Ecological perspective, Consumerism, Art Education, and Web 2.0
Orr (1992) argues that small changes in human perspectives about the environment (ecological perspective) can solve most problems we are facing today such as environmental crisis, social injustice, and human rights violations. He posits that a different worldview than Communism and Capitalism is necessary in order to achieve ecological sustainability.
“The historic upheavals in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe in 1989-90 are ample evidence that communism, or at least a particular version of it, has failed. We have yet to admit that Western capitalism has failed as well. (…) If communism has failed on this score, so too has capitalism. Communism has all but collapsed because it could not produce enough; capitalism is failing because it produces too much and shares too little. Communism imposed an ascetic morality on its subjects, while capitalism has permitted the collapse of morality itself. Neither system is sustainable in either human or ecological terms.” (Orr, 1992, p. ⅸ)
When I think of ecological perspective, I consider it as a world perspective about the environment, sustainability, community, human justice, and so forth.
Consumerism, I think, is a global ideology and practice. It is pervasive in every aspect of today’s human values and activities. The video explains how much humans' modern living is dependent on consuming and how the values of greed for profit and overuse of natural resources destroy the world we live in and threaten human lives.
One thing that the video did not attend to too much is that dehumanization is derived from consumerism and economic globalization.
“Uneven patterns of consumption and the uneven distribution of its consequences are also problematic. Western production and consumption processes that rely heavily on global trade can exacerbate the inequitable distribution of the world’s wealth and natural assets. (…) Such trade may foster Third World dependence on Western countries while doing little to promote long-term economic development.” (Lin, 2008, p. 58)
In stores like Walmart, purchases are cheap and so is the labor of those who produce what is for sale. What responsibility does an art educator, parent, and world citizen have towards laborers of the products purchased?
What about education? I believe that contemporary education is also based on consumerism. Why are students encouraged to compete with each other in school? What kinds of ethics and values do students learn in school? How many teachers and students care about people who work for their school and community? How many teachers care for each student’s life? What kinds of artworks are taught in art classes? How many art teachers and students know where their art supplies come from and go to after being thrown away? How many art teachers and students care for meanings of art in the context of their lives, relationships, and experience? What is the role of art educators in relation to issues of consumption from unethical and non-sustainable practices?
Since the ecological perspective, I think, is a world perspective, it is axiomatic that it entails different values from consumerism such as lack balance, harmony, equilibrium, equality, social justice, cohabitation, etc. What kinds of values should be interrogated in art education?
I think that there are some positive characteristics of Web 2.0 pedagogy in terms of ecological perspective such as empowerment of users, collaboration, openness, and so forth. What kinds of characteristics of Web 2.0 pedagogy can contribute to ecological perspective? How those characteristics can be integrated in education and art classroom?
References:
Lin, A. (2008). Virtual consumption: A Second Life for earth? Bringham Young University Law Review, pp. 47-114.
Orr, D. (1992). Ecological literacy: Educational and the transition to a postmodern world. Albany: State University of New York Press, Albany.
Please post below my entries, your comments about if, why, and how art educators should address consumerism in their teaching. Also, please provide recommendations of texts to read, videos to watch, or Web sites to visit about ecological perspectives that would be inspirational in art education. Discuss what you would ask students to do with these texts, and most importantly WHY such activities are relevant art education. Please keep in mind that I am asking your help to articulate the relation of ecological perspectives to the role of art education, rather than asking for your agreement with my thoughts posted below. I encourage your candidness and different views.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed watching "Big Ideas that Changed the World" and believe that students should be made aware of issues related to consumerism. Consumerism is a social issue that is important to address in the art education curriculum through contemporary art, visual culture, and media. Consumerism could function as a big idea for an art education unit.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching "Big Ideas that Changed the World", I immediately thought of Barbara Kruger's artwork. Her artwork is featured in PBS art 21 Season 1 Episode: Consumption. When covering an art education unit based on the big idea of Consumerism students could watch the PBS art 21 episode containing her artwork, and they could be directed to the website http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/kruger/index.html to read the artist's biography and view additional images of her work. Students could create an Adbuster that talks back to visual culture images that encourage consumerism.
