Secondary Students’ Visions of ‘Ideal’ Material-Semiotic Networks, Possibly Supporting Increased Global Ecojustice
摘要
Most climate scientists agree that human activities are contributing to alarming increases in average global temperatures that are causing increasingly frequent and severe weather disasters, forced migrations, etc. that mainly affect disadvantaged people. This crisis should not, however, be treated in isolation; but, rather, as one of many other risks and harms—like food system collapses, habit destruction and species losses. While debatable, such complex crises appear largely due to—apparently expanding—‘pro-capitalist dispositifs; that is, vast and highly resilient networks of living (e.g., financiers, governments), nonliving (e.g., the Internet, container ships) and symbolic (e.g., ‘success via competition’) actants that largely function as machines to generate private profits. A key technique of such dispositifs is, apparently, disinformation. Companies have, for example, paid scientists and others (e.g., journalists) to cast public doubts about climate science. To ‘inoculate’ students against such propaganda, we found some successes using direct instruction (with relevant applications)—assisted by art forms—about apparently problematic relationships among STEM fields and societies and environments and possible sociopolitical actions to overcome risks/harms within them. ‘Successes’ like those above appear, however, to be somewhat rare. Consequently, we conclude by advocating for increased efforts at broadening and deepening global pro-ecojustice dispositifs.