Reason and Reenchantment in Cultural Change Sustainability in Higher Education by Peggy

At this critical historical juncture of environmental degradation, awareness of needed cultural change, and an emerging sustainability movement, attention to “reenchantment”—the phenomena of sensory, emotional, and nonrational ways of connecting with the earth’s living systems—strengthens our professional understanding as educators as well as our ability to contribute to institutional change. Research among participants in the Piedmont Project—a faculty development program for sustainability across the curriculum at Emory University—and among sustainability leaders in higher education across North America shows that wonder, delight, awe, and meaning are linked to both personal and political spheres of action. The experience of reenchantment can be understood in seven dimensions and provides restorative moments, fosters creativity for change, and supports a revised worldview. A stereoscopic paradigm that combines reason and reenchantment will serve an anthropology that seeks to think, in Roy Rappaport’s words, “not merely about the world but on behalf of the world.”