Multiple Worldviews Research Articles

The semiotic roots of worldviews: logic, epistemology, and contemporary comparisons

Abstract The logic of worldviews provides a consistent method of comparison between multiple worldviews. The present paper connects the logic of worldviews to important historical and contemporary influences. Beginning with its roots in semiotics, an account of epistemology emerges which is mediated by a belief system. We show that Charles Peirce’s pragmatistic theory of inquiry is the bedrock beneath the logic of worldviews. We formulate it as a generalized version of inquiry with underlying game-theoretic semantics. In this paper, we extend Peirce’s triadic model of signs to cover knowledge mediated by systems of beliefs. Michael Polanyi’s account of personal commitment includes a subsidiary/focal distinction that views theoretical frameworks as tools for interpreting orders of reality through actual practices of research. We also see how a precedent is set by Johan Georg Hamann’s epistemology of belief, recovered by Ludwig Wittgenstein, using reason as an interpretation of God’s speech in nature. We argue that Thomas Kuhn’s theory of inquiry and worldviews (or paradigms) may be fruitfully contrasted with Peirce’s theory, with reasoning by abduction, deduction, and induction occurring within the community of inquirers. The upshot is that although worldviews may be adopted for non-rational reasons, one can meaningfully compare worldviews through a method proposed by Alasdair MacIntyre: the proponent of a theory learns the language of competing theories and uses them as a metatheory to show how one’s own theory may not have the resources to resolve certain problematic situations. Our result is a meta-linguistic falsification in the sense of Peirce’s semiotics and pragmaticism: the competing theory may be used to show that the object theory does not have a strategy at its disposal to interpret the anomalous phenomenon.

Biodynamic farming research and transdisciplinary knowledge co-production: Exploring the synergies

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) values the inclusion of multiple worldviews for knowledge co-production. Biodynamic farming (BF) corresponds to a specific worldview, in which inner capacities play a major role. Through its century-old history, BF has proven to be an important source and catalyst for innovation. This ability can be fostered as part of TDR projects and inspire leading edge methodological innovations for the TDR field itself. The article provides multiple examples of such synergies, yet it is argued that much of the transformative potential remains to be activated.

Heart Health Begins With Community: Community-Based Research Exploring Innovative Strategies to Support First Nations Heart Health

BackgroundIndigenous people have displayed their strength through their holistic practices and spiritual connection to the land. Despite overcoming the impact of discriminatory and disempowering policies within Western institutions, Indigenous people continue to experience a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, compared to the general population. To move toward improving Indigenous health outcomes, researchers need to work in partnership with communities to develop heart health strategies centred on their experienced barriers and sources of healing. We conducted a community-based explorative study in Moosonee, Ontario to explore the local community’s needs and priorities regarding heart health and wellness. MethodsA convenience sample of community members and healthcare professionals were invited to participate in a sharing circle. Qualitative data were analyzed using conventional content analysis and the Indigenous method of two-eyed seeing. ResultsEight community members and 5 healthcare professionals participated in the sharing circle. Four dominant themes were identified: (1) heart health is more than metrics; (2) honouring our traumas; (3) destigmatizing care through relationship building; and (4) innovative solutions start with community. With the history of mistreatment among Indigenous people, strength-based solutions involved rebuilding clinical relationships. To bring care closer to home, digital health tools were widely accepted, but the design of these tools needs to integrate both Western and Indigenous approaches to healing. ConclusionsIndigenous health upholds the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs of an individual as being of equal importance. To improve community heart health, strategies should start by strengthening broken bonds and bridging multiple worldviews of healing.