I believe that ecological perspectives can easily be integrated in the art education curriculum through use of imagery. If discussing energy consumption issues students could visit http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights_dmsp_big.jpg for a visual of how much energy is being used around the world. In an art class students could also be encouraged to use found materials and recyclable materials for projects.
I also enjoyed watching "Big Ideas that Changed the World”. I think the video raised plenty of valid points about the ecosystem and society. I completely agree we have to change the way we live to be more sustainable and eco-friendly. I also think consumerism is another huge problem facing the world today. I can also see how the video linked the two problems. The two seemed to be internally linked, how so we fix one, without fixing the other?
ReplyDeleteAs we know, consumerism sells much more then just the product. As mentioned in the video, advertisers have looked into the psychology of how to work on a viewer’s subconscious. Students should be taught how to look critically at images and ask what they are really selling. Consumerism goes beyond visual culture and is deeply embodied into every aspect of our lives.
Educators in general should feel a certain need to address the issues of consumerism to their students. Specifically art educators have a variety of ways that this can be implemented into the classroom.
Art can be a great way for students to be able to explore these growing issues of ecological downfall, consumerism, visual culture, and eventually social change, while allowing students to create their own personal identities with each topic.
For example, by creating networks and collaborative environments using web 2.0 technologies, students can create blogs, remixes, and artwork that can reflect these growing issues. Websites such as http://www.greenmuseum.org/archive_index.php is a great resource for art educators to use. There are plenty of artists on here that deal with ecological issues and create artwork around it. This site can help produce plenty of creative lesson plans that can get students thinking about these issues.
*This video I found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDR0-QgqiEk
I think would relate perfectly to this topic of ecological awareness and web 2.0 technologies. It doesn’t relate directly to art education, but it is a great example on how these technologies can reach out beyond the art world and work towards a greater good, so I thought I'd include it
By creating an art classroom that isn't only about making art is where art educators can begin to contribute to the ecological perspective. Like the piece narrated and directed by Jonathan Parrett, Big Ideas that changed the world: Consumerism we are introduced to the idea that consumption is what got us in our environmental state we are in today, and that if we don’t seriously rethink all of our lives collectively the global crisis will become even more dire. I agree. As educators, more accurately art educators, we have the privilege to use our art making to inspire and inform out students. The example Jen gave and the link Ashley provided are great places to begin when looking for environmental art resource. Look at this blog it is another usable resource and location to share ideas and information on the combination of art and ecology, http://ecoartblog.blogspot.com/.
ReplyDeleteThink about this, before we form our students into informed conservationist citizens we need to example the way our lives, and our classrooms are run. Think about our materials we use, about the way we dispose of our waste, do we recycle? All of those things can be used as an avenue to create change within your classroom. This process will get the students thinking about conservation and consumption and how they are related.
The notion of consumption and consumerism is a huge contributor to the environmental state our earth is in at this moment, if we allow our students to use the art classroom as the area to act and react they are able to look critically at advertisements and become more sustainable citizens.
Thanks for having us watch Big Ideas that changed the world: Consumerism, directed by Jonathan Parrett. I think the video points out a number of ecological issues that are driven by a consumerist lifestyle. However, I wonder about the impact of technology in the classroom in relationship to this very problem.
ReplyDeleteParrett cites the number of celphones that are put in landfills or otherwise retired as an example of this type of technology waste. In a technology classroom do we think about the number of laptops or computers students need to access the technology we need? The ecological cost of a laptop; the manufacturing infrastructure it needs, the shipping from place to place, the 2-3 batteries it may use in a lifetime, and the electricity, are only a few of the ecological costs of the laptop. In other words the "carbon offset" of the machine and the energy needed to run it is an important consideration.
While the physical machine has an environmental impact, there is also a potentially forgotten infrastructure of server farms, render farms, switches, routers and cables that support all of the Web 2.0 technologies.
