Eco-Spiritual Approach for Advancement of Human Rights: A Concept of 'Interconnectedness' and Practical Explorations

Overview: This interactive workshop aims to develop knowledge and insight about the eco-spiritual approach to advancing human rights and social justice. A core concept, ‘interconnectedness,’ will be explored in Eastern-rooted and indigenous spiritual traditions. Presenters will share potential practice models with attendees to promote ideas and skills in an exploratory way.Proposal text: The world has never been more interconnected as a global society. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified, causing a greater collective awareness of what is happening around us and allowing people to listen to wake-up calls to the serious social and global issues (i.e., inequality, imbalance, injustice) deeply embedded in dominant mainstream culture (Miller, 2020). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is a milestone document in the history of human rights, states in Article 1 that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood” proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948. When it comes to paying attention to this history of human rights, acting “towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood,” a deep reflection arises in mind in terms of what we learn, teach, and practice as a social work educator and a practitioner. This reflection then encourages us to think about what to prepare for social work students to become well-trained social workers as well as social change agents.
In this workshop, the presenters recognize that to fundamentally advance human rights for racial, economic, and environmental justice, it is crucial and even central to include spirituality as a universal aspect of human experience and development, a search for a sense of meaning, purpose, morality, well-being and connectedness, which is commonly understood in social work literature (e.g., Canda et al., 2020; Dudley, 2016). While spiritually sensitive social work guides person-in-environment more holistically upon a bio-psycho-social-spiritual-ecological perspective, the ‘eco-spiritual approach’ has been acknowledged to provide a new worldview in social work to shift the Western-centered imposed paradigm (i.e., dualism, determinism, extreme individualism, modern capitalism), allowing for the inclusion of spirituality, indigenous voices and beneficial, genuine cross-culture exchange (Besthorn & Canda, 2002; Coates et al., 2006; Gray & Coates, 2013). Based on this understanding, the presenters will explore the key concept of the eco-spiritual approach, which relates to interconnectedness and interdependent relationships.
The presenters will help attendees foster knowledge and insight about interconnectedness through exploring the concepts of ‘interbeing’ in Buddhism, ‘grace’ in Won Buddhism, and ‘ubuntu’ in African spiritual tradition. In these views, humans are seen as interconnected parts of a larger web of life, where each being is uniquely valuable in a mutually supportive and respectful way (Macy & Johnstone, 2012). For practical applications, the presenters will explore gratitude practice based on Won Buddhism and the Circle of Insight (Nicotera, 2018) to support ways to cultivate this fundamental concept of interconnectedness and the essentialness of promoting and protecting human rights. Active learning will be encouraged through the attendee’s use of a workbook designed by the presenters that can then be tailored to their own unique settings. Through building knowledge of the eco-spiritual perspective and exploring ways to promote a new worldview, attendees will gain strategies for improving teaching practices and creating more inclusive learning environments in social work education toward symptom reduction but ultimately towards root-cause solutions.