Integrating planetary citizenship as a cross-curricular theme and a whole-school approach: using a value-creating approach to learning

This article reflects on the double planetary crises of climate impacts and Covid-19 from a study of certain Indigenous perspectives. An early review of the impact of these crises suggests the importance of resilience at the national and regional level to combat these challenges. Value-creating global citizenship education is a pedagogical approach developed from a study of certain Indigenous perspectives to enhance the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and beyond. The key focus of this approach is to build resilience and hope through engaged relationships between learners and their natural, social and educational environments. Using this approach, education for planetary citizenship is proposed as a cross-curricular theme, and a whole-school orientation for education across nation states, within formal and non-formal settings. Under this banner, the study of human relationship to Nature and its exploitation, risks such as climate change crisis, threats from global pandemics and lessons from Green Schools and Eco-Schools are suggested as focal points of study. In discussing these issues, this article enacts a dialogic engagement with multiple world views that brings into focus different ways of thinking about ourselves, society and Nature, such as reflected in the Earth Charter, which can enhance the intercultural dimension of education.

Value Pluralism in Practice: Integrating IPBES to Refine Ecosystem Services Assessments in South Africa

As global biodiversity loss continues to increase, effective valuation of natural capital is a prerequisite for effective environmental planning decisions. The introduction of Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in 2005 brought the concept of ecosystem services into the limelight. After that, The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) mirrors the MA's original use of the term ecosystem services and goes further by openly embracing concepts from multiple worldviews on human-nature relationships and knowledge systems. The emergence of the latter promises to provide new and improved suggestions for existing assessment methods in many countries around the world. One such example is Natural Capital Accounting (NCA) in South Africa. By summarizing the current assessment methodology of the NCA in South Africa, this paper summarizes the current limitations of the NCA and suggests that the integration of the IPBES method into the NCA can effectively solve the above problems. The paper also analyses the first national form of IPBES organization, the Brazilian BPBES, to illustrate the need to tailor IPBES selectively to the specific problems of the country to achieve the best results. This paper is an attempt to optimize the methodology of the South African national-level ecosystem services assessment and an exploration of the application of IPBES, a conceptual framework linking nature and people.

Pluriversal Futures for Design Education

The Future of Design Education working group on pluriversal design—with members from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, South and Southeastern Asia, North America, Oceania, and Europe—developed recommendations for higher education design curricula. The group addresses the dominance of a Eurocentric design canon and worldwide colonization by a twentieth-century design monoculture grounded in the concept of universal human experience. Curricular recommendations honor Indigenous worlds and place-based ways of being, and chime with anthropologist Arturo Escobar’s premise that every community practices the design of itself, through participatory processes that are independent of experts. The authors posit that rather than a Cartesian rationalist perspective, the group advocates a relational view of situations in which the design responses to interdependent natural, social, economic, and technical systems, are specific to places and cultures. The recommendations assert a pluriversal design imperative in which multiple worldviews thrive and diverse lived experiences inform the entire field, as well as individual projects.

