Radical Critical Empathy and Cultural Sustainability

Abstract

This chapter suggests some methodological and pedagogical orientations to the project of cultural sustainability. The scholarship of Michael Jackson, Edie Turner, Henry Glassie, and Jeff Todd Titon explores how culture can be existentially sustaining, but often this quality of culture is lost in scholarship and practice. The chapter argues that participation, empathy, and communitas should be cultivated in pedagogy and research methodology. Such an approach recasts the relationship of experts to communities, ways of knowing and communicating, and the ethics of scholarship. Considering well-being and culture from this vantage point suggests factors that are relevant to broader issues in sustainability and have informed the curriculum and philosophy of the Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability program at Goucher College.