Pramod Parajuli

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			Address Penstemon Building 226 Grove Avenue Phone Number (928) 350-3222 (877) 350-2100 x 3222 Email pparajuli@prescott.edu Sustainability Education Faculty List

Biographical Information
Welcome to my Prescott Faculty corner! Joining Prescott faculty is like "home coming" for me. I am committed to teach, conduct research, develop programs and appropriate curriculum so that we can adequately prepare the next generation of educators and leaders. My model of teaching and learning seeks to connect and integrate the ecosphere (the earth's household) with ethnosphere (the human household) with the learningspehere (the way we learn and engage in inquiry).

I bring to Prescott College more than two decades of experience and skills in innovative and award-winning program development and the interdisciplinary content for the doctoral and graduate programs. A graduate of Stanford University (1990), my scholarship, inquiry and teaching has been interdisciplinary, engaged, and had opened new terrains of theory and practice. I bring interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological insights to what and how I teach sustainability, sustainable livelihoods, social movements, political ecology, and bio-cultural diversity.

I have taught at different universities including Stanford, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, Lewis and Clark College, the International Honors Program. At Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, I co-founded and also served as the Executive Director of the Portland International Initiative for Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning ( (2001-2008, visit, www.piiecl.pdx.edu) .

In Portland, Oregon, I also had the opportunity to initiate and lead an award winning Food and Garden based Ecological Education Design (FEED) and the Learning Gardens project. Working with a number of parents, teachers and garden educators, part of that effort have resulted into establishing a non-profit, called the Learning Gardens Institute (LGI). With a motto of "growing together from soil to supper," the goal of LGI is to disseminate the idea of "learning gardens" to schools as well as "edible gardens" to households and neighborhoods, locally, bioregionally and globally. I am eager to fully explore with Prescott students, faculty and community partners if and how we could build on food and gardens as a gateway to our deeper social and ecological engagements.

Another area of my passion and expertise is to develop whole systems design that seek and solve for pattern (not symptoms) in food and agro-ecological systems, learning systems and social systems. In 2005 and in 2006, two of my students and I received the nationally competitive, People, Planet and Prosperity reward from the US Environmental Protection Agency. We have looked at schools as ecosystems and developed a web-based guide that engages 4th-8th grade children in the dreaming and designing of their own school through 36 different activities (please visit: www.wisedesign.org).

Speaking ecologically and in terms of inhabitation, I am at the verge of a confluence between the three plateaus: the Himalayan, the Columbian and the Colorado.   Born in a rural peasant family in the Himalayan foothills of Nepal, I have traveled far and wide. I hope to make this move to Prescott as a natural continuum between the Columbia plateau (where I reside today) to the Colorado plateau.   Indeed, there is so much to learn and share. While I miss the majestic terrain of the Himalayan foothills, for the last decade or so, I have equally enjoyed being in the beautiful and rainy Pacific Northwest. As I prepare to (I think partially) move to the dry and sunny Colorado Plateau, I feel pretty lucky. Finally, I will have enough sunlight and serotonin in my rain-soaked body!!

Scholarship and Interdisciplinary Pursuits

Author of dozens of journal articles and book chapters, Pramod is currently working on several book manuscripts including "Learning Sustainability: Ecological and Cultural Foundations," "Towards a Global Political Ecology," and "A Learning Gardens Pedagogy from Soil to Supper."

Links to my Publications Online

Some of my publications are found in the following link at: http://www.piiecl.pdx.edu/research&publications/lecl_core_readings.htm

Click below for book and journal articles by Professor   Pramod Parajuli.

"Partnership Model of Sustainability" - by Pramod Parajuli

A diagram showing the relationships between economy and ecology on the one hand, and biocultural diversity and social justice on the other. Depicts intra- and inter-generational partnerships, inter-economic partnerships, inter-cultural partnerships, and inter-species partnerships. This diagram serves as the thematic model for curricula development in the Portland International Initiative for Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning (PIIECL).

"Coming Home to the Earth Household: Indigenous Communities and Ecological Citizenship in India" - by Pramod Parajuli

From Indigenous People's Wisdom and Power

Racismo Ambiental (em Portugues) - by Pramod Parajuli

"An Idea that is seeking its own Biomass: The first 4 years of PIIECL" - by Pramod Parajuli

"Learning Suitable to Life and Livability: Innovation through Learning Gardens" - by Pramod Parajuli

Update on the progress of PIIECL's FEED Program, JEAN's Farm, and Learning Gardens Laboratory in Coalition for a Livable Future's publication, Connections.

"Towards an Environmentalism of the Global South: A playful conversation around Mahatma Gandhi" - by Pramod Parajuli

Is there an environmentalism of the global South? In a conversation with Dr. Dilafruz Williams, Dr. Parajuli explains Mahatma Gandhi's influence on the new environmentalism of the global South. Extends the ecological foundations of Gandhian wisdom to modern issues of environmentalism, biocultural diversity and social justice.

