ABSTRACT

Experiments are deemed not only useful, but necessary in sustainability transformation to enhance local decision-making. This is especially apparent in Finland where national government programmes and city administrations promote sustainability experimentation and bottom-up initiatives in the interest of equitable participation. At the same time, universities are expected to respond to societal calls for major infrastructural transformations, while neoliberal principles shift responsibility from authorities to individual citizens. This paper examines the case of a student-driven sustainable campus initiative called “Test Site” in a university committed formally to sustainability education. The students questioned whether sustainability should be taught in air-conditioned classrooms, what topics were socially just and worth pursuing, and rather sought material engagement, creative exploration and autonomy. Invested faculty members were dependent on demonstrations and proof of impact, or at least convincing visuals, to sustain the initiative. The outcome of experimenting most valued by the students however was the material-based social learning on how to self-organise. The meaning of such “minor” experiments thus becomes muddled, involving local, situated power dynamics among university management, faculty and students and what is regarded as useful space and activity for learning. The case illustrates how an experimental site partly removed from university constraints rendered explorations of self-organising participants as valuable yet depended on visible proofs to justify this very exploration as worthwhile. Even within a neoliberal and highly hierarchical governance structure, some participants are able to make small gains to pursue socially just solutions.

摘要

实验被认为不仅有用，而且在可持续性转型以加强当地决策方面是必要的。这在芬兰尤为明显，国家政府计划和城市管理部门为了公平参与而促进可持续性试验和自下而上的举措。与此同时，大学有望响应社会对重大基础设施变革的呼吁，而新自由主义原则将责任从当局转移到个人公民身上。本文研究了一所正式致力于可持续发展教育的大学，名为“试验场”的学生驱动的可持续校园倡议的案例。学生们质疑是否应该在有空调的教室里教授可持续发展，哪些主题是社会公正且值得追求的，而是寻求物质参与、创造性探索和自主性。投资的教职员工依靠演示和影响证明，或者至少是令人信服的视觉效果来维持这一倡议。然而，学生最看重的实验结果是关于如何自我组织的基于材料的社会学习。因此，这种“次要”实验的含义变得混乱，涉及大学管理层、教职员工和学生之间的地方性、情境化的权力动态，以及被认为对学习有用的空间和活动。该案例说明了一个部分脱离大学限制的实验场所如何使自组织参与者的探索变得有价值，但又依赖于可见的证据来证明这种探索是值得的。