more than one profound truth

Rose, Deborah Bird. 2003. Decolonizing the Discourse of Environmental Knowledge inSettler Societies. In Culture and Waste: The Creation and Destruction of Value, editedby Gay Hawkins and Stephen Muecke, 5372. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield,

Soper, Kate. 1996. Greening Prometheus: Marxism and Ecology. In The Greening ofMarxism, edited by Ted Benton, 81102. New York: Guildford.

Correspondence should be addressed to Peter McLaren, Division of UrbanSchooling, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies; University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles; Los Angeles, California. E-mail: [email protected]

More Than One Profound Truth:Making Sense of Divergent CriticalitiesDAVID A. GRUENEWALDWashington State University

As someone who deeply respects the critical work of both Chet Bowers and Pe-ter McLaren, I am saddened to see them insulting each other once again in print.This is especially disappointing for me because I, along with guest coeditor KateWayne, invited Bowers and McLaren to submit articles for publication in the spe-cial issue of Educational Studies on Education and Eco-Justice (vol. 36, no. 1).Our hope, then, and I still hold onto it today, was that engaging both Bowers andMcLaren in the task of articulating an emerging pedagogyan eco-justice peda-gogy that is responsive to the expanded notion of justice demanded by the recogni-tion of the interrelationship among culture, economics, and environmentwouldhelp move the conversation about environment, culture, and education more to-ward the forefront of our field. As they had skirmished before (Bowers, 1991; Mc-Laren, 1991), we knew that inviting McLaren and Bowers to the same party wasrisky. The tension between them was sure to be dynamic, possibly even creative ofsome new ideas. Seeing enormous value and even much common ground in bothauthors groundbreaking work, we hoped that placing their ideas side by sidewould show readers new to eco-justice just how complex, imminent, and all-en-compassing the issues are. We wanted to urge readers to pay attention to ideas thatare too often ignored.

Too often ignored in educationand in all of academeis the fact that cultureand environment, or humans and nature, are inextricably connected and that oureducational policies, structures, practices, theories, traditions, and academicjournals1 continue to operate as if this were not the case. Bowerss vast body ofwork can be read as the seminal attempt in education to correct the silence toward

206 REJOINDER AND DISCUSSION

environment and to develop an educational theory that is responsive to the complexand shifting intersections between culture and environment at global and local lev-els. Some of Bowerss more recent writing, in fact, has established the frameworkof eco-justice that we used to solicit author contributions to the special issue (seeBowers 2001). McLaren, as evidenced by his published writings, has only begun toexplore the cultureenvironment relationship as those of us who work in this areaunderstand it. However, much of his writing addresses issues essential to eco-jus-tice, such as the problem of economic domination and its link to other forms of op-pression. Furthermore, McLarens writing on revolutionary critical pedagogy, andhis many collaborations and elaborations on this theme, can be read as one of theseminal attempts to bring a strong critique of culture into the field of education.How, we wondered, would this leader in the field of education and social theory in-tegrate critical ecological perspectives into his cultural work? Frankly, we weregrateful that he would give it a try. I hope others will as well.

The initial outcome, from my perspective as a scholar eager to see more wide-spread attention to environment, especially from left-leaning champions of socialjustice, was very positive. It must be stressed before continuing that McLarencoauthored the article Revolutionary Ecologies: Critical Pedagogy andEcosocialism with Donna Houston, a critical geographer likely more conversantwith an ecological intellectual terrain than her coauthor. This kind of collaborationis, in fact, exactly what Kate and I hoped to foster with the special issue: conversa-tion between diverse theoretical perspectives and backgrounds, an expansion ofthe landscape of social justice and leftist theory to include a culturally and geo-graphically grounded ecological critique.

In their article, McLaren and Houston (2004) made several bold and perhapseven historic concessions about the absence of ecological thinking in the traditionof critical pedagogy. They wrote, We are all too aware that the field of criticalpedagogy is bereft of a conscious ecological dimension and that escalating envi-ronmental problems at all geographical scales from local to global have become apressing reality that critical educators can no longer afford to ignore (2829).They seek in their article not to significantly reengineer the DNA of revolu-tionary critical pedagogy as much as adjust its political optic to include what Rich-ard Kahn (2003) calls a critical dialogue between social and eco-justice (29).This, it seems to me, signals a very positive development. How else, I wonder, dopeople learn and develop their thinking, if not to make adjustments in their formerunderstandings in order to better comprehend the more complex present?

