A Case for Universal Context: Intersections of the Biosphere, Systems, and Justice Using a Critical Constructionist Lens

Document Type

Book Section

Publication Date

1-19-2018

Publication Title

Innovation in Environmental Leadership: Critical Perspectives

Publisher

Routledge

Publisher Location

New York, NY

First page number:

1

Last page number:

16

Abstract

Leadership is a socially constructed phenomenon, situated in context, place, and time. Efforts in the literature to ground leadership in something more substantial that will apply across contexts have either been anchored in a problematic reductionism or largely amount to personal values and identity clarification. Criticality provides a moral direction to leadership, focusing as it does on emancipation and unearthing unequal power relations. By becoming more critical learners and actively disrupting these processes, we may shape leadership theory and practice to be an affirming place of reclamation and social change. Senge has strongly made the case for both systems and sustainability, eventually integrating the two and calling "systems citizenship" the "leadership mandate for this millennium". Leadership that acknowledges the biosphere as the ultimate frame in which we operate has the potential to transcend environmental sustainability and positively influence other important leadership goals that we might share.

Disciplines

Educational Leadership | Leadership Studies

Language

English

UNLV article access

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