Raisa Foster
Movement-based practice in the context of EcoJustice
The objective of this paper is to investigate the possibilities of movement-based practice in order to enable human relationship with more than human world; in other words, to make possible ecological transformation as it is described in EcoJustice framework (Martusewicz, Edmundson & Lupinacci 2015). I claim that it is necessary to better understand, how human diversity and social problems are closely connected to the questions of ecological destruction. In order to build sustainable practices in pedagogy, we need to overcome our anthropocentric attitude. This paper also suggests, how to develop body and movement-based practices in the context of EcoJustice education. I claim that through body awareness and movement practices we can deeply understand our being in the world, because it is after all our sensual body that ties us to the world (Merleau-Ponty 2008).
This paper proposes that one of the fundamental aspects of ecological transformation is mutual recognition, not just between humans but also more than humans. Thus the mutual recognition here is not understood just as a question of social justice, but in the broader context of EcoJustice. The paper challenges the anthropocentric view of (social) justice by understanding mutual recognition not only in its rational, cognitive, and political aspect of human life, but as a necessity to have a feeling of belongingness to the world. The goal here is to introduce, how the concept of mutual recognition consists not only as respect and acknowledgement of others, but also its affective and holistic stance towards oneself and the whole world.
In order to show the connections between mutual recognition and ecological transformation, I turn into the literature of EcoJustice and recognition (see f.e. Honneth 1995, 2000; Ricoeur 2005; Taylor 1994), and describe my own movement-based practice against those theories.
Bio
Raisa Foster is an independent researcher/artist/educator. She completed her Ph.D. in 2012 at the University of Tampere. She graduated as a dance animateur in 2006 from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Foster has created her own artistic/pedagogical method Tanssi-innostaminen®, a pedagogical method The Pedagogy of Recognition as well as an art-based research method Eragraphy. Foster is currently interested in combining different artistic and more traditional qualitative research methods in her practice as an artist/researcher/educator in the contect of EcoJustice education. She is the research director of Art-Eco Project funded by Kone Foundation.