Bowers, obviously, disagrees. The very provocative title of his rejoinderHow Peter McLaren and Donna Houston, and Other Green Marxists Contributeto the Globalization of the Wests Industrial Culture (2005)is blatantly dismiss-ive. Not only do McLaren and Houston have it wrong theoretically, according toBowers, but their green critical theory is a kind of Trojan horsea vehicle fordeceptive manipulation and, ultimately, domination. In his numerous attacks on

EDUCATIONAL STUDIES 207

Freire and his followers, Bowers says as much and more about the entire, diversetradition of critical pedagogy and its generations of theorists and practitioners. It islittle wonder, then, that the gist of Houston and McLarens (2005) current responseto Bowers is that he has brain damageor as they put it, political amnesia. Wheredoes this mutual lack of understanding and respect leave us?

The great physicist Niels Bohr (cited in Shlain 1991, 430), once put it this way:The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a pro-found truth may well be another profound truth. I think Bohrs aphorism applieshere. The Im-rightyoure-wrong ideological rigidity I read in both Bowerssand McLaren and Houstons responses to each other seems, to me, to close off thepossibility of continued conversation or to conclude even before beginning thatthey have nothing to learn from each other, that their theories are simply incompat-ible (and, of course, correct, from their respective points of view). There are manyreasons to resist such a conclusion. The first is that ideological rigidity is, in asense, an antirelational stance, and both the critical pedagogy and eco-pedagogyadvocated by McLaren and Houston and Bowers is fundamentally about honoring(and, as Bowers frequently claims in his allusions to Confucius, rectifying) rela-tionships. In fact, each of these theorists and their theories claim also to honor di-versity; critical pedagogy and eco-pedagogy are meaningless without a constanteffort to understand diversity in thought, language, culture, and ecosystem. Sec-ond, because both McLaren and Houston and Bowers appear opposed to the direc-tion of Western industrial culture under global capitalism, their disagreements intheoretical particulars prevent them from affiliating as a community of resis-tance (see hooks 1990). As many observers have pointed out, the problem withthe left (a label I suspect Bowers might brush off) is its failure to come togetherto create a movement. Conversely, members of the right, despite differences intheir ranks, continue to move forward in organizational sophistication and politicalsuccess. Whether ones criticality commits him or her mainly to the category ofrace, class, gender, environment, or to the construct of capital or the commonsas the appropriate unit of analysis, in many cases one still stands in opposition tothe rightist regime that daily assaults the integrity of communities worldwide. Iwonder uneasily about the possibilities for resistance and/or community re-newal when we conclude that our opposition is of such a different order that wecannot stand together, or even near each other. It is for this reason that I thankRebecca A. Martusewicz, the editor of Educational Studies, for allowing me tocomment on the controversy and to argue that the opposition signals not necessar-ily irreconcilable differences but the presence of more than one profound truth.

The Bioregional Divide

The chief division I read in the current debate is McLaren and Houstons em-phasis on a Marxist critique of capital on the one hand, and Bowerss focus on a


grassroots reclaiming of the commons on the other. I see no fundamental contra-diction here. In fact, it seems to me utterly obvious that these emphases representtwo necessary dimensions of the same task: (a) that of resisting (as well as trans-forming) the dominance of neoliberal and neoconservative market industrial capi-talism and (b) that of renewing (as well as conserving and creating) cultural tradi-tions that are responsive to geographical and ecological diversity.

However, the tone of the language and substance of the claims on either side ofthis debate clearly trigger a defensive, as well as a dismissive, response. FromBowers, dismissive responses are especially predictable at any mention of criticalpedagogy and the larger project of class struggle and socialist revolution; likewisefrom McLaren (and Houston in the present case), dismissive responses predictablysurface at Bowerss long-running critique of critical pedagogy as well as at his re-peated embrace of indigenous cultures as models and exemplars of other culturalways of knowing. Butand heres the rubBowers goes much further than re-jecting McLaren and Houstons theoretical framework. He even has the nerve tocharge McLaren and all Freirians with reinforcing dominator culture with theirpedagogy and the deeper assumptions on which it is based (a charge that elicitsfrom McLaren and Houston only a sarcastic Huh? and a barrage of similarlydamning insults).

