Humanities & Sustainability

What are the humanities? 

 

According to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the humanities entail the study of languages and literatures; linguistics; rhetoric; history; philosophy; religion; ethics; the theory, criticism, and history of the arts; jurisprudence and cultural theory; as well as those aspects of social sciences that have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods (e.g., cultural anthropology). The humanities also include the study and application of the humanities to the human environment and to contemporary life, with particular attention to race, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as to diverse peoples and traditions. Humanities methods include (but are not limited to) the deep reading of texts and signs, the construction of meaning through interpretation, the exploration of material and visual culture and human practices, and the study of knowledge construction itself. 

Values Affect Scale: Humanities for the Environment

"Values, Affect, Scale: Humanities for the Environment" is a film produced by the Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) in conjunction with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) that stands as a significant realization of the Institute's sustained effort to address the Humanities' role in sustainability issues and environmental studies.

What do the humanities
                   contribute to sustainability studies?

Ecological sciences and the humanities must be coupled in the sustainability enterprise. Scientists look at physical processes, and social scientists examine sociological processes.  Humanists focus on ideas, values, language, culture, and history.  To sustain our human communities, our natural resources, and our rich global biological and cultural heritage, we must explore humans’ beliefs about their relationship to nature and integrate knowledge and policy across the disciplines in order to understand, inform, and direct human development toward a responsible, sustainable future.   

Borderlands RAVE exhibit.

As the detailed pages above explain, humanists:

• Assess, interpret, and understand the role of human values, beliefs, fears, and cultural inclinations in shaping humanity’s relationship to the natural world;

• Analyze “path-dependence” or habits of mind that persist despite their destructive effects on actions and decisions;

• Interpret the language we use to define our principles, goals, and actions;

• Promote rhetorics of deliberation and activism;

• Interrogate how we construct knowledge about the world and develop and test hypotheses;

• Consider what evidence is necessary to have reliable knowledge about any subject;

• Probe the morality of human actions, practices, and institutions with regard to the natural world;

• Examine religious structures and rituals that promote both sustainable and unsustainable actions and practices;

• Understand how humans have conceptualized their place in the cosmos;

• Reveal the sometimes hidden values in scientific inquiry and practice;

• Explore questions about the value of scientific advancement;

• Examine the role of language as an organizing principle behind scientific inquiry and practice;

• Expose the inequities and other human costs of unsustainable practices and technologies as well as of remedies designed to heal the ecosystem;

• Promote human practices, such as literacy, that are necessary for a sustainable future;

• Explore linguistic and cultural diversity as an important part of biodiversity;

• Trace concepts about the natural world and the consequences of human activity in nature over time;

• Identify historical cause and effect of today’s environmental crisis.

Sustainability@ASU - ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS)

Documents:

Humanities and Sustainability - What Do The Humanities Contribute?