— SYSTEMIC ALTERNATIVES —

John Foran
— curator —
John Foran is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a member of EJ/CJ, the Environmental and Climate Justice Studies Research Hub at UCSB’s Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies.
T eaching about the climate crisis can be devastating to students if we focus only on the grim facts. What if, in every course, we could teach ways to confront the climate crisis as well?
In a way, that is what the NXTerra project is all about, as are our individual Topics.
I follow along these lines in my Topic page on Climate Justice Movements, which shows students that there are others around the world who are confronting the crisis in fresh and exciting ways, and that our students can not only learn about these movements, they can join in and create new ones as well.
A second and for me crucial approach is to show students that there are attractive alternatives to the way things are at present—holistic blueprints and actual, real-life case studies, exciting theoretical systems, and powerful political strategies for social transformation. Among them are such paradigms and practices as:
Some of the questions that can be discussed with students and others include:
Another space for systematic alternatives is comprised by the many areas and sectors where new ideas are being tried, such as permaculture and regenerative agro-ecology, renewable energy and reduced consumption of all forms of energy, deeper and more participatory democracy, and circular local economies, among others.
Both of the above approaches and all of these critical questions (and many others!) make up, for me, the Topic of “Systemic Alternatives,” and this part of the website will show you how I (and eventually other teachers) have been working in this broad, almost limitless area.
Ways to get started
I have prepared a short overview of most of the topics involved as a class handout: Systemic Alternatives: Notes on Transition Towns, Degrowth, Buen Vivir, Ecosocialism and How to Get There.
For good overviews of the topic, you can consult my undergraduate syllabus for Sociology 130SD: The World in 2050: Systemic Alternatives, or my graduate course of the same name, Sociology 265.
For superb book-length introductions to the topic, there is the aptly named compilation Systemic Alternatives, which you can read here, and Pluriverse: A Post-development Dictionary, both of which I use in my classes.
There are fascinating websites to explore, and to get a sense of the creativity and vision that exists around these issues, and some these can be found below.
I also include a number of bibliographies with readings on particular systemic alternatives which can both help teachers grasp the topic better, and serve as readings for students. Where possible, these are annotated by myself.
In addition to syllabi, teaching ideas, websites, videos, and readings, the last section of this Topic is devoted to an actual systemic alternative which my students and I engage in both inside and outside the classroom, a project we call Eco Vista. We hope that this might inspire other teachers and learning communities to create their own real-world systemic alternatives.
Please contact me at foran@soc.ucsb.edu if you have any feedback, if you want to contribute to this Topic, or if you’d like to be part of a network of educators involved in this kind of work with their students.
Let’s have fun trying to change the world with our students and communities!
— Updated May 13, 2020
[under development, check archives and syllabi to build this]
An annotated bibliography on Systemic Alternatives TBA
Arturo’s 2010 book Designs for the Pluriverse
Pablo Solon, Systemic Alternatives (PDF – Spanish; PDF – English)
Fictions and Future Scenarios
Jonathan Porritt, The World We Made
Kim Stanley Robinson, The California Trilogy
Ernst Callenbach, Ecotopia
Naomi Oreskes and Conway, The Coming Collapse of Western Civilization
[Stay tuned for Individual bibliographies on Degrowth, Commoning, Buen Vivir and the Rights of Mother Earth, Ecovillages, Transition Towns, Ecosocialism and ecofeminism]
Websites
[section in development]
Publications
La Via Campesina
The New Economy Coalition
Transition US
Indigenous Environmental Network
DSA EWG
Symbiosis Revolution
SCNCC
Global Tapestry of Alternatives
Doughnut Economics
The World in 2050 2025: Sustainable Development and its Alternatives [Sociology 130SD, UCSB, Spring 2020].
The World in 2050 has become my “signature” class, one which I have tried to offer every year starting in 2016-17.
The World in 2050: Sustainable Development and its Alternatives [Sociology 130SD, UCSB, Spring 2019].
The World in 2050 has become my “signature” class, one which I have tried to offer every year starting in 2016-17.
The World in 2050 [Sociology 265SD, UCSB, Spring 2018].
This is the graduate version of 130SD, which naturally tackles longer and more difficult texts. It is still very much a work in progress, as I have so far only taught it once!
Earth in Crisis [Sociology 134EC and Environmental Studies 134EC, UCSB 2019].
Earth in Crisis, graduate seminar [Sociology 265EC].
What’s Wrong with the World? How Do We Fix It? [Interdisciplinary Studies 133B, UCSB 2019]
Co-aught with Ken Hiltner, English Department, UCSB. This is a small [35-student] seminar offered in the summer for the past three years. Because it falls under the category of Interdisciplinary Studies and not English or Sociology, it has attracted students from as many as twenty different majors that span the social sciences, sciences and humanities.
Eco Vista [Sociology 190A]. Introduction to the course: “From Isla Vista to Eco Vista – A Design Project in Community Resilience.”
This is a new class, offered first in the Spring of 2019 to 18 undergraduates. It is tightly linked to the Eco Vista initiative outlined below, and provides a chance for students to actually practice systemic transformation by designing and implementing projects of their own to turn their residential community adjacent to the university in to an ecovillage.
One of the most exciting experiences of my teaching life has been a new student-driven project at the University of California to turn their adjacent residential community of 20,000 (80 percent of them students) into an ecovillage in the next 8-10 years, transforming what is now Isla Vista into Eco Vista.
You can learn more about it by visiting the website: ecovistacommunity.com
You can read some short pieces about it in this folder:
Berchenko, Jess A et al. TBA
I have proposed a detailed research proposal that goes into a bit more depth.
Buen Vivir – introduced by Sergio Beltran
QUOTE: Buen vivir (living well, or living well together) is an indigenous Latin American term describing alternatives to development rooted in community, ecology, culture, and a spiritual connection to the land. The concept is radically different from the modern economistic view: whereas homo economicus sees nature as a resource to be exploited, even destroyed, for profit, the convivial buenviviente sees other species, as well as forests and rivers, as having the same rights to prosper that she does. The concept has been taken up by social movements and progressive governments across the Americas, serving as a philosophical and cosmological foundation for developing new and better ways of living well together.
Further reading:
Buen Vivir: Today’s Tomorrow, by Eduardo Gudynas.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1993) by Paulo Freire (PDF)
FEATURED MEDIA RESOURCES
Published EcoVista CoolBlock on Jun 9, 2019
Published by Stockholm Resilience Centre TV on May 6, 2019
How to imagine alternative economic futures? Timothée Parrique describes his on-going doctoral research at the Stockholm Resilience Centre on the political economy of degrowth. The lecture was organised by the group Post Growth Transformations Stockholm on 2 May 2019.
Published by P2P Foundation on May 9, 2017
Published by Fundacion Solon on January 16, 2018