The ethics of artificial intelligence, UNESCO and the African Ubuntu perspective

PurposeThis paper aims to demonstrate the relevance of worldviews of the global south to debates of artificial intelligence, enhancing the human rights debate on artificial intelligence (AI) and critically reviewing the paper of UNESCO Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) that preceded the drafting of the UNESCO guidelines on AI. Different value systems may lead to different choices in programming and application of AI. Programming languages may acerbate existing biases as a people’s worldview is captured in its language. What are the implications for AI when seen from a collective ontology? Ubuntu (I am a person through other persons) starts from collective morals rather than individual ethics.Design/methodology/approachLiterature overview on the African philosophy of Ubuntu as applied to artificial intelligence. Application of it to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) debates on establishing guidelines to the ethics of artificial intelligence.FindingsMetaphysically, Ubuntu and its conception of social personhood (attained during one’s life) largely rejects transhumanism. When confronted with economic choices, Ubuntu favors sharing above competition and thus an anticapitalist logic of equitable distribution of AI benefits, humaneness and nonexploitation. When confronted with issues of privacy, Ubuntu emphasizes transparency to group members, rather than individual privacy, yet it calls for stronger (group privacy) protection. In democratic terms, it promotes consensus decision-making over representative democracy. Certain applications of AI may be more controversial in Africa than in other parts of the world, like care for the elderly, that deserve the utmost respect and attention, and which builds moral personhood. At the same time, AI may be helpful, as care from the home and community is encouraged from an Ubuntu perspective. The report on AI and ethics of the UNESCO World COMEST formulated principles as input, which are analyzed from the African ontological point of view. COMEST departs from “universal” concepts of individual human rights, sustainability and good governance which are not necessarily fully compatible with relatedness, including future and past generations. Next to rules based approaches, which may hamper diversity, bottom-up approaches are needed with intercultural deep learning algorithms.Research limitations/implicationsThere is very few existing literature on AI and Ubuntu. Therefore, this paper is of an explorative nature.Practical implicationsThe ethics of Ubuntu offers unique vantage points in looking at the organization of society and economics today, which are also relevant for development of AI, especially in its tenet of relatedness rather than individuality (and practical use of AI for individuals), taking responsibility for society as a whole (such as analyzing the benefit of AI for all strata of society), and embodying true inclusiveness. Whether looking at top-down guidelines for the development and implementation of AI or the bottom-up ethical learning process of AI (deep learning), ethics of the Global South can have an important role to play to combat global individualist tendencies and inequity, likely reinforced by AI. This warrants far more research.Social implicationsApplications of AI in Africa are not contextualized, do not address the most pressing needs of the African continent, lead to cybersecurity issues and also do not incorporate African ethics. UNESCO’s work in this regard is important but expert inputs are largely centered around Western “universal” principles and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and EU precedence. African ethics have, so far, a small role to play in global ethics and philosophy and therefore risk to be overlooked in the discussion on AI and ethics. This is why the consultation process of UNESCO on ethics of AI was of paramount importance. However, it does not automatically lead to consultation of African philosophers or sages, as many are educated in Western (ized) education systems. See further details under practical implications.Originality/valueThis is a new area of research in which little work has been done so far. This paper offers the opportunity to widen the debate on AI and ethics beyond the conventional discourse, involving multiple worldviews, of which Ubuntu is just one.

"All My Relations": Elders’ Teachings Grounding a Decolonial Bachelor of Nursing Program Philosophy

The aim of this paper is to share the process of developing a decolonial nursing program philosophical framework. Following cultural protocol, we asked two highly respected local Indigenous Knowledge holders and retired nurses to serve as Presiding Elders for the Bachelor of Nursing (BN) Curriculum Redesign Committee. Select committee members engaged with the Elders in a series of gatherings. Elders gifted ‘All My Relations’ as the unifying basis for their teachings of ‘The Four Realms’ and ‘Ani to Pisi -Spiderweb’ as the new BN program philosophical framework: local Indigenous teachings provide the standpoint for respectfully engaging with interconnected multiple worldviews to advance equity and restore wellness in nursing education. Collaboration with Elders provides an invaluable opportunity for decolonization in nursing workplaces and learning spaces.

Inuit youth-engaged community-based environmental research as supporting local development in Nunavut, Canada

ABSTRACT Community leadership in Arctic environmental research is increasingly recognized to contribute to Indigenous self-determination and sustainable development in the Arctic. While experienced Inuit harvesters, hunters, trappers, and other recognized environmental knowledge experts are largely included in research, similar opportunities for Inuit youth remain limited. Our study explored pathways for community-based engagement in environmental research to serve as a form of experiential learning for Inuit youth and enhance capacity in Arctic communities. For that, we examined, through interviews and workshops, the perspectives of 41 northerners from Pond Inlet (Mittimatalik), Nunavut, including 19 Inuit youth aged between 18 and 35 years old. We found that mentor-mentee relationships between researchers and Inuit youth may enhance scientific literacy and complement traditional learning pathways and observational learning. On the other side, by engaging Inuit youth, researchers may benefit from the experiences and knowledge of this new generation of northern Indigenous peoples uniquely positioned to value multiple worldviews in designing studies that address local priorities.

