Affirmative Intervention to Support Multispecies Relationships: (Contemporary Systems Thinking)

This book offers a pioneering approach to collaborative co-authorship, integrating storytelling, participatory action research, and innovative uses of technology like Zoom to bridge geographical and cultural divides. The authors emphasize authentic dialogue, using a form of metalogue to ensure all voices are heard and respected, thus avoiding ventriloquy—speaking for or over others. Their praxis revolves around performative and regenerative projects involving indigenous custodians, academics, students, and community members, aiming to address "Species Apartheid" and promote a more inclusive and sustainable future. The book's engagement model includes inner work, focusing on critical analysis and analytical meditation on values and their consequences; outer work, involving transformative education and organic food production workshops to engage a broad community of practice; and future work, exploring narrative and "if-then" scenarios to envision new possibilities, with an emphasis on creativity and courage. The authors draw inspiration from diverse sources, including Indigenous knowledge systems and various academic institutes and organizations. Through their collaborative efforts, they aim to create a more inclusive, sustainable, and just world.

Table of Contents:
Earning, Learning and Growing a Future Together.- The Personal and Political: Ways to Support Participatory Design: Affirmative Intervention to Support Multispecies Relationships through Meditation, Analysis, Scenarios and Story Pathways to Wellbeing.- Storytelling and Scenarios : Fostering Emotional Intelligence, Distributive Leadership and Multispecies Relationships.- Vignette A Critical Systemic Reflections on Narratives at Writers Week in the Wake of Climate Change, Pandemic and War.- A Reflection on Knowing your Place: Learning Supported by Meditation and Dialogue.- Storytelling to Weave Scenarios with Unravelled Threads.- Pointing the Way : How Critical Systemic Novels can Help to Address Polarisations : Through Recognising Continuums and Exploring Integrative Scenarios.- Making Sense of my Own Life : Pandemic and Unravelling: Diary Notes 2022-2023.- Vignette: Small Stories : Orphans Growing a Future Post Covid.- High as a Kite: School Lunches as Food for Thought.- Earth Jurisprudence, Consciousness and Knowing our Place : Protecting the Commons (food, water, energy) Through non Anthropocentricism and Nonviolence Protecting the Commons Through Linking Indigenous Views on Natural Law with Relational Governance.- Rebalancing Conservation and Development:Water Security and Sowing Indigenous Seed and Wisdom.- A Metalogue on Constructivism and why Thinking Matters : A Consideration of Multispecies Relationships and Re-considering our Identity.- The Logosofia Thread as Constructivist Paradigm Praxis.- Community of Practice based on Spanning Boundaries and Extending our Solidarity with other Species: Intergenerational Learning and Local Wisdom.- Exploring Lessons on Re-generative Living with a Community of Practice in South Africa and Indonesia.- Re-generating Local, Regional and International Leadership Through Community engagement on Earning, Learning and Growing a Future: A Metalogue with Youth Leaders and Young at Heart Facilitators.- Multi-species Relationality Through Scaling up Systemic Governance to Re-generate and Protect the Commons: Summing up our Dialogues and Metalogues.- Concluding Reflections on Dynamics and Displacement: Implications for Systemic Governance Food, Energy and Water Security.

About the Author :
Janet J. McIntyre-Mills, DLitt et Phil in Sociology, is a Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa in the College of Education and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide Business School since December 2019. With affiliations at universities in Indonesia, such as Universitas Padjadjaran, she is affiliated with the Centre for Research and Participatory Development Research. In August 2019, she was recognized as "Sociologist of the Month" by the Current Sociology Journal for her paper "Recognising our hybridity and Connectedness." Her research was ranked by the National Research Foundation in South Africa in 2020 and has been supported by grants from the South African National Research Foundation in 2021 and 2022 (grant numbers 132043 and 137987). Her research focuses on systemic representation, accountability, and re-generation applied to social and environmental justice concerns. She has authored numerous articles in accredited journals and edited and sole-authored volumes, including "Transformative Education for Regenerative Development" (Springer, 2021), "From Polarisation to Multispecies Relationships" (Springer, 2021), "Planetary Passport: Re-presentation, Accountability and Re-Generation" (2017), and "Systemic Ethics and Non-anthropocentric Stewardship" (2014), all published by Springer, New York.