The Ivan Illich Learning Web

AERA Conference 2010, Call For Papers / Panels: Ivan Illich SIG (#161)

We invite papers related to how Illich might respond to this year’s AERA theme, Understanding Complex Ecologies in a Changing World. From Illich’s perspective, the ideas of “ecosystem” and an “ecological worldview” were particularly seductive. While they appeared to represent part of a movement to protect life from industrial destructiveness, he ultimately suspected that “ecology” was part of a systematic movement to manage both nature and people’s lives in accordance with the abstractions of an administrative class of professional experts. For Illich, then, complex ecologies were undoubtedly changing the world but not necessarily for the better! Papers relevant to our SIG might then involve, though not be limited to, analyses and/or critiques of:

• The Manner in Which Curricula or School Systems Represent a Global Ecology of Education
• Education for Sustainable Development Policies and Practices as Representing or Intending Complex Ecological Outcomes
• Ecology, conceived as a Scientific Standard and New Knowledge Paradigm
• Media/Information Ecologies
• The Differences Between Political and Cultural Ecologies That Organize Nature as a Commons versus Nature as a Productive Resource
• Place-Based Forms of Education or Cultural Experience
• The Ways in Which Industrial Cultures Entail Different Life Expectations and Possibilities than Pre or Post-Industrial Cultures
• The Different Knowledge Ecologies Made Possible by Alternative Educational Institutions
• How Health, Medical, and Other Social Institutions Currently Produce an Ecology of Well-Being (or Unwell-Being)
• And, How Global Social Systems Frame, Integrate, or Otherwise Constrain Lived Experiences of the Local in Either a Contemporary or Historical Context

Please note: we are also happy to accept paper and panel proposals that extend beyond the scope of the specific call for papers issued here.

Important Announcements

* Call for Submissions will be posted on May 15, 2009
* Online Submission System will Open June 1, 2009
* Paper & Session Submissions: Deadline July 15, 2009

If you have any questions about a possible proposal for the Ivan Illich SIG, please feel free to contact our SIG Chair, Richard Kahn (rvkahn@gmail.com).