Understanding Radical Humanism...

Understanding radical humanism, or trying to anyway...

So how did I end up, selecting this paradigm, as the one I thought I needed to explore. The decision to focus on radical humanism came from the reading I did this summer for an initial lit review for my research. I had, from previous reading, understood that part of my research needed to be phenomenological study, understanding how people perceive and experience weather, climate and disaster. My sense is that if we are to be successful in realizing the benefits of climate science, we need to understand how indigenous, or local, communities and people experience and understand climate in the first place. From my reading this summer I came to realize I needed to sort out whether I was coming from an interpretist orientation, or a radical humanist one. Disaster risk reduction programs use participatory approaches, which in some instances include analysis of the broader context which influences hazard and risk; these approaches are similar to Frierian pedagogy, which in turn, has roots in radical humanism. While my first inclination was to focus on gaining in depth knowledge of interpretivist sociology, as this is where, as I understand it, phenomenology as a methodology draws from, I knew that at some point, I would need to sort out how I intended to deal with the broader contextual issues. And thus I am now delving into reading on radical humanism.