Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons

Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons PDF Author: Sharon Egretta Sutton
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 1531502830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
A rare and powerful illustration of what it takes to become a sustainable, community-embedded organization that continually grows the next generation of compassionate leaders. This essential, timely book meets us at our current moment of crisis to offer hope that American democracy’s stalled trajectory toward its founding creed to embrace all, and not just some, can indeed be re-invigorated. Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons is about low-income youth of color working within justice-oriented, community-based organizations to improve the social and spatial conditions in their surroundings. It draws from hundreds of pages of data, some collected over a decade ago by graduate research assistants at three universities and some collected recently by a graduate research assistant at a fourth university, to present verbatim quotes from interviews with constituents of three youth-serving organizations. The book posits that the disinvested neighborhoods where youth experience abandonment and marginality in fact can serve as a call to action, given appropriate organizational support. Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons envisions a place-based critical pedagogy that can provide young people with the practical skills and deep values to engage with today’s economic, racial, and ecological crises. It offers a welcome antidote to a neoliberal education system that has not only veered away from its public mandate to advance democratic citizenship but that has also reinforced today’s insidious economic inequality, rendering illusive the idea that rich and poor can work together toward a common good. Between these pages resonates a passionate call for an approach to cultivating citizens who have the critical skills to challenge injustice, the courage to hold the rich and powerful accountable, and the empathy to advance not just their own self-interest but also the health and well-being of their communities and the planet. The author proposes that such citizens develop by exercising collective agency in “the commons,” a political and psychic space whose values are mapped out in physical space. Through the expert use of an architect’s lens, this groundbreaking book argues that the three-dimensional concreteness of the nation’s disinvested neighborhoods provides a virtual stage where disenfranchised youth can experiment with collective life, become more discerning about the forces that have shaped their communities, and practice working toward just and inclusive futures. Merging Paolo Freire’s seminal theory of critical pedagogy with Grace Lee Boggs’s belief that hands-on community-building can disrupt the ever more destructive forces of neoliberal capitalism, Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons refines an aspirational framework for a pathway forward through a careful analysis of three exemplar organizations. It offers rich, unique portraits of young people transforming their communities in southwest Detroit, Wai’anae, and Harlem, respectively illustrating place-based activism through theater, organic farming, and critical inquiry. Here activism is framed as the hands-on engagement of youth in addressing inequities in the commons of their neighborhoods through small but persistent interventions that also help them learn the language of solidarity and collectivity that a sustainable democracy needs. Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons is a must-read for our times and for our future.

Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons

Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons PDF Author: Sharon Egretta Sutton
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 1531502830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Get Book Here

Book Description
A rare and powerful illustration of what it takes to become a sustainable, community-embedded organization that continually grows the next generation of compassionate leaders. This essential, timely book meets us at our current moment of crisis to offer hope that American democracy’s stalled trajectory toward its founding creed to embrace all, and not just some, can indeed be re-invigorated. Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons is about low-income youth of color working within justice-oriented, community-based organizations to improve the social and spatial conditions in their surroundings. It draws from hundreds of pages of data, some collected over a decade ago by graduate research assistants at three universities and some collected recently by a graduate research assistant at a fourth university, to present verbatim quotes from interviews with constituents of three youth-serving organizations. The book posits that the disinvested neighborhoods where youth experience abandonment and marginality in fact can serve as a call to action, given appropriate organizational support. Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons envisions a place-based critical pedagogy that can provide young people with the practical skills and deep values to engage with today’s economic, racial, and ecological crises. It offers a welcome antidote to a neoliberal education system that has not only veered away from its public mandate to advance democratic citizenship but that has also reinforced today’s insidious economic inequality, rendering illusive the idea that rich and poor can work together toward a common good. Between these pages resonates a passionate call for an approach to cultivating citizens who have the critical skills to challenge injustice, the courage to hold the rich and powerful accountable, and the empathy to advance not just their own self-interest but also the health and well-being of their communities and the planet. The author proposes that such citizens develop by exercising collective agency in “the commons,” a political and psychic space whose values are mapped out in physical space. Through the expert use of an architect’s lens, this groundbreaking book argues that the three-dimensional concreteness of the nation’s disinvested neighborhoods provides a virtual stage where disenfranchised youth can experiment with collective life, become more discerning about the forces that have shaped their communities, and practice working toward just and inclusive futures. Merging Paolo Freire’s seminal theory of critical pedagogy with Grace Lee Boggs’s belief that hands-on community-building can disrupt the ever more destructive forces of neoliberal capitalism, Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons refines an aspirational framework for a pathway forward through a careful analysis of three exemplar organizations. It offers rich, unique portraits of young people transforming their communities in southwest Detroit, Wai’anae, and Harlem, respectively illustrating place-based activism through theater, organic farming, and critical inquiry. Here activism is framed as the hands-on engagement of youth in addressing inequities in the commons of their neighborhoods through small but persistent interventions that also help them learn the language of solidarity and collectivity that a sustainable democracy needs. Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons is a must-read for our times and for our future.

Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons: Pursuing Democracy's Promise Through Place-Based Activism

Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons: Pursuing Democracy's Promise Through Place-Based Activism PDF Author: Sharon Egretta Sutton
Publisher: Polis: Fordham Urban Studies
ISBN: 9781531502812
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons

Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons PDF Author: Sharon E. Sutton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781531504205
Category : Community development
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A rare and powerful illustration of what it takes to become a sustainable, community-embedded organization that continually grows the next generation of compassionate leaders. This essential, timely book meets us at our current moment of crisis to offer hope that American democracy's stalled trajectory toward its founding creed to embrace all, and not just some, can indeed be re-invigorated. 'Pedagogy of a Beloved Commons' is about low-income youth of color working within justice-oriented, community-based organizations to improve the social and spatial conditions in their surroundings.

Postindustrial DIY

Postindustrial DIY PDF Author: Daniel Campo
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 1531504701
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
Chronicles grassroots efforts to recover, rebuild, and enjoy architecturally iconic but economically obsolete places in the American Rust Belt. A pioneering Detroit automobile factory. A legendary iron mill at the edge of Pittsburgh. A campus of concrete grain elevators in Buffalo. Two monumental train stations, one in Buffalo, the other in Detroit. These once-noble sites have since fallen from their towering grace. As local elected leaders did everything they could to destroy what was left of these places, citizens saw beauty and utility in these industrial ruins and felt compelled to act. Postindustrial DIY tells their stories. The culmination of more than a dozen years of on-the-ground investigation, ethnography, and historical analysis, author and urbanist Daniel Campo immerses the reader in this postindustrial landscape, weaving the perspectives of dozens of DIY protagonists as well as architects, planners, and preservationists. Working without capital, expertise, and sometimes permission in a milieu dominated by powerful political and economic interests, these do-it-yourself actors are driven by passion and a sense of civic duty rather than by profit or political expediency. They have craftily remade these sites into collective preservation projects and democratic grounds for arts and culture, environmental engagement, regional celebrations, itinerant play, and in-the-moment constructions. Their projects are generating excitement about the prospect of Rust Belt life, even as they often remain invisible to the uninformed passerby and fall short of professional preservation or environmental reclamation standards. Demonstrating that there is no such thing as a site that is “too far gone” to save or reuse, Postindustrial DIY is rich with case studies that demonstrate how great architecture is not simply for the elites or the wealthy. The citizen preservationists and urbanists described in this book offer looser, more playful, and often more publicly satisfying alternatives to the development practices that have transformed iconic sites into expensive real estate or a clean slate for the next profitable endeavor. Transcending the disciplinary boundaries of architecture, historic preservation, city planning, and landscape architecture, Postindustrial DIY suggests new ways to engage, adapt, and preserve architecturally compelling sites and bottom-up strategies for Rust Belt revival.

Educational Commons in Theory and Practice

Educational Commons in Theory and Practice PDF Author: Alexander J. Means
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137586419
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
In this volume, critical scholars and educational activists explore the intricate dynamics between the enclosure of global commons and radical visions of a common social future that breaks through the logics of privatization, ecological degradation, and dehumanizing social hierarchies in education. In its institutional and informal configurations alike, education has been identified as perhaps the key stake in this struggle. Insisting on the urgency of an education that breaks free of the bonds of enclosure, the essays included in this volume weave together bright threads of radical thought into a vivid tapestry illustrating a critical framework for enacting a global educational commons.

When Ivory Towers Were Black

When Ivory Towers Were Black PDF Author: Sharon Egretta Sutton
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823276139
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
This personal history chronicles the triumph and loss of a 1960s initiative to recruit minority students to Columbia University’s School of Architecture. At the intersection of US educational, architectural, and urban history, When Ivory Towers Were Black tells the story of how an unparalleled cohort of ethnic minority students overcame institutional roadblocks to earn degrees in architecture from Columbia University. Its narrative begins with a protest movement to end Columbia’s authoritarian practices, and ends with an unsettling return to the status quo. Sharon Egretta Sutton, one of the students in question, follows two university units that led the movement toward emancipatory education: the Division of Planning and the Urban Center. She illustrates both units’ struggle to open the ivory tower to ethnic minority students and to involve those students in improving Harlem’s slum conditions. Along with Sutton’s personal perspective, the story is narrated through the oral histories of twenty-four fellow students who received an Ivy League education only to find the doors closing on their careers due to Nixon-era urban disinvestment policies.

