Five commitments for an ecologically attuned critical communication pedagogy for the Anthropocene¶

Theory · All theories
Evidence · 1 claim (1 for) · 1 study (1 design), q1 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 1 claim rests on one study

Description¶

The article proposes an approach to critical communication pedagogy contextualized by planetary ecological crisis, organized around five commitments: that "Anthropocentrism and speciesism participate in the maintenance of social hierarchy"; that environmental and social justice are entangled; that ecological crisis is made "concrete, embodied, proximal, and implicative"; that critique of language involves critique of humanism; and that "ecologically just speculative futurity is requisite to political praxis." The framework is explicitly positioned as elaborating upon, not replacing, Fassett and Warren's (2007) ten commitments for CCP, and is grounded in the author's experience teaching the course Communication at the End of the World across five semesters at three institutions.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Read alongside Fassett and Warren's (2007) ten commitments for CCP rather than as a replacement for them
• Instructors willing to locate critical pedagogy's intervention in expanding critical spheres of concern to the more-than-human

Constraints¶

• Developed from one instructor's reflective experience teaching an upper-level undergraduate course, not from systematic empirical evaluation
• Acknowledged by the author to be messy, embracing entangled complexities rather than simplifying them

Target Learners¶

• upper-level undergraduate communication studies students

Target Learning Objectives¶

• critical analysis of anthropocentrism and ecological crisis
• ecologically just political praxis

Claims¶

• Collectively mourning extinct or near-extinct more-than-human entities facilitates recognition of the more-than-human as co-participants in shared reality [+W]

Related Theories¶

• Integration of decolonial, socioecological, translingual, trauma-informed, and community-engaged praxis across the handbook

Examples¶

• Cultivate ecologically just speculative futurity as requisite to political praxis
• Render planetary ecological crisis concrete, embodied, proximal, and implicative for students
• Assign speculative theory-fiction writing to build students' capacity for ecologically just futurity
• Critique of language in CCP must include critique of humanism and humanist historicization
• Task students with proposing a neologism and a golden spike placement to expose the rhetoricity of historicizing the Anthropocene
• Cultivate AI literacy as relational rather than transactional work through reflective engagement with human-AI entanglement

Key Sources¶

• Rife, T. S. (2025). Critical Communication Pedagogy at the End of the World. Journal of Communication Pedagogy. https://doi.org/10.31446/JCP.2025.1.07