Response-Ability, Along a Way of Life

This chapter explores the concept of postgrowth response-ability through the lens of John Dewey’s notion of doing-undergoing and examines how seemingly everyday practices can be reimagined to support postgrowth futures. Drawing on Dewey’s articulation of the essential interplay between action and experience, this chapter demonstrates how everyday practices enacted in our local contexts and communities can foster deep connections that reground us in our local communities and bioregions. Integrating Tim Ingold’s concept of “improvising along a way of life” into the conversation helps to more fully articulate the importance of intergenerational, embodied, and emplaced pedagogical processes over and above an emphasis on pedagogies centred on disembodied and displaced symbolic representation and computation, currently dominant in mainstream education. To demonstrate the implications of such a severe emphasis on symbols in educational practice, Cary reflects on examples adapted from his career as a music educator and musicologist. He concludes with a curricular story showing how these concepts can be applied through a place-centred imagination exercise in which students imagine possible postgrowth futures in their local living contexts.