Embracing hope and utopia amidst complex eco-social crises

This article is based on Raisa Foster’s keynote address, in which she examined how artistic research can contribute to reimagining futures amidst interlinked ecological and social crises. Drawing on the concept of ecosocialization, she emphasized embodied, artistic, and pedagogical practices as ways to cultivate subjectivities oriented toward interdependence, multispecies relationality, and ecological care. Foster further underscored the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, showing how new insights can emerge when artistic, ecological, educational, and even military perspectives meet. By reframing security within an ecosocial perspective and advancing the triad of facts, reflection, and fiction, she argued that artistic research can serve as a transformative practice of hope and responsibility in the Anthropocene.

Introduction: Framing the crisis

We are living in a period of profound historical transformation, marked by overlapping ecological, social, and political crises. The climate emergency, biodiversity collapse, growing inequality, and the erosion of democratic values are not distant or abstract phenomena – they shape our lives here and now. These developments are also entangled with wars and violent conflicts, which both intensify and are intensified by the broader ecosocial crisis (Foster & Mäkinen 2025).

Artistic research and pedagogy cannot be separated from these conditions. The question that guides my paper is therefore: How can we respond to the complex entanglements of the ecosocial crisis? More specifically, what might artistic research – in collaboration with other fields of inquiry – contribute not only to analyzing the current situation but also to imagining and enacting possible transformations?

My own background lies in dance and education, but much of my artistic research has taken place in dialogue with diverse disciplines and communities. Collaborations with ecologists, ethicists, and, recently, even with military scholars, as well as with communities and participants unfamiliar with dance or theatre, have shaped my approach. This position allows me to consider artistic and embodied practices not only within the performing arts but also in terms of their broader societal relevance.

In an era when dystopian scenarios are no longer speculative futures but lived realities, it is tempting to give in to despair. Yet precisely now we need hope and utopias – not as escapist fantasies or naive optimism, but as grounded and ethical orientations toward the future. Hope cannot be sustained through wishful thinking or denial of the unsustainable trajectories. Thus, to confront and transform our current condition, I propose three interconnected approaches: facts, reflection, and fiction.

Facts refer to scientific knowledge that helps us understand ecological and social processes. Yet, knowledge alone does not lead to transformation: despite extensive awareness of environmental problems, behavioral and structural change remains insufficient. Moreover, science is never entirely neutral, since political, economic, and cultural interests shape research agendas, curricular choices, and public discourses. So, I do not suggest that scientific knowledge is superior to artistic knowledge; instead, both are necessary and mutually enriching. For instance, in my collaboration with ecologist Sami Keto, ecological insights have been integrated into artistic and pedagogical practices, while artistic methods have also informed ecological perspectives (Keto & Foster 2021). In theories and practices we have co-developed, scientific and artistic ways of knowing meet on equal ground, feeding and inspiring one another.

Alongside facts, we need reflection – a critical examination of how we reached this catastrophic situation. Such reflection must address not only immediate political decisions but also the deeper cultural values, narratives, and institutional structures that have normalized unsustainable ways of living. This involves questioning the dominance of anthropocentrism, rationalism, and instrumental thinking that frame nature primarily as a resource for human use. Artistic practices are particularly powerful in this regard: contemporary art can expose and unsettle the taken-for-granted assumptions of modern thought (Foster et al. 2019; Foster & Turkki 2023). Yet reflection alone is insufficient. Critical analysis can reveal the roots of the crisis, but in a political climate where militarized solutions and the ideology of endless growth are increasingly presented as inevitable, critique risks becoming paralyzing unless it is accompanied by practices that nurture different horizons of possibility.

