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From-Within-the-Event: A Post-constructivist Perspective on Activism, Ethics, and Science Education

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Activist Science and Technology Education

Part of the book series: Cultural Studies of Science Education ((CSSE,volume 9))

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to sketch out a post-constructivist perspective on activism, science education as/for socio-political action, and the associated ethico-moral dimensions. I begin by providing glimpses at one local environmental activist group, which had taken the environmental health of the main watershed in which its municipality is located as its object, and at seventh-grade students who, following a call by the activists, contributed to realizing the common goals that these articulated. I then respond to the rhetorical question whether community-based activism is something to feel morally good about before articulating theoretical perspectives on activism, the eventness of events that orients us to continual becoming, and on ethics from classical and from-within-the-event perspectives on activism. I conclude that the post-constructivist perspective emphasizes the ethico-moral dimensions of activism, which does not inherently do good, but whose actions are subject to the same kind of precautionary principles that activists often jut into the faces of (sorcerer-apprentice) scientists.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although a website of the SENĆOŦEN aboriginal language spells the name ḰENES, the activists and the academic unit doing related research refer to it as ḰENNES. I use one or the other spelling appropriate to the context in which the name is used.

  2. 2.

    I came to understand only much later that what would unfold was not caused by my actions and what would come out of all of this exceeded the powers of my research group that thought about activism as a context for science education.

  3. 3.

    In his original Russian, Bakhtin (1993) uses the term sobitijnost’ sobitija (событийность события), which the translators of his book rendered as “eventfulness of the event”), but which other translators render as “eventness of the event.” In his French language, Romano (1998) uses the term événementialité, a neologism based on the adjective and noun événementiel (“of events”) that was constructed to emphasize the event us something unfolding and inherently graspable in its extent. The English translation of the book renders the French term by means of the adjective “evential.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, University of Victoria, MacLaurin Building A567, Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2, Canada

    Wolff-Michael Roth

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  1. Wolff-Michael Roth
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Correspondence to Wolff-Michael Roth .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    John Bencze

  2. Faculty of Education and Department of Science and Technology Studies, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Steve Alsop

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Roth, WM. (2014). From-Within-the-Event: A Post-constructivist Perspective on Activism, Ethics, and Science Education. In: Bencze, J., Alsop, S. (eds) Activist Science and Technology Education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4360-1_14

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