Although denigrating Freire and his followers has long been part ofBowerss confrontational shtickone that undoubtedly alienates a multitude ofreaders who value the Freirian traditionBowerss arguments on this point de-serve careful consideration.2 I draw here from a careful study of Bowerssoeuvre, especially his recent article in Educational Studies (vol. 34 no. 1), CanCritical Pedagogy Be Greened? Bowerss basic argument is that cultural andeducational theory generally, and a theory of eco-justice specifically, must pro-vide a way of understanding the ecological realm of existence, especially con-cerning the limits and possibilities of local cultures and bioregions. Here iswhere I believe McLaren and Houstons vision of ecosocialism and a greencritical pedagogy, and Bowerss vision of eco-justice and an eco-justice peda-gogy collide. A key unit of analysis, for Bowers, is the bioregion, which can bedefined as the unique ecological, historical, and cultural (includingepistemological) characteristics of a specific geographical place, or eco-region.Bowerss recent discussions of the significance of the commons (cultural, eco-logical, historical, linguistic, intellectual) deepen the concept of the bioregion toinclude a stronger emphasis on local culture, knowledge traditions, and whatneeds to be conserved to resist the enclosure of industrial culture. Key also tounderstanding Bowerss work is that at least part of his emphasis on thebioregion and the commons is linked to his concern with long-term ecologicalsustainability and with the related challenge of developing and reclaiming cul-tural patterns with a smaller ecological footprintthat is, ways of being that ex-tract, produce, consume, and waste less than Western industrial culture.


Unlike Bowerss focus on geographically specific cultural formations, Mc-Laren and Houstons central unit of analysis appears to be the entire global eco-nomic system under capitalism. Although McLaren and Houston also concede theglobal severity of environmental problems, they see eco-justice as primarily aglobal class struggle, albeit one that is increasingly shaped by environmental con-cerns in particular localities. This difference in focus points to a second fundamen-tal impasse: dissimilar understandings about the concepts environment and ecol-ogy. Whereas Bowerss understanding of ecology derives from Batesonianphilosophy, indigenous cultures and epistemologies, ecological economics, envi-ronmental science, and other varied sources, McLaren and Houstons appears toderive from environmental politics, critical cultural geography, and Marxist politi-cal ecology (they do briefly reference environmental history, but only in the con-text of making a point about Marx). Although each author does share a concernwith, for example, environmental justice and justice toward nonhuman nature, theyunderstand the cultureenvironment nexus in very different ways. McLaren andHouston (2004) urge a dialectical and historical approach to understanding rela-tionships across the societynature interface, an approach that involve[s] an un-derstanding of how real geographies of uneven capitalist development producediscursive and material natures that obscure the historical contexts and origins ofenvironmental crisis and its deadly effects (34). In their formulation, nature, envi-ronment, and ecosystem are described as a product of a culture disfigured by theprocess of historical materialism and the scourge of global capitalism. Naturally,such a perspective prompts them to place their emphasis not so much on environ-ment, ecosystem, place, bioregion, or the problem of long-term ecologicalsustainability but rather on the forces of production (uneven capitalist develop-ment) that threaten such real geographies (McLaren and Houston 2004, 34).3

Bowerss emphasis, on the other hand, is the real geographies themselvesplaces, bioregions, ecosystems, commonswhere particular cultures, people, andother species actually live and die. Culture, for Bowers, is nested in ecosystem, or,as ecological economist Herman Daly (1996) put it, economic systems are a subsetof ecological systems. Such statements can easily veer off into arguments about theextent to which nature, environment, and even ecosystems should be seen as cul-tural productions. The point I want to make here, however, is much more basic: (a)McLaren, Houston, and other critical social theorists view environment mainly inrelation to large-scale political economy, and (b) Bowers and other critical ecologi-cal theorists view environment mainly in relation to local bioregion and culture.Both views, it seems to me, are necessary to grasp the interrelationship among en-vironment, culture, and economics. Clearly, global economics affect local placeseverywhere.

