David Meek

Learning as territoriality: the political ecology of education in the Brazilian landless workers’ movement

In this contribution, I explore the importance of agroecological education in the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). I analyze how certain MST educational programs are based in a critical place-based pedagogy. This type of pedagogy can serve as a form of territoriality, influencing individuals’ interactions with the land. Drawing upon a political ecology of education perspective, I conclude that MST educators can serve as Gramscian ‘organic intellectuals’, by using a critical pedagogy of place as a form of territoriality to: (1) create a conception of place that is not discrete, but instead relational, and (2) advocate counter-hegemonic land usage.

Towards a political ecology of education: the educational politics of scale in southern Pará, Brazil

Social movements have initiated both academic programs and disciplines. I present ethnographic data that I gathered during 17 months of fieldwork with the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in southeastern Pará, Brazil, to explore the MST’s role in creating agroecological education opportunities. My analysis highlights three factors in southeastern Pará that initiate environmental education opportunities. First, activist professors are key players, serving as mediators between the state and social movements. Second, recurring events incubate environmental educational institutions and degree programs. Third, by collaborating with institutionalized education, movements are able to develop their own radical educational spaces. These three factors result in a gradual anti-neoliberal transformation in southeastern Pará’s rural educational opportunities. I develop a theoretical perspective of the political ecology of education to understand the relations between these three factors and educational change. By drawing attention to the educational politics of scale, I help advance theories of environmental education in a neoliberal age.

Introduction: Synthesizing a political ecology of education

Educational scholars face a challenge. Critical pedagogues acknowledge that “education, every aspect of it one can imagine, is political” (Apple & Aasen, 2003, p. 1). Yet, this understanding of education as fundamentally political is in many respects disconnected from an analysis of how the politics and economics of education affect our relation to and utilization of the environment. Various critical schools of thought in environmental education have made important inroads into the political nature of our educational relationship to the environment (e.g., DiChiro, 1987, 2006; Fien, 1993, 2000; Hursh, Henderson, & Greenwood, 2015; Kahn, 2010; Payne, 1995, 1999, 2015, Robottom, 1987; Robottom & Hart, 1995; Russell & Fawcett, 2013; Stevenson & Evans, 2011). This special issue seeks to critically engage with and advance this scholarship by synthesizing insights from political ecology with recent debates in environmental education. Political ecology, as an interdisciplinary research agenda, has historically focused on the relation between the politics of knowledge, political economy, and environmental change (Biersack, 2006; Goldman, Nadasdy, & Turner, 2011; Robbins, 2004). In the introduction to this special issue, we help develop a nascent political ecology of education framework by synthesizing diverse areas of educational and political ecological scholarship. The resulting political ecology of education perspective sheds light upon how power relations, political economic processes, and their structural arrangements mediate education—from tacit to formal learning, influencing the management of natural resources, conceptions of nature-society inter-relationships, and interactions with the natural environment. Political ecology explores the relationships between environmental change and political, economic, and social processes (Greenberg & Park, 1994). It can be contrasted with classic ecology, which apolitically explores webs of relationships between organisms and their surroundings (Biersack & Greenberg, 2006). Political ecologists are keenly interested in the production, circulation, and application of environmental knowledge (Forsyth, 2004; Goldman et al., 2011). As Neumann (2005, p. 1) indicates in the opening to his text Making Political Ecology, “the environment and how we acquire, disseminate, and legitimate knowledge about it are highly politicized, reflective of relations of power, and contested.” Despite this clear articulation of the relations between the politics of knowledge and those of the environment, political ecology has itself traditionally lacked a framework for understanding how the reciprocal relations between political economic forces and pedagogical processes mediate resource access, control, and land use and landscape change. Our objective in this introduction is to help develop a political ecology of education framework to illuminate these interrelations, contributing to a better understanding of the ways education, particularly educational practices focused on the environment, are inherently political and fundamentally impact nature-society relations. We begin by briefly reviewing the formative debates in anthropology, geography, and agrarian studies that led to the development of political ecology as an interdisciplinary area of inquiry. Next, we sketch out some of the major thematic debates within political ecology, highlighting areas of potential synergy with environmental education. We then develop a definition for the political ecology of education by synthesizing traditional definitions of political ecology, and simultaneously integrating those definitions

