Capra's attack on genetic determinism p. 205). The desire for community belonging can trump the will to dissent--this applies to graduate students too.
- ecoliteracy and ecodesign: www.ecoliteracy.org
- p. 239: system 1: nature; system 2: human community; system 3: circulation of scientific knowledge through the international community. Is this like Latour's discussion of the cave, and Science as the mediating language between human community and nature?
- Capra often refers to the reputation of his sources, sort of like a contrast between credible and non-credible people/communities?
- Overall, this book doesn't make me feel included, but rather more like a spectator to what is already going on (here are all the problems, but just sit back and relax cause it's all being taken care of). If the technical and conceptual realms are ready to go, where's the social? Is political will just a policy issue around tax incentives? what about public education around ecoliteracy? Democracy?
- In my Master's thesis I arrived at the conclusion that: 1) meanings of nature frame understandings of the form and function of urban greenspace; 2) meanings of nature are socially constructed over time and space; 3) at the Ecology Park in Peterborough, "good" human-nature relations mirrored "good" human-human relations, especially around ideas about diversity, health, community, and respect. How might these conclusions fit with Capra?
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2 comments:
hey, i'm assuming mf wrote this, even tho' it's signed as 'marta'.
so my comments are directed to mf--sorry if that offends anyone.
re: "overall not feeling included"--perhaps this is because the language is one of mobilization rather than consideration... i feel the same way about Giroux's very polemical writing: even tho' i don't necessarily disagree, i still feel a little excluded from his project.
some of what seems to be discussed i found to be more compellingly treated in Edward T. Hall's work (specifically, Beyond Culture). it also seems to be less biased--indeed, Hall, like Becker (for the most part at least), leaves the bias in the fact that it's (whatever 'it' is) what's being discussed at all. That is, there are an infinity of topics out there; the bias is in the selectivity, in choosing one about which to write and speak.
Anyway, maybe something to triangulate thoughts... Another possibility would be a test-case to see how Capra's ideas do/don't hold with respect to an existing practice (not generalizable universals or abstractions like particle physics).
From a practical perspective, i thought these two statements were the most telling, perhaps uncovering "bias" that kris writes about:
why do academics adopt positions not supported by existing research? (e.g. Carl Wieman's attack on the "lecutre" and Capra's attack on genetic determinism p. 205). The desire for community belonging can trump the will to dissent--this applies to graduate students too.
"good" human-nature relations mirrored "good" human-human relations, especially around ideas about diversity,
i think that one of the social aspects of engineering is that because it is based on problem solving, engineers tend to learn to work in groups and brainstorm a lot about how to get from point A to point B--lots of ideas tend to get thrown into the mix for debate and in a good group, people tend to hear each other out if they are actually looking for solutions.
in the environmental debate, i find it's pretty much the opposite and i totally agree that human-nature relations mirror human-human relations: even though to some extent everyone in the room knows the issues, i find it's hard to get anyone throw out ideas without fear, or to agree on *anything*, or, when people want to belong to the right social group, they won't acknowledge the problem. there is no problem solving atmosphere. there's a lot of ego, or hope of belonging to the right group.
anyways, i really like this analysis.
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