International Agricuture Center, NCHU

2022 International Conference on Sustainability Culture (ICSC) 

WELCOME to ICSC - 2022

2022 International Conference on Sustainability Culture (ICSC-2022) will be held ONLINE from National Chung Hsing University, International Agriculture Center, Taichung, Taiwan, during 29^th and 30^th September 2022.

The ICSC's theme for 2022 will be: “SUSTAINABILITY, AGROECOLOGIAL TRANSITION, AND THE SENSE OF BELONGINGNESS TO THE LAND, ENVIRONMENT, AND EACH OTHER.”

The International Conference on Sustainability Culture (ICSC) aims to be one of the leading International conferences for presenting novel and fundamental advances in the interdisciplinary space between Sustainability Culture and the AgroEcological Transition. It also serves to foster communication among researchers and practitioners working in a wide variety of scientific areas with a common interest in this field.

The conference provides a platform for professionals to exchange knowledge and gain an insight into the latest ideas and solutions in the field as they have been developed and applied in different countries. Participants include a wide variety of stakeholders from research and academia, to industrial sectors as well as government organizations. 

Important Dates:

Conference Outline:

Here, at the IAC/NCHU, Taiwan, we focus on an interdisciplinary study of sustainability culture and what is needed to achieve the Great AgroEcological Transition. In our research, we find that the same core question arises over and time again: how is it possible that even though we already have all the knowledge and technology required to live and farm sustainably, we do not seem to be able to fully achieve this? We postulate that the answers are found in how we form our culture and how we relate to the technology that gives us our comforts. Which values do we have, how do we think the world works, and do we really want to be sustainable, no matter what?

THE CONFERENCE therefor seeks to further the debate on how culture defines our drive and thrust toward sustainability from an interdisciplinary approach. It seeks to further the dialogue on what sustainability culture means exactly in the 21^st century. The conference seeks to explore the issues that hinder the achievement of the Great AgroEcologial Transition, and what cultural change is needed to advance this in general. In particular the conference is intended to examine the role and importance in that process of the sense of human belongingness to the land, the environment, and more broadly, to the Earth. We shape our lives in the bedrock of culture. What happens to this process when the Business-As-Usual culture that has led to Climate Change intersects with the urgent need to live sustainably, or when we are faced with the horror of the Anthropocene (Timothy Clark, 2020)? And what does sustainable living mean without having a direct connection with our environment, our community, each other, or the Earth, and do not perceive our lived space as finite and connected? What can we modernized human beings, learn from Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in this? Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2003) has convincingly argued that the Indigenous populations of Australia have a natural sense of belonging to the land they are born on as an ontological connection to that land which connection arises from ancestry. How can we assume that we can have sustainable development when we do not have such an ontological connection and we do not feel the Earth as part of us, as our home? And how do we form a new future horizon of human progress when we no longer can afford to use the Earth as a conceptual externality where we can banish all that we do not want (David Woods, 2005)?

There will be special attention for the phenomenon of Pacific Island Sustainability Culture. There is a widening acknowledgment that Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) offers pertinent insights on how to be sustainable in relationship to land, sea, and communities of all sentient beings. In the Asia-Pacific region, this knowledge to a large extent belongs to a culture that is island bound. The Austronesian and Polynesian peoples have spent several thousands of years developing a way of life that is in harmony with their natural environment that is dominated by the ocean and a seafaring way of life. Now that modernised society people are in need of getting (back) in touch with the sense of belongingness to land, ocean, and community, (island) TEK has an important role to play. The question arises whether the island peoples of the Asia-Pacific region, because of their island life bound nature and culture, have a special outlook on TEK and sustainability that is specific to island life, and as such differs from more continental viewpoints. And to the extent this is the case, it is worthwhile to explore what can be their special contribution, especially in comparison to the more continental based sustainability learning movement that is driving much of the SD learning worldwide. This Conference aims to explore these issues.

THE THEME of the AgroEcological Transition and the sense of belongingness to the land, each other, and the Earth, will be regarded from an interdisciplinary perspective, inviting contributions from all fields, including but not limited to: ethnology, cultural studies, agriculture, anthropology, literature, water and soil management, sustainability education, anthropogeography, (cross-cultural) psychology, sociology, film and media studies, transpacific studies, art, economics, religious studies, and history.

POSSIBLE TOPICS for papers relate, but are not limited to:

• What is sustainability culture exactly, its definition and aspects?
• How do we overcome Business-As-Usual in our (agri)culture?
• Sustainability and social justice;
• Indigenous land and sea management;
• Building sustainable connections with our direct environment and living communities;
• Rethinking education for sustainability;
• Art and sustainability;
• The Great AgroEcological Transition and its difficulties;
• TEK and evolving beyond the post-colonial discussion;
• How do we bring TEK into the AgroEcologial Transition?
• Is there a Pacific Island Sustainability Culture and what does that entail?
• On being ecologically human;
• New Commonness: a universal issue that sustainability is grappling with?
• Sustainable living as the new universal?
• Any other related subject.

IMPORTANT information: the conference shall be held online on September 29 & 30, 2022. To submit, please send a max 100-word bio and 1200-word abstract as one document before July 15, 2022 to theodoorrichard@nchu.edu.tw .

Our conference committee will review the abstracts and will contact the contributors for presentation accordingly. Selected contributors will be expected to submit (i) a 2500 word long abstract (to be made avalaible online to the conference attendees), OR (ii) a full 6000 word paper (if the contributor wishes to qualify for publication in the official proceedings of the conference), before the deadline of August 31, 2022.

Young scholars are especially encouraged to submit, as we will organize a specific section dedicated to PhD Candidates and post-doc researchers in their first three years.

Please contact Theodoor Richard at theodoorrichard@nchu.edu.tw for further questions or information.