CS,  as an approach, reminds us of the dimensions of education that are relevant as is the case in groundwater monitoring, where participation means learning new technology and in so doing there is a 'new'  potential to participate in a particular sphere of social life.   The opposite would be injustice and the lack of representation – or misrepresentation. We are including people who are usually excluded – and re-frame the conditions of engagement that promote social justice. As such participatory parity has intrinsic value (equity and a more just social context) but also extrinsic value (better data for remote rural areas otherwise difficult to access). Local-level information is not only captured on groundwater flows but also on flows of power and equality, visibility and invisibility. Who is visible or invisible (society) and what or where are parameters (science) hidden or obscured.  

This links in well to our interest in tools and technique. The ideas put forward by feminist philosophers are at the core of CS and the dimension of CS as an approach to environmental education in general and groundwater monitoring in particular - avoiding misrepresentation and recognising the principle of equality to participate in a particular sphere of social life. We pay attention to the way in which people who are usually excluded can be included and in so doing re-frame the conditions of engagement that promote social justice.

In the context of chaos and complexity theory – the analogy to be explored for human society is that not centralisation and many complex rules, but decentralisation and a few simple tendencies or rules, are the conditions for complex and harmonised local behaviour (Chambers 1997). The emergent paradigm for humans living on and with the Earth brings together decentralisation, democracy and diversity. What is local and what is different is being valued. The trends towards centralisation, authoritarianism and homogenisation are reversed – and top-down implementation is doomed (ibid).


Last modified: Saturday, 20 November 2021, 6:59 PM