Environment and Society at UNSW

30/01/2025

The Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, from lead editor E&S UNSW Prof Tema Milstein, now is OPEN ACCESS to be freely read and used by academics, practitioners, and the public to help bring about positive change in environment and society. The book and individual chapters can be downloaded.

Endorsements from Escobar, Castree, Haraway, Cox, Akanbi, Carbaugh, Celermajer, Endres, Willard:
“...a treasure of insights on the politics of life, broadly speaking, and a novel toolbox for tackling effectively the damages caused by modern capitalist modes of extraction and the urgent task of Earth’s ontological repair and renewal.”
Arturo Escobar

“This superb collection shows why all identities are ecocultural ones, and why full recognition of this is essential to all our political futures.”
Noel Castree

“A smart, provocative, and original collection ... a definitive introduction to the constraints upon, and the contexts, formations, and impacts of, our diverse – but often unexamined – ecological selves.”
Robert Cox, three-time national president of the Sierra Club

“I am in complete solidarity with this book.”
Donna Haraway

ABSTRACT: The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity brings the ecological turn to sociocultural understandings of self. The editors introduce a broad, insightful assembly of original theory and research on planetary positionalities in flux in the Anthropocene – or what in this Handbook cultural ecologist David Abram presciently renames the Humilocene, a new “epoch of humility.” Forty international authors craft a kaleidoscopic lens, focusing on the following key interdisciplinary inquiries:
Part I illuminates identity as always ecocultural, expanding dominant understandings of who we are and how our ways of identifying engender earthly outcomes.
Part II examines ways ecocultural identities are fostered and how difference and spaces of interaction can be sources of environmental conviviality.
Part III illustrates consequential ways the media sphere informs, challenges, and amplifies particular ecocultural identities.
Part IV delves into the constitutive power of ecocultural identities and illuminates ways ecological forces shape the political sphere.
Part V demonstrates multiple and unspooling ways in which ecocultural identities can evolve and transform to recall ways forward to reciprocal surviving and thriving.
The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity provides an essential resource for scholars, teachers, students, protectors, and practitioners interested in ecological and sociocultural regeneration.

The Handbook was awarded the 2020 Top Book Award from the National Communication Association's (USA) Environmental Communication Division

The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity brings the ecological turn to sociocultural understandings of self. The editors introduce a broad, insightful

04/09/2024

The Conference on Communication and Environment Call for Proposals is LIVE! We on the organising committee are extremely excited to invite academics, practitioners, artists, and activists to submit their work and/or to attend COCE, for the first time held in the Southern Hemisphere. Come on down under to gather in Tasmania, Australia, and enjoy being a co-creator and participant in the most unconventional COCE to date. See info and truly exciting details here, along with the Call for Proposals: https://event.fourwaves.com/coce2025/pages Please help share far and wide!

Fourwaves - 18th Biennial Conference on Communication and Environment

20/06/2022

Featuring Enviro & Society UNSW scholars

07/04/2022

From UNSW Environment & Society PhD graduate Dr. Gretchen Miller: "A seismic shift is happening in Australian politics."

Smart, experienced and savvy people are stepping up to challenge the political status quo. But who are they and what drives them? Meet the Independents.

14/03/2022

Free webinar (co-sponsored and co-organised by the UNSW Environment & Society Group): Transcultural Conversations in Troubling Times, comprising three lively recorded conversations to watch and listen to at your own pace. The series hosts US cultural ecologist and geo-philosopher David Abram in conversation with Indigenous Australian thought leaders Mary Graham, Jakelin Troy, Linda Ford, Bruce Shillingsworth, Bruce Pascoe, Kevin Lowe, Anne Poelina & Tyson Yunkaporta.

Tune in to the entire program at:
https://bit.ly/3MMkcly

Or individual sessions:
Language & Kin:
https://bit.ly/3tb1AEe

Country & Culture:
https://bit.ly/3t7tLng

Deep Time:
https://bit.ly/3KIiAY8

BETWEEN STORIES: TransCultural Conversations for Troubling Times • Session #3 of 3 • DEEP TIME • 10 DEC 2021 • Guests: Anne Poelina, Tyson Yunkaporta, David ...

08/03/2022

Our masters/diploma/grad certificate program is focused on transformative learning and on nurturing change agents and leaders for these times. New program video just out (shot during a break in the rains!). Read more about the program in the UNSW Handbook: https://www.handbook.unsw.edu.au/.../programs/2022/8623...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2brflCUKkLo

The Master of Environmental Management program is focused on transformative learning and on nurturing change agents and leaders for these times. Read about t...

