From an essential being to an actor’s becoming: political ecology transformational learning experiences in adult education

Abstract

Adult education in political ecology entails critically and constructively observing the interactions among the actors involved in socioecological conflicts at global and local scales. This definition invites transcending environmental education and education for sustainability’s frontiers, examining the ontology, or the ‘place’, from where actors co-construct these conflicts. If actors don’t question the reified and divided assumptions of the ‘self’ and ‘reality’ at the base of these conflicts, the creative and transformative potential of becoming together cannot unfold. The transformational learning approach is a coherent way of addressing this challenge, as it promotes an ontological change in actors and their worldview. The training experience offered by the University of Santiago provides insights into how transformational education’s perspective can contribute to education in political ecology, inciting an acknowledgment of the self and the world as a complex and dynamic entanglement of actors.

Keywords:

• Political ecology
• learning
• activism
• becoming
• ontology

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the project USA 1555, University of Santiago of Chile, and the graduates of the Diploma in Social Ecology and Political Ecology, who shared their learning experiences that made this work possible.

Notes

1. Agroecology is an agri-food production system that arises as a critique to the epistemological reduction of agroindustrial modern development (Altieri et al. 1999). It is not only a techno-methodological critique, but an epistemological critique, because it engages with the challenge of moving from a modern episteme to a complex approach in food production systems, revaluing local identities, knowledges, and biodiversities. With this end, agroecology is defined as ‘pluri-epistemological’, that is, a ‘holistic discipline that apprehends and applies knowledges generated in different scientific disciplines, and that is nurtured by the knowledges and experiences of farmers, fishermen, indigenous communities, afro descendants, and other social actors involved in the rural development processes’ (Nieto, Francis, and Giraldo 2013, 205, our translation).