Workshop series #4/7
Perin Ruttonsha
This series of 45-minute workshops examines the balancing act that is implicit in global sustainability transition, organised around the following seven themes: (1) order in chaos; (2) reductionism reconciled; (3) parallel worlds; (4) power and vulnerability; (5) shadows and archetypes; (6) relational wellbeing; and, (7) fierce and quiet kinds of love.
Global sustainability challenges have been characterised by considerable disparities in power, equality, and wealth. This has included a long history of colonisation, resulting in the disenfranchisement and marginalisation of diverse populations, based on race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, gender, sexuality, and ability. Whereas, sociologist Rianne Eisler has suggested that contemporary social and environmental movements are reflective of a transition towards forms of social organisation based around collaboration rather than domination, care rather than cruelty, creativity rather than destruction. Meanwhile, where marginalised communities are undergoing processes of cultural healing from centuries of oppression, those in positions of dominance may, at the same time, be reconciling with their ancestral histories of becoming the oppressors. This results in a two-sided process of recalibration, wherein some are working to reclaim their heritage, traditions, voices, agency, and sovereignty, while others are being asked to relinquish the superficial forms of dominance, along with abuses of power and privilege, which have become embedded across academies, industries, governments, and communities. At the same time, contemporary global scenarios—such as climate change and COVID-19—raise challenges that may also trigger high levels of existential angst, and whereby we are forced to confront the potential short and long-term decline of planetary systems, along with our own human vulnerability, therein. In this workshop, we consider how to balance between these two sides of society and humanity to facilitate regenerative sustainability.