Introduction note from the Editor

The book is tremendously useful for the Greek readers (academic or not) for three reasons; a) the Liberal Arts and the Human Sciences in the Greek Universities today pay almost no attention to environmental or ecological matters and the respective justice issues stemming from these fields. The reason is that the academic teachers of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences consider them to be more an area of study for the Faculties of Science and Technology (Fien, 1993; Ratcliffe & Grace, 2003) b) many educators in the Academic fields of Economics, Literature, Law, History, Humanities etc, have a lot of intertwining with the industrial and banking complex that rules the country, especially its Politics and Education. Many of them are ministers in the cabinet, authors of books for Primary and Secondary Schools etc (Panoussis, 2008; Kimball, 1990). Thus, there is total absence in the Greek Liberal Arts’ and Human Sciences’ Academia, of ideas, actions, writings or speeches about Environmental and Ecological Critical Thinking and Justice. To this field the current book has a lot to contribute. c) Making Environmental and Ecological Justice Education more a “toy” or “gaming activity” in the Primary and Secondary Schools, deprived of any political meaning (with the brave exception of some brilliant primary and secondary school teachers) there is tremendous lack of theoretical background for major peoples’ movements, leading the latter to a gradual degeneration. We will refer to two ongoing major such struggles in Greece (including fights with the police, sometimes the Army, and – of course – the local incumbents and officials): The struggle of the people in Keratea, a degraded outskirt of Athens, to avoid building a big waste landfill in their land (Douzinas, 2012; Botetzagias & Karamichas, 2009) and the struggle of the people around Asopos river in-between Attica and Viotia to stop the water of their river being polluted (better say: poisoned) by the local industries (even Erin Brockovich is involved in the struggle of the latter) (Holst-Warhaft & Steenhuis, 2010). With a book like “Greening the Academy”, such environmental and ecological justice struggles could achieve a strong theoretical background outside the society—where they are already strong—in the Tertiary Education territory.

“The local”

“The global”

“The old (the traditional)

“The new”

A

B

C

D

In a previous work of us (Gkiolmas & Skordoulis, 2006) we presented the view that everyone involved in Environmental, Ecological or Justice Education – being a student, a teacher, a stake holder, a curriculum creator, a policy-maker or whatever else – would in fact position himself or herself in a certain position, defined by two intersecting theoretical axes. The one axis has as ends “the local” and “the global” and the intersecting axis has as its ends “the old” (“the traditional”) and “the new”. Both axes are depicted in Figure 1, below:

“The local”

“The global”

“The old (the traditional)”

“The new”

A

B

C

D







Figure 1: The two intersecting theoretical axes delineating all kinds of involvement with Environmental Education, Ecological Education or Justice Education (Gkiolmas & Skordoulis, 2006).
Everyone involved in “greening” education – and specifically Tertiary Education – as an instructor, as a learner, as an administrator, a stake-holder, a curriculum maker, a policy-maker or even an activist of a non-governmental organization, automatically locates himself and his theoretical context and viewpoints somewhere on the two intersecting axes of Figure 1. One might act or thing closer to “the new” or closer to “the traditional”, closer to “the local” or closer to “the global”. Alternatively he/she can choose to be situated in one of the four quadrants (A, B, C and D) of Figure 1, in the sense that when one is in quadrant A, for example he sees “greening” in a mole global sense and also closer to the traditions of indigenous cultures (like “eco-wisdom”). (Skolimowski, 1991; Van Damme & Neluvhalani, 2004)

It should be stressed that whenever one environmentalist, ecologist or social / environmental justice theorist and activist chooses to be situated in the context of Figure 1, does not identify him as radical, critical, progressive or – on the contrary – conservative and neoliberal. His actions and thoughts or writings do that! For instance, one may be in Quadrant C of Figure 1 and be radical and progressive, in the sense that he views “greening” as protecting the local cultures and ecosystem attitudes of indigenous people in an area and also claim that this must be done with new methods, using the Internet, the social media, Wiki-spaces etc. (Rohwedder, 1994; Briano et al., 1997; Stables & Bishop, 2001). Another person could be located in Quadrant C of Figure 1, and be totally conservative and neo-liberal in the sense that he favors the local environmental and economical development of an area or city, regardless of the fact that it will ruin the neighbouring areas and civilizations or ecosystems, and he also introduces new methods of greening like GMO plants and foods, destroying ecosystems’ balances and peoples’ health. (Leeming et. al.,1993; Cutter-Mackenzie & Smith, R., 2003).

