Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
our reluctance to create a somewhat larger frame of mutual interest, if not
mutual responsibility, leaving us with no ways to live together as a people or
to address societal problems. Our preoccupation with creating and defending
boundaries tends constantly to narrow our sense of identity - as does the constant
preoccupation with comparing, and with similarities and differences. . . .
Community groups historically have proven incapable of sustaining coalitions
that did not necessarily address immediate community needs but might change
harmful policies and practices over time.
Social capital, civic engagement and democratic renewal cannot be based solely
on utility. A value change is required, which in turn perhaps points to the inadequacy
of Coleman and Putnam's concept of 'social capital' if viewed largely as an exchange
relationship. If something is worth doing, it should be done for its own sake as well
as for any external benefit. The principle and practice of civic and community
participation needs to become part of what Bourdieu (1977) termed the
social
habitus
- that is, the production of systems of durable transposable dispositions,
structuring structures, matrices of perceptions, appreciations, predispositions, tend-
encies, norms, values and actions. In her study of democratic participation in Brazil,
Abers (1998: 63) suggests that a democratic habitus and collective moral personality
can be constructed from virtually nothing. People learn about democratic practices
through experiencing them. They gain confidence, as well as skills and habits of
collective decision-making, through participating in actions that have an evidently
good effect. They learn that selfishness can easily backfire, while being concerned
about the needs of others does not necessarily mean losing out oneself. Nonetheless,
material poverty and educational deficits need to be addressed, if people's potential
for and sense of collective efficacy and personal agency is to be nurtured. Existing
predispositions to exclude or to conform need to be challenged. Existing structures,
relations and processes of power, systems of administration and governance, and
vested interests need to be contested and reformed, so that new sustainable habits,
perspectives and values can emerge - from the bottom up and dialogically. Projects
that involve both social and ecological concerns but deny the importance of either
are likely to falter as the initiative to build the Huangbaiyu Sustainable Village in
China demonstrates. This ecovillage has houses designed and built to high ecological
specifications, based on the guidance of the American green architect William
McDonough, but failed to attract local buyers, largely because local people, with
their limited means, prioritized social, educational and employment issues over the
benefits of living in environmentally sound, comfortable and attractive dwellings.
There was a lack of understanding, a lack of dialogue, between the fundamental
needs of people and those of the ecosystem (Sudjic, 2006).
Public libraries: public pedagogy, democracy and
sustainability
The privatization and commercialization of public space, and more generally of the
public sphere, is a defining characteristic of neoliberalism's political and economic
hegemony. This has been discussed fully and defiantly by many people (Low and
Smith, 2006; Harvey, 2013). The future of public libraries in the age of the Internet
and ubiquitous digital technologies may seem rather trivial but what makes the
