---------- Forwarded message ---------
From:
James Proctor <jpro...@lclark.edu>Date: Mon, Jun 16, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Subject: AESS conf attendees (& others!): Bringing EcoTypes into your scholarship/teaching
To: <
essf...@aessonline.org>
Greetings! For those of you planning to attend our
AESS conference next week, I invite you to participate in a session Mon Jun 23 starting at 10:30 am titled "
Bringing 'Many Care, Just Differently' Into Your Scholarship & Teaching"; a session abstract & learning objectives are below. (And if you cannot attend our conference, feel free to be in touch and I can keep you in the loop.)
EcoTypes explores environmental conflicts in a novel way. Many students have completed the EcoTypes survey (~18K since it was launched in 2017) and benefitted from
related resources. But a deeper scholarly and pedagogical opportunity is suggested on the EcoTypes home page: "We disagree. That's good! Our differing EcoTypes can be a source of creative solutions."
Students
explore this possibility via the possibility that Many Care, Just Differently—MCJD. And scholars are increasingly realizing that we have gotten stuck in our narrow conceptions of "pro-environmental" attitudes and behavior, our simplistic tendencies to erase difference via laudable attempts at agreement, or, on the other hand, our understandable but unhelpful calls to fight in the face of environmental conflict. MCJD is bold and risky, especially in the Trump 2.0 era, but perhaps never more needed to work toward genuine environmental progress again.
I would like to guide interested environmental scholars and educators toward incorporating EcoTypes, and its deeper MCJD theme, into your work. EcoTypes offers a nationwide and international network you can be a part of. Please consider attending our AESS session, and do directly be in touch (
jpro...@lclark.edu) if you'd like to chat further.
Thank you,
Jim Proctor
***
Session abstract: Many AESS participants are familiar with the EcoTypes initiative (
ecotypes.us), and thousands of college students complete the EcoTypes survey annually. But a deeper lesson is summarized via EcoTypes resources exploring "Many Care, Just Differently"—arguably an imperative for our world of seemingly unending, perhaps even escalating, environmental disagreement and debate. How might AESS scholars orient our work, and our teaching, around "Many Care, Just Differently (MCJD)?" Professor Jim Proctor of Lewis & Clark College will offer guidance, examples, and personalized assistance during this professional development seminar. We will consider MCJD scholarship addressing theoretical and empirical dimensions of ideological difference over issues of environment, and MCJD instruction that encourages and empowers our students to reach beyond their comfort zone and engage with those who offer differing life experiences and insights into common issues of environment. Participants will leave with a customized trajectory they can follow as next steps in their environmental scholarship and/or teaching, and join a growing community of AESS scholars who prioritize engagement across difference as perhaps the most important skill we might cultivate and practice in today's world.
Workshop objectives
- Situate "Many Care, Just Differently" (MCJD) relative to its common alternatives in navigating difference.
- Consider a range possibilities for environmentally-oriented MCJD scholarship and instruction.
- Develop a professional plan for next steps in MCJD-oriented research and/or teaching.
***