Critical food systems education (CFSE): educating for food sovereignty

ABSTRACT Food systems education can help individuals and communities transition to more sustainable food systems. Despite the growing scholarship on food systems education, there is a paucity of critical perspectives on its pedagogical methods, learning outcomes, and overarching objectives. This article addresses this gap by integrating insights from critical pedagogy, food justice, food sovereignty, and agroecology, developing a new synthetic area of study and research entitled critical food systems education (CFSE). CFSE is composed of a tripartite perspective, consisting of praxis, policy, and pedagogy. This framework is guided by the following overarching question: How can food systems education prepare individuals and teachers to transform the food system, and help communities attain food sovereignty? Following a review of the food systems education literature, we highlight the constraints of the depoliticized approach by drawing attention to its race and class-based assumptions. We then construct a definition of CFSE, and articulate the theoretical and practical cornerstones of this perspective, which are drawn from critical pedagogy, food justice, food sovereignty, and agroecology. A case study of a seed sovereignty project at a vocational high school associated with Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement is used to exemplify how CFSE can contribute to educating for food sovereignty.

Transforming Space and Society? the Political Ecology of Education in the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement's Jornada De Agroecologia

The occupation of space is a key geographic tactic for social movements. In this article, we explore how movements’ explicit and everyday occupation of space exists along a continuum. Taken together, these occupations can function as part of a broader strategy of creating dialogic spaces for environmental knowledge production. Dialogic spaces have an educational function, and are intended to provoke critical dialogue and transformation within society. Drawing upon a political ecology of education framework, we show that these dialogic spaces are strategically occupied to help transform both material and immaterial territories. We evidence this argument by analyzing the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement’s (MST) Jornada de Agroecology (agroecological journey), which is a social movement meeting. Drawing upon data collected at the 2012 Jornada, we argue that the Jornada’s disparate spatial forms are part of a broader journey related to transforming not only space, but also what constitutes agroecology.

Movements in education: the political ecology of education in Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement

This ethnographic research explored the opportunities and constraints towards advancing agroecological education within Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). The setting was the MST’s 17 de Abril settlement, and a series of movement and state educational spaces in southeastern Pará, Brazil. Drawing upon 17 months of fieldwork, it explored: (1) why does the MST see agroecology as a valuable ideological and practical tool?; (2) how do MST activists access political programs and financial resources to facilitate critical environmental education (Gruenewald 2003)?; and (3) how does the larger cultural milieu influence efforts to disseminate agroecological learning? Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, a large-scale survey (n = 330), and an analysis of remotely sensed satellite images and historical aerial photographs. The research underscored the importance of agroecology within the MST’s value system. The MST mobilizes around agroecology because it is ideologically tied to social transformation, and helps farmers resist the expansion of capital and establish food sovereign communities. Findings indicate that institutional partnerships between MST leaders and university educators were a key factor that enabled the movement to fund its critical environmental education efforts, such as a certificate program exploring agroecology, capitalism, and the agrarian question. One constraint to advancing critical environmental education is the history of the landscape, which was heavily deforested for cattle grazing due to government subsidies, and is largely perceived as unsuitable for subsistence agriculture. Another limitation is the waning political participation of the settlement’s inhabitants, who feel little affiliation with the movement’s ideals. This research advances the field by developing a theory of the political ecology of education. Made evident is how the distribution of power and resources among interconnected entities mediates pedagogical processes – from tacit to formal learning – and knowledge systems, affecting access to natural resources, interactions with the cultural landscape, as well as conceptions of nature–society relationships. This study provides an example of a national program that was developed through social movement activism, and is funding the creation of various critical environmental education opportunities at a local and regional scale. This example and the political ecology of education framework used to analyze it provide insights into the opportunities and constraints various communities face in advocating for critical environmental education.

The Geography of Education and the Education of Geography: Agricultural Extension and the Political Ecology of Education

The spatial nature of learning is increasingly a focus of geographic inquiry. I argue that the spatiality of education, which is where formal learning occurs, has the potential to shape students’ spatial imaginaries. I analyze the role the spatiality of agronomic education plays in the historical construction of the social and physical landscape in southeastern Pará, Brazil. In opposing ways, the first Green Revolution, and agrarian social movements’ more recent agroecological Green Revolution are found to structure agronomic education and spatial imaginaries. The perspectives of agricultural extension agents trained in traditional agronomic programs are compared with teachers from an agroecological school located in an Amazonian agrarian reform settlement of Brazils Landless Workers’ Movement. I collected these data over 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork. To analyze these data, I employ a political ecology of education perspective, which highlights how education and political economy interact to mediate relations with, access to, and contestations over natural resources. The geography of education and the education of geography exist in a complicated feedback cycle: Education is not neutral but ideologically charged and affects conceptions of productive landscapes, providing students intellectual and economic power to put their visions of landscape into effect.