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<b>The Handbook of Ecocultural Methodology and Transformation<br>
– a followup to <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351068840" originalsrc="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351068840">
The Handbook of Ecocultural Identity</a> (2020)</b><br>
<br>
<b>Call for Chapters: Submissions due to editors for consideration by 1 December 2025<br>
</b><br>
<b>Editors:<br>
</b>Tema Milstein, University of New South Wales<br>
José Castro-Sotomayor, California State University Channel Islands<br>
Mariko Thomas, Skagit Valley College<br>
Lyb Maree, University of New South Wales<br>
<br>
Recent major global environmental reports emphasise that humanity’s dominant anthropocentric ways of orienting to the Earth have brought us to today’s global environmental, extinction, and climatic crises (see, e.g. UNEP, 2021). As the species responsible,
we must develop the insight and tools to change the life-extinguishing paradigms driving these crises. Systems change theorists (e.g., Meadows, 2015) argue the most powerful leverage point for bringing about massive transformation is in making visible, deconstructing,
and reworking these dominant orienting paradigms through which we encounter and shape the world. This book aims to build shared methodological foundations to buoy research across disciplines that challenges dominant anthropocentric paradigms and amplifies
enduring and rising paradigms to undergird pluriversal futures (Escobar, 2020) defined by mutual survival and flourishing. <br>
<br>
To do this work, scholars across disciplines have crafted an ecocultural theoretical lens, tracing ways in which humans, no matter their cultural identities, contexts, or cosmologies, are always ecologically enmeshed and consequential, whether harmfully or
harmoniously (Milstein and Castro-Sotomayor, 2020). Ecocultural inquiry reweaves the two inextricable realms of ecology and culture, which research in Western/ized and/or industrial/ized settings has dominantly viewed and examined as separate strands. This
ecocultural reintegration in research acknowledges we “are made of, part of, emerging from, and constantly contributing to both ecology and culture” (ibid, p. xix), widening the scope and aims of inquiry to understand the paradigms we live by as informed by
interactions and meaning-making ranging from the complex to the mundane. <br>
<br>
An established ecocultural research methodology, however, has been missing, slowing the emergence of ecocultural knowledge at a time it is urgently needed. Outside of important integral Indigenous research approaches (e.g., Cajete, 2004; Country, 2015; Graham,
2020; Kimmerer, 2013; Shay, 2021; Smith, 2021; Whyte & Cuomo, 2016; Wright et al., 2012), transdisciplinary ecocultural research approaches looking at diverse cultural and environmental contexts have required reinventing the analytical wheel with each study.
<b>The aim of this book is to collaboratively grow an expansive, inclusive, and supportive ecocultural methodology that will nourish paradigm-shifting research into the future.</b> In doing so, we also seek to build upon preliminary methodological efforts in
ecocultural research, including ad hoc mashups of useful existing interdisciplinary discourse and constructivist methodologies, such as Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2013), Cultural Discourse Analysis (Carbaugh, 2007), constructivist grounded theory
(Charmaz, 2014), Positive Discourse Analysis (Stibbe, 2020), and mindful blendings of ecological, cultural, critical, and creative lenses.<br>
<br>
<a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351068840" originalsrc="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351068840">The Handbook of Ecocultural Identity
</a>(Milstein and Castro-Sotomayor, 2020; open access 2025) prepared the ground for this work, gathering 40 international authors from across disciplines to apply an identity-focused ecocultural framework to understand and respond to diverse projects, articulating
ways individual and collective identities and their emotional, embodied, ethical, and political sensibilities are culturally and ecologically implicated and impactful. As a powerful conceptual tool, ecocultural identity provides researchers a theoretical hub
from which to operate and has set off a wave of theory- and praxis-focused research (see Milstein, Castro-Sotomayor, & Carr, 2026). <br>
<br>
This volume builds on the groundwork and theoretical implications of ecocultural identity to support and grow research inquiry and insight not only into identity but into myriad scales and areas of ecocultural experience in which humans interrelatedly perceive,
communicate, and act with/in/toward the ‘more-than-human world’ (Abram, 1996). Addressing today’s wicked, interlinked planetary problems calls for a broad methodology that cuts across disciplines, cultural contexts, and praxis to illuminate ways cultural orientations
and ecological relations interlink, shaping everything from everyday experience to political change to Earthly renewal. <br>
<br>
<b><br>