However, this video brought to my attention that the more sinister environmental issues of technology in the classroom isn't the physical consumption, but rather the psychological cues that support consumerism. Baudrillard suggests in Simulacra and Simulation; "the role of the hypermarket goes far beyond "consumption," and the objects no longer have a specific reality there: what is primary is their serial, circular, spectacular arrangement - the future model of social relations." (1) Requiring laptops and using the most advanced technology means that we as educators encourage our students down the road that the "newest and best" is what they should buy to enable them to pursue education on the digital frontier. In other words we may feed the desire for desire; leading to a recursive festival of consumption in the name of education. This gets them into the faster and better mindset, wanting a better internet connection and faster wireless at their home to complete assignments. Of course the environments themselves are often supported by advertising, or, in the case of second life, direct sales just outside of the classroom. The spectacle of consumption can be addicting.
I don't want this to be a tirade against using technology for education though. Rather it's a call for restraint and awareness, much like asking to use canvas bags at the supermarket. The act itself may not save the world, but the person using it models a more responsible behavior to those around them. Since educators are role models how can we best model behaviors that encourage sustainability is a question we'll all have to confront very soon.
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ReplyDeleteThe video, "Big Ideas that Changed the World”, gave me a lot of massages about consumerism.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I could realize that we start our daily activities with using a massive reduction in consumption but we do not recognize the relationship between us and the environment.
Secondly, I found out ‘Art’ and ‘consumption’ bound up each other very tightly.
We live in vital and visual culture world. So I think that subject ‘Art’ is more valuable to teach such topic as consumerism, ecology and environment than the other subjects. In class, art educators should teach about producing aesthetic and contemplative experiences, contemporary art and design with concepts, assumptions, ecologies, environment and boundaries in everyday life, and imagine new ways — material and intellectual — of going about the world.
For example, ecological art class provide to students to understand environment and assumption through use of website, video and text. I recommend this website, http://www.rsaartsandecology.org.uk/. There are various sources about ecology and art. Students can visit this website and make to solve questions like what ecology is, what kinds of ecology art works exist in this website, and how do I participate in ecology art project. It makes to student more think about art, ecology and environment and encourage understanding present and future ecological visual culture.
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ReplyDeleteThe ecological perspective is important to education, if we want to make a change and our next generation to have a better life. I think the video raises important environmental issue, but I am not sure the connation between the consumerism and environmental issue is clear in the video. Taking a computer for example, the environmental coast of manufacturing and eventually discarding a computer is huge because there are a lot of chemicals and other things that pollute environment if we don’t do anything to eliminate them. However, if there is a requirement by government to recycle and eliminate the pollution, people and manufactures will have to follow. Maybe the coast of a computer, then is more expensive. But, people then won’t be able to be so wasteful. In this way, buying a new computer is not the cause of environmental issue, but the process of making and discarding it. The cheap and massive production that sacrifice environment is the problem. In short, the real coast of production is not reflecting in the price of the product. I agree with Rob, that the issue is not physical consumption. Maybe consumerism that encourages people to have more is the reason that manufactures sacrifice environment to create cheap products, and unfortunately when this started, people did not foresee the problem.
ReplyDeleteI think government should play a bigger role in this issue to create laws to require every manufacturer taking the responsibility to environmental coast of producing a product. Individuals play important roles too. If people are aware of the impact of our living style to the environment, individuals can take actions on change something to reduce the problem. Educator should educate people to understand how our modern life style is impacting the environment. People need to understand things, such as where do our trash go, where do our food come from… etc. If more people care about the issue, government will have to do something and create laws. Art educators can use artwork as a starting point to discuss this issue with students. There are activism art that can create dialogues in classroom. Web 2.0 technologies can provide a useful tool for connecting people and enact activism. Virtual worlds also can play an important role. OneClimate Island in Second Life is an example. I would use virtual environments as a place for engaging students in activism art, because they can participant in dialogue with people around the world and create their own activism art to make a change.
