This is a draft of the presentation that will be given at the HEA Social Sciences annual conference - Teaching forward: the future of the Social Sciences. For further details of the conference: http://bit.ly/1cRDx0p Bookings open until 19 May 2014 http://bit.ly/1hzCMLR or external.events@heacademy.ac.uk Imagined world This paper draws upon one world imagined through the transition movement; characterised by two interrelated and dynamic movements that will trigger a major ontological shift one is the end of cheap oil and the other is the impact of climate change. Many possible worlds may result and depend upon how we respond to climate change. The end of cheap oil spells the end to our modern industrial way of life and a need to rethink our communities in terms of their resilience. Resilience describes the capacity for communities to be able to meet their own needs - currently we are 3 days away from having no food in supermarkets should the infrastructure that support this breakdown. In this future, society faces a more inhospitable climate characterised by water shortage, extreme weather conditions and greatly diminished resources; necessitating a return to traditional skills such as weaving, hunting, bushcraft etc. On the one hand this poses a planned approach to the impending apocalypse through building resilience, but on the other hand is the view “there may be a situation where society breaks down and civil unrest leaves you and your family vulnerable". So you had better be prepared! Abstract This paper considers the future predicted through the ‘Transition’ movement which argues that our environment and lives will be drastically altered as a result of climate change and the end of cheap oil. A consequence of this is that skills and knowledge that we engage students with will need to support the development of resilient communities; which emphasise local production and a return to traditional methods. This paper draws upon sustainability, academic practice and psychoanalytic theory to explore whether working with such a scenario is helpful or unhelpful for engaging students and peers with sustainability.

1. Respite in
the
Apocalypse
Antony Johnston, University of the Arts
London

2. Contents
Introduction
20 years from now
Responses
Resistances
Academic Practice
Bystanders
Conclusion

3. Preface

4. Introduction
In what ways are future scenarios helpful
or not in raising issues around
sustainability with students and peers?

5. The Future?

6. Enjoy life while you
can. Because if
you're lucky it's
going to be 20
years before it hits
the fan.
In 20 years…
‘Dead End’ by Justin.Beck CC BY
2.0 / cropped from original
(Lovelock quoted in
Aitkenhead 2008)

7. ‘Peaked Oil’ by Mark Rain CC BY 2.0
Tim J Keegan 2007 [CC-BY-SA-2.0
Creative Commons

8. Peak Oil
(Reproduced from Duncan 2005: 7)

9. Teaching Sustainability
"THERE IS NO "MORAL COMPASS" APP." by
University of San Francisco CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

10. Response

11. Transition Movement
Crafts
Woodland
Building
Field
Workshop
Textile
Domestic
Repair, maintenance &
salvage
(Quilley 2009)
Defense
Photo by Kate Jewel CC BY-SA 2.0

12. Resistances
Photo by Herbythyme CC BY-SA 3.0 /
Cropped from original

13. Resistance
perhaps, there has never been a broader based and more
carefully corroborated scientific consensus on any issue,
involving thousands of the world's top climate scientists,
backed up by the most elaborate computer modelling.
(Jucker 2014 p27).

14. Why
The problem of our day is an inner deadening, and increasingly
deployed defence against the stresses of living in an overbuilt
industrialized civilization saturated by intrusive advertising and
media, unregulated toxic chemicals, unhealthy food, parasitic
business practices, time-stressed living...No wonder so many of
us disconnect, feel nothing, and resort to medication or other
addictions, inflicting violence upon ourselves in an attempt to
temporarily drown out external hostilities...
...The environmental crisis...ultimately springs from the
unmanaged demons of the human psyche, hopes for an end to
the long and self-destructive war between humankind and Earth
depend on repairing the damage inflicted on both.
(Buzzell and Chalquist 2009)

15. Transitions:
Constructive
‘Healthy’
Proactive
Enlightened
Enlivened
‘Good’
Illusory
‘Unhealthy’
Distraction

16. Hysteria
Today, a spontaneous sympathy for hysteria can once more be
found, because our age also feels that the putting-into-action is
impossible, because what they want is impossible.
(Benvenuto 2005: 17)
hysterics’ essential desire is to have an unsatisfied desire—a
desire for potential (in potentia) but never acted out (in actu)
pleasure.
(ibid.: 2)
Hysteria has a primary relation to escaping from what one
wants—which in turn has a paradoxical connection with the
impossibility of escaping...
(ibid.: 8)

17. Change for Sustainability
There is still a very strong tendency to delegate the paradigm
change from an unsustainable to a sustainable future to the next
generations.
From all we know about successful change in communities and
societies, it just doesn't work the way we tend to conceptualise it
in ESD: equip the next generation...with the skills and knowledge
to build a sustainable society... and we've done our job and they
will be off and away into a bright future. It is a classic case of
projection: because we messed up the world and cannot get a
handle on our unsustainable habits, lifestyle, society and
economic structures and actions... Apart from being morally
highly dishonest, it doesn't work.
(Jucker 2014: 25)

18. To what extent do future visions
defer action and set up something
impossible?

19. Enjoy!
the hysteric annoys our society
that wants to ensure the
maximum hedonistic satisfaction
for all...
(Benvenuto 2005 :8)

