EDITORIAL: THE ECO-HUMAN PERSPECTIVE FOR OUR MOVEMENT INTO THE FUTURE
The eco-human perspective on perceiving and transforming reality is the ideological and value-based direction our journal seeks to advance. Grounded in the recognition of the fundamental unity of humans and their environment, and in the urgent need to sustain this unity across spheres of life, we promote eco-human theories and practices as resources for shaping a new, future-oriented reality of ecological civilization.
In this issue, we explore the creative potential of the eco-human approach and its relevance to pressing contemporary challenges, particularly those concerning culture and intercultural relations. We understand the current global transition toward multipolarity as both inevitable and necessary; yet it is often met with resistance from forces that defend the old order and perpetuate long-standing mechanisms of ecospheric and human destruction. Such forces neglect the dialectics of relationships among human and more-than-human participants in cultural and natural ecosystems, and the reality that human communities and organizations are part of the web of life, co-creating and sustaining living environments, or "homes," for themselves and others.
From an eco-human standpoint, the contributions in this issue address diverse problems in contemporary society, including systemic violence within human communities and the relationships between social structures and the environment. These problems are often entangled with colonial legacies and neocolonial formations on the one hand, and with decolonization and the self-determination of peoples and cultures, as well as the remaking of cultural identities through connections to natural ecosystems, on the other.
Together, these contributions highlight the ambition of ecological civilization as a global megaproject and open up a constructive horizon for humanity to build a large, shared "home" for nature and humanity. In the section "In Search of an Eco-Humanities Paradigm: Theory, Methodology, Concepts," the article "Redefining Violence for the Anthropocene: From Ecocide to Ecological Civilization" by Toni Ruuska, Pasi Heikkurinen, Todd Levasseur, and Arran Gare argues that violence is a historic and stratigraphic phenomenon as much as it is present, immediate, and abrupt. The authors propose extending the concept of violence to the more-than-human world, emphasizing that other beings, habitats, landscapes, and ecosystems can be, and repeatedly have been, violated by human action. They advance a non-anthropocentric definition of violence as encounters involving force that violates life-supporting processes. To reduce violence in ecosystems, the article calls for withdrawal from the industrial-capitalist megamachine and for placing greater emphasis on provisioning the fundamentals of life and on collective efforts that advance ecological civilization.
In the article "Ecology of Culture and Nature: Examining Cultural Issues in Psychotherapy from an Ecological Viewpoint (Using Art Therapy as an Example)," Alexander Kopytin discusses a development in expressive/creative arts therapy: increased attention to cultural and environmental context. He shows how forms of cultural organization and intercultural relations reflect different kinds of environmental awareness and orientations toward the environment. The article also considers the concepts of colonization and decolonization in relation to the relationships of human communities with one another and with the natural world, and comments on selected publications that address colonialism and decolonization in creative/expressive arts therapies.
In the section "Practices and Technologies of the Eco-Human Approach," Valentin Gukov's article "Comedy Nature Photography and Ecology" examines the cultural role of humorous wildlife photography, which has attracted billions of viewers over the past decade, and its potential to foster love of nature. The socio-psychological and aesthetic functions of comedy wildlife photography are identified. Potential applications of wildlife photography in photo tourism, entertainment literature, product design, advertising, and therapy are also considered.
The "In Resonance with the Earth" section of this issue includes poetry, photographs, and artworks by Merve Kurt and Judith Greer Essex. As the concept of ecopoiesis suggests, creation emerges from shared resonance between humans and their environments, aligning the human with nature and inviting us into a carnival of images of resilience, flexibility, and the multiplication of life. In this sense, every step taken in nature, in particular among trees, can become an act of co-creation and co-sensing. Merve Kurt's poem and photographs came into the world through this co-sensing: through witnessing and being inspired by trees.
Judith Greer Essex shares her perception of the solstice as a special time when the sun seems to stop, and she does too: a time to listen inwardly and outwardly. Each year, she takes that day to watch the sun rise and set. She rereads her journals from the year that has ended, reflecting on what occurred. Her artwork and poem speak to the gifts of darkness and stillness, and to the practice of going within, as if the earth shows us the way: be quiet; take care of your body, mind, heart, and soul.
In the "Events. Book Reviews. Interviews" section, Merve Kurt offers a critical review essay, "Aesthetic Responsibility and Relational Ontology in Ecopoiesis," which examines Ecopoiesis: A New Perspective for the Expressive and Creative Arts Therapies in the 21st Century (Levine & Kopytin, 2022) through the lenses of aesthetic responsibility and relational ontology. Drawing primarily on Levine's poietic ecology and Kopytin's notion of the environmental subject, the review traces how ecopoiesis reframes arts therapies as practices of world-making in the Anthropocene. Healing, it argues, cannot be reduced to regulating individual "symptoms"; rather, it must be understood as cultivating reciprocal relations, place-based attention, and the capacity to remain with grief, uncertainty, and ecological loss. The essay foregrounds phenomenological contributions to show how attention becomes a bodily-ethical stance, and mobilises debates on beauty and making-with (Haraway's sympoiesis) to articulate ecopoiesis as a shift from "using" nature to reciprocity and obligation.
Alexander Kopytin, Arran Gare, Zhihe Wang, and Stephen K. Levine present the international collective monograph On the Path to an Ecological Civilization: The Eco-Human Perspective, published in Russia in 2024. The monograph explores the scientific understanding of ecological civilization as one possible scenario for humanity's future. It assesses the concept of sustainable development, including its constructive potential and limitations. From the perspective of an eco-human approach, the prospects for developing a new civilization and for addressing environmental and human problems are considered. The monograph also describes a system of eco-human technologies that mobilises the arts and human sciences in education, enlightenment, medicine, and social work.
In his tribute to John Cobb Jr. (1925-2024), a leading figure in the global process philosophy movement, Arran Gare reflects on the relationship between philosophy, theology, and radical developments in the sciences, as well as in social, ethical, and political theory and economic thought. He also highlights the institutions Cobb established to facilitate work in these areas and to forge links among people across academic disciplines, religions, and political movements worldwide.
Alexander Kopytin, Co-Editor-in-Chief