However, this difference in critical perspective is key to understanding howBowers can accuse McLaren and Houston (and others) of contributing to the


growth of industrial culture, and it is this accusation that keeps these profound (andprofoundly related) critical perspectives apart and antagonistically opposed. In es-sence, Bowers claims that if ones view of environment and culture is rooted in andconditioned by a Marxist critique of political economy, one will be unlikely to seeor imagine the bioregional specificity of the environmentculture interface. Thus,although I believe Bowers goes too far when he calls McLaren, Houston, Freire,Giroux, and others colonizers, I think he is right to point out that the assumptionsthat guide even green Marxist thinking seem to preclude the development ofbioregional (or geographically specific cultural) analysis and that such an analysisis essential to eco-justice. Furthermore, absent a bioregional analysis, it is possibleto claim, as Bowers has repeatedly, that critical pedagogues reproduce severalroot metaphors of industrial culture: individualism, anthropocentrism, and afaith in progress that is suspicious of tradition.

McLaren and Houston themselves recognize, and have begun to remedy, theanthropocentric prejudice of critical theory and pedagogy; however, theystrongly object to the charge that critical pedagogy fosters an antirelational indi-vidualism. Although it is true that the practice of critical pedagogy can be acommunal processeven a process that respects local traditionsa critical ped-agogy abstracted from the bioregion is likely to neglect other cultural ways ofknowing associated with geographically rooted experience. As Bowers argues,these other cultural ways of knowing are often based on assumptions of inter-connection, reciprocity, and a deep respect for traditional and intergenerationalknowledge. When critical pedagogy fails to address these themes in its quest fortransformation, it is possible (but far from given) that the process will reinforceassumptions about individualism and progress that are also common to industrialcapitalism.

Bowers, however, impugns critical pedagogy with categorical certainty. Heclaims that Freirian transformative education has become a kind ofepistemological prison, an ideological imposition, and a product of formulaicMarxist thinking that deflects peoples attention away from the cultural and histor-ical specificity of place and bioregion and toward class struggle and socialist revo-lution. Although I do not agree with lumping, for example, McLaren and Freirespolitics in with the World Trade Organization, it is true that neither stance advo-cates for or develops a bioregionally specific analysis of culture.4

The Persistence of Capitalism

This is not to say, however, that critical pedagogy is as fatally flawed asBowers claims. Although applying a Marxist critique or Freirian strategy fortransformation on all places and times may not fully fit a certain place and time,surely elements of these critiques accurately describe the circumstances of many


real geographies. For critical pedagoguesand I believe even Bowers wouldagree with thisthe power dynamics associated with the flow of capital in theworld economy are undeniably relevant to eco-justice. Houston and McLarens(2005) counterpunch, therefore, to Bowerss (2005) audacious charge ofepistemological colonization is that Bowers suffers from simpleminded nostal-gia; does not grasp the complexity of a global political ecology; and, worse, thathe wants to reincarnate the Noble Savage as a model for just social and eco-logical relationships. Just as I think Bowers goes too far in casting critical peda-gogues as carriers of dominator culture, I think McLaren and Houston misrepre-sent Bowers careful study and respect for non-Western and indigenous culture.However, it is significant that whenever Bowers gives examples of the kind ofcultural renewal he advocates, he usually points to cultural spaces far from Mc-Laren and Houstons Los Angeles and far also from all the places where I havelived and worked. I have no doubt that the cultural affirmation projects to whichBowers often refers in Peru, Bolivia, Ladakh, and other Third World places havemuch to teach people in this and other Western countries. But it is difficult tosee, without further elaboration, how these cultures can serve as exemplars forcultural renewal in the United States, where the educational system is tightlyaligned with the largely unexamined dictates of the global market. Examiningand transforming the relationship among capital, culture, and education is pre-cisely what McLaren and Houston advocate.