This is where fiction becomes indispensable. By fiction, I refer to the imaginative capacity to envision how things could be otherwise. New stories, speculative gestures, and artistic interventions are needed to expand the realm of possibility. Against voices claiming that “there is no alternative,” fiction sustains the idea that there are always other pathways – and that without hope, transformation becomes impossible. My collaboration with ecologist Sami Keto, which led to the concept of ecosocialization, illustrates how such imaginative work can emerge when scientific and artistic knowledge meet, opening space for alternative imaginaries and practices (Keto & Foster 2021).

Ecosocialization: Ontology, epistemology, and ethics

Ecosocialization opens up both a theoretical and a pedagogical horizon by inviting us to reconsider how human subjectivity is formed, and what kinds of educational and cultural practices are needed in a time of ecological crisis (Keto & Foster 2021). To illustrate the concept, one of the simplest practices I use in my work is “plant breathing.” In this exercise, participants are guided to notice that every breath connects them to the plant world: oxygen is received from plants and carbon dioxide is returned for plants to live. Whether practiced outdoors in a forest or indoors in a studio or a classroom, this exercise often proves transformative, especially for participants with no prior experience of artistic practices. Breathing, usually unnoticed unless disrupted by illness or pollution, becomes revealed as a relational act that situates the human within a shared cycle of interdependence with plants. 

This observation captures the essence of ecosocialization. It is a process that takes place inevitably and continuously, yet often remains unnoticed. Our aim in articulating the concept was precisely to foreground this overlooked dimension of existence, since the neglect of these ongoing interdependencies – and our ignorance of them – lies at the root of many of our current troubles (also Foster et al. 2022).

Traditionally, socialization has been understood as the process through which human individuals are integrated into human culture via language, values, norms, and institutions. However, such a view treats humans as separate from the rest of nature and overlooks the broader ecological contexts in which subjectivity also develops (Keto & Foster 2021). By contrast, ecosocialization suggests that becoming human is always simultaneously a process of becoming-with the more-than-human world.

Ontologically, ecosocialization means recognizing that humans are not autonomous beings but entangled, co-emerging processes. Our physicality, emotions, and identities are shaped through ongoing relations with microbial life, plants, other animals, and entire ecosystems; we do not inhabit sterile spaces free from other forms of life, even though modern culture often assumes so. The concept of the holobiont illustrates this point vividly: each human body is not a bounded individual but a multispecies assemblage, sustained by symbiotic relationships with bacteria, viruses, and fungi. To be human, then, is already to be more-than-human – to live as a porous, relational entity whose existence depends on constant exchanges with other forms of life.

From an epistemological perspective, ecosocialization shifts how to think about knowledge and learning. Knowledge cannot be reduced to cognitive or linguistic processes – those typically associated with humans, and even then only with humans who fit particular norms of ability and cultural belonging. This narrow view excludes many other humans, such as people with disabilities or those positioned outside dominant linguistic and cultural frameworks. It is crucial to recognize that before concepts or language, our ways of knowing are shaped through embodied interaction within the world. Ecosocialization emphasizes this pre-conceptual and pre-rational dimension of knowledge, reminding us that learning is not only a matter of abstract thought but also of sensing, feeling, and being in relation. Such an orientation challenges the dominance of disembodied, representational models of knowledge and legitimizes artistic and embodied practices as epistemic acts in their own right.

From an ethical perspective, ecosocialization calls for an expanded sense of responsibility. If human subjectivity is shaped through entanglements with other beings and systems, then ethics cannot be confined to human-to-human relations. It must also include responsiveness to the more-than-human, recognizing that human flourishing depends on the flourishing of other forms of life. A central capacity here is empathy – understood not only as a human trait but also as a relational capacity shared by many other sentient animals, and as a prerequisite for peaceful coexistence. Cooperation, rather than competition, is what sustains life. This does not imply a universal or totalizing ethic; rather, it requires cultivating situated ethical sensitivity – paying attention to the specific relationships, vulnerabilities, and dependencies that structure lives. Such sensitivity demands slowing down, attuning to others, and acting with care (Foster & Ojanen 2025). In this sense, ecosocialization is not only a descriptive concept but also a normative one: it invites us to ask what kinds of subjectivities might be cultivated through practices that foreground interdependence, empathy, multispecies relationality, and ecological care.