Embedding interdisciplinary learning into the first-year undergraduate curriculum: drivers and barriers in a cross-institutional enhancement project

ABSTRACT Engaging with interdisciplinary learning during higher education (HE) study can provide students with skills and modes of thinking informed by multiple worldviews. Opportunities for interdisciplinary learning in the English HE system are limited; associated primarily with postgraduate study or later undergraduate stages. This paper reports on an enhancement project that sought to engage first-year students with interdisciplinary learning. Drawing on data gathered from staff interviews, student focus groups and module enrolments, we examine drivers and barriers impacting on the planned curriculum transformation. Whilst drivers emerged from many directions (e.g. professional bodies, staff advocates), these were overwhelmed by the barriers – both administrative and ideological. Student responses were mixed. Some would have liked a wider choice of truly interdisciplinary modules, but it was clear many students did not understand the rationale for the modules and felt that they needed more support to participate.

Sustainability reporting beyond the business case and its impact on sustainability performance: UK evidence

We explore Landrum and Ohsowski (2018)'s development model, which positions each company's sustainability reporting with multiple worldviews of corporate sustainability. We investigate the impact of sustainability report communicative actions on corporate sustainability performance. We argue that companies that comply with the reporting guidelines and adopt the business case for corporate sustainability may not capture all sustainability aspects, and therefore may not have a real impact on sustainability performance. Employing a computer-based textual analysis on a sample of UK firms that published sustainability reports during the period 2014–2018, we find that sustainability reports that communicate the message that firms understand sustainability to mean maintaining production and consumption patterns within resources capacity of the planet and coexisting in harmony with nature are likely to have a positive effect on sustainability performance. On the other hand, communicating compliance and the business-centred approach as their understanding of sustainability will negatively affect sustainability performance. Our findings offer important implications for companies who need to change their approach towards sustainability reporting and shift from the business case approach to advance to the next stage of sustainability reporting which should guide corporate decisions and actions.

Pursuing Plurality: Exploring the Synergies and Challenges of Knowledge Co-production in Multifunctional Landscape Design

Knowledge co-production has emerged as an important conceptual and processual tool in sustainability research addressing the needs of equity and inclusion. Indigenous communities and local people have engaged with the process of knowledge production, foregrounding their historical relationships with landscapes, based on their unique worldviews and knowledges. However, knowledge co-production, especially for multi-functional landscapes remains a contentious and complicated affair with enduring issues of power-sharing related to the different socio-political positions of stakeholders. This work explores the synergies and challenges in knowledge co-production for landscape re-design in the south Island of Aotearoa NZ through an assessment of the work done at the Centre for Excellence, Lincoln University. At this center, a multi-stakeholder team is grappling with designing a farm, through a transdisciplinary framework that attempts to include multiple worldviews. This work explores the various stages of the co-production process, analyzing the exchanges between various members as they prepare for co-production, the knowledge produced through this engagement, and how this knowledge is being utilized to further the goal of sustainability. Our results show that significant gaps remain between co-production theory and co-production practice which are a result of the mismanagement of the co-production process, the mismatch in the time and spatial scales of project goals, and the differences in the values and objectives of the different stakeholders. However, the process of co-production, though flawed, leads to the building of more open relationships between the stakeholders, and leads to some very meaningful knowledge products that address the multi-temporal and multi-spatial aspirations of multi-functional landscapes in Aotearoa NZ, while contributing to the broader scholarship on co-production in sustainability. Finally, both synergies and challenges prove meaningful when challenging the roadblocks to the inclusion of a diversity of worldviews, by clearly highlighting the places of engagement and why they were made possible. We suggest that knowledge co-production attempts in multi-functional landscapes around the world should attempt a similar assessment of their process. This can help build better relationships between scientists and IPLC, address disciplinary bias and marginalization of non-expert opinions, while also ensuring the relevance of the research to the multiple stakeholders of the land.