Submission Details </b><br>
This call invites researchers from across disciplines to collectively articulate an ecocultural methodology. We are looking for chapter submissions that introduce ecocultural methodology tenets, articulations, and elaborations, case studies, practical applications,
creative iterations, and reflexive accounts. The resulting volume will comprise a selection of chapters that collectively construct an ecocultural methodology for researching and reimagining ecocultural orientations, relationalities, and implications. We are
especially interested in submissions that investigate fertile intersections between an ecocultural research methodology and restorative relations and that explicate ways to apply such a methodology to interactions, spaces, and scales ranging from the interpersonal
to the internatural (Plec, 2013). The volume has garnered initial major academic press interest and will likely take the form of a handbook. <br>
<br>
Please note, this book has a <b>methodological and applied research focus.</b> Chapters will need to provide a foundation for weaving relational webs and deepening observations between ecocultural scholarship and public praxis to support and sustain efforts
toward the massive restorative change needed in the second half of this ‘decisive decade’ (Figueres & Rivett-Carnac, 2020). Successful submissions will exhibit accessible, cross-disciplinary perspectives to explicate and demonstrate ways an emergent ecocultural
methodology can be clearly articulated and how such a methodology can be used not only to avoid or reverse dominant anthropocentric ways of doing research but to expand and enhance ecocentric research perspectives, practices, findings, and outcomes. In illustrating
these kinds of pragmatic functions, contributors will both outline an emergent supportive ecocultural methodological structure for doing research and demonstrate possibilities that arise from using an ecocultural methodology. Case study submissions, for instance,
should not only exhibit applications of ecocultural methodological lenses, foci, data collection and analysis processes, and outcomes, but aim to expand our understanding through the application of an ecocultural methodology of the many ways humans ecoculturally
are, how we endure and transform, and how we may engender planetary renewal instead of crises.<br>
<br>
<b>Questions submissions could address include (but are not limited to):<br>
</b>● What kinds of ontological, epistemological, and/or ethical considerations does an ecocultural methodology require and how do these shape core tenets of such a methodology? <br>
● How do various modes of thought and practice inform and/or emerge from an ecocultural methodology? <br>
● What kinds of ecocultural methodological reflexivities, frameworks, and tools should inform the practical steps of research, including subject of focus, data collection, analysis, writing, publication, and dissemination? <br>
● How does the more-than-human world have agency in and inform an ecocultural methodology?<br>
● How can embracing difference and non-normative ways of being and doing (in terms of ecocultural identity, interspecies relations, language, culture, gender, indigeneity, religion, spirituality, race, disability, sexuality, etc.) strengthen impact of an ecocultural
methodology? <br>
● How can an ecocultural methodological approach contribute to restorative and response-able collaborations, alliances, and coalitions in praxis?<br>
● How do ecocultural identities (of the researcher, study participants, communities, institutions) become apparent, amplify, or transform when using an ecocultural methodological lens?<br>
● How could and should an ecocultural methodology transform scholarship, pedagogy, advocacy, and practice?<br>
● What roles do Earthly emotions – including active hope or despair – play in an ecocultural methodology and transformation?<br>
● What roles do justice, voice, and reparation have in an ecocultural methodology?<br>
● How can interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary/transdisciplinary research approaches and/or collaborations nurture a diverse, thriving, and evolving ecocultural methodology? <br>
● How can various technologies, the arts, and other modes of creative performance, communication, and embodied and sensorial approaches inform an ecocultural methodology? <br>
<br>
The volume seeks to have an international and transdisciplinary scope to represent the range of articulations, approaches, and perspectives within an emerging ecocultural methodology. Scholars, educators, and graduate students from across disciplines, as well
as ecocultural practitioners, advocates, and artists are invited to submit full papers or abstracts.
<b>For consideration, submit: (1) a 200-word author bio (with link, if available, to your official online profile), (2) a 200-word summary of the ecocultural methodology approach, function, use, and take-away tool/s of your submission, AND (3) an extended abstract
(400-500 words) OR a complete paper (3,000-7,000 words including references) (in either form, use APA 7th edition for citations/references).