The Great Adventure of Pedagogy

The Great Adventure of Pedagogy PDF Author: Clara Wilson Sanderson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description


The Real Fake

The Real Fake PDF Author: Maria Francesca Piazzoni
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823280896
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Thames Town—an English-like village built in Shanghai—is many places at once: a successful tourist destination, an affluent residential cluster, a city of migrant workers, and a ghost town. The Real Fake explores how the users of Thames Town transform a themed space into something more than a “fake place.” Piazzoni understands authenticity as a dynamic relationship between people, places, and meanings that enables urban transformations. She argues that authenticity underlies the social and physical production of space through both top-down and bottom-up dynamics. The systems of moral and aesthetic judgments that people associate with “the authentic” materialize in Thames Town. Authenticity excludes some users as it inhibits access and usage especially to the migrant poor. And yet, ideas of the authentic also encourage everyday spontaneous appropriations of space that break the village’s staged atmosphere. Most scholars criticize theming by arguing that it produces a “fake,” controlling city. Piazzoni complicates this view by demonstrating that although the exclusionary character of theming remains unquestionable, it is precisely the experience of “fakeness” that allows Thames Town’s users to develop a sense of place. Authenticity, the ways people construct and spatialize its meanings, intervenes holistically in the making and remaking of space.

Poppies of Iraq

Poppies of Iraq PDF Author: Brigitte Findakly
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 1770463712
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
A personal account of an Iraqi childhood Poppies of Iraq is Brigitte Findakly’s nuanced tender chronicle of her relationship with her homeland Iraq, co-written and drawn by her husband, the acclaimed cartoonist Lewis Trondheim. In spare and elegant detail, they share memories of her middle class childhood touching on cultural practices, the education system, Saddam Hussein’s state control, and her family’s history as Orthodox Christians in the arab world. Poppies of Iraq is intimate and wide-ranging; the story of how one can become separated from one’s homeland and still feel intimately connected yet ultimately estranged. Signs of an oppressive regime permeate a seemingly normal life: magazines arrive edited by customs; the color red is banned after the execution of General Kassim; Baathist militiamen are publicly hanged and school kids are bussed past them to bear witness. As conditions in Mosul worsen over her childhood, Brigitte’s father is always hopeful that life in Iraq will return to being secular and prosperous. The family eventually feels compelled to move to Paris, however, where Brigitte finds herself not quite belonging to either culture. Trondheim brings to life Findakly’s memories to create a poignant family portrait that covers loss, tragedy, love, and the loneliness of exile. Poppies of Iraq has been translated from the French by Helge Dascher. Dascher has been translating graphic novels from French and German to English for over twenty years. A contributor to Drawn & Quarterly since the early days, her translations include acclaimed titles such as the Aya series by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie, Hostage by Guy Delisle, and Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët. With a background in art history and history, she also translates books and exhibitions for museums in North America and Europe. She lives in Montreal.

Free, Fair, and Alive

Free, Fair, and Alive PDF Author: David Bollier
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1771423102
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
The power of the commons as a free, fair system of provisioning and governance beyond capitalism, socialism, and other -isms. From co-housing and agroecology to fisheries and open-source everything, people around the world are increasingly turning to 'commoning' to emancipate themselves from a predatory market-state system. Free, Fair, and Alive presents a foundational re-thinking of the commons — the self-organized social system that humans have used for millennia to meet their needs. It offers a compelling vision of a future beyond the dead-end binary of capitalism versus socialism that has almost brought the world to its knees. Written by two leading commons activists of our time, this guide is a penetrating cultural critique, table-pounding political treatise, and practical playbook. Highly readable and full of colorful stories, coverage includes: Internal dynamics of commoning How the commons worldview opens up new possibilities for change Role of language in reorienting our perceptions and political strategies Seeing the potential of commoning everywhere. Free, Fair, and Alive provides a fresh, non-academic synthesis of contemporary commons written for a popular, activist-minded audience. It presents a compelling narrative: that we can be free and creative people, govern ourselves through fair and accountable institutions, and experience the aliveness of authentic human presence.