" Homeward Bound: Agroecological Civilization and the Quest for a Sustainable Society: A Conversation with Pramod Parajuli " -

In this dialogue, Professor Pramod Parajuli, critically explores three schools of environmentalism, namely, earth as sacred, earth as a factory, and earth as a household.

Beyond Capitalized Nature: Ecological Ethnicity as an Arena of Conflict in the Regime of Globalization" - by Pramod Parajuli

While introducing the notion of ecological ethnicities, Professor Parajuli examines the impact of the ecological phase of globalization on ecological ethnicity. When nature is capitalized and capital is naturalized, ecological ethnicities are affected to a disproportionate degree due to their intimate connection with the Earth. Discusses the effects on the adivasis of India and Native American communities of North America, among others.

"How Can Four Trees Make a Jungle?"

Reports a conversation between Professor Parajuli and Tularam, a neighbor of the experimental farm in Chitwan, Nepal. Offers suggestions for a healthy coexistence of farm and forest, wild and the not so wild.

"Learning from Ecological Ethnicities: Toward a Plural Political Ecology of Knowledge" - by Pramod Parajuli

Explicates the relationship between ecological extraction for short-term economic gain, and the subordination of ecological ethnicities. Shows the depth of interaction and interdependence between the human and more than human worlds within widely defined ecoregions, or "cultures of habitat." Outlines implications of this possibility for governance at the community level and for ecological citizenship.

"Power and Knowledge in Development Discourse: New Social Movements and the State in India" - by Pramod Parajuli

Deals with global development discourse, social movements, and the state in India. Asserts new indicators of growth as livability, sustainability, and equality. Delineates new social movements arising in response to global economic hegemony.

"No Nature Apart: Adivasi Cosmovision and Ecological Discourses in Jharkhand, India" - by Pramod Parajuli

Compares and contrasts the agro-ecological cosmovisions of adivasi and other peasant communities of India and the Peruvian Andes with the standard developmentalist paradigms. Explores the notion of cosmovisions in comprehending nature and human-nature-supernatural relationships. The author concludes this chapter with the question: How can the holistic cosmovisions of peasant communities inform the fragmented and reductionist policies regarding water, forest, and land of current developmentalist states?

"Revisiting Gandhi and Zapata: Motion of Global Capital, Geographies of Difference and the Formation of Ecological Ethnicities" - by Pramod Parajuli

In this chapter of an edited volume, Professor Parajuli continues the explication of his concept of ecological ethnicities in light of concepts from environmental scholars and sociopolitical leaders. In order to illustrate the gaps between environmentalism of the global North and global South, he synthesizes ideas such as Gandhi's village self-rule and local economy, Zapatismo ecologism, and de Certeau's "tortured body and altered earth" as metaphors for environmental destruction and social injustice. Parajuli identifies five crises that ecological ethnicities are experiencing because of a globalizing economy, namely, the crisis of nature, crisis of social justice, crisis of survival, crisis of knowledge and identity, and crisis of governance. He closes with initiatives from around the world, including Portland, Oregon, to facilitate the foodsheds and local economies based on local bioregions.

"Struggling For Autonomy - Lessons from Local Governance" - by Pramod Parajuli and Smitu Kothari

Explores two emerging models of governance: global governance, and various forms of radical democratic organization at the grassroots. Looks critically at the global civil society as promoted by various institutions and NGOs and proposes community as a viable site of new governance.

Courses Developed and Taught (1988-2008)

  (Includes Portland State University, Syracuse University, Lewis and Clark College and other Institutions)

Sustainability and Ecological Education:

Learning Gardens and Food Policy, Sustainability Education, Ecological Education in K-12, Ecological and Cultural Foundations of Learning, Culture and Curriculum, Global Environmental Narratives, Ethics of Development in a Global Environment (EDGE).

Political Ecology, Leadership, and Social Movements :

Global Political Ecology, Introduction to Global Political Ecology, Ecology and Social Justice, Leadership for Sustainability Political Anthropology, Ethnicity and Ethnic Movements, Race and Ethnicity in Global Perspectives,

Theory and Practice of Sustainability, Social Movement Theory, Gandhi and Social Movements, New Social Movements in India.

Global Ecology in Social and Cultural Perspectives, Global Environmental Movements, Seminar on Sustainable Development, Technology and Culture Change,

Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Studies :

Global Indigenous Cultures and Biocultural Diversities, Gandhi, Zapata and New Agrarianism, Global Cultures from the Margins, Readings on Non-Violence, Gandhi, Nonviolence and Sustainability, Power and Resistance, Ethnographies of Resistance, Peoples and Cultures of the World, Himalayan Anthropology, Introduction to Asian Studies, Cyborg Millennium.

Ethnography, Participatory Action Research and Collaborative Research: LCL Thesis, LECL Culminating Projects, Collaborative Ethnographic Research Methods, Anthropological Praxis, Social Movement Research Methods, Social Movement Practicum, Quantitative Research Methods, Social Science Research in South Asia.

Research Projects, Grants/Fellowships