Rethinking security in an eco-social frame

This question of how to cultivate alternative futures has guided my project on ecosocial care ethics and comprehensive security, conducted within the research initiative Just and Unjust Environmental Wars (environmentalwar.fi). The project explores – both theoretically and through artistic practice – how a comprehensive and embodied approach might intervene in dominant security discourses and open space for alternative imaginaries. To envision alternative futures, it is necessary to critically examine the frameworks that structure our present. Among these, the concept of security is particularly central. Conventionally, security is defined in terms of military defense, national borders, and geopolitical threats. Yet in the context of climate collapse, resource shortages, pandemics, and mass extinction, such a definition is not only insufficient but actively harmful, as it sustains logics of domination and exclusion.

My research on ecosocial security has been developed in collaboration with Colonel Lieutenant (ret.) Juha Mäkinen, who also holds the title of an Associate Professor of Military Pedagogy at Finland’s National Defence University. This collaboration demonstrates again how different forms of expertise can be mutually enriching: while military studies provide critical insights into ethical and strategic frameworks, embodied and ecosocial approaches open perspectives that challenge conventional paradigms.

The ecosocial approach, increasingly central in Finnish educational philosophy and policymaking, emphasizes the inseparability of ecological and social systems (Keto et al. 2022). It rejects the false division between “nature” and “society” and recognizes that social and ecological injustices share common roots in dominant modern modes of thought – rationalism, individualism, instrumentalism, and anthropocentrism, among others (Foster et al. 2019). Within this framework, security can be redefined not as protection through exclusion or dominance, but as the co-creation of conditions for shared and sustained life across geographies, generations, and species. Ecosocial security has been conceptualized through three interlinked dimensions: spatial, temporal, and agential (Foster & Mäkinen 2025).

Spatially, security must be understood at a planetary scale. Ecological systems and environmental threats do not obey political boundaries. Rivers flow, winds carry toxins, species migrate, and carbon circulates; what happens in one region inevitably affects others. The question is therefore not how to defend national interests but how to sustain the conditions of life – all life – across boundaries.

Temporally, the dominant framing of security is rooted in immediacy. It emphasizes “fast violence”, urgent threats and quick responses. Such a perspective ignores the “slow violence” of ecological degradation, which unfolds over decades or centuries. Ecosocial security extends the temporal horizon by recognizing the delayed effects of current actions, the continuing impact of past injustices, and the regenerative cycles of ecosystems that operate beyond political or economic urgency. Temporal security, then, entails responsibility across time, not only reaction in the present.

Agentially, ecosocial security requires expanding the notion of who and what counts as an active participant in forming and maintaining security. Conventional discourses grant agency only to humans, and often only to particular humans. In the Anthropocene, such a view is untenable. More-than-human actors – bees, forests, fungi, rivers – are not passive backdrops but co-agents in our shared survival. Security must be co-produced not solely through force or diplomacy but through ethical relations that include the more-than-human world.

The perspective of ecosocial security does not demand the invention of entirely new practices. Rather, it calls for the recognition and revitalization of cultural practices – past and present – that support peaceful and sustainable ways of living.

Embodied ecosocial care ethics in artistic research

Together, the three dimensions of ecosocial security – spatial, temporal, and agential – offer a framework more adequate to contemporary ecosocial realities. Yet the question remains: how might these ideas be practiced and embodied?

Through my artistic–pedagogical research, I have developed an approach to care ethics that extends beyond human-centered relations toward ecological and multispecies orientations (Foster & Ojanen 2025). This approach emerges from feminist, posthuman, and relational care traditions, while being grounded in artistic and pedagogical practices. Care ethics, in this sense, is not about controlling or fixing others, nor about solving problems from a distance. It is about being with – with other beings, and with the uncertainties that emerge in those relations – and allowing this presence to reshape how we act in the world. I define ecosocial care ethics as a pedagogical and ethical orientation that foregrounds human interdependence with the more-than-human world, emphasizing embodied practices as crucial for cultivating this awareness.

