The authors propose a metaphor of "ensoulment" to suggest cam pus-based practices in favor of education for sustainability rather than the dominant greening.
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Environmental Education, Communication and Sustainability
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edited by Walter Leal Filho
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Vol. 34
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PETER LANG
Frankfurt am Main· Berlin, Bern· Bruxelles . New York· Oxford, Wien
Walter Leal Filho (ed.)
Sustainable Development at Universities: New Horizons
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PETER LANG
Internationaler Vedag der Wissenschaften
Chapter 15
Complexity of Campus Sustainability Discourse Tamara Savelyeva and Jae Park
Abstract From the outset, the authors note a general lack of a more updated and deep theoretical en gagement on the discourses of ecologism and sustainability in universities, and contrast this de ficiency with sustainability-related practices. While explaining the interconnected nature of eco logism and sustainability, the authors describe the rise of ecological citizenship and the ex pected role of universities. Although ecological discourses are comparable across countries and universities, the practical implications of sustainability on campuses vary in degrees of com plexity, namely linear, complicated, and complex. To support their arguments with practical understanding, the authors typify the challenges in sustainability practices at the Duke Universi ty and the University of Hong Kong by using their earlier works. The findings show similarities . in sustainability discourses across campuses characterized by a "double dichotomy" phenome· non in sllstainability efforts. The authors propose a metaphor of "ensoulment" to suggest cam pus-based practices in favor of education for sustainability rather than the dominant greening and public relation efforts.
Introduction .
The rapid growth of ecology-related efforts in higher education (HE) reveals the absence of well-articulated theoretical structures to support campus sustajnabiJity discourse. The theoretical reflections on the history and intellectual content, pertinent to the topic of sustainability and its relation to a broader notion of ecologisffi, are sporadic and discormected. In numerous analytical studies, the key objectives of campus sustainability discourse - analysis, management, and dis semination - have not been pursued as theoretically advanced. As a result, sustamability re mains an intellectually non-rigorous field within broader hmnanistic domains. The lack of theo retical engagement restricts researchers from fully understanding the complex situation of eco discourses on campuses. How does sustainability discourse fit in within strucrures and processes of HE? The case in point is the Western discourses1 of ecologism and sustainability, which have the most visible applications on university campuses, compared to other ecological move ments.' Although. the origin of concern for nature in the West could be traced back to the Middle Ages in the works of St. Francis (Sessions 1987), the rise of modern eco-discourses reaches the Age of Ecology with Carson's Silent Spring (1962) and Meadows's Limits of Growth (1972), which, in rum, followed earlier works on "ecological perspective" by Law rence and Huxley among other writers, and on "ecological conscience" by Leopold (Sessions, •
I
2
The present work follows Gee et al. (1996) to define discourse as "a way of talking, listening, reading, writing, acting, interacting, believing, valuing, and using tools and objects, in particular settings and at specific times to display or to recognize a particular identity." Dryzek (2005) proposes four basic ecological discourses: environmental problem solving. survivalism, sllstainability, and green radicalism.
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1987). The works of Carson and Meadows are generally regarded as the milestones of West ern eeo-movements. The various instances of sustainability discourses going global in HE worldwide can be exemplified by articles of Palma et al. (2011), Fonseca et al. (2011), Naeem and Peach (2011), and Leal Filho (2011). Palma et al. (2011) mapped sustainability courses at federal universities in BraziL Naeem and Peach (2011) drew a picture of EfS practices in Asia-Pacific region. Fonseca et al. (2011) described the situation of sustainability reports by Canadian HE institutions. A book edited by Leal Filho (20 II) linked this globalizing trend with an intrinsic complexity of HE systems and provides comprehensive examples of practica.l implementa tions of sustainabiLity discourse in international campuses. Dewey's (1954) seminal ideas about the public articulate the rise of citizenship and action that underlines the assumptions about the public nature of eeo-discourses on campus. According to Dewey, the public is brought into existence by the awareness of "extensive and lasting em broilment and the hann wrought by it" (p. 17). This idea leads to a particular type of public the ecologically concerned public - that develops a shared ecological awareness in response to environmental damages that inflict potential or real harm on them. This awareness would also be the basis of a discourse: an ecologically concerned public conscientiously organizes and sets itself in motion. In the process of action, the public performs the tasks of defending a common cause and interest (guardians); analyzing problems (interpteters); and taking action (doers or executors): •
Recognition of evil consequences brought about
a
common interest which required for ilS mainten�
ance certain measures and rules, together with the selection of certain persons as their guardians, in terpreters, and, if need be, their executors (Dewey 1954:
17).
