(Eco)critical sustainability (OPEN UNI)

5 ECTS credits, Academic Year 2025-2026, KE00AQ67
How human-centred is sustainability? What power-structures underpin it? How does modernity influence the way we think about it? Do we need to decolonise sustainability?

This participatory and student-centred course critically examines common narratives and assumptions in sustainable development. Participants explore ecocritical, multispecies and more-than-human approaches and what genuinely transformative sustainability education might look like.

Enrollment period

-

Mode of delivery

Independent study

Course study period

-

Price

Free of charge

Education information

Content:

The course critically examines the assumptions that underpin concepts such as sustainable development across different disciplines. After an introduction to critical thinking principles, participants explore ecocritical, multispecies and more-than-human approaches and how they apply to their own fields. Participants will also distinguish and compare power relations within sustainability narratives, how sustainability knowledge is constructed, and reflect on their own positionality. Topics for discussion will include comparing anthropocentric with ecocentric approaches; whether there is a need to decolonise sustainability thinking; and what ecocritical sustainability might mean in practice.

Pedagogically the course is participatory and student-centred. Participants are encouraged to suggest relevant topics and questions for discussion and will have the opportunity to investigate and compare critical approaches to sustainability across different disciplines.

Key questions the course aims to explore include:
• What does it mean to think critically about sustainability? How do we distinguish it with counter-cultural thinking / resistance to mainstream thinking / conspiracy thinking?
• What assumptions underlie the three pillars of sustainability: environment, social & economic? • How human-centred (anthropocentric) are current sustainability narratives?
• What power-structures and value-hierarchies underpin sustainability knowledge(s) in various fields?
• How is the concept of sustainability influenced by dominant Western industrial culture (especially modernity)? Do we need to decolonise sustainability?
• What might genuinely transformative sustainability education look like?

Contents:
• Critical thinking: key principles, concepts and issues and how they apply to sustainability.
• The three pillars of sustainability (environment, social & economic): critical tensions and assumptions.
• Anthropocentrism in sustainability: ecocritical, multispecies, relational and more-than-human approaches to sustainability narratives and human-nature discourses.
• Western modernity & decolonising sustainability: decolonial critiques of sustainability and the reproduction of power inequalities in sustainability discourses.
• Transformative / critical sustainability: putting transformative sustainability ideas into practice; transformative sustainability education.

Education format

Continuous learning
Open university

Semester

Academic Year 2025-2026

Field of study

Education

Discipline

Gender Studies

Teaching language

English

Course organiser

University of Oulu

Location

online
Oulu

Maximum participants

8

Last updated: 3.6.2025