Sensing, feeling, thinking: Relating to nature with the body, heart and mind

Abstract The cultural ecosystem services (CES) construct has evolved to accommodate multiple worldviews, knowledge systems and conceptualizations of nature and values, including relational and mental health values. Cultural ecosystem services research and practice has mostly focused on cognitive ways of constructing and expressing intangible values of, and relationships with, nature. But our non‐material relationships with nature are not exclusively cognitive: sensory and affective processes are fundamental to how we build, enact and experience these relationships. Building on the core ideas of relational values, embodied experiences and connectedness with nature, we present a simple framework to explore the sensory, affective and cognitive dimensions of human–nature interactions, as well as the settings and activities that frame them. We demonstrate its use in a case study in the Peruvian Andes, where we applied an inductive, exploratory approach to elicit personal imageries and imaginings related to nature, place and recreation. The narratives shared were rich with symbolism and personal sensory experiences, emotions and memories, which the interviewees linked with general assertions about people, place and nature. We discuss the usefulness of such a perspective for CES research, and for human well‐being, environmental justice and landscape management.

Cosmopolitan Geopolitics

ABSTRACT Whether addressing violent ethno-nationalism, xenophobic bigotry, or religious intolerance, scholars and educators invoke cosmopolitan notions of a shared planet and common humanity as a means of rising above difference. Cosmopolitanism as an ethical and political orientation places an imperative on seeking out, welcoming, and learning from cultural others. As such, cosmopolitanism involves a process of reducing the social and physical proximity between ‘them’ and ‘us’ carried out in the belief in shared commonalities held by a universal ‘we.’ However, a priori assumptions about who and what constitutes that ‘we’ at the heart of cosmopolitanism are necessarily partial, situated, and subjective. In this special section, authors consider the tensions, paradoxes, and potentials of cosmopolitanism in diverse settings and from diverse perspectives. Specifically, these papers examine the formation of youthful, cosmopolitan subjectivities and youth involvement in the creation of cosmopolitan spaces, from South-South global volunteering and international missionary trips to the anti-nationalist hip-hop scene in Sarajevo and efforts to enact a civic cosmopolitanism in Beirut. Situated in post-colonial and post-conflict contexts and centering the political subjectivities of young people and their hopeful efforts to bring about a better world, these papers examine the spatial-temporal politics of cosmopolitanism and the tension inherent in creating necessarily bounded spaces grounded in cosmopolitan openness. This introduction frames this examination of grounded and contested cosmopolitanisms as an immanent process of world-building guided by a transcendent worldviews. This framing emphasizes cosmopolitanism as a universal moral outlook and the need to create caring pluriversal worlds capable of accommodating multiple worldviews.

Multiple‐Benefit Conservation defined

AbstractA new term, Multiple‐Benefit Conservation, has emerged in the conservation community, but has not been defined. We define Multiple‐Benefit Conservation asconservation efforts designed to simultaneously benefit local communities of people, enhance ecological function, and improve habitat quality for fish and wildlife. Its key features are setting ecological and societal goals at the outset and defining success as achieving these goals simultaneously. This is in contrast to efforts aimed at one goal thatmayalso produce co‐benefits; it is inclusive of ecosystem services but not limited by a focus solely on human benefit. Strengths of this approach include that it is constructive, inclusive of multiple worldviews, easily communicated, solutions‐oriented, and compelling. Multiple‐Benefit Conservation as we define and describe it here appears to provide a pathway useful for designing conservation efforts that are more likely to be inclusive, that will quantify trade‐offs among goals, and can embrace pluralistic conservation leadership.

Engaging Indigenous perspectives on health, wellbeing and climate change. A new research agenda for holistic climate action in Aotearoa and beyond

ABSTRACT Existing frameworks for interpreting and acting upon the health consequences of climate change fail to engage with the multiple and complex forms of loss and damage that Indigenous peoples experience to their health and wellbeing in a changing climate. Using a case study of Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand, we call for a new research agenda that foregrounds Indigenous peoples’ collective, relational perspectives on health and wellbeing in order to better conceptualise the health implications of climate change. The agenda builds understanding and recognition of intangible loss and damages, bringing multiple knowledge systems and worldviews into conversation to drive adaptation that not only safeguards but also promotes the visions Indigenous peoples have for their health and wellbeing.