Dewey's typology of public tasks (guardians, interpreters, and doers) can be paralleled with three key objectives of campus sustainability discourse - analysis, management, and dissemi nation. This parallel allows identifYing ecological citizens (Dobson 2004) and their roles. With their discourses, ecological citizens shape the ways of apprehending the world with their particular "assumptions, judgments, and contentions that provide the basic terms for analyses, debates, agreements, and disagreements" (Dryzek 2005: 9), and unveil their identity with their actions. Education system, HE in particular, is one of the key places where such ecological citizens are likely to rise. University is a time-honored global institution that has been addressing "the need for all citizens to have an infonned understanding of complex matters" (Barnett 1990: 176), from Christian theology to infonnation and communication rechnology. Thus, universities are expected to cultivate eeo-citizenry by promoting student and faculty involve ment with ecological issues in a learned and informed manner. Ecologism and sustainability discourses emerge from this informed and increasingly interconnected international university commtlllity. However, the complexity of ulliversity structures and processes makes it difficult to articulate and categorize the existing eco-djscourses on campus, with a view to finding ways to develop them further or to generate new pathways. This paper outlines a taxonomy of ecological discourses in HE campuses by making a comparative analysis between sustainability discourse and ecoiogism in two campuses with dif ferent cultural and historical backgrounds, namely Duke University (Duke) and the University of Hong Kong (HKU)l. This study follows the earlier work of Savelyeva and McKenna (2011) on the three different forms of campus sustainability - greening, sustainability sciences, and education for sustainability - and intersects these three types of sustainability 3
Duke University sustainability website: hnp://sllstainabiiity.duke.edu; University of Hong Kong sllstai nability website: www.sustainability.hku.hk.
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Complexity of Campus Sustainability Discourse
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applications on university campuses with complexity theory's categories of linear, compli cated, and complex practices. Preamble: Ecologism, sustainability, and complexity science
[t may be useful to start by differentiating ecology from ecologism. Ecology is the smdy of eco systems and is only marginally concerned about sustainability. By contrast, the more recent concept of ecoiogism consistently juxtaposes sustainability discourse, which adds a clear dif ference: ecoiogism is a movement for and with action. Ecologism suggests, demands, and emphasizes the need for a paradigm shift in humanity's relationship with nature, which should bring about fundamental changes in societal and political lives. Ecologism calls for major changes in very assertive or provocative tenns, and often assigns priority to the survival of nature over man. Such practical reasoning makes ecologism a moral and ethical discourse. The call for activism, its connection to ethics, and the slowly developing theoretical and ideo logical root') (Baxter 1999) make ecologisrn attractive to intellectuals and w elcomed by aca demic communities. Cases in point could be the Greenpeace flagship confronting a whaling boat a more action-oriented activism and the "Do not eat blue-fin tuna sushi" campaign from the World Wide Fundfor Nature (WWF), which is more of a moral education lobby. The "radical green" or "deep ecology movement" (Sessions 1987) brand of ecologism arouses strong atti tudes to the point of suggesting, for example, a "landscape without humans," however unfeas ible it might be. A milder form of ecologism considers the current environmental predicament as rooted in the "metaphysics of mastery," that is, the dominance of anthropocentrism in En lightenment humanism that would have caused subordination and exploitation of nature (Bonnett 2007). Sustainability is the youngest sibling in the ecologism family. It is perhaps the simplest among ecological discourses, and it has become popular since the J 980s. This integrated and integrating discourse appears reasonable and inclusive, as it covers environmental concerns at local and global levels and requires practical movements toward a gradual change in relation ships with nature. However, what sustainability means in theory has never been crystal clear within the academic community, regardless of it being the cause of comprepensive debates at all levels of policy and practice. The way something can become sustainable makes it instant ly an evolving and longitudinal discourse, highly scalable/negotiable, and, therefore, most re levant to academic institutions and individuals alike. A theoretical engagement with campus ecologism and sustainability cannot be addressed comprehensively with '"either/or" reasoning of classic science. In contrast, complexity science (CS) offers a conjunctive uand" framework for reasoning that allows better handling of some deeply ill-structured and problematic situations in the domain of social sciences (Delonne 20 I 0). CS is a body of multidisciplinary ideas and principles that has been constructed from var IOUS domains of knowledge (page 2011; Waldrop 1992) and offers an analytical tool to under stand a wide range of phenomena from ordinary to illstitutional level events of human life, such as o:"ganization learning and corporate management. What CS thinkers have in common is the 7 abIi�ty to take a closer look at certain qllalia of the realities. In relation to sustainability. these realitles might include predictability, causality, hierarchy of control, and, where human freedom becomes involved, accountability. These qualities are generally grouped into three degrees: li near (non-complex .causal relation), complicated (numerous but predictable rules), and complex �emer �ence), CS reiterates that "classic" nattrral and social sciences have long been falling short m thel�. desCnptlv e and explanatory endeavors because they mostly rely on linear and, at most, compilcated paradigms. Thus, CS positions itself by differentiation from classic scientific para digms and chaos theory : u[N]or mal science shows how complex effects can be understood from 7
.
