Books by Zack Walsh
Palgrave Macmillan, 2018
This transdisciplinary volume puts forward proposals for wiser, socially just and sustainable soc... more This transdisciplinary volume puts forward proposals for wiser, socially just and sustainable socio-economic systems in transition. There is growing support for the view that the end of capitalism is around the corner, but on which conceptual and ethical basis can we interpret these times? With investigations into feminist economics, post-growth environmentalism, socio-technical digital design, collaborative and commons economics, the editors create a dialogue between radical knowledge/practices and contemplative social sciences to transgress disciplinary boundaries and implement new visions of reality. This important book challenges our ways of thinking and outlines a pathway for new research.
Peer-Reviewed Articles by Zack Walsh
Sustainability Science, Mar 17, 2022
The concept of sustainable lifestyles is said to have reached the limits of its usefulness. As co... more The concept of sustainable lifestyles is said to have reached the limits of its usefulness. As commonly understood, it impedes an effective response to our increasingly complex world, and the associated societal challenges. In this context, the emerging paradigm of relationality might offer a way forward to renew our current understanding and approach. We explore this possibility in this study. First, we systematize if, and how, the current dominant social paradigm represents a barrier to sustainable lifestyles. Second, we analyze how a relational approach could help to overcome these barriers. On the basis of our findings, we develop a Relational Lifestyle Framework (RLF). Our aim is to advance the current knowledge by illustrating how sustainable lifestyles are a manifestation of identified patterns of thinking, being, and acting that are embedded in today's "socioecological" realities. The RLF revitalizes the field of sustainable lifestyle change, as it offers a new understanding for further reflection, and provides new directions for policy and transformation research.
Today’s converging social and ecological crises are the result of centuries of broken relationshi... more Today’s converging social and ecological crises are the result of centuries of broken relationships produced by systems of oppression that prized some lives over others. The fundamental sense of separation and “othering” endemic to the old dualistic paradigm and the society which it constructed is collapsing under the weight of its dysfunction. The only way to address our ongoing crises and build an alternative of thriving is through restoring the sanctity of our relationships to all life and constructing a society on that basis. Amidst such times of crisis, we can practice caring and healing, while moving toward the relational paradigm and the life-affirming and sustainable society constructed in its image. To do that, we offer a relational model for building cultures and communities of liberatory practice. The model, called CourageRISE, leverages somatic, trauma-informed, relational and restorative practices to help cultivate the shift toward a relational paradigm.
This paper aims to increase related knowledge across personal, social and ecological dimensions o... more This paper aims to increase related knowledge across personal, social and ecological dimensions of sustainability and how it can be applied to support transformative learning. The paper provides a reflexive case study of the design, content and impact of a course on eco-justice that integrates relational learning with an equity and justice lens. The reflexive case study provides a critical, exploratory self-assessment, including interviews, group discussions and surveys with key stakeholders and course participants. The results show how relational approaches can support transformative learning for sustainability and provide concrete practices, pathways and recommendations for curricula development that other universities/training institutions could follow or learn from. Sustainability research, practice and education generally focuses on structural or systemic factors of transformation (e.g. technology, governance and policy) without due consideration as to how institutions and systems are shaping and shaped by the transformation of personal agency and subjectivity. This presents a vast untapped and under-studied potential for addressing deep leverage points for change by using a relational approach to link personal, societal and ecological transformations for sustainability.
Ambio, 2020
Relational thinking has recently gained increasing prominence across academic disciplines in an a... more Relational thinking has recently gained increasing prominence across academic disciplines in an attempt to understand complex phenomena in terms of constitutive processes and relations. Interdisciplinary fields of study, such as science and technology studies (STS), the environmental humanities, and the posthumanities, for example, have started to reformulate academic understanding of nature-cultures based on relational thinking. Although the sustainability crisis serves as a contemporary backdrop and in fact calls for such innovative forms of interdisciplinary scholarship, the field of sustainability research has not yet tapped into the rich possibilities offered by relational thinking. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to identify relational approaches to ontology, epistemology, and ethics which are relevant to sustainability research. More specifically, we analyze how relational approaches have been understood and conceptualized across a broad range of disciplines and contexts relevant to sustainability to identify and harness connections and contributions for future sustainability-related work. Our results highlight common themes and patterns across relational approaches, helping to identify and characterize a relational paradigm within sustainability research. On this basis, we conclude with a call to action for sustainability researchers to co-develop a research agenda for advancing this relational paradigm within sustainability research, practice, and education.
