Professor Paul Prew
Dr. Paul Prew’s research and personal interests all revolve around the growing concerns regarding the destruction of our environment. One of his latest publications appears in the Oxford Handbook of Marx. “Sociopoiesis: Understanding Crisis in the Capitalist World-System through Complexity Sciences” applies new understandings in social and physical sciences to comprehend the source of our looming ecological crisis. He has also recently published an intellectual biography of Karl Marx for a text called, Great Economic Thinkers. You can find a review here: “Explaining the Dismal Science.”
After more than a decade and a half in Sociology, he made the move to Urban Studies. Dr. Prew continues to teach Indigeneity and Environment for the American Indigenous Studies Program and added the course, Sustainable Communities, to his focus on environment, sustainability and indigenous studies. He thoroughly enjoys the change and the opportunity to apply his areas of expertise in a new context. Moving to Urban Studies has given him a renewed energy and interest in developing new courses and research possibilities.
As he looks forward to working with students in Urban Studies and elsewhere on campus, he remarks that he sincerely loved the various student projects that he was involved in over the past nearly twenty years. Based on his prior experiences, he resonates most with this quote from a Sociology student’s capstone project:
“This department has seemingly gone out of its way on so many occasions to destroy my faith in humanity I’ve literally almost wanted to kill myself on several occasions when I think about how awful some of you have been as just human beings. I seriously think some of you suffer from a dark combination of at best apathy and compassion fatigue, and at worst a pathological lack of empathy.”
Just as this student faced, and overcame, adversity, students have impressed him with their activism, resilience, teaching, and tenacity. They have always been the fuel for his passion to teach. Students also provide a reason to work harder to provide them with the tools they will need to try to adapt to the coming stressors this world will bring. Many of his students provide models to emulate as we face challenges both individually and globally.
In
the past, he has focused on how environmental threats are forcing
changes in indigenous groups as well as in poorer nations around the
world. To get a first-hand look at these issues, Dr. Prew has traveled
to Ecuador to learn from an indigenous group, Sarayaku (http://sarayaku.org/ : http://www.frontieredevie.net/en/nation.htm),
and
struggles by other groups resisting environmental degradation and
threats to their livelihood. He describes his experiences in this article, “Indigeneity
and the Environment in Ecuador- A Past Participant Shares His Story,” on the Global Exchange Reality Tours Blog.
