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Disrupted coping and skills for sustainability: A pluralist Heideggerian perspective

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  • Trent Brown

Abstract

What is the ontological significance of sustainability crises – and the struggles to overcome them? Drawing on Heideggerian perspectives – in dialogue with Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theories – I argue sustainability crises become meaningful at the level of everyday experience when they disrupt the flow of ordinary skilled practices and their orientations towards the future. Such disruptions trigger what Heidegger termed ‘anxiety’, which implies an erosion of life's coherence, meaning and purpose. Developing skills to ‘cope’ with sustainability crises may enact alternative ontologies that restore what anxiety threatens; ‘skills for sustainability’ potentially disclose new worlds, meanings, values and goals. I illustrate this through vignettes of individuals transitioning to organic farming in India. I show how disruptions to farmers’ skilled practices triggered anxiety while also prompting the development of skills for alternative agricultural practice. These skills enabled new ways of experiencing worlds, non-human entities and the telos of everyday activity.

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  • Trent Brown, 2024. "Disrupted coping and skills for sustainability: A pluralist Heideggerian perspective," Environmental Values, , vol. 33(6), pages 585-605, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envval:v:33:y:2024:i:6:p:585-605
    DOI: 10.1177/09632719241265394
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2015. "The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10581.
    2. Ian Carlos Fitzpatrick & Naomi Millner & Franklin Ginn, 2022. "Governing the soil: natural farming and bionationalism in India," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(4), pages 1391-1406, December.
    3. Reddy, D. Narasimha & Mishra, Srijit (ed.), 2009. "Agrarian Crisis in India," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195695953.
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    Cited by:

    1. Tom Greaves, 2024. "The ecology of finitude," Environmental Values, , vol. 33(6), pages 579-584, December.

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