Ecological Psychology

1
Ecological Psychology

• Introduction

2
Psychologies of the Self

• Ways to answer Who am I???
• Psychology vs. Psychologies
• Physiological
• Personality
• Social
• Abnormal
• Developmental
• Cognition
• Learning
• Industrial/Organizational
• Humanistic

3
Psychologies tend to be

• Atomistic
• Self as separate, distinct phenomenon discrete
  unique
• Reductionistic
• Explain by smaller mechanisms breaking down
• Empirical
• Driven by observations of differences
  data-driven
• Discipline-based
• Separated by areas, and separated within areas
• Value free
• Strive to be neutral descriptive, not normative

4
Limitations of Psychologies

• Can miss larger context
• Cultural
• Evolutionary
• Historical
• Philosophical
• Ecological
• Can normalize unnatural behavior
• Modern human life may be unsustainable
• May ignore natural ecology limits on species
• May ignore moral (or values) ecology
• Desire Community, Career, Capitalism Freedom
• Ideas of the Good

5
Goals of Ecological Psychology

• Contextualize Psychology
• Within culture
• Within history
• Within nature
• Integrate across academic disciplines
• Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, History,
  Ecology, Biology
• Uncover assumptions and predispositions
• Is individual person self-contained unit
• Is autonomy always desirable
• Is personal freedom always good?
• Are we each entitled to pursue our own idea of
  the good?

6
Key Perspectives

• Modernity
• Technology
• Capitalism
• Desire
• Consumption
• Career
• Food
• Nature
• Evolution

• Entertainment
• Wisdom
• Community
• Individual
• Dwelling
• Atomism
• Holism
• Freedom
• Good

7
Cartesian Knowing

• What does it mean to Know something?
• Control, instrumentality, completeness,
  competency
• Knowing something as a Fossil Fuel
• Knowing through technology- means/ends
  relationship
• Standing within or standing over?
• Part of ecology or outside ecology?

8
Jacksons Land Institute
9
Jacksons Land Institute
10
Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place

• Cartesian worldview
• Reductive
• Hubris
• Interpenetration
• Interactive world
• Science, values, technology, consumerism,
  capitalism
• Dialectical Ecological Approach
• Evolutionary view (25)
• Knowing as alienation
• Chicken
• Mimicry
• Native American Woman
• Polyculture, prairie like

11
Jacksons Land Institute
12
Jacksons Land Institute
13
Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place

• Cartesian worldview
• Reductive
• Hubris
• Interpenetration
• Interactive world
• Science, values, technology, consumerism,
  capitalism
• Dialectical Ecological Approach
• Evolutionary view (25)
• Knowing as alienation
• Chicken
• Mimicry
• Native American Woman
• Polyculture, prairie like

14
Land Institute

• The Land Institute has worked for over 20 years
  on the problem of agriculture. Our purpose is to
  develop an agricultural system with the
  ecological stability of the prairie and a grain
  yield comparable to that from annual crops.

15
Land Institute

• Mission Statement
• When people, land, and community are as one,
• all three members prosper
• when they relate not as members
• but as competing interests,
• all three are exploited.
• By consulting Nature as the source
• and measure of that membership,
• The Land Institute seeks to develop an
  agriculture
• that will save soil from being lost or poisoned
• while promoting a community life at once
• prosperous and enduring.

16
Hell in a Handbasket Vital Signs

• Clear pattern of trends
• 1st world consumption spreading
• Little adjustment to date
• Real impacts
• Alternatives available

17
Sense-making

• Speculative Generative epistemology becomes
  ontology
• Recursivity snake eating own tail
• Incomplete
• Embodied knowledge
• Physicality freeway system suburbs cars
• Affective, aesthetic
• Intentionality what gets noticed
• Evolved tailored mechanisms
• Holistic

18
Sense-making

• Karl Weick organizational psychology tail
  wagging the dog
• Perspectivism
• Complementarity
• Distributed Reality ongoing sense-making
  occasions not stuff
• Decentered subject