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Access Type
WSU Access
Date of Award
January 2022
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
Sociology
First Advisor
Michelle Jacobs
Abstract
Colonial and Indigenous perspectives are ontologically different, impacting how relations are built, understood, and upheld. This work investigates the dominant perspectives in environmental literature in order to understand how humans engage with Earth, the dominant understanding of human’s relation to Earth and its beings, and the assumptions made about Earth, humans, and our futures. I aim to understand how colonial and Indigenous perspectives interact with climate change and environmental justice through the language used in academic texts, and how this language reflects internalized beliefs and perspectives as they relate to the dominating power structure. Using Punjabi- Sikh ways of building and understanding knowledge as the foundational methodological approach to understanding human-Earth relations, I “conducted” a content analysis, which is to say I gathered knowledge in the form of popularly cited academic articles from three search terms from the Web of Science database. Colonial perspectives remain dominant in highly cited environmentalist work, indicating a colonial leaning in the materials knowledge workers are learning from, disseminating, and building with.
Recommended Citation
Kaur, Harmandeep, "How Do You See Earth?: Perspectives In Stories Of Earth, Value, And Futures" (2022). Wayne State University Theses. 902.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_theses/902