Cala Munda, Hankins, Sullivan County NY, June 15th/16th 2019
Hosted by Caroline Baillie (USD) and Eric Feinblatt (Waste for Life)
Invitation
We are delighted to invite you to ESJP’s third critical conversations retreat, ‘Critical conversations around Engineering and Degrowth’, to be held in beautiful Cala Munda (home on the hill) in Hankins, NY. The retreat is designed to follow on immediately after the ESJP14 conference 13-15thJune*.
Critical conversations are retreat based, in-depth conversations that focus on important issues arising from our yearly conferences and/or from our work at large. We held our first conversation in 2014, ‘Conversations about Critical Action’ that exploredpast, present and future actions thatenhancesocial justice. We concluded that new ways of working together and new forms of education needed to emerge to achieve our goals. We committed to researching these and devisingalternatives. A second conversation was held in 2018, ‘Critical Conversations about Trust’, wherewe grappled with the various dimensionsof ‘trust’ when working with vulnerable communities.
Our forthcoming critical conversation, ‘Engineering andDegrowth’will be held in June 2019, again in retreat format – with no more than 15 participants – for deep reflection intended to guide future action and outcomes. Participants will spend 1/1/2 days at the Standing People Together retreat, Cala Munda,in Hankins, New York**. We will apply forest schoolpedagogy to animate the activities and conversations that will take place in outdoor studio settings. As usual, we hope to bring together a group with a wide variety of experience and interest in this topic to take our understanding to new levels.
Why Degrowth?
The continuing human and environmental fallout from our morally defunct systems of governance can easily leave us at a loss at where to begin – all the more so because engineering, as a profession, is often complicit in perpetuating the injustices and devastations that envelop us (e.g., think about pipelines and border walls).
Climate disruption, as an example, can be easily and forcefully connected to unfettered growthwhose paramount attributes, ‘efficiency and productivity’, are in the DNA of most engineers, who have little practice separating the seeming inevitability of and, indeed, aimsof growth from their technical goals.
Missing in conversations between environmentalists, activists, and political economists is the voice of engineerwho will take this head on.What would production look like if, like the natural world, we created just enough? What role would automation play if it were to be fair to workers and the planet? What would design look like if we were to learn from the trees and create products that lasted for hundreds of years,did not waste anything, and survived on only what was needed? Surrounded by the forest, and inspired by the elegance of nature’s complex ecosystem,our conversations about degrowthwill begin to tackle these critical issues and consider pathways to further the conversation about the future of engineering practice.
Call for expressions of interest
As places are limited, we are asking for expressions of interest at this time. Please email 200 words by April 15th about your interest in attending this meeting (cbaillie@sandiego.edu). Please accept our apologies in advance for not being able to accept all those who wish to attend.
* ESJP14 is to be held at the Sky lake retreat centre, Windsor, NY Hankins,NY 13-14thJune with a special session at Cala Munda, on the morning of the 15th. The critical conversation participants will stay on after lunch at Cala Munda to begin their retreat. Accommodation for the retreat can be offered on site to a limited number of guests, or at local Airbnb cottages.
** Hankins, NY is 2.5 hours NW of NYC and a 55 minute drive from Sky Lake Camp and Retreat centre, main location of ESJP14. Transport options include flights / car rental from JFK/Newark, Scranton and Stewart International airports, also bus from Port Authority NY