{"id":2278,"date":"2012-09-28T09:26:30","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T08:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=2278"},"modified":"2012-09-28T09:26:30","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T08:26:30","slug":"the-millers-tale-i998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2012\/09\/28\/the-millers-tale-i998\/","title":{"rendered":"The miller's tale \u2013 I998"},"content":{"rendered":"

As referenced earlier<\/a>, 14 years ago, and again<\/a> the other day, I had a conversation with a miller in the small caucasus mountains in Georgia that was more than merely thought-provoking. \u00a0I wrote it up as part of my field report for the evaluation of WWF's global education work that John Fien directed. \u00a0 Here's what Stephen Gough and I wrote about it in our 2003 book: Sustainable Development and Learning: framing the issues. <\/em><\/p>\n

'The Miller\u2019s Tale\u2019, which is a reflection by one of the WWF evaluation team on a field visit to the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park in Georgia in October 1998, drawing additionally on ideas from Lusigi (1994).\u00a0 The thinking behind the challenging questions raised in this extract about the purposes of education in conservation and sustainable development has been, and continues to be productive for the organisation and its work.\u00a0 It is consistent with the implications of ... distinguish[ing] information from communication and mediation as approaches to learning, and sets them in a context of influential external factors.\u00a0 It is also consistent with ... the notion of environmental meta-learning across institutions, practices and literacies.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Miller\u2019s Tale:\u00a0 Reflections on the miller, his two cows and the distant pasture: false consciousness, or <\/strong><\/p>\n

competing rationalities,<\/strong>and the ends of sustainable development education<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the context of the development of the new national park in Borjomi it is clear that in many people\u2019s minds the purpose of (environmental) education associated with this programme is to persuade the recipients of the educational intervention (villagers, farmers, herders) that the authority\u2019s plan to implement the national park is rational and therefore the only sensible possible development.\u00a0 The proponents of this case (teachers, NGO officials, politicians, bureaucrats) believe in the rationality of the national park programme \u2013 even though it means that village people in certain areas will no longer have the possibility of cutting and\/or gathering wood, or grazing their cattle in traditional areas.\u00a0 The supporters of this argument believe this because of the higher conservation goal (a \u2018natural\u2019 forest containing newly regenerated land) and its contribution to maintaining biodiversity across the Caucasus.\u00a0 Taxed with the claims of the traditional users, they argue these higher goals and point to alternatives which have been built into the plan (in this case grazing which is at some inconvenient distance from the traditional areas).\u00a0 They believe in the rationality of their case and see education, or perhaps more accurately, information, as the means of either persuading (where successful) or justifying (where unsuccessful) this higher conservation goal.\u00a0 These people are (to various degrees) educated, eloquent, confident, literate \u2013 sets of status which bolster their conviction about the plan (and park\u2019s) rationality.\u00a0 They probably also believe that theirs is, and can be, the only possible rationality \u2013 especially since it is shared by so many other people in powerful and influential positions.\u00a0 The argument of the villagers (who are about to be dispossessed of traditional access and benefits) must seem like an aberration, a special pleading, a disposition which is only possible because of ignorance of the facts and of the value of the wider goal.<\/em><\/p>\n

However, from the villagers\u2019 perspective, one might surmise that their own case is just as rational.\u00a0 Here are traditional rights, enjoyed by generations, which survived the rigours and arbitrariness of collectivisation, which emerged intact into a more democratic future, which are now to be taken away or abridged at any rate by that newly democratic state, aided by the West\u2019s most prestigious NGOs and richer governments \u2013 and for what: the promise of something in the future and a rather vague conservation ideal (sustainable development).\u00a0 So, when the local miller asks \u2018why can\u2019t this huge national park cope with my two cows?\u2019 he doesn\u2019t get an answer because it has been decided that the question need not be taken seriously; rather, the question is to be argued away by a process of re-education which, if successful, will resolve the problem; if unsuccessful, it will at least explain the subsequent exercise of state power.<\/em><\/p>\n

The point here is that it is patronising not to see the Miller\u2019s question and the disposition from which it stems as one which in his terms, on his ground, in his time, is quite as rational as the other.<\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps there needs to be two kinds of sustainable development education: one form directed at addressing the conservation issues; one form focused at the power groups who sponsor the first.\u00a0 The aim of these two, complementary approaches might be to seek compromise, to find plausible alternatives, to allow everyone to \u2018win\u2019.\u00a0 The NGOs have a vital role in this.\u00a0 Their unique position can be used to broker a solution, rather than being part of imposing one.\u00a0 Thus the end of environmental education needs to lead to compromise and alternative paths, not coercion to a superior point of view.\u00a0 The error, perhaps, from this perspective, which the powerful groups make is to believe that their own form of rationality lies dormant, untapped, unrealised, within the other \u2013 lying masked by feelings, thoughts, passions and convictions which are to be overcome, and that the role of education is to help those individuals see the error of their ways and release them from their false view of the problems and hence the world.\u00a0 And if education fails in this task, well then, compulsion in the name of the higher rationality, is its own form of schooling.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notes<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Research report citation: WWF\u00a0 (1999b)\u00a0 Education & Conservation: an evaluation of the contributions of education programmes to conservation within the WWF Network [Reference Volume to the Final Report]. Gland & Washington: WWF International & WWF-US p. 40<\/p>\n

Lusigi W. (1994), Socioeconomic and ecological prospects for multiple use of protected areas in Africa, in: M. Munasinghe and J. A. McNeely (eds.), Protected Area Economics and Policy: linking conservation and sustainable development, <\/em>Washington DC, World Bank\/IUCN. Ellis, F. (1993), Peasant Economics: Farm Households and Agrarian Development<\/em>, second edition, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As referenced earlier, 14 years ago, and again the other day, I had a conversation with a miller in the small caucasus mountains in Georgia that was more than merely thought-provoking. \u00a0I wrote it up as part of my field...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}