Facing the Anthropocene: Comparative Education as Sympoiesis

Before proceeding with the three provocations, it is important to introduce a new word in our expanding comparative education vocabulary: sympoiesis. The word “sympoiesis” derives from the ancient Greek sún (“with, together”) and poíēsis (“creation, production”), meaning “making-with” or “becoming-with.”5 As Donna Haraway (2016, 58) explains, “Sympoiesis is a simple word; it means ‘making-with.’ Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing. In the words of the Inupiat computer ‘world game,’ earthlings are never alone. That is the radical implication of sympoiesis. Sympoiesis is a word proper to complex, dynamic, responsive, situated, historical systems. It is a word for worlding-with, in company.” Inspired by Haraway’s (2016) approach, I will use the concept of “sympoiesis” as a keyword for thinking-with (or thinking together) about the role of education in our damaged but still ongoing living worlds in the time of the Anthropocene. In the spirit of the long-established tradition of Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), I will “think with” the ideas and reflections shared by past CIES presidents, the perspectives of my current friends, colleagues, and students, as well as insights from the scholars in the fields of philosophy, anthropology, science and technology studies, and ecofeminism. I will thus engage with the idea of “sympoiesis” both intellectually and practically.