This report offers a synthesis of findings from 18 experts who, at a three-day workshop, discusse... more This report offers a synthesis of findings from 18 experts who, at a three-day workshop, discussed how shifting the ontological premises of political and economic thought toward process-relational ontology could transform society. The workshop, called “Onto-seeding Societal Transformation,” was co-hosted by the Commons Strategies Group and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, in Neudenau, Germany, between September 9-12, 2019. It consisted of three successive sessions focused on process-relational approaches to ontology, design patterns, and politics. A final, fourth session focused on the integration of ontology, patterns, and politics in concrete case studies. This report concludes with new questions and next steps for strategically advancing relational approaches to governance and the commons.
Religions, 2019
This paper proposes “making refuge” as a conceptual placeholder and an analytical rubric, a guidi... more This paper proposes “making refuge” as a conceptual placeholder and an analytical rubric, a guiding ethos and praxis, for the engaged Buddhist aspiration of responding to the social, political, economic, and planetary crises facing the world. Making refuge is conceived as the work of building the conditions of trust and safety necessary for living and dying well together as co-inhabitants of diverse communities and habitats. The paper will explain the rationale for making refuge by connecting the dharmic understanding of dukkha with feminist conceptualizations of the body and vulnerability. This will chart some theoretical and methodological pathways for engaged Buddhism to further its liberatory aspirations in reciprocity with emergent movements in radical critical theory, contemplative studies, and social and ecological activism. The paper will also examine the effects of white supremacy in U.S. Buddhism through the framework of making refuge. This will demonstrate how political healing and restorative justice might be cultivated through a dispositional ethics that pays appropriate attention to the vulnerabilities facing oppressed people.
The Arrow: A Journal of Wakeful Society, Culture & Politics, 2018
Special Issue: Critical Perspectives on Corporate Mindfulness, Jan 15, 2018
At the heart of many mindfulness critiques is essentially a critique of how mindfulness has been ... more At the heart of many mindfulness critiques is essentially a critique of how mindfulness has been rebranded to promote neoliberal governmentality and produce neoliberal subjects. Most critics of corporate mindfulness don’t argue that teaching mindfulness in a corporate setting is a problem in itself– they are more specifically critiquing the broader notion of corporate mindfulness, as a management tool whose various entanglements with neoliberal governmentality subordinate mindfulness practitioners to larger systemic issues related to how stress is generated and how mindfulness is used to alleviate the symptoms, rather than systemic sources of stress. In this paper, I will argue that mindfulness programs provide effective regulatory mechanisms for biopower to extend neoliberal logics of control to internal conditioning processes, and I will articulate ways in which one might alternatively conceive and practice mindfulness not only to resist neoliberal governmentality, but also to affirm the lives that it subjugates.
The growing critical reception of mainstream mindfulness interventions often concerns itself with... more The growing critical reception of mainstream mindfulness interventions often concerns itself with the social and ethical dimensions of mindfulness practices and their current inability to effectively address social and ecological problems. While Buddhists often advocate recontextualizing the practices in their original ethical frames, such proposals inadequately account for Buddhism's historic biases and secular practitioners' unwillingness to conform to Buddhist norms. Likewise, secular practitioners who argue that ethics implicitly informs mindfulness, but who forgo explicit ethical considerations , are often uncritical of the inner workings of power and injustice shaping mindfulness. This paper presents a dual critique of Buddhist and secular approaches to mindfulness, and attempts to outline dialectical and integral approaches that synthesize aspects of both. This dual critique lends itself to a post-secular synthesis of ethics and mindfulness, as irreducible aspects of each other informed by a non-binary understanding of religion and secularism. Finally, this synthesis is explored in light of several existing theoretical and practical examples of contemplative practices developed to support personal, social, and ecological transformation.
A Critical Theory-Praxis for Contemplative Studies, Jan 11, 2016
This paper will adopt the lens of critical theory to understand how internal and external tension... more This paper will adopt the lens of critical theory to understand how internal and external tensions appear in the commoditization of meditation through its mediation in the culture industry and science. I will use critical theory to argue that meditation is defined by a repressive rationality functioning within Happy Consciousness and scientific operationalism. Finally, I will offer hopeful remarks about the future of contemplative studies by offering a unity of theory and praxis that attempts to transcend the social context in which meditation is currently thought and practiced.
