environmental and social justice imperatives ever came about, so too is this the
best hope for sustaining them towards their promised aims.
It is this crucial lesson that current planetary management initiatives are most
in danger of forgetting. Without it, there is a serious vulnerability to ‘fallacies of
control’. These exaggerate the efficacy of intentionally structured determinism, not
because it is particularly effective in achieving radical social change, but because
the idea merely helps sustain existing patterns of privilege. The prevalence of this
fallacy is thus a particular example of how knowledge not only informs power,
but is profoundly shaped by it. If aspirations to radical social change are to have
real prospects for success, actions must be as transformative of these regressive patterns
in knowledge as of more material relations.
Perhaps transformation is better understood in terms of mutual relations of ‘care’
than of dominating ‘control’ (Bowden, 1997; Cluff and Binstock, 2001; Noddings,
2002; Frankfurt, 2004; Pellizzoni, 2004; Hagedorn, 2013). Deliberately enacted
this way, the ‘knowing doing’ of care can transcend the context-free absolutes,
assertive dualisms and idealized subjugations of control (Gilligan and Richards,
2009) – of neatly subordinated subjects over objects; relations after categories;
actions based on knowledge; effects determined by causes; ends driving means;
structure over agency (Held, 2005; Slote, 2007). The obdurate realities of the world
remain. However, in its rebalancing of relations between subjects and objects of
practice, a caring approach accommodates better than control the ways in which
transformative understandings and actualities are symmetrically co-produced with
action (Felt et al., 2013).
The knowing and doing of transformation are thus not separate, but intimately
interlinked. Neither alone is sufficient. As in the exquisite changes of direction
seen in flocking behaviours in nature, real social transformation is arguably only
truly achieved through a dynamic of diversity, creativity and democratic struggle
– equally in knowledge and action. Radical social change is therefore not about
controlled structures in knowing and doing, but about fractal patterns of ‘political
judo’, Trojan horses’ and ‘civilizing hypocrisies’ in turbulent flows of ‘knowing
doings’. Transformation is not achieved by deterministic structurings of social
control, but by counterpointing these with the subversive mutualities of care,
yielding more distributed culturings of radical change.
Where instead sustainability is addressed as a determinate technical end, rather
than as an emancipatory process for determining plural human and ecological ends,
it betrays its own foundations. Hope for genuinely progressive ‘green transformations’ are not about fear-driven technical compliance, but hope-inspired democratic
choice. This is the challenge of ‘emancipating transformation’.
Note
1 A longer, fully referenced version is available at: http://steps-centre.org/wp-content/
uploads/Transformations.pdf, accessed 2 July 2014.
Emancipating transformations 67
best hope for sustaining them towards their promised aims.
It is this crucial lesson that current planetary management initiatives are most
in danger of forgetting. Without it, there is a serious vulnerability to ‘fallacies of
control’. These exaggerate the efficacy of intentionally structured determinism, not
because it is particularly effective in achieving radical social change, but because
the idea merely helps sustain existing patterns of privilege. The prevalence of this
fallacy is thus a particular example of how knowledge not only informs power,
but is profoundly shaped by it. If aspirations to radical social change are to have
real prospects for success, actions must be as transformative of these regressive patterns
in knowledge as of more material relations.
Perhaps transformation is better understood in terms of mutual relations of ‘care’
than of dominating ‘control’ (Bowden, 1997; Cluff and Binstock, 2001; Noddings,
2002; Frankfurt, 2004; Pellizzoni, 2004; Hagedorn, 2013). Deliberately enacted
this way, the ‘knowing doing’ of care can transcend the context-free absolutes,
assertive dualisms and idealized subjugations of control (Gilligan and Richards,
2009) – of neatly subordinated subjects over objects; relations after categories;
actions based on knowledge; effects determined by causes; ends driving means;
structure over agency (Held, 2005; Slote, 2007). The obdurate realities of the world
remain. However, in its rebalancing of relations between subjects and objects of
practice, a caring approach accommodates better than control the ways in which
transformative understandings and actualities are symmetrically co-produced with
action (Felt et al., 2013).
The knowing and doing of transformation are thus not separate, but intimately
interlinked. Neither alone is sufficient. As in the exquisite changes of direction
seen in flocking behaviours in nature, real social transformation is arguably only
truly achieved through a dynamic of diversity, creativity and democratic struggle
– equally in knowledge and action. Radical social change is therefore not about
controlled structures in knowing and doing, but about fractal patterns of ‘political
judo’, Trojan horses’ and ‘civilizing hypocrisies’ in turbulent flows of ‘knowing
doings’. Transformation is not achieved by deterministic structurings of social
control, but by counterpointing these with the subversive mutualities of care,
yielding more distributed culturings of radical change.
Where instead sustainability is addressed as a determinate technical end, rather
than as an emancipatory process for determining plural human and ecological ends,
it betrays its own foundations. Hope for genuinely progressive ‘green transformations’ are not about fear-driven technical compliance, but hope-inspired democratic
choice. This is the challenge of ‘emancipating transformation’.
Note
1 A longer, fully referenced version is available at: http://steps-centre.org/wp-content/
uploads/Transformations.pdf, accessed 2 July 2014.
Emancipating transformations 67