Furthermore, Bowers does not often acknowledge that the cultures to which herefers already mediate by necessity between the global market and local traditionand that they (and we) are not and cannot be completely free of the money econ-omy. In addition, it is doubtful, as Bowers seems to imply, that the global marketeconomy can be tamed of its colonizing power by simply reclaiming localnonmonetized traditions. As David Harvey (1996) argued in Justice, Nature, andthe Geography of Difference, an ecologically sustainable land ethic would neces-sarily entail the construction of an alternative mode of production and consump-tion to that of capitalism (122). As Harvey explained, the changes necessary toput Western culture on a more sustainable pathway cannot ignore or escape thecurrent political economy. Dealing with the money economy; the almost universalcomplicity of Western culture in particular with this economy; and the corporate,governmental, and military power that controls this economy, all require a com-plex political strategy. This is the strategy that, I believe, McLaren and Houston(2004) begin to map out in Revolutionary Ecologies: Ecosocialism and CriticalPedagogy. Whereas McLaren and Houstons (2004; Houston and McLaren 2005)two articles show an underdeveloped theory of bioregional specificity and culturalrenewal, Bowerss recent attacks on critical pedagogy show an underdevelopedtheory of political ecologythat is, the link between global forces of production,geographically and culturally specific environmental problems, and the need forand possibility of transformation.


Education in the Prophetic Voice

In his great book, The Moral and Spiritual Crisis in Education, David Purpel(1989) drew from prophetic spiritual tradition to describe the kind of thinking andacting needed in a world plagued with multiple wrongs. Purpel cited scholar Abra-ham Joshua Heschel, who wrote:

The prophet seldom tells a story, but casts events. He rarely sings, but casti-gates. His images must not shine, they must burn. The prophet is intenton intensifying responsibility, is impatient of excuse, contemptuous of pre-tense and self-pity. His tone, rarely sweet or caressing, is frequently consol-ing and disburdening: his words are often slashing, even horriddesignedto shock rather than to edify. [The Prophet is concerned with] wrenchingones conscience from the state of suspended animation. (Heschel 1962,cited in Purpel 1989, 81)

Purpel is careful to explain that he does not want educators to assume the role of apreacher or to develop a strategy to shock or edify. What Purpel values,however, is the prophets passion, commitment, and courage in expressing [his]convictions so loudly (81).

It is not my intent to flatter, but both Chet Bowers and Peter McLaren are, to me,powerful prophets, each speaking his passion loudly, and with courage and convic-tion. Although I do not always agree with Bowerss critique of the Freirian tradi-tion, I have to admire his persistence in pointing out our problematic assumptions,and I am grateful for his vigorous effort to wrench the critical consciousness out ofsuspended animation so that we can recognize the fact that we are not merely his-torical and political beings but that our existence is fundamentally an ecologi-calcultural problem. Likewise, although McLarens criticality has only just be-gun to address ecological concerns, I am grateful for his passion for clarifying therole that capitalism plays in past, present, and future human societies. In the cur-rent debate, neither author shines. Each burns. Each speaks a profound truth thatneeds to be heard.

Notes1. Educational Studies is an exception to this, along with several other journals, includingEncounter; the Journal of Environmental Education; the Canadian Journal of Environmen-tal Education; the Journal of Research in Environmental Education; the Australian Journalof Environmental Education; and the Trumpeter, an exclusively online journal. TheEcoJustice Review: Educating for the Commons (www.ecojusticeeducation.org) is a newonline journal devoted to eco-justice.


2. Perhaps the best case Bowers has made against Freirian pedagogy is latest book, Re-thinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis (n.d.), which had not yet beenreleased at the time of this writing. In this edited volume, Third World activists describetheir own processes of coming to reject a Freirian framework for transformation in order tohonor local culture.3. The use of the term political ecology is, from a broader ecological perspective, somewhatironic, because it uses the word ecology to describe mainly anthropocentric relationships.The common use of the word ecology or ecological to describe complex interrelationshipsin human social systems is problematic when it deflects attention away from human interac-tion with the ecosystems in which, Bowers (2005) points out, we are all nested. This is not toclaim that political ecology is always hopelessly anthropocentric and concerned only withhuman systems, but that there is more to ecological thinking than the politics of power.4. Burbules and Berks (1999) discussion of the difference between critical pedagogy andcritical thinking provides a useful context for reading Bowerss critique of critical peda-gogy. Many of the generalizations Bowers makes about critical pedagogy (e.g., that it is thesame kind of critical thought advocated by technocratic world planners) might be moreproperly made of critical thinking (Bowers 2003).