</b>In addition to typical research or practice submissions, creative approaches are welcome. Artists may submit 3-5 images with their abstract or paper, clearly explaining how the images relate to their written submission. <br>
<br>
For consideration, make your submission by 1 December 2025 using this form: <a href="https://forms.gle/SjwyGJMc3eJ69KSi7" originalsrc="https://forms.gle/SjwyGJMc3eJ69KSi7">
https://forms.gle/SjwyGJMc3eJ69KSi7</a>. <br>
<br>
If you have any questions or issues with the form, please email Lyb Maree (<a href="mailto:l.maree@unsw.edu.au">l.maree@unsw.edu.au</a>).<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>References</b><br>
Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. Vintage Books. <br>
Cajete, G. (2004). Philosophy of native science. In A. Waters (Ed). American Indian thought: Philosophical essays (pp. 45-57). Blackwell.<br>
Carbaugh, D. (2007). Cultural Discourse Analysis: Communication practices and intercultural encounters. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 36(3), 167–182.
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17475750701737090" originalsrc="https://doi.org/10.1080/17475750701737090">
https://doi.org/10.1080/17475750701737090</a><br>
Castro-Sotomayor, J., & Parks, M. (2025). Ethnographic iterations and seeds of possibilities in environmental communication research. In A. Carvalho & T. R. Peterson (Eds). Handbook of Environmental Communication (1st ed., pp. 109–128). De Gruyter Mouton.<br>
Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing Grounded Theory (2nd ed). SAGE.<br>
Country, B., Wright, S., Suchet-Pearson, S., Lloyd, K., Burarrwanga, L., Ganambarr, R., Ganambarr-Stubbs, M., Ganambarr, B., & Maymuru, D. (2015). Working with and learning from Country: Decentring human author-ity. Cultural Geographies, 22(2), 269–283.<br>
Escobar, A. (2020). Pluriversal politics: The real and the possible (English edition). Duke University Press.<br>
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical Discourse Analysis: The critical study of language (2nd ed). Taylor and Francis.<br>
Figueres, C. & Rivett-Carnac, T. (2020). The future we choose: Surviving the climate crisis. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. <br>
Graham, M. (2020). Understanding Human Agency in Terms of Place: A Proposed Aboriginal Research Methodology. Philosophy Activism Nature, 6, 71–78.
<a href="https://doi.org/10.3316/informit.590560058861546" originalsrc="https://doi.org/10.3316/informit.590560058861546">
https://doi.org/10.3316/informit.590560058861546</a><br>
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.<br>
Kinefuchi, E. (2023). Recovering the dots of social injustice and ecological violence: A case for Critical Intercultural Communication. In T. K. Nakayama & R. T. Halualani (Eds). Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (1st ed., pp. 483–491). Wiley.
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119745426.ch36" originalsrc="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119745426.ch36">
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119745426.ch36</a><br>
Meadows, D. H. (2015). Global environmental politics: From person to planet. Routledge.<br>
Milstein, T., & Castro-Sotomayor, J. (2020). Handbook of Ecocultural Identity. Routledge. <br>
Milstein, T., Castro-Sotomayor, J., & Carr, J. (forthcoming, 2026). Ecocultural identity and Ecolinguistics. In R. Poole, D. F. Virdis, J. Hampton & A. Ghorbanpour (Eds). Handbook of Ecolinguistics. Routledge.<br>
Plec, E. (2013). Perspectives on human-animal communication: Internatural communication. Routledge.<br>
Shay, M. (2021). Extending the yarning yarn: Collaborative Yarning Methodology for ethical Indigenist education research. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 50(1), 62–70.
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/jie.2018.25" originalsrc="https://doi.org/10.1017/jie.2018.25">
https://doi.org/10.1017/jie.2018.25</a><br>
Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. Bloomsbury Publishing.<br>
Stibbe, A. (2020). Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by. Routledge. <br>
United Nations Environment Programme “UNEP” (2021). Making peace with nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity, and pollution emergencies.
<a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/making-peace-nature" originalsrc="https://www.unep.org/resources/making-peace-nature">
https://www.unep.org/resources/making-peace-nature</a><br>
Whyte, K. P., Cuomo, C. J., Gardiner, S. M., & Thompson, A. (2016). Ethics of caring in Environmental Ethics. In S. M. Gardiner & A. Thompson (Eds). Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics (pp. 234-247). Oxford University Press.<br>
Wright, S., Lloyd, K., Suchet-Pearson, S., Burarrwanga, L., Tofa, M., & Bawaka Country. (2012). Telling stories in, through and with Country: Engaging with Indigenous and more-than-human methodologies at Bawaka, NE Australia. Journal of Cultural Geography,
29(1), 39–60. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08873631.2012.646890" originalsrc="https://doi.org/10.1080/08873631.2012.646890">
https://doi.org/10.1080/08873631.2012.646890</a></div>
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