Realizing the Ecological University: Eight Ecosystems, Their Antagonisms and a Manifesto

By: Professor Ronald Barnett

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Synopsis: The ecological university takes its interconnectedness with the world seriously. This is challenging, for the world is in difficulty and is shot through with antagonism. The university is partly culpable for those difficulties and so has responsibilities towards the world. Realizing the Ecological University spells out this thesis by charting the university's entanglements with eight ecosystems – knowledge, learning, persons, social institutions, culture, the economy, the polity and nature. The book identifies ways in which each of the eight ecosystems is impaired and points to possibilities through which universities can help in repairing those ecosystems. This book also sets out broad principles in helping to realize the ecological university in each of the eight ecosystems. Wearing his scholarship lightly, Ronald Barnett draws widely from philosophy, social theory, comparative higher education and ethics, and advances a particular form of the philosophy of higher education, at once realist, societal, critical, worldly and Earthly. Written with wit and lots of examples – actual and fictional – the text has a compelling vibrancy, made manifest in its concluding Manifesto.