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simple laws; chaos theory demonstrates that simple laws can have complicated, unpredictable consequences; and complexity theory describes how complex causes can 'produce simple ef fects" (Anderson 1999: 217). A succinct, yet comprehensive, list of the most frequently visited issues and concepts in CS includes: •
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Interconnected and interdependent elements and dimensions;
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Feedback processes promote and inhibit cbange within systems;
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System characteristics and behaviors emerge from simple rules of interaction;
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Nonlinearity;
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Sensitivity to initial conditions;
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Phase space tbe "space of the possible";
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Attractors, chaos and the 'ledge of chaos";
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Adaptive agents;
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Self-organization;
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Co-evolution.
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(Ramalingarn and Jones 2008: viii)
Method •
Two campuses are arbitrarily selected - Duke University and HKU - followed by data collection from tbe websites created by their sllstainability offices, complemented by interviewing sustainability-related staff as well as information from openly available textual narratives and artifacts. The data are manually analyzed employing reflective-interpretive approaches to ana lyses.
Results: Complexity science and campus sustainability actions The three degrees of complexity and CS's conceptual paradigms can now be intersected with the framework by Savelyeva and McKenna (2011), which describes three main fonns ofw]i· versity-based actions for sustainability (greening, sustainability sciences, and education for sustainability). Related theoretical considerations can b e illustrated with two cases of campus sustainability. This study is built on the assumption that HE institutions are multifaceted in their organizational structure and physical sites, with a wide range of enactments of ecological discourses. An easy approach to ecologism is to operate witb enforcement of a set of regula� tions, which is evident in the case of campus greening.
Greening: a linear policy and complicated action Campus greening is the strongest and the most visible sustainability application in contempo rary universities (Savelyeva and McKenna 2011). Greening serves as an assessment yardstick of overall campus sustainability and aims to increase the efficiency in all university opera tions and inspire sustainable actions. Campus greening policies and initiatives can create an ecologically sensitive academic environment and establish a results-oriented culture of sus tainable action. They also exemplify and provide visions of innovation and technological ad vances that create a positive image for the university. Greening includes a standard list (Ke niry 1995) of greening initiatives that are visible on both Duke and HKU campuses: •
Constructing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified buildings and retro-fitting old campus facilities;
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Including vegetarian and organic meal options in university catering;
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Complexity of Campus Susfainability Discourse
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Updating campus infrastrucnlre with energy and water efficient technologies;
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Using local and organically produced foods in food services;
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Organizing campus recycling initiatives;
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Participating in a sustainability assessment program; Including environmental impact specification for cleaning products, laboratory equipment, paper, and building materials.
The linear nature of greening policies allows administrators to explain the multifaceted sus tainability action in tenns of three well-defined elements: reduce, reuse, and recycle. The goal is
predictability (if you recycle one aluminum can, you can save half a gallon of gasoline) and control (if you can control energy consumption, you can control a university budget). Another important characteristic of the linear nature of greening is that it presumes consistency and steady conditions. For example, given the same general conditions for enforcing a green policy on campus, a university usually achieves corresponding results, say, reduction in energy cost, waste production, or water consumption. When conditions are changed (e.g enforcement of new room temperature standards for lecture halls), the outcome (reduction in energy consumption) will settle to a new equilibrium until the next policy takes effect. Linearity in greening has a number of significant consequences, some intentionally sought, and others unintended. First, it heJps universities to materialize sustainability efforts and to measure achievable outcomes provided that proper planning, analysis, and assessment are si
multaneously conducted. Second, it narrows the scope of policymaking to
a
linearly definable
,scale. Thus greening often allows campus leaders to break down sustainability into piecemeal processes so that even a less-endowed university can make small steps toward its envisioned sustainability. And third, it tacitly makes a "false promise" of absolute control that prevents panicipants from understanding more complex problems and corresponding solutions re
quired for true sustainability. This is obviously an unintended side-effect of linear greening efforts, which raises the unsolved problems to complicated and complex levels.