ReferencesBowers, C. A. 1991. Critical Pedagogy and the Arch of Social Dreaming: A Response to

the Criticisms of Peter McLaren. Curriculum Inquiry 21:47987.. 2001. Educating for Eco-Justice and Community. Athens: University of Georgia

Press.. 2003. Can Critical Pedagogy be Greened? Educational Studies 34:1121.Bowers, C. A. n.d. Rethinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis.

Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Bowers, C. A. 2005/this issue. How Peter McLaren and Donna Houston, and Other

GreenMarxists Contribute to the Globalization of the Wests Industrial Culture. Edu-cational Studies 37:185195.

Burbules, Nicholas. and Rupert Berk. 1999. Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy: Rela-tions, Differences, and Limits. In Critical Theories in Education, edited by ThomasPopkewitz and Lynn Fendler, 4566. New York: Routledge.

Daly, Herman. 1996. Beyond Growth. Boston: Beacon Press.Harvey, David. 1996. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford, England:

Blackwell.Heschel, Abraham Joshua. 1962. The Prophets (2 vols.). New York: Harper & Row.hooks, bell. (1990). Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural politics. Boston: South End

Press.Houston, Donna, and Peter McLaren. 2005/this issue. The Nature of Political Amnesia:

A Response to C. A. Chet Bowers. Educational Studies 37:196206.Kahn, Richard. 2003. Paulo Freire and Eco-Justice: Updating Pedagogy of the Oppressed

for the Age of Ecological Calamity. http://getvegan.com/ecofreire.htm andhttp://www.paulofreireinstitute.org/freireonline/volume1/1kahn1.html

McLaren, Peter. 1991. The Emptiness of Nothingness: Criticism as Imperial Anti-Politics.Curriculum Inquiry 21:459487.

McLaren, Peter, and Donna Houston. 2004. Revolutionary Ecologies: Ecosocialism andCritical Pedagogy. Educational Studies, 36:2746.

Purpel, David. 1989. The Moral and Spiritual Crisis in Education. New York: Bergin &Garvey.

Shlain, Leonard. 1991. Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light. NewYork: Morrow.


Correspondence should be addressed to David A. Gruenewald, Dept. of Teachingand Learning, College of Education; Washington State University; Pullman, WA.99164. E-mail: [email protected]

On Acknowledging Differences that Make a Difference:My Two CentsREBECCA A. MARTUSEWICZEastern Michigan University

Although I had hoped to remain in the role of editorial facilitator of these dis-cussions, these issues are squarely within my own field of research, as well as mygrassroots commitments, and I feel a strong responsibility to try to clarify what Iread as a misrepresentation of ideas. Believe me, it is not without a fair amount oftrepidation that I enter the fray, certain that what I have to say here will draw heat.Still, there are important clarifications to be made, and at the risk ofovergeneralizing some important differences, or overlooking importantconvergences, Id like to give it a shot.

First, let me say that I appreciate David Gruenewalds willingness to take up myinvitation to mediate the debate between Bowers and McLaren and Houston. Rec-ognizing that he has long been a student of both bodies of work, it was my hopethat he might bring understanding to both sides that could calm the waters some.His conclusion that it is important that we are able to recognize more than oneprofound truth is important. Unfortunately, however, he makes several points thatI think ultimately misrepresent the differences between the two perspectives andthat have the potential of reproducing important misconceptions. Although I trulyfind an ally in David, we disagree about the source of conflict between these schol-ars, and it is from that point of entry that I join this discussion.

Gruenewald (2005) attempts to reconcile these two approaches by arguing thatthey represent two sides of a coin, or two dimensions of an important analysis if weare to live more sustainable and healthy lives. On the one side, he finds the localbioregional perspective represented by Bowers, and on the other, the more globalpolitical economy perspective represented by McLaren and Houston. ForGruenewald, each side holds profound truths that should be brought together tomake a fuller analysis of the cultural and ecological crisis and educations role inremediating these problems. He argues that while McLaren and Houstons articlemakes important strides toward the greening of critical pedagogy, Bowers hasyet to embrace a political economy analysis; his work remains focused primarily


more than one profound truth

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