Abstract
We bring to the academic debate on place-based education (PBE – science), ecojustice, and indigenous knowledge a distinctly different perspective on the relationship between humans and their world. While contemporary conceptions of place tend to reinforce modern distinctions between subject and object, our conception of place, founded upon being, attempts to ameliorate these binary distinctions. Within the literature on PBE a variety of conceptions of place extend influence over the movement. The natural realm, that is, a physical location, orients early conceptions of place. Gradually, the veneer of the cultural realm has extended influence over place to include community. Presently, a sophisticated cultural realm considering complex social and political factors has extended place meaning. The literature review indicates little consideration of place from the ontological perspective. Our work explores the ontological realm through the philosophy of hermeneutic phenomenology – a philosophy premised upon human relationship with the world. Place conceptions inclusive of the ontological and the resulting influence they have on PBE movements have the potential to replace a traditional and prevailing form of knowledge as representation with a view of knowledge as a subspecies of a kind of thoughtful dealing with the world capitalizing on transcendent experiences with nature and our primordial capacity for care.
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Notes
- 1.
For a detailed description of how the concept educating-within-place was conceived see D. D. Karrow (2003).
- 2.
In its upper case form “Being” is distinctly different from its lower case form, “being.” Being (capitalized form) “is not a being, a God, an absolute unconditional ground or a total presence, but is simply the living web within which all relations emerge” (Bigwood 1993, p. 3). Whereas being is existence, Being refers to the primordial existence of our being. In other words, Being is, “that which gathers particular beings together into a way of being and courses through them in their coming to appearance (p. 146).
- 3.
Our intent within this chapter is not to provide an account of the derivation of educating-within-place, but to elaborate theory around PBE by considering ontological realms. For a more detailed account of its origin, see D. D. Karrow (2003).
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Michiel van Eijck for his astute editorial advice, and Michael Mueller and Deborah Tippins for their invitation to contribute to this collected work.
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Karrow, D., Fazio, X. (2010). Educating-Within-Place: Care, Citizen Science, and EcoJustice. In: Tippins, D., Mueller, M., van Eijck, M., Adams, J. (eds) Cultural Studies and Environmentalism. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3929-3_16
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