31/01/2022

Congratulations to the Environment & Society Group’s newest PhD, Dr. Gretchen Miller!

Gretchen’s PhD project and exegesis, titled “The Rescue Project,” is both a beautiful example of integrating creative work with research and of practice-based, theory-generating research that works closely with nonprofit organisations and community. Dr. Miller’s thesis received unanimous “outstandings" and two recommendations for the Dean’s Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis from her examiners.

We couldn’t be more proud, Gretchen! Here’s Gretchen’s thesis abstract and a link to the podcasts (some aired on ABC) and citizen-storytelling that make up the creative portion of the thesis.

Abstract
What is the experience of being a rescuer of damaged landscapes and broken creatures, at a time of environmental crisis in Australia? How do individuals and grassroots communities go about small acts of rescue, and how do they maintain the courage to do this work?
The Rescue Project is practice-based research. It includes a public digital storytelling site of 51 text rescuer story contributions and a podcast of four episodes, plus an exegesis providing critical reflection and analysis of the creative practice and the resultant thematic threads. The digital site was constructed in partnership with the non-government, volunteer-based, land regeneration organisation Landcare Australia.
This practice and exegesis contribute new thinking to the scholarship of environmental communication by considering the meaning of rescue, providing insights into the affectual themes of acts of rescue, articulating rescue relations, and introducing and developing several key terms: ecosonics, homeground, and citizen storytelling.
The themes which emerge from this project reveal the emotional affects and effects of undertaking rescues and suggest rescues take place within three related and iterative overarching themes. Firstly, the theme of humility that is required to begin an act of rescue. Secondly, the theme of attunement that builds resonances with both sentient figures and non-sentient features of homegrounds. Finally, the theme of courage concerning rescue activities, and its iterative outcome, encouragement.
Further, this practice and exegesis contribute to environmental communication through foregrounding listening and hearing, the spoken word, community storytelling, and the ecosonics of the more-than-human world. In giving space to the methodological processes of my creative practice, this exegesis offers environmental communication practitioners new ways to go about their work. It also responds to current calls within this scholarship for a listening modality: for too long we have been deaf to the sounds of the more-than-human world. The Rescue Project is a demonstration of how we might humbly hear these worlds speak.
To explore the digital space, please visit:

Kind acts of environmental rescue

03/11/2021

The Environment & Society Group is co-organiser of this upcoming series. You are invited to the Between Stories: Transcultural Conversations for Troubling Times series (3 live online sessions). Leading thinkers of Australia’s First Peoples and North American cultural ecologist David Abram explore our place in the more-than-human world. Sliding scale (including free) registration.

Enjoy the BETWEEN STORIES: • Mon 6th Dec • Wed 8th Dec • Fri 10th Dec • 12.30-2.30pm AEDT (UTC+11) on Zoom, Hosted online, During 6th of December. Tickets are only $20 AUD + BF. Only on Humanitix

18/05/2021

Congratulations to the Term 1 graduates of Environment & Society's Master of Environmental Management program!

15/05/2021

A great review of Enviro & Society Group's Gretchen Miller's PhD thesis project, the Rescue Project podcast w/ Landcare Australia. There are three other episodes in addition to the one linked/reviewed here:
"Mentally and physically depleted, but rescued: Living in the midst of the climate crisis can be both mentally and physically depleting. Forces, strangely unseen in many ways, attack your soul and drag you down and although “The Rescue Project” from the Climactic Collective does not side-step the issues at all, it simply makes you feel better and even stronger.
Gretchen Miller takes the listener deep into the crisis, but does it with a certain aplomb, allowing the seriousness of the what’s happening to earth to reach the crevices of your soul but then, through obvious action provides repair.
The 18-minute episode, “On History, Art and Loving a Tree” begins with the comforting sound of running water and while that husbands your soul, your intellect is taken on a journey with a story about philosopher and activist, Val Plumwood.
Invest just 18 minutes, well, 17 minutes and 57 seconds, and you will be repaid."
https://landcareaustralia.org.au/rescue/listen-to-the-rescue-project-on-history-art-and-loving-a-tree/?fbclid=IwAR3zogDSUr2LnEA7OsvOfVhDjd9qwTM2Riwo7vSz4RlAGpK4ILq_rcj7icw

Share Read on Mobile Enter Reading Mode LISTEN TO The Rescue Project – On History, Art and Loving a Tree Posted on August 5, 2019 by Gretchen Miller Podcasts Uncategorised Grevillea Grevillea by Margaret Storey In On History, Art and Loving a Tree we listen to the history of land protection, hear ...