Some recourses:
Floating point by Tiffany Holmes:
http://tiffanyholmes.com/Projects/floating_point/HolmesColab/docs/index.html
http://artsociety.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_art_communicates
Artist Mark McGowan
OneClimate Island Second life: http://www.oneclimate.net/getting-started/island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/OneClimate/128/128/26/
North of the OneClimate island is ECO commons. It is also an interesting place to visit.
http://redgreenandblue.org/2008/12/11/from-real-life-to-second-life-global-warming-activism-in-the-metaverse/
http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2008/04/23/green-global-voices-web-20-environmental-activism/
This video exposed “self interested individualism” as the root of our problems in a capitalist society that is using up the earth. We are operating under the assumption that the more we consume the better our lives will be. I am very concerned about what we need to do to turn around and make change. What will it take to change patterns of consumption and shift our value system. How can the people resist. It must be a shared effort between corporations and consumers. But, what would cause corporations to stop trying to increase profits? I certainly agree that the art educator has a place take in making change. Especially since the field of art education has taken up visual culture art education as a serious area of inquiry. I see consumerism as intertwined with visual culture. HongKyu asks us to think about how Web 2.0 pedagogy is related to a solution. Web 2.0 may actually make reducing fuel consumption possible by allowing us to communicate quite efficiently without having to travel to a meeting place. For example, the Pennsylvania Art Education Association reduced the number of face to face board meetings this year for the first time in favor of a combination of synchronous and asynchronous meeting solutions that rely on social networking and Voice Over Internet Protocol technologies. As an avid technology user, I am aware that technology use is well-connected to consumption. In order to participate in a Skype conference call, one must purchase the right gadget. I am concerned that my enthusiasm for educational technology may also transmit messages of consumerism.
ReplyDeleteI highly recommend the Druses story/video of the Lorax as a starting point for a lesson of consumerism and ecological perspectives.
ReplyDeleteThe video can be found on YouTube in 3 parts:
The Lorax ... Part 1 of 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GECJcW2Ifm4
The Lorax ... Part 2 of 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko5oojUQe0Q
The Lorax ... Part 3 of 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLnJd7mPx1g
Some possible discussion questions:
Who or what does the Once-ler represent in our lives?
What are the Once-lers reasons for cutting down the trees, inviting his family, and building stores and roads?
What effects do these changes have on the environment?
How would you have tried to stop the Once-ler?
What is meant by the line, “for he’s a jolly good Once-ler, aren’t we all?”
Possible web 2.0 pedagogy ties ins could be:
A blog to address discussion questions.
A VoiceThread set up to be a mock town hall meeting to discuss what to do about the Once-ler.
A second life town hall meeting instead of VoiceThread
Possible tie ins to art activities:
As a class create a virtual environment in second life to represent what the town looked like once all the inhabitants and Truffula trees were gone. Students can offer suggestions for how other will interact with the space. Will they start replanting trees, will there be environmental education material? How can we use the virtual environment to teach other what we have learned from the Lorax?
Have students discuss advertising, techniques the Once-ler used to advertise, and examples of advertising we see everyday? What make an advertisement effective? Have students examine issues of Adbusters magazine and bust their own add in response to what they learned from the Lorax.
The video "Big Ideas that Changed the World” provided me with a good opportunity to think about two main issues—as a member of an economic society, what values I have to pursue for living with “others” and as a teacher what educational philosophy I have to keep for my students. It shows that more than any political notions and religions, today consumerism could be the most dominant and “multi-national” issue and it has already raised serious social environmental problems. As the written advertisement on the bus, “Shopping is an art” implicates, consumerism is overtly as well as covertly pervaded in our daily life.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching the video, when I tried to recall my teaching experience on art classes, what occurred to me at first was using natural or recycled media, such as cases of eggs, plastic bottles, used magazines, and fabric, for art making. I preferred using those in my classroom to already-designed materials in order to make artworks. Seemingly, there are no differences between using recycled media and ready-made ones rather than using natural materials, such as pine cones, dried leaves, and sand. However, it could be a totally different experience of learning in that students can learn more about their own family’s propensity to consume, excessive packaging culture, and exhaustion of raw materials used for making those. As a result, teachers can bring these kinds of issues into their art classes and further teach a socio-environmental issue to their students by interdisciplinary approach, integrating with other subjects depending on circumstances.
