This book studies the importance of adopting Green Academia as a systemic long-term counter-intervention strategy against any form of impending pandemics in the post-COVID era and beyond. It argues that anti-nature and capitalistic knowledge systems have contributed to the evolution and growth of COVID-19 across the globe and emphasizes the merits of reinstating nature-based and environment-friendly pedagogical and curricular infrastructures in mainstream educational institutions. The volume also explores possible ways of weaving ecology and the environment as a habitual practice of teaching and learning in an intersectional manner with Science and Technology Studies. With detailed case studies of the green schools in Bhutan and similar practices in India, Kenya, and New Zealand, the book argues for different forms of eco-friendly education systems and the possibilities of expanding these local practices to a global stage.
Part of the Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-COVID World series, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of sociology, cultural studies, decolonial studies, education, ecology, public policy social anthropology, sustainable development, sociology of education, and political sociology.
1. Introduction: Why Green Academia?
2. Eco-friendly Academic Systems: A Journey to the Roots
3. Transformations: Curriculum and Pedagogy
4. Political Ecology and Science and Technology Studies: Weaving Intersectional Academic Spaces
5. Non-Conclusion: A Multidimensional Mechanism
Biography
Sayan Dey is currently working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is also a Faculty Fellow at the Harriet Tubman Institute, York University, Canada. His published works include The Indigenous Voice of Poetomachia: The Various Perspectives of Text and Performance (2018), Different Spaces, Different Voices: A Rendezvous with Decoloniality (2019), Decolonial Existence and Urban Sensibility: A Study of Mahesh Elkunchwar (2019), History and Myth: Postcolonial Dimensions (2020), and Myths, Histories and Decolonial Interventions: A Planetary Resistance (2022). His research interests are postcolonial studies, decolonial studies, critical race studies, food humanities, and critical diversity literacy. He can be reached at www.sayandey.com.
"Drawing on examples across the continent, the monograph provides a fascinating account of the destructing role of the colonialism on indigenous knowledge system and its continuation even in present times. It makes a strong case for reorientation of academia in favor of ‘ecodemia’ based on principles and practices of exemplary institutions existing in different parts of the globe."
Virginius Xaxa, Sociologist and Visiting Professor at Institute for Human Development, New Delhi
"Sayan Dey’s newest book is a welcome intervention into the complacency that too often plagues educational institutions, which should instead be the cutting edge of liberatory socio-cultural, transformations. In his characteristic, engaging narrative style undergirded by a powerful moral voice and scathing critique, Dr. Dey demonstrates the important role that educational systems must play in elevating ecological and environmentally friendly systems of knowledge-making. His lens is global and wide-sweeping, the book meticulously researched and hopeful offering a new imaginary so desperately needed to energize, uplift, and empower youth, who are the receiving end of a dying planet, we must and can save."
Diana Fox, Professor, Bridgewater State University
"Dr. Sayan Dey’s monograph on sustainable and eco-friendly education system in the post-COVID world is a path breaking study that revisits indigenous knowledge and education systems globally with the purpose of not only making those systems visible but also decolonize knowledge production and dissemination. Through its offering of alternatives to the exploitative and violent knowledge structures of capitalism, the monograph cannot be better timed, and will surely be an invaluable contribution to transcultural pedagogy and decolonial studies."
Sukla Chatterjee, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Bremen
"Building on ecological, decolonial and other politico-ethical approaches, this relevant and timely book critically engages with debates around sustainable development, demonstrating how the entanglement of modernity/coloniality and capitalism has resulted in ecological destruction on a global scale. Simultaneously, it beautifully visibilizes an array of transformative and reparative eco-centric initiatives, embracing the importance of Indigenous knowledges and epistemologies of the South in re-imaging and co-creating environmentally, socially, and culturally more sustainable and just futures for us all."
Tiina Seppala, Lecturer, University of Lapland
"The relation between Capitalism and Modernity is a vexed one. Sayan Dey`s book helps us with great alacrity to identify the faultlines and allow us to imagine what post-Capitalist modernity might look like."
Ajay Gudavarthy, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
"Providing an insightful account of decolonizing and Indigenous ecology-focused educational projects in India, New Zealand, Kenya and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, Green Academia constitutes a vivid resource and powerful inspiration to learners, teachers, activists, and scholars that strive for social and environmental justice during the current uneasy times."
Lenka Vrablikova, Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London
"Green Academia has an unmatched level of critical analysis which is deeply rooted in historicity and indigenous eco-knowledges in how they respond to capitalistic and universalistic knowledge production. The book practically engages pre-coloniality and modernity. Sayan Dey’s ability to give a historical account while conceptualizing a post-Covid-19 future of sustainable and eco-centric knowledges is unmatched, ground-breaking, and visionary."
Ompha, Early Career Researcher, UNISA