However, not all campus-based greening efforts are linear. The large variety of scenarios
that draw students and faculty into greening efforts offers a glimpse of the complicated side of campus sustainability. For example, installing recyciing bins for sorting waste might not nec essarily inspire people to change their habits of dumping all waste in the same garbage bin. To make this happen, universities might need to use media resources to �nnounce and monitor
the initiative, educate the public about recycling practices, and promote recycling on their campuses. Analogous actions might be needed for reusing and reducing. It is obvious that
greening policies are received by the campus community members with different levels of responsiveness, suggesting the need for a mOre complicated approach to sustainability, which will be discussed in the following sections.
Sustainability sciences: complicated business Savelyeva and McKenna
(2011) described a second type of campus-based sustainability efforts
as "sustainability sciences," with research being its main feature. The idea is that universities as research institutions "could and should develop much of the knowled ge base for an ecolog ICally enlightened society" (Mathisen 2006: 111). Campus-based sustainability science are s complicated (in the taxonomy of CS) and they often transcend disciplinary boundaries. They .
m�lude either collaborative or single field research projects focused on s ustainability and sus tamable development (Fig. 1), -
Tamara Savelyeva and
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Fig. 1:
Sustainability research domains on HKU
Jae Park
and Duke campuses •
Economic
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development Forestry
Soil science
Biodiversity
Agric ultu re
,
Energy and
resource conServatio n
Note: The absence of linking lines among the concentric ovals illustrates the challenge of creating inIer- and trans-disciplinary connections.
The complicated nature of sustainability sciences on campuses is attributable to their broad range . s, of discipline the mere presence of sustainabiiity-retated research in a university does not make that university sustainable. Existing research projects must be inventoried, and new studies must be launched in coordination without compromising the academic freedom of the faculty and research fellows. A university usually creates a separate research center to identify and monitor sustainability-related research studies, attract governmental and corporate sponsors, and house the new studies on sus tainability-related topics.
Education for sustainability: a complex story In contrast to the divergence of research-centered sustainabiUty sciences, several models of Education for Sustainability (EfS) converge in infusing sllstainability into a university's teaching and learning that are intended t o engrave stable and lasting dispositions in students and academic staff (Savelyeva and McKenna 20 II). At
Duke,
sustainability-related courses
are offered primarily in the Nicholas School of the Environment via its undergraduate, gradu ate, and professional degrees and programs in biology, environmental sciences, and earth sciences. In its Faculty of Science and School of Biological Sciences HKU also offers majors, minors, and degree programs to undergraduate and graduate students with a focus on issues related to sustainability. Students can take eJectives on broader sustainability issues (climate change, social responsibility, sustainable building design) in the Faculties of Engineering. Ar
chitecture, Business and Economics, Law, and Social Sciences.
The most common ways of delivering EfS to faculty and staff are sustainable-practices training (for administrative staff) and "curricular greening" workshops (for faculty members). These initiatives at the curricular level are typically offered with the support of external grants, and the access to funding generally affects whether a university can offer such work shops. All of these efforts to introduce EtS into teaching and learning, either through adding a sustainability course to the roster or offering a training session to staff and faculty, contribute to the noble goal of capacity building aimed at a particular type of "global citizenship"
(De
maine 2004; Pike 2008) by fostering concrete attitudes and values that witl produce "ecologi cally sound" graduates, faculty and administrative staff. The primary objective ofEtS is guided by several United Nations (UN) declarations and initi atives, such as the ongoing 2005-2014 UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.