The second memory is about keeping finished artworks. At the end of every semester, I used to struggle with artworks which students did not want to take home. Just as people throw away their clothes, shoes, and other belongs when they do not want to use those any more, I know that it frequently happens in art class. In this sense, teachers have to let students have attachment to their artworks by emphasizing the process of making art rather than completed products. This is what I think of this issue.
For me, it was little bit difficult to connect consumerism to Web 2.0 pedagogy, focusing on the ecological perspective in art education, since there are four big themes in a topic for this activity. However, I would say that students could indirectly experience the issues derived from consumerism in simulated situations made by relationality and social networking of Web 2.0 pedagogy such as the Second Life (SL).
http://www.greenmuseum.org/
This online museum emerged from our own experiences making environmental art and from seeing firsthand some of the challenges facing artists, community groups, nonprofit organizations and arts institutions when it came to presenting and discussing environmental art.
More than a museum, we see greenmuseum.org as a giant collaborative art-making tool. We hope you find it useful, friendly and easy to navigate.
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ReplyDeleteI also really enjoyed watching the video "Big Ideas that Changed the World". I think the issues of consumerism are very important to human society. I believe that art education could play an important role to solve the problem of consumerism,
ReplyDeleteI think one of important roles of art education could be to cultivate critical eyes about consumerism. We could consider that a big problem is that student be paralyzed by consumerism, especially which is related to mass mediated visual culture. Therefore we could bring visual images related to consumerism into class with critic eyes. Art educators encourage and enable student to criticize the images rather than accept them uncritically.
This video reminds me one lecture and one book which I would like to recommend you. The title of the book is spectacle pedagogy (2008) written by Charles R. Garoian & Yvonne M. Gaudelius. I read the book as my book analysis last semester. It is really helpful for me to critically think about mass mediated visual culture as an art educator. Especially related to ecological issues, I would like to recommend chapter 3 and chapter 7 of the book. In chapter 7, the issue of water could be connected with the lecture of B. Stephen Carpenter II on Jan. 27. At the lecture, related to ecological issue, he showed the water issue and said that one of art educators’ roles would be to bring social issues into class and take an issue of social problems which we could easily ignore otherwise. I also agree with his opinion and I believe it is very important thing related to social problems such as ecological issues.
Consumerism, directed by Jonathan Parrett, was a thought-provoking video. I also enjoyed reading your ideas and questions related to consumerism and art education. Seeing the images of the landfills, and watching at the people being used for cheap labor reminded me of the positive power of images.
ReplyDeleteI was particularly interested in the discussion in the first video relating consumption / consumerism to addiction. Understanding addiction strikes me as an important place to begin. Why do addictions begin? What do addicts need to stop using? Images may be used raise awareness, but how can the arts enable further intervention?
Personally, I might first look to education. An educational system constructed to produce "docile factory workers" might be the perfect culture to indoctrinate with consumerism. Students are trained to perform on standardized tests; they are trained to listen to authoritative voices. Marketing has learned how to reproduce these voices in advertisements aimed at particular consumers. We are offered a path toward filling in the circles with a #2 pencil towards the image of the life we wish to occupy. We need to learn there are other approaches.
What role should art educators play? I am uncomfortable with the word "should." I would like to see art educators working to change the form of education (as described above). I wold like to see art educators and students explore and question together. Students and teachers could create art as research into these questions of consumerism / commodification together. Together they could create pieces that respond to the question: what should we do? What is our ethical obligation? These pieces can be displayed in local grocery stores and banks. Raise awareness.
In considering "what kinds of characteristics of Web 2.0 pedagogy can contribute to ecological perspective?" -- I have been involved in a project this semester that connects a rural school with a researcher in Los Angeles and an artist who lives over an hour from the school. By utilizing a wiki site, skype conference, closed blogs, interactive calendar -- we are able to stay in close communication without having to use resources for travel.