fostering a culture of sustainability: introducing the case for cultural indicators douglas worts...
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Fostering a Culture of Sustainability:
Introducing the case for cultural indicators
Douglas Worts and Lynne Teather
CSIN Conference, TorontoMarch 3, 2010
Objectives of the Workshop
1. that each participant thinks about the role that culture plays in defining their life
2. to identify ways that our society’s unsustainability is rooted in cultural values and behaviours
3. identify ways to create and use cultural indicators that can help shift how individuals and societal systems operate
What are your expectations for the workshop?
Agenda
A. Introductory Exercise
B. Discussions of Culture and Intersections with Sustainability
C. Cultural Assessment Indicators Exercise
Who are you… culturally?1. Spend a couple of minutes and write down 2 short
descriptors (1-3 words) that would provide a sense of how your culture is expressed in your life.
2. Pair up with someone you don’t know. Each introduce yourself - name and the two descriptors you have chosen for yourself
3. Share one descriptor to share in large group
A. Introductory Exercise
What can be made of these cards?
A. Introductory Exercise
How do these attributes relate to our sustainability / unsustainability?
A. Introductory Exercise
Section B: Culture and its Intersections with Sustainability
Culture“a basic pattern of assumptions
invented, discovered or developed by a given group as it learns to
cope with its problems of external adaptation and
internal integration”Edgar Shein
In, Mastering Civic Engagement
B. Culture and Sustainability
Another Definition of Culture…. all of the ways in which a people relate
to those aspects of life which: a) they can know and control; as well as,
b) those they can’t fully know or control, but to which they must have a conscious relationship.
Worts, 2001
B. Culture and Sustainability
Culture is: Standing
on the shoulders
of ancestors
B. Culture and Sustainability
Culture is Relationships
FamilyCommunity
Society
Global humanity
Environment
Self
The Unknown
<--Past <--Present --> Future-->
Museums &Cultural Organizations
Forces
of C
hange
Pressures
B. Culture and Sustainability
Sustainability, (and unsustainability)
is a cultural matter
• Our values• Our behaviours• Our attitudes• Our priorities• Our systems
Rooted in:
B. Culture and Sustainability
Sustainability Model
Econom
y
Society
Environment
Sustainability
CultureValues, traditions, behaviours, relationship
B. Culture and Sustainability
What are Some Attributes of Culture– Reflection (individual and collective)– Participation/engagement in what is relevant– Relatedness - connection to others/environment– Awareness of history - learn from the past– Creativity - & have faith in it personally– Conscious systems of knowledge - including values– Connection to the symbolic & the spiritual– Connection to what cannot be controlled– Responsible action– Capacity to embrace change– Attendance at cultural facilities…?
B. Culture and Sustainability
Adaptive Renewal Cycle
Holling (2004) www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art11
B. Culture and Sustainability
Complex Forest Ecosystem B. Culture and Sustainability
Australian Bushfire, 2009
Insurance companies had claims of $22 billion this year
B. Culture and Sustainability
Even more complexity…
Panarchy
B. Culture and Sustainability
“Sustainability is the capacity to create, test and maintain adaptive capability”.
Development is the process of creating, testing and maintaining opportunity
Adaptation in a cultural context…
- changes in personal relationships- changes in career- moving from country to city (or vice-versa)
Personal Level:
Collective Level:- development of new technologies- monocultures => pluralism- urbanization
Change can be either adaptive or maladaptive
Institutional Level:- re-examine first principles
B. Culture and Sustainability
The Challenge of Feedback Loops Indicating a
‘Culture of Sustainability’
Examples => making the invisible, visible
B. Culture and Sustainability
World Population
B. Culture and Sustainability
Convenience of Cell Phones
QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
B. Culture and Sustainability
What is this?
Courtesy: Chris Jordan
B. Culture and Sustainability
What is this - 2?
QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Courtesy: Chris Jordan
B. Culture and Sustainability
Discarded Cell Phones
Photo by Chris Jordan
QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US
every day
B. Culture and Sustainability
Ed Burtynsky - Ship Breaking, Bangladesh
B. Culture and Sustainability
Keeping Places-Australia
Armidale Aboriginal Cultural Centre and Keeping place
B. Culture and Sustainability
Exhibitions with Civic Engagement
B. Culture and Sustainability
B. Culture and Sustainability
“WithoutSanctuary”
Alberta, Canada: Economic Wellbeing
Economy
oikos (household)
nomia (management)
Mark Anielsk
B. Culture and Sustainability
C) Cultural Assessment Indicators Exercise
• Divide into 3 groups
• Each group is given a topic to develop a public engagement initiative on a sustainability topic
• Each group will brainstorm 2 or 3 ideas
• Each group will assess the ideas using a series of questions, provided - from the Critical Assessment Framework - and report back on one ‘best’ idea
Exercise - Report Back
Comments about the workshop?
Many thanks!
Lynne Teather, Professor, Museum Studies ProgramUniversity of [email protected]
Douglas Worts, WorldViews Consulting,[email protected] www.douglasworts.org