Having introduced this theoretical framework, one can notice that everyone of the participating authors of this brilliant book, is situating himself within the “system of coordinates” defined in Figure 1, as regards his/her conceptual representation of the term “Greening”. Needless to say, that wherever they are situated in this theoretical scheme, they are all radical, critical, or progressive educators, seeing “green academy” as a site resisting the international industrial and military complex (Best, Nocella II & McLaren, 2009; Bellamy Foster, 2002; Kahn, 2008)
Thus:

• 
  Fassbinder is more on “Quadrant C”, favoring "the local” and “the new”. We focused more on his paper, due to our interest as educators.
  
• 
  Beirne and South are more on “Quadrant D”, favoring "the global” and “the new”.
  
• 
  Animasahaun is more on “Quadrant D”, favoring "the global” and “the new”.
  
• 
  Luke is again “Quadrant D”, favoring "the global” and “the new”.
  
• 
  Best (an anarchist and non-anthropocentric Ecology theorist, very well known here in Greece) is more on “Quadrant A”, favoring "the global” and “the old (the traditional)”.
  
• 
  Kennet and Gale de Oliveira are more on “Quadrant D”, favoring "the global” and “the new”.
  
• 
  Houston, whom we respect a lot as researcher, both her and her husband Greg Martin, finds herself more in “Quadrant B”, favoring "the local” and “the old”.
  
• 
  Swidler is more on “Quadrant A”, favoring "the global” and “the old (the traditional)”, in the sense of historical perspective.
  
• 
  McKenna is again more in “Quadrant B”, favoring "the local” (local communities) and “the old” (historical analysis).
  
• 
  Milstein is located rather in “Quadrant A”, favoring "the global” (overall study of Nature in its communicative role) and “the old (the traditional)” (historical study of the concept of environment).
  
• 
  Lewis can be situated in “Quadrant C”, favoring "the local” (focusing on American literature) and “the new” (impact on modern neo-liberalism, capitalism and on attitude towards Nature).
  
• 
  Nocella II is rather in the theoretical context of “Quadrant D”, favoring "the global” (all-inclusive environmental and sustainability education for all) and “the new” (the new scientific paradigm of eco-ability, as a concept that connects environmental education and action with social justice and elimination of all kinds of discriminations).
  
• 
  Finally, Gaard would rather be put in the context of “Quadrant B”, favoring "the local” (the specific contribution of feminism in “greening” education) and “the old” (historical review of it).
  

All the authors of the volume use excellent critical and radical argumentation and approaches. Some of them deal with “greening” from a more historical perspective (“what has been done” in order to “green” or how a particular academic field contributed to “greening”), others describe more the current situation and if, how, and to what extent the specific field contributes to “greening,” as well as the reasons for this kind of contribution and finally many of them reach to a point of “what has to be done – as soon as possible – to introduce “greening” to the specific field, or to alter drastically the way that this field adds “greening” to Tertiary Education.

Nevertheless, all the authors of this brilliant work, which we introduce warmly to any active and thinking reader, come to the same conclusion (more or less):
if we want academic life and activity to continue resisting the tremendous pressure on behalf of capitalist, neo-liberal, commercial and martial global interests, and to continue – or in some cases, start – producing critically thinking and alert citizens, or producing knowledge and research for people and the Nature and not for industries, we must immediately take the decisive turn. That is to introduce and diffuse as large amounts as possible of environmental, ecological, critical and based-on-justice education and action within the university campuses.




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