Building on earlier work, I identify three capacities that deepen ecosocial care ethics. The first is relationality, the recognition that we are always in relation, not only with other people but also with other forms of life. Relationality can be cultivated through simple practices such as sensory walks, in which participants move slowly and attentively through natural or built environments, allowing the body to be affected by surfaces, sounds, temperatures, smells, and light (Foster & Ojanen 2025; Foster & Sutela 2024). These walks train perception and attunement to interdependence.

The second capacity is the recognition of intrinsic value, the affirmation that other beings have worth beyond their utility. In dance pedagogy, this may be explored through contact improvisation tasks that resist hierarchy (Foster & Ojanen 2025). Pairs might move together, exploring balance and shared gravity without speech or direction. The “other” can also be more-than-human – a tree, a branch, even a snake. The emphasis is not on manipulation or aesthetic product but on experiencing the other as valuable in itself.

Finally, ecosocial care ethics requires embodied responsiveness, the ethical and pedagogical capacity to sense and respond in relation. This can be developed through speculative exercises, such as moving “as if” one were another animal or even a slowly eroding coastline (Foster & Ojanen 2025). These practices are not representational but speculative, asking through movement: What would it feel like to live in this spatial, temporal, or agential relation?

These capacities demonstrate that care is not only a personal disposition or moral abstraction ; it is a learnable and rehearsable orientation (Foster & Ojanen 2025). Through sensory, embodied, and imaginative methods, participants begin to feel their interdependence and to recognize how their actions are entangled with broader ecological and social horizons.

This orientation has been further developed through the Environment & War workshops I facilitated in Finland in 2023 as part of the Just and Unjust Environmental Wars project. Rather than discussing wars, ecological crises, or security conceptually, the workshops invited participants to investigate them collectively through movement and embodied practices.

We began in silence, standing together in a circle and gradually introducing small movements in order to awaken bodily awareness and attunement to the group. This was followed by a so-called chaos practice, in which participants were invited to move freely and non-habitually through the space. The aim was to release patterned gestures, encourage improvisation, and allow each participant to discover their own way of moving. This step was particularly important because the workshops were open to all, including individuals with no prior experience of dance or somatic practices. After this, we engaged in improvisations guided by visual images and short text fragments. These tasks encouraged participants to weave connections between their personal, embodied experiences and wider realities of ecological degradation and armed conflicts, thereby engaging not only creative expression but also critical and affective reflection.

One central practice was the silent partner exercise, in which one person stood still with eyes closed while the partner initiated subtle movements of their hand, beginning with the fingers and palm, then gradually extending to the forearm, upper arm, and eventually the whole upper body. Afterward, the roles were reversed. Throughout the process, there was no speaking. At first glance, the practice may appear limited to human-to-human interaction, which might seem at odds with the more-than-human orientation emphasized in this paper. Yet it reflects a foundational premise of ecosocial care ethics: the quality of our attention and relational presence matters. Capacities such as slowness, listening, vulnerability, and mutual attunement are cultivated in these encounters and form the basis for how we meet the world in its diversity. I have extended these same methods into more-than-human contexts, for example through movement exercises that invite attunement with soil, water, stone, tree, or wind.

Following the silent partner exercise, participants were asked to write down three words capturing their experience. Most responses were originally in Finnish; while translation into English is not always exact due to the multiplicity of meanings, have tried my best to convey the affective tone of the original words capturing the experience. The words included: connection, fellowship, oneness, caring, gentleness, surrender, safety, holding, warmth, peace, love; as well as terms evoking sensory attunement such as listening, fragility, intricacy, and qualities of movement such as softness, melting, and freedom.