Critical Theory and the Contemporary Discourse on Mindfulness , Mar 15, 2016
Book Chapters by Zack Walsh
Leadership Matters: Finding Voice, Connection and Meaning in the 21st Century , 2018
Co-Designing Economies in Transition: Radical Approaches in Dialogue with Contemplative Social Sciences, 2018
This essay maps the conditions under which a socially just and sustainable global future could em... more This essay maps the conditions under which a socially just and sustainable global future could emerge from large-scale structural transformations to contemporary society. First, it considers how the global political economy is undergoing world-historical changes, in response to the pressures of mounting inequality, climate crisis, and the growing illegitimacy of neoliberal capitalism. Then, it examines how current political, economic, social, and technological changes could positively and negatively shape the construction of a new world system beyond capitalism. And, finally, it outlines possible avenues for exploring these world-historical changes by developing new fields of inquiry in the emerging transdisciplinary field of contemplative social sciences.
In today’s highly individualistic culture, expressions of religion and spirituality have been lar... more In today’s highly individualistic culture, expressions of religion and spirituality have been largely restricted to the inner sphere of one’s private life. Yet despite the oft repeated belief that contemplation is about individual subjective experience, rather than social experience, contemplation has always had a strong relationship to ethical action. This paper will argue for a shift away from the focus on individualized, privatized forms of contemplation, and it will argue instead for the importance of socialized and politicized forms of practice and discourse. First, I examine the evidence for contemplation as a powerful mechanism for social and political transformation by using Buddhist and Christian sources to give a historical demonstration of contemplation’s social and political effects. Then, I argue in favor of democratizing the field of contemplative studies, so that more individuals may speak from a diversity of social locations and religious traditions. Overall, this will help set the framework for determining the practical goals of a contemplative social science.
Handbook of Mindfulness: Culture, Context, and Social Engagement, eds. Ron Purser, David Forbes, and Adam Burke , Oct 26, 2016
Online magazines and blogs are attempting to translate mindfulness into the cultural mainstream, ... more Online magazines and blogs are attempting to translate mindfulness into the cultural mainstream, but online discussions often reproduce assumptions and patterns of thinking which are divisive, leading to an increasingly polarized debate. This paper presents a discourse analysis of mindfulness critiques circulating in online media over the last few years in order to identify the fault lines that frame public debate on mindfulness. It combines critiques to present a coherent summary of critics’ concerns, and it outlines the conditions for renegotiating how mindfulness is framed. Overall, this paper argues that neoliberalism has transformed mindfulness into a variety of depoliticized and commodified self-help techniques, and that universal, asocial and ahistorical views of mindfulness should be replaced by critical, socially aware and engaged forms of mindfulness.
Press Coverage & Interviews by Zack Walsh
Advaya's four-part Regenerative Activism 2022 series, run in collaboration with the Ulex Project ... more Advaya's four-part Regenerative Activism 2022 series, run in collaboration with the Ulex Project and Gita Parihar, is exploring methods for Reclaiming Our Future in these uncertain times for our planet. During the second session in the series, the panellists inquired into the topic of Forging and Sustaining Vision.
Interview with Zack Walsh by Roisin McAuley
BBC Radio Ulster: Sunday Sequence, 2019
Media Articles by Zack Walsh
The Long View, Jun 18, 2023
This article is part of a collaboration between Commonweal and Polycrisis Transition Consultancy ... more This article is part of a collaboration between Commonweal and Polycrisis Transition Consultancy with support from One Project. In this article, we situate emerging definitions of polycrisis within cognate bodies of scientific literature exploring societal risk and collapse. By refining our understanding of polycrisis in relation to these existing bodies of literature, we seek to more clearly identify opportunities for further developing the concept in both research and practice. We conclude with implications for how to respond to the depth and severity of the global polycrisis via just and regenerative civilizational alternatives.
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Books by Zack Walsh
Peer-Reviewed Articles by Zack Walsh
Book Chapters by Zack Walsh
Press Coverage & Interviews by Zack Walsh
Media Articles by Zack Walsh