Page 44 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

20 R.A. Martusewicz et al.

that it helps to maintain a healthy community of life, and thus has a smaller ecological
footprint. For example, farmers who use manure to fertilize their fields instead of
buying commercially produced chemical fertilizers are using an ancient, commons-
based agricultural practice that is both a good way to dispose of animal waste, and
helps to produce strong plants needed for good food. Or, in urban settings, the decision
by some residents to use rain barrels to collect water used in gardens and yards
instead of running sprinklers from the tap demonstrates the knowledge that water
is a sacred resource to be conserved and protected.
The question before us here is how might science teachers, aware of the rich
practices and knowledges – the assets – in local communities, involve their students
in work that is focused on protecting interdependent relationships that are part of
intricate living systems. What aspects of the local commons support living systems,
and which aspects work to undermine living systems? What needs to be sustained?
What needs to be limited or recognized as harmful and thus abolished? Here we
want to emphasize that not all nonmonetized, commons-based activities or beliefs
are beneficial. This should be clear from our discussion of the ways modern west-
ern culture is built upon taken-for-granted value hierarchies and hegemonic centric
thinking that lead to all sorts of domination. Racist, sexist, or anthropocentric beliefs
or practices may be shared without monetary exchange and thus form part of the
cultural commons, but they do not protect life. Learning to discern the difference in
the effects or consequences of commonly shared practices is what it means to
become ethically engaged in the local.
Of course, while practices and relationships that make up the commons continu-
ally emerge and develop, most of the practices that we identify as having a smaller
ecological footprint are generally very old. In our western culture, they date back
to times when our economy was more community-based. For example, the practice
of barter is ancient – but how we barter, and what we exchange, may be modern.
For many of us in the West, these commons practices have been so eaten away by
processes of commodification, that it may be difficult to identify them as still existing
(Bowers 2006). The important point for science teachers is that communities comprise
any number of strengths – assets – that can be brought to bear in solving all sorts
of problems. Science ought to be approached as a way to both identify and address
needs and problems in the community.

Enclosure

[To] reduce life to the scope of our understanding (whatever “models” we use) is inevitably
to enslave it, make property of it, and put it up for sale. (Berry 2000, 7)
Woven into the long history of the world’s diverse ecological and cultural commons
is the practice of enclosure. Enclosure privatizes and commodifies what was once
freely shared, and cuts people off from the life-giving relationships offered by the
commons. Founded upon deeply embedded cultural assumptions that define humans