Center for Life Ethics
Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 7
D-53113 Bonn
Center for Life Ethics
Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 7
D-53113 Bonn
Modernist models of 'progress' and 'development' have not only proven to be unsuitable for countering the growing number of global eco-social threats; they are increasingly seen as part of the problem. Voices from the global South in particular criticize 'developmentalism' as an ideological device for universalizing 'Western' worldviews and visions of the future and ultimately for legitimizing a system of (neo-)colonial domination over nature and a large part of humanity. The resulting geopolitics of knowledge systematically excludes subaltern (e.g. non-hetero-male, indigenous, southern) perspectives from official discourses on desirable futures and possible solutions to the current multi-crisis scenario.
Against this background, we are interested in alternative ontological, epistemological, methodological, ethical and political approaches and practices that are often located outside or at the interface with the academic sphere and require transdisciplinary engagement. In doing so, the 'others' must be seen as equal - without absolutizing categories of otherness or relativizing scientific knowledge.
By following the idea of a pluriverse of coexisting worlds, we focus on the ontological, epistemological and ethical dimensions that different practices of world-making entail, as well as on the different futures that can emerge from these practices.
Our ability to find sustainable solutions to global eco-social threats will depend crucially on whether and how we negotiate different ethical conceptions of human and non-human "life", "nature" or "environment" and bring them together in our projections of possible, sustainable futures. This requires all participants to recognize the possibility and legitimacy of other perspectives and worlds.
As part of a long-term strategy to open the current scientific system to a variety of perspectives on global challenges, this international workshop brings together a transdisciplinary group of experts from Latin America and Germany with researchers from the University of Bonn. For a whole week, the participants exchanged experiences and ideas on environmental ethics and shaping futures beyond modernist models of "development" in pluriversal dialogues at the Center for Life Ethics. A series of workshops provided space for experimenting with different co-creative, dialogical and performative practices and methods from intercultural environmental research and education.
The analysis of these practical experiences from different cultural, social, historical and geopolitical perspectives provided important insights into the potential, feasibility and challenges of mobilizing divergent perspectives for the co-creation of socially and environmentally sustainable solutions.
This joint project and the International Workshop is carried out by a consortium of researchers from different institutions of the University of Bonn (Center for Life Ethics, Global Heritage Lab, Center for Development Research, Institute for Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology, Interdisciplinary Latin American Center) and is closely related to the joint project 'Towards Pluriversal Dialogues' at the Center for Life Ethics.
Research Area Globalization
Center for Life Ethics
Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 7
53113 Bonn
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