Portfolio

XIX International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology. Canberra, Australia, February 4-8, 2013.
Invited Chair and Speaker: Behavioral Change session, February 7, 2013.

TITLE
Who do you think you are? The influence of social identity on motivating behavioral change in pursuit of sustainability.

ABSTRACT
It is increasingly recognized that social and cognitive factors play a major role in influencing motivation for adaptation to environmental and climate change. Socio-cognitive factors likely are also at play in facilitating and impeding behavioral change relating to adopting more sustainable practices. Using a conceptual model originally developed for adaptation to climate change, this presentation explores the role that social identity may have in strengthening or weakening motivation for behavioral change in pursuit of sustainability. Based on social identity’s influence on people’s perception of institutions, organizations, and other groups responsible for sustainability policies and initiatives, and of the information they provide, social identity likely features similarly in motivating behavioral change for sustainability as it does in motivating adaptation to climate change. I propose that institutions, organizations, businesses, and citizen groups, all generators of social identity, could actively use knowledge of social identity and perception to increase motivation to adopt more sustainable practices within and between their groups and among the public. The concept of boundary organizations may also be significant in facilitating fair and equitable collaboration between groups as boundary organizations can serve not only as generators of social identity and sources of information, but also as bridges between social groups.

XIX International Conference of the Society for Human Ecology. Canberra, Australia, February 4-8, 2013.
Speaker: Transformative Learning session, February 7, 2013.

TITLE
The Consciousness Conundrum. What the evolution of the universe tells us about achieving sustainability on Earth.

ABSTRACT
The universe has no “blueprint,” but there does seem to be a “building code” naturally embedded within everything in it by which things self-organize and evolve so that the universe, matter, and life persist sustainably despite the opposition of entropy. Earth appears to be a hub of the creative complexity that continues to emerge from the process and we humans have managed to figure out quite a few of the rules within which our world exists and functions. One of the rules we have yet to understand—or at least to implement—is how humans with our “unruly” consciousness can organize ourselves and live in a way congruent with nature’s sustainable code. It is increasingly understood that failure to do so will lead to societal collapse and the related demise of innumerable other species. In developing, teaching, and applying a holistic, integrative philosophy of sustainability, it is the universal sustainable “building code” that should be the foundation of our knowledge and the model for both our physical designs and our socioeconomic organizational system.