Shinrin yoku as a pedagogy for peace amidst violence: generating dynamic narratives of Palestine-Israel relations on college campuses

Abstract

ABSTRACT Amidst violent conflict over Palestine-Israel relations at colleges across America, how might we use our classrooms and campus landscapes to generate dynamic narratives that facilitate peace? Moving beyond a chronological ordering of events, a narrative is a constructed cohesive account of occurrences used to make sense of experiences and motivate action. In violent settings, narratives tend to retrench into static accounts that increase prejudice and motivate greater acts of violence. Alternatively, dynamic narratives offer complex judgement, plot, character, and value assessments of the world thus encouraging more openness to others and peace. I propose a novel intervention for the generation of dynamic narratives. I use the practice of shinrin yoku or guided forest walks in a seminar about Palestine and Israel, to invite liminality, the experience of communal spaces where traditional markers of power and social obligations are stripped. I expected that increasing experiences of shinrin yoku, and in turn liminality, will induce dynamic understandings of Palestinian Israeli relations on campus. Digital diary responses from eleven student participants kept over twelve weeks in a Fall 2022 seminar reveal that even with the eruption of hostilities, 1 students adopted dynamic stories about Palestine and Israel relations when they spent increasing time engaged in shinrin yoku.