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Complexity of Campus Sustainability Discourse
H owever, almost 40 years after these international declarations and signatories' commitments, EfS remains marginalized and delimited to a particular discipline on campus
Of
a lecture topic
within a course. Creative, cross-curriculum, interdisciplinary ways of teaching are rather ex ceptional due to the disciplinary compartmentalization within university systems themselves (Savelyeva 2012). The perspective from complexity theory can contribute to a better understanding of the dy namics of classroom relationships regarding sustainability. Taking cues from Miller and Page
(2007) it could be argued that EfS should be seen as a "complex adaptive system" rather than simply an "adaptive system." First, multiple agents are involved namely, students, faculty, and administrative staff with various degrees of participation. Second, these agents are not isolated, but interdependent. This tenet has been marked as reflexivity by CS theorists. Third, there is di versity among agents, yet each contributes to their organization with their uniqueness and dif ferences, which provides cohesion in EfS (ref. Sargut and McGrath 2011). For example, stu dents bring in new systemic properties (new agents, ideas, and problems) to everyEfS course or training program. These properties are essential for "emergence" in a complex adaptive system, which typically makes "the whole more than the sum of parts." InEfS, such emergence happens during the process of teaching and learning, and they cannot be predicted. For example, an un anticipated yet relevant issue could emerge during a class discussion that might lead to deeper understanding of sustainability. Second, any small difference, called "disturbance" (for exam ple, diverse opinions about climate change within a group) gets amplified through the interac tion between faculty and students. This amplification of minor differences holds the potential tor short- or longer-term changes in students' and faculties' perceptions of sustainability. Not all disturbances lead to a major shift in perception and understanding of sustainability, just like not every graduate of the university becomes a global eco-citizen with deeply rooted sustaina bility ideals. This points to another complex property of the sustainability discourse: unpredicta bility of outcomes. Accepting the non-linear character of outcomes ofEfS helps one to embrace the paradoxical nature of bi-directional relationships within educational processes and to view the lack of absolute control as nonnal. This acceptance helps ease the perception of personal or pedagogical failure associated with linear implementation sustainability practices. Recognizing
.
and anticipating unpredictability is also a goal o f producing a global eco-citizen more realisti cally. As the focus on measurable outcomes of campus sustainability programs becomes less urgent and somewhat shocking, more attention can be paid to immediate interactions (studentfaculty), available resources (existing courses), and defining relationships·(agents-nature).
Discussion and conclusion The findings indicate that ecologism and sustainability discourses of two culturally and geo graphically distant campuses show significant similarities in: • • •
efforts to meet eeo-standards and rank highly in international ranking systems; emph sis on greening overEfS and sustain ability research; � devotIOn of sustainability efforts to appear as an eco-compliant institution before the gen eral public;
mo�tly linear approach to eco logism and sustainability efforts; and • t�c:t assumptio n that compl ex intricacies of campus sustainability and issues of accountablhty are not really acce ssible to the public. The findings draw a double dichotomy picture of campus sustainability: a dich otom y bet\veen camp s sustaina bility � discourse and the university's public image, and this in turn with an in . ternatIOnal rankmg o excellence in sustainability. This dichotomy is a resu lt of the HE em•
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Tamara Savelyeva and Iae Park
190
phasis on quick and visible sustainability image-building efforts that might be found in other campuses around the world. Although these are reassuring signs of sustainability implementa tion efforts on campuses, whether university alumni will continue participating and growing as ecological citizens after their graduation is difficult to predict Nor is- it certain that academ ic and non-academic staff will lead their off-campus lives conforming to their infonned sustai nability ideals. The double dichotomy phenomenon makes sustainability discourse look identic al to that found in universities of comparable rank. but the perceptions of tbose involved can be drastically different. HKU does have
a
reputation as a green university. However, this percep
tion is countered by a disastrous sustainability situation in the region. This implies that little progress has been made outside the HKU campus. By contrast, Duke enjoys a positive reputa tion as a highly advanced sustainability-driven university that serves an ecologically con.
cerned community.
The bottom line is that campus sustainability efforts should render more stable habits and lifelong ideals among people in HE. Indeed, the main raison d'etre of the university as a so cial institution is the fonnation of future citizens, who are expected to be ecologically in formed and proactive. This imperative for nurturing
sense of ecological citizenship can be illustrated with an analogy borrowed from Ancient Greek philosophy "ensoulment". In short, a
ensoulment means the incorporation of a soul into a physical body of living beings.
In the context of sustainability discourse in HE, ensoulment can illustrate the need for higher level of acquired sustainability values, the "ecological sou]", for the HE public rather than a merely �echanistic and linear delivery of green knowledge, green rules and green in itiatives. But ensoulment is not the same as simply knowing a set of sllstainability values. An ecological ensoulment also suggests a pedagogical aim in HE, that is, helping people to embo t dy those values with a finn intellectual commitment and lasting predisposition to sustainabiliy actions. To achlcve this state of ecological ensoulment, diverse ways might be considered by HE educators and academics; fyom classical approaches of moral education scaffolding with a par ticular focus on the virtue of justice (Kohlberg 1981) and character education (Lickon. 1992) to . the approach of dual inculcation of "deep ecology movement" and "deep ecology" (Drengson and Inoue 1995; Naess 1973). The real challenge for any of these approaches (0 ecological en soulment lies beyond short-tenn and action-driven campus greening, in a categorically different type ofEfS through which ecological citizenship can shine forth from within. Finally, the idea of ensoulment supports a non�mechanistic research perspective, which takes into accoun t'
