Eve Tuck

Marcia McKenzie

Bridging environmental and Indigenous studies and drawing on critical geography, spatial theory, new materialist theory, and decolonizing theory, this dynamic volume examines the sometimes overlooked significance of place in social science research. There are often important divergences and even competing logics at work in these areas of research, some which may indeed be incommensurable. This volume explores how researchers around the globe are coming to terms - both theoretically and practically - with place in the context of settler colonialism, globalization, and environmental degradation. Tuck and McKenzie outline a trajectory of critical place inquiry that not only furthers empirical knowledge, but ethically imagines new possibilities for collaboration and action. Critical place inquiry can involve a range of research methodologies; this volume argues that what matters is how the chosen methodology engages conceptually with place in order to mobilize methods that enable data collection and analyses that address place explicitly and politically. Unlike other approaches that attempt to superficially tag on Indigenous concerns, decolonizing conceptualizations of land and place and Indigenous methods are central, not peripheral, to practices of critical place inquiry.

Theory, Methodology, and Methods

Place in Research

Andrew Bieler

Critical Education and Sociomaterial Practice presents a situated approach to learning that suggests the need for more explicit attention to sociomaterial practice in critical education. Specifically, it explores social, place and narrative dimensions of practical experience as they unfold in schools, in place-based learning, and teacher education contexts. Such an orientation to practice both links social and material conditions (social relations, other species, physical context, objects) to human consciousness and learning, and considers the relationship between such learning and broader cultural change. The core of the book is an examination of critical situated learning undertaken through three separate empirical studies, each of which we use to elaborate a particular domain or dimension of practical experience. In turning to the sociomaterial contexts of learning, the book also underscores how social and environmental issues are necessarily linked, such as in the production of food deserts in cities or in the pollution of the drinking water in Indigenous communities through oil development. More social movements globally are connecting the dots between sexism, heteronormativity, racism, colonization, White privilege, globalization, poverty, and climate justice, including with issues of land, territory and sovereignty, water, food, energy, and treatment and extinction of other species. As a result, categorizing some concerns as ‘social justice’ or ‘critical’ issues and others as ‘environmental,’ becomes increasingly untenable. The book thus suggests that more integrative and productive forms of critical education are needed to respond to these complex and pressing socio-ecological conditions.

Narration, Place, and the Social

Critical Education and Sociomaterial Practice

Restorying Culture, Environment, and Education

Fields of Green

Kate McCoy

This important book on Land Education offers critical analysis of the paths forward for education on Indigenous land. This analysis discusses the necessity of centring historical and current contexts of colonization in education on and in relation to land. In addition, contributors explore the intersections of environmentalism and Indigenous rights, in part inspired by the realisation that the specifics of geography and community matter for how environmental education can be engaged. This edited volume suggests how place-based pedagogies can respond to issues of colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty. Through dynamic new empirical and conceptual studies, international contributors examine settler colonialism, Indigenous cosmologies, Indigenous land rights, and language as key aspects of Land Education. The book invites readers to rethink 'pedagogies of place' from various Indigenous, postcolonial, and decolonizing perspectives. This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

Rethinking Pedagogies of Place from Indigenous, Postcolonial, and Decolonizing Perspectives

Land Education

Marcia McKenzie

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