what *are* ecotypes, anyway?...your input please on draft conference talk

[James Proctor]

Dear colleagues, hello again! I'm on sabbatical this semester, and have had time to do all sorts of work related to EcoTypes. To catch up on what I've shared to date:

• A 2022 summary of survey results
• A set of possible new EcoTypes, including 2022 re-analysis

This email shares with you a draft conference presentation I'll make in late March at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, as part of three sessions I've organized titled Plural Environmental Imaginaries. Feel free to access this draft via:

bit.ly/jdpaag23draft

Make sure, when you pull up the presentation, to press S on your keyboard to see speaker notes for each slide...hopefully they will help convey the argument.

In important ways, the presentation offers one answer to "What *are* EcoTypes, anyway?" Sometimes, for instance, people call EcoTypes "values," but that's not technically correct. Many geographers and others now approach environmental ideas as *imaginaries*—that's what the AAG sessions are all about. But I propose a reimagining of imaginaries, with brief application to EcoTypes at the end of the talk. My draft title and abstract are at bottom.

I would appreciate any quick thoughts or feedback you might have: just email me, or fill out the EcoTypes response form. Feel free to share, and thank you in advance for your thoughts, whether on the theory you'll read or its pedagogical applications in the classroom.

Thank you in advance,

Jim P.

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Title: Exploring Environmental Worldviews: Imaginaries, Ideologies, Frameworks, EcoTypes

Abstract: How explore environmental ideas without idealism? The most recent, compelling answer by geographers and others involves the concept of imaginaries. In these sessions, contributors have deployed imaginaries in a variety of settings, illustrating the power of this approach. I wonder, however, where we might place imaginers and imagining in our work on imaginaries—and whether we might assess the imaginativeness of these imaginaries? I also wonder whether we are ready to place our scholarly imaginaries in greater symmetry alongside our work on popular imaginaries? What I propose involves a dialectic btw ideologies, expressed as ideological attractors, and imagining, to give better, more active focus to imaginaries. I also propose a consideration of both as frameworks—structured conceptual assumptions—especially among scholars. I offer a background on imaginaries, then propose a model relating ideologies and imaginaries (mindful that scholars of imaginaries may not be friendly to this amendment). I then offer a background on ideologies, and develop a notion of ideologies as attractors deployed by powerful actors. I then review the concept of frameworks, especially as deployed by scholars, with examples. Building on this approach, I introduce the EcoTypes educational and research initiative, first by contrasting it with the ubiquitous New Environmental Paradigm framework used in environmental worldview assessment, then by introducing how EcoTypes determines attractors and imaginaries inductively, via a broad survey based on the premise of environmentalism in the plural—that many care, just differently. I close with an exploration of imagining strategies in EcoTypes, navigating difference between one and two. 

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