These responses contrast sharply with the vocabulary of mainstream security discourse: threat, dominance, resilience, protection. What emerged instead were relational attunement, ethical presence, and shared vulnerability. Silence, slowness, and attentiveness created space for emotions often absent in public debate on war and crisis: overwhelm, grief, and fear, but also care, trust, and hope. The workshops thus reframed security not as control or defense but as lived, shared, and practiced.

This embodied perspective opens a utopian imaginary of security grounded in relational trust, uncertainty, and responsiveness – capacities largely absent from current strategies yet essential for survival in the Anthropocene. Ecosocial security, then, is not only a theory but also a bodily and collective practice. It raises political questions central to rethinking security today: What would security look like if grounded in relational trust rather than threat containment? How might we train ourselves to respond with care rather than fear? And how can we sustain such capacities collectively, through shared ethical practice?

These questions are not confined to the artistic research. I have also presented this work at a military ethics conference, bringing ecosocial perspectives into dialogue with military scholars and practitioners. This reflects my conviction that art and artistic research have much to offer society: they do not merely theorize alternatives but can actively contribute to broader interdisciplinary conversations – including those arenas where decisions about security are being made.

Conclusion: Toward a transformative practice

To conclude, I return to the triad of facts, reflection, and fiction introduced at the beginning. If we are to transform the dominant culture – especially under conditions that so often appear defined by inevitability and closure – we must engage all three modes together.

We need scientific facts to understand the scale and urgency of ecological collapse. We need critical reflection to analyze how we arrived at this point and to challenge the logics of domination that maintain unsustainable ways of life. And we need imaginative fiction to expand our sense of possibility and to rehearse alternative ways of being, knowing, and relating.

Each mode on its own is insufficient. Focusing only on facts risks repeating what we already know without generating change. Focusing only on reflection may reveal problems but fail to offer alternatives. Focusing only on fiction risks detachment from reality. Transformation requires holding these three together, side by side.

Artistic research is uniquely positioned to weave these modes. It does not need to provide definitive answers; rather, it can dwell in complexity, remain with uncertainty, and create spaces where difficult emotions and radical imaginaries can emerge. To stay with hope and to create utopias is not naive, despite claims to the contrary. It is a refusal to settle for what is, and a gesture toward the good that might yet be.

References

Foster, R., M. Zin, S. Keto, J. Pulkki. 2022. “Recognizing Ecosocialization in Childhood Memories.” Educational Studies 58(4): 560–574. doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2022.2051031.

Foster, R., J. Mäkelä, and R. Martusewicz, eds. 2019. Art, EcoJustice, and Education: Intersecting Theories and Practices. Routledge.

Foster, R., and J. Mäkinen. 2025. “Nato-Suomen toimintaympäristö ja ekososiaalisesti kestävä tulevaisuus.” Tiede ja Ase 2024(82). journal.fi/ta/issue/view/12282/2823.

Foster, R., and W. Ojanen. 2025. “Ecosocial Care Ethics In and Through Dance Education.” Journal of Dance Education 25(4): 1–11. doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2024.2423230.

Foster, R., and K. Sutela. 2024. “Ecosocial approach to music education.” Music Education Research 26(2): 99–111. doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2024.2319586.

Foster, R., and N. Turkki. 2023. “EcoJustice Approach to Dance Education.” Journal of Dance Education 23(2): 91–101. doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2021.1906430.

Keto, S., and R. Foster. 2021. “Ecosocialization – an ecological turn in the process of socialization.” International Studies in Sociology of Education 30(1–2): 34–52. doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2020.1854826.

Keto, S., R. Foster, J. Pulkki, A. O. Salonen, and V.-M. Värri. 2022. “Ekososiaalinen kasvatus – viisi teesiä ratkaisuehdotuksena antroposeenin ajan haasteeseen.” Kasvatus & Aika 16(3): 49–69. doi.org/10.33350/ka.111741.