20. Academic
Practice

21. Teaching Sustainability
...uncertainty...arises from the complexity of the world and our
knowledge of it...arises out of a personal sense that we never
could hope satisfactorily even to describe the world, let alone act
with assuredness in it. `Anxiety', `fragility', `chaos': these are as
much characterizations of an inner sense of a destabilized world.
It is a destabilization that arises from a personal sense that we
never can come into a stable relationship with the world. The
descriptions of the world that are available to us especially in a
global and multicultural world multiply and conflict with each
other.
(Barnett 2004: 250)

22. Paradigmatic Approaches
(Sterling, 2001, 2003 & 2009, table reproduced from Plymouth CDIP)
Educational
paradigm
Positivist Interpretivist,
Constructivist
Critical,
radical
Participative
Role of
educator
Instruction Facilitation Critical pedagogy/
‘transformative
intellectual’
Mediation,
mentoring/
‘invitational’
leadership
Curriculum Prescribed Constructivist,
Student centred
Issues based Indicative, emergent
Pedagogy Delivery Transactional Critical pedagogy Coinquiry

23. Careful where you tread…
‘Karpman Drama Triangle’ image
by Cdw1952 CC BY-SA 3.0
Alienation
Frustration
Denial
Anxiety
Anger/aggression
Competition
Refusal
Loss

24. Bystander
...a person who does not
become actively involved in a
situation where someone else
requires help...Bystanders...
could, by taking some form of
action, affect the outcome of
the situation even if they were
not able to avert it. Thus, by
definition, anyone who gets
actively involved in a ‘critical
situation’, whether we describe
this choice as pathological
(scriptbound) or autonomous, is
not a Bystander.
(Clarkson 1987: 82)Image by ‫زودة‬ ‫رمزي‬ CC BY-SA 3.0

25. Criteria
1. Something seems wrong in a situation.
2. The person is aware of it.
3. They do not actively take responsibility for their part in
maintaining the problem or preventing its resolution.
4. Existential bad faith or inauthenticity – they claim they could
have acted otherwise.
5. It is base on minimising their capacity for autonomy, intimacy
and potency in the world
(Clarkson 1996: 54)

26. Moving to action
1. Notice that something is happening
2. Interpret the situation
3. Assume personal responsibility
4. Choose a form of assistance
5. Implement the assistance
(Latané and Darley 1970 cited in
Clarkson 1996: 102)

27. Utopias/dystopias exercise
our values
Can provide an alternative to
hegemonic power
May offer a way to engage in
meaningful praxis
Offers creativity, agency and
potency
Ideological (right/wrong)
Distraction
Defers action
Squanders agency, creativity
and potential
Ideological (wrong/right)
By way of a conclusion
A ‘helpful’ phantasy?

28. References 1
Aitkenhead, D. (2008) ‘James Lovelock: 'enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan‘’,
The Guardian, 1 March 2008,
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
Accessed 15 May 2014.
Barnett, R. (2004) ‘Learning for an unknown future’, Higher Education Research & Development, 23(3).
Barnett, R. (2007) A Will to Learn: Being a Student in an Age of Uncertainty. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill/
Open University Press.
Chalquist, C. & Buzzell, L. (2010) ‘Introduction: Psyche and Nature in a Circle of Healing’. In: Chalquist, C. &
Buzzell, L. (eds.) Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind. Kindle Edition: Sierra Club/Counterpoint.
Clarkson, P. (1987) ‘The bystander role’, Transactional Analysis Journal 17(3), 82-87.
Clarkson, P. (1996) The Bystander (An End to Innocence in Human Relationshps?), London: Whurr
Publishers.
Duncan, R. (2005) ‘The Olduvai Theory: Energy, Population, and Industrial Civilization’, The Social
Contract, Winter 2005-6. http://www.thesocialcontract.com/pdf/sixteen-two/xvi-2-93.pdf. Accessed 15
May 2014
Benvenuto, S. (2009) ‘Dora Flees…Is there anything left to say about hysterics?’, Journal of European
Psychoanalysis, 21(2).

29. References 2
Hopkins, R. (2008) The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience,
http://www.transitie.be/userfiles/transition-handbook(1).pdf, Accessed 25 January 2014.
Jucker, R. (2014) Do we know what we are doing? Reflections on learning, knowledge, economics,
community and sustainability,
http://rolfjucker.net/20140116_Do%20we%20know_incl%20Strachan_webversion.pdf. Accessed 20
January 2014.
Latané, B. & Darley, M. (1970) The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn’t HE Help?, New York: Appleton
Century Crofts.
Rockström, J. et al. (2009) ‘Planetary boundaries:exploring the safe operating space for humanity’. Ecology
and Society 14(2).
Quilley, S. (2009) ‘Transition Skills: Skills for transition to a post-fossil-fuel age’. In: Stibbe, A. (ed.) The
Handbook of Sustainability Literacy: skills for a changing world. Kindle Edition: Green Books.
Sterling, S. 2001. Sustainable Education: Re-visioning Learning and Change, Dartington, Green Books.
Sterling, S. 2003. Whole systems thinking as a basis for paradigm change in education: explorations in the
context of sustainability. University of Bath.
Sterling, S. 2009. Ecological Intelligence: viewing the world relationally. In: STIBBE, A. (ed.) The Handbook
of Sustainability Literacy: skills for a changing world Kindle Edition: Green Books.