Also -
re my Post: I was speaking with a young recent-PhD from South America a few days ago and was fascinated by his views, his passion and his anger. This prompted me to post the email - I am hoping to instigate some of these new voices (I am imagining they are potentially on this discussion list) to come forward. So if you have done your doctoral work in the area of sustainability in Asia - and live and work in Asia I would like to hear about what you are doing.
Additionally from others - I would like to hear about recent graduates who may be doing fascinating work in Asia in the sphere of sustainability.
This topic “the sphere of sustainability” in Asia is an account that includes community engaged practice - spoken of as social innovation in some instances. I am also looking to see what the near and far future world looks like if you are in an environment that is devastated, or host to internally displaced people. Asia in this account contains the former Soviet bloc countries (unique meaning of environmental devastation), the middle east (another angle completely for sustainability) and then the rest more towards the east.
Have a good day everyone. Look forward to your suggestions.
(Thanks Ken, Good to hear your suggestions )
Soumitri
On 22 Feb 2015, at 8:09 pm, Studio Soumitri <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I am doing a piece on sustainability in Asia, and this has been an interesting journey. Should I take the American wilderness movement, combine it with Datchevsky and call out the western sustainability movement as shallow and utterly utilitarian? Or should I call out the elitism inherent in the wilderness movement, and in deep ecology, that has no space for the poor, marginalised, the refugee and the displaced people of the planet - by aligning myself with the greens, the bioethicists and the development theorists? Or should I simply stay within the discourse of sustainability within the profession of design and account for the pretty objects (Tree Hugger) and pretty buildings (ArchDaily), with an enumeration of the ecodesigned consumer products for consumption in volumes across the globe? Then there is the ‘real world’ and ‘humanitarian’ narrative of lets go to Africa to help out the less-fortunate with products that will improve their lives. In the writing none of these accounts contained Asia in them. Which potentially implies there is nothing to report on sustainability in Asia. But that can’t be true - there is the fact that the eco-footprint of the typical citizen of Asia is very small. So its possible the western contraction of the problem of sustainability could be about something else - aka Brundtland saying lets not endanger our prosperity. Is it possible there is another way to contract the narrative of the future of this planet without the ‘sustainability’ blame game? Something potentially requires us to have a different point of view. The privileging of the eastern philosophy as holding the solution does not appeal.
>
> So what could this new framework, this new way of constructing a violable and plausible future be? Is there something around us already that is a bit more Asia centric.
>
> Would be good to hear your thoughts.
>
>
> Dr. Soumitri Varadarajan
> Deputy Dean - Industrial and Interior Design, School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476v, Melbourne, VIC 3001, AUSTRALIA, CRICOS provider code: 00122A
>
>
> BLOG: https://campaignprojects.wordpress.com
>
>
>
>
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