The George Link Jr. Environmental Awareness Lecture

Arun Agrawal, Samuel Trask Dana Professor at The University of Michigan

Monday, October 28, 2024
4:30pm
Steele 006

Social Action, Commoning, and Social Change

This talk examines the relationship between social action, commoning, and social change. Its goal is to assess how each of these concepts and associated meanings can inspire actions based in research, teaching, and engagement for societal transformations towards justice and sustainability. As universities and other educational institutions reflect on responsibilities in and for democratic societies, such an assessment of the place of commoning and social action is both promising and overdue. The talk will briefly reflect on the relationship between knowledge and action as goals of education in democratic societies and ask whether a focus on experiential learning for deeper, durable knowledge is also a call for action through education. The relationship between commoning, social action, and social change provides a platform for enacting social change, achieving deeper engagement with the arts of citizenship, and building on canonical scholarship related to the commons and social movements.

Bio:

Arun Agrawal is the Samuel Trask Dana Professor at The University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS). He is one of the most significant living scholars studying environmental commons governance. His work emphasizes the politics of international development, institutional change, environmental conservation, and sustainability. He has written on indigenous knowledge, community-based conservation, common property, population resources, and environmental identities. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and is currently the co-chair of “Transformative Change Assessment” for the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Sponsored by the Department of Environmental Studies and the Office of Sustainability at Dartmouth

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC