Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:09:11.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The application of critical realism as a basis for agency in environmental education: The case of Roy Bhaskar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2019

Mehri Mirzaei Rafe ,
Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast ,
Afzal Sadat Hosseini  and
Narges Sajadieh
Mehri Mirzaei Rafe*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy of Education, University of Tehran, Iran
Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy of Education, University of Tehran, Iran
Afzal Sadat Hosseini
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy of Education, University of Tehran, Iran
Narges Sajadieh
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy of Education, University of Tehran, Iran
*
*Corresponding author. Email: Mirzaei_m@ut.ac.ir
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article will investigate the philosophy of science of Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014) as a coherent basis for environmental education. The work of Bhaskar serves as an in-depth approach to understanding how to apply critical realism (the critical and the realist) to matters such as environmental education, because he concretely theorises the connections between science, social change and metaphysics. By mobilising key Bhaskarian motifs — that is, the primacy of ontology over epistemology, the laminated system as a means to understand reality, the ways in which inquiry may be organised through the real, actual and the empirical, and the positive application of dialectics — this article constructs a new approach to environmental education and positions it in the field of environmental education by comparing it to posthumanism and the new materialisms. This article contains inquiry-based study outlines for enhanced thinking around: (1) climate change and social justice; (2) movements towards a carbon-free economy; (3) water, food and population; and (4) the future of human habitation.

Keywords

critical realismenvironmental educationBhaskaragencyAnthropocene
Type
Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , November 2019 , pp. 230 - 238
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alamel, A. (2015). An integrated perspective of student housing supply and demand: Sustainability and socio-economic differences (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Loughborough University, Loughborough UK.Google Scholar
Archer, M. (2000). Being human: The problem of agency. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (1978). A realist theory of science. Brighton, UK: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (1986). Scientific realism and human emancipation. London, UK: Verso.Google Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (1991). Philosophy and the idea of freedom. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (1993). Dialectic: The pulse of freedom. London, UK: VersoGoogle Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (2002). The philosophy of meta-Reality, Vol. 1: Creativity, love and freedom. New Delhi, India: Thousand Oaks.Google Scholar
Bhaskar, R. (2010). Contexts of interdisciplinarity: interdisciplinarity and climate change. In Bhaskar, R., Frank, C., Høyer, K.G., Næss, P., & Parker, J. (Eds.), Interdisciplinarity and climate change: Transforming knowledge and practice for our global future (pp. 1–25). London, UK: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhaskar, R., & Danermark, B. (2006). Metatheory, interdisciplinarity and disability research: A critical realist perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 8, 278–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhaskar, R., & Parker, J. (2010). Introduction. In Bhaskar, R., Frank, C., Høyer, K.G., Næss, P., & Parker, J. (Eds.), Interdisciplinarity and climate change transforming knowledge and practice for our global future (pp. vii–xiii). London, UK: York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birdsall, S. (2010). Empowering students to act: Learning about, through and from the nature of action. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 26, 65–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bookchin, M. (1980). Towards an ecological society. Montreal, Canada: Black Rose Books.Google Scholar
Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Cambridge, UK: The Polity Press.Google Scholar
Chu, S., & Majumdar, A. (2012). Opportunities and challenges for a sustainable energy future. Nature, 488, 294–303.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cole, D.R., & Mirzaei Rafe, M. (2017). Conceptual ecologies for educational research through Deleuze, Guattari and Whitehead. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30, 849–862.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, D.R., & Mirzaei Rafe, M. (2018a). Positioning Whitehead as a means to enhance social justice in education. Interchange, 49, 377–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, D.R., & Mirzaei Rafe, M. (2018b). An analysis of the reality of authoritarianism in pedagogy: A critique based on the work of Deleuze, Guattari and Bhaskar. Espacio, Tiempo y Educación, 5, 41–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coole, D., & Frost, S. (Eds.). (2010). New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cruickshank, J. (2002). Realism and sociology: Anti-foundationalism, ontology and social research. London, UK: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Crutzen, P. (2002). Geology of mankind. Nature, 415, 23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism & schizophrenia II (B. Massumi, Trans.). London, UK: The Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Esbjörn-Hargens, S. (2010). An ontology of climate change: Integral pluralism and the enactment of multiple objects. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 5, 143–174.Google Scholar
Hawken, P., Lovins, A.B., & Lovins, L.H. (2013). Natural capitalism: The next industrial revolution. London, UK: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malm, A. (2016). Fossil capital: The rise of steam power and the roots of global warming. London, UK: Verso Books.Google Scholar
Marx, K. (1887). Capital: A critique of political economy (vol. 1, Moore, S. & Aveling, E., Trans., Engels, F., Ed.). Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers.Google Scholar
Moore, J.W. (2017). The Capitalocene, Part I: On the nature and origins of our ecological crisis. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44, 594–630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Næss, P. (2015). Critical realism, urban planning and urban research. European Planning Studies, 23, 1228–1244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newell, P., & Paterson, M. (2010). Climate capitalism: Global warming and the transformation of the global economy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nordhaus, T., Shellenberger, M., & Blomqvist, L. (2012). The planetary boundaries hypothesis: A review of the evidence. Oakland, CA: Breakthrough Institute.Google Scholar
Payne, P.G. (2016). What next? Post-critical materialisms in environmental education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 47, 169–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plant, M. (2001, August–September). Critical realism: A common sense philosophy for environmental education? Paper presented at the 26th Association for Teacher Education in Europe Conference, Stockholm.Google Scholar
Powell, N.S., Larsen, R.K., & van Bommel, S. (2014). Meeting the ‘Anthropocene’ in the context of intractability and complexity: Infusing resilience narratives with intersubjectivity. Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, 2, 135–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redman, C.L. (1999). Human impacts on ancient environments. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Sack, R.D. (1986). Human territoriality: Its theory and history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, D. (2005). Critical realism and empirical research methods in education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 39, 633–646.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sells, M. (1994). Mystical languages of unsaying. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Shipway, B. (2011). A critical realist perspective of education. London, UK: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Whitehead, A.N. (1967). Science and the modern world. New York, NY: The Free Press. (Originally published in 1925).Google Scholar