Causal Stories and the Role of Worldviews in Analysing Responses to Sorcery Accusations and Related Violence

This paper uses the concept of causal stories to explore how death, sickness and misfortune lead to accusations of sorcery or witchcraft. Based on empirical research in Papua New Guinea, we propose a new analytical framework that shows how negative events may trigger particular narratives about the use of the supernatural by individuals and groups. These narratives then direct considerations about the cause of the misfortune, the agent who can heal it, and the appropriate response from those affected by the misfortune. We also categorise the factors that attract people towards magical causal narratives or towards competing non-magical causal narratives. We situate our analysis within a context of worldview pluralism, where individuals possess multiple worldviews, such as a magical worldview or a scientific worldview. We argue that causal stories operate to activate the dominance of one worldview or a combination of worldviews in given circumstances. Our theoretical contribution may be extended to discrimination and violence against those suffering from health-related stigma, as this too gives rise to competing causal stories that either take hold or are ignored depending upon diverse factors.

Calling the Soul Back: Embodied Spirituality in Chicanx Narrative by Christina Garcia Lopez

Reviewed by: Calling the Soul Back: Embodied Spirituality in Chicanx Narrative by Christina Garcia Lopez Danielle López Chicanx studies, indigenous spirituality, ancestral knowledge, brujeria, embodied spirituality, feminism, healing, colonialism christina garcia lopez. Calling the Soul Back: Embodied Spirituality in Chicanx Narrative. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2019. Pp. xv + 211. Calling the Soul Back: Embodied Spirituality in Chicanx Narrative highlights the current counter-narrative power of Chicanx ancestral knowledge, seeking to correct the ways in which Western thought has delegitimized spirituality. Garcia Lopez engages the many Chicanx scholars who call for more [End Page 264] inclusive and grounded approaches to the study of spirituality, paying homage to authors, artists, and intellectuals already revered for their essential contributions to Chicanx literature. Audiences familiar with Chicanx literature will note the roster of influential authors such as Dr. Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, and Rudolfo Anaya, and appreciate the inclusion of exciting new voices in the genre. However, Lopez does not limit the scope of her research on the decolonization of narratives to traditional academic literature; rather, she extends her discussion expansively into nonfiction, performative monologue, short fiction, fables, illustrated children's books, and novels, and offers revelations about how these, too, are sites for raising a critical consciousness of embodied spiritualty. The book, which also engages fields of religious studies, Indigenous studies, feminist studies, sociology, environmental studies, and philosophy, shows how all intersecting fields of knowledge can benefit from inclusive and holistic methodologies that include decolonized narratives across multiple worldviews. She urges further efforts to disrupt Western epistemologies by fully articulating ancestral and spiritual knowledge systems, to reach a deeper understanding of embodied spirituality as a tool for social change. The book presents readers with an array of frameworks of embodied spirituality in Chicanx narratives, showing how they produce liberating subjectivities. The imperative to do this work stems from a larger project of reading Chicanx literature, specifically, the active reading of the works where the spiritual is celebrated as an immersive modality of knowledge. In order to provide a context for culturally relevant modalities of knowledge that are crucial to all scholarship, Garcia Lopez urges us to witness how the works presented in the book use narratives that evoke healing spirituality to further the process of curing the mind, body, and spirit from still-existing colonial wounds. Through the analysis of characters, aesthetics, sensate experiences, and cultural nostalgia, Lopez unveils the beauty of cultural adaptation and border crossing—including crossing of borders between human and nonhuman worldviews—in narratives by Chicanx authors and people of other intersecting communities. In Chapter 1, "The Body in Trauma: Healing a Collective Susto," Garcia Lopez introduces a critical reading of Dr. Gloria E. Anzaldúa's essay "Let Us Be the Healing of the Wound: The Coyolxauhqui Imperative—La sombra y el sueño" (2002), in which the traumatic events of 9/11 are considered alongside the embodied spiritual healing ritual os susto. Anzaldúa creates an imaginatively decolonized process of healing through collective consciousness of trauma within the community of those who experienced, witnessed, and endured life forever altered by the attacks. This text is read in connection [End Page 265] to the 2004 monologue "Panza Brujeria," a part of Virginia Grise and Irma Mayorga's The Panza Monologues where the force of collective healing turns the shame of the panza into a source of strength to overcome the terror caused by the trauma of the George W. Bush era. The joint context of both works supports the suggestion that the colonial wound can be remedied by making the site of the wound a space for transformative renewal in synthesis with the elements of nature. Chapter 2, "The Ritual Body: Feminism and Spiritual Inheritance," discusses domestic and interpersonal relationships presented in a specific story of ancestry that helps to reclaim the body as a site of feminist and spiritual strength. Showing how the inheritance of feminine knowledges can be worked to remedy the patriarchal wound, Garcia Lopez sets the motifs of the narrative within a ritual time-space where the patriarchy is broken up by the powerful embrace of gifts that the protagonist accepts as a priestess inheriting the abundant domestic and...

