Afghan Poppies, Climate Change and War: Thinking Systemically About Us and Them
Karen Litfin, University of Washington-Seattle Campus
This contemplative practice inquires into the complex web of interdependencies linking global climate change, the War on Terror, Afghan poppy production, opiate addiction, and food security through the lens of systems theory. The exercise challenges students to consider these linkages not only conceptually but also somatically and emotionally.

A Game-Based Social Resilience Workshop: Thinking about Communal Response to Change
Joli Sandoz, The Evergreen State College
Social resilience is the capacity of a social entity to learn and adapt to sudden or gradual change, while continuing to fulfill the entity's purpose or function. This integrative and experiential workshop prompts students to apply previous learning about social resilience, social equity, social dilemma, and governance by experiencing several ways to approach a collective action problem in equitable resource distribution and management. The collective problem is modeled in the form of a card game that requires players to manage 12 plots of commonly-held crop and forest land under various conditions.

Afghan Poppies, Climate Change and US Heroin: Thinking Systemically About Us and Them
Karen Litfin, University of Washington-Seattle Campus
This very simple contemplative exercise is rooted in my "Person/Planet Politics" approach, which invites students to into an experiential relationship with a global socioecological phenomenon: in this instance, Afghan poppy production. It can be adapted to a range of courses and a range of topics within those courses. The basic question is: "Who am I in relation to this?"