Socioecological Transformations : Linking Ontologies with Structures, Personal with Collective Change

Socioecological Transformations addresses two opposing trends in transformations literature. First, the widespread co-optation of transformations and transformative change in sustainability science and policy. Second, the narrow framing of “radical” socioecological transformations, which include only the structural/systemic aspects of socioecological destruction, but ignore the ideational, including ontological foundations of socioecological crises.

In response to these two trends, this book aims to reclaim socioecological transformations as radical, justice-centred concept and praxis, which tackle the deeper roots of the current socioecological violence and oppression, that touches deep down to the materialist-dualist worldview that has helped the establishment and maintenance of the colonial-racist-capitalist structures of oppression. Second, it aims to expand the meaning of radical transformations to include, in addition to resistance of current structures, the strategies and responses that challenge and seek to reinvent the dualist-materialist worldview onto which those structures rest. Such strategies and responses of transformations include in addition to active resistance, also the practice and embodiment of deep interconnectedness, kindness, and openness, which help us perceive and experience ourselves as part-wholes of One existence.

Socioecological Transformations is vital reading for students, researchers, and policy players who want to embrace and effectuate radical change in the face of socioecological crises.