Towards biocultural approaches to peatland conservation: The case for fish and livelihoods in Indonesia

Conservation projects are likely to fail if plans to preserve important wildlife habitats and species are not co-developed between conservation organisations and local communities to reflect the needs and diverse values of the latter. Tropical peatland conservation represents a case in point: local community livelihoods have only recently come into focus, particularly within academic literature. Instead, many previous studies emphasise the need to conserve intact peat swamp forests for their carbon storage, as a habitat for flagship species such as the orangutan, and to provide fire-free landscapes. Here, we explore the socio-environmental issues being faced in the peatland landscapes of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. This includes the loss of peat-swamp forest, decreases in peatland fish populations and related socio-cultural challenges such as potential loss of fishing livelihoods along with historic and continued experiences of marginalisation of indigenous communities. To find solutions to these complex and interrelated problems, an interdisciplinary approach which focuses on interdependencies and includes multiple worldviews is required. We propose an approach which deploys both Ethan Miller’s use of livelihoods (incl. Miller, 2019) and biocultural approaches to conservation to analyse human-nonhuman relationships, with a focus on fish and fishing livelihoods. We draw on data from in-depth social and ecological research in two village communities in Central Kalimantan, and in so doing illustrate how fish conservation has the potential to support important biocultural and livelihood relationships between human and nonhuman communities in peatland areas. Our findings lend support to previous calls for biocultural approaches to conservation in other socio-ecological contexts, and lead us to conclude that tropical peatland conservation initiatives that integrate such approaches will result in improved outcomes for peatlands, forests, biodiversity and people. These findings will be relevant to other tropical peatland areas with high dependence on fishing as a source of livelihood, such as the peatlands of the Amazon and Congo basins.

El sueño espacial europeo como alternativa en Próxima, de Alice Winocour (2019)

El estreno del filme Próxima en 2019, realizado por la directora francesa Alice Winocour, ha establecido un hito en el género cinematográfico de viajes espaciales al tratarse de la primera producción protagonizada por una mujer astronauta europea, madre de familia, que realiza su sueño de viajar a las estrellas en una misión de la Estación Espacial Internacional. El contraste de la protagonista con sus compañeros de tripulación —un cosmonauta ruso de Roscosmos y un astronauta estadounidense de la NASA—, da lugar una confrontación de diversos imaginarios: espacial, geopolítico y de roles femeninos y masculinos. El presente artículo pretende analizar esta confrontación socionarrativa presente en Próxima, tomando como referente el sueño espacial europeo en cuanto ethos alternativo al sueño americano y al sueño ruso/soviético.