Ratty places - unsettling human-centeredness in ecological inquiry with young people

Posthumanist orientations have underlined the need to foster non-hierarchical relations with other-than-human beings to adequately attend to planetary crises and help life to survive and flourish. Since a posthumanist critique towards natural sciences has mostly leaned on questioning the premise of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental education research 2024-07, Vol.30 (7), p.1129-1146
Main Authors: Kervinen, Anttoni, Hohti, Riikka, Rautio, Pauliina, Saari, Maria Helena, Tammi, Tuure, Aivelo, Tuomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Atmosphere
Ecological research
Environmental education
materiality
multispecies worlds
posthumanism
SDG: 4 quality education
Young adults
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:Posthumanist orientations have underlined the need to foster non-hierarchical relations with other-than-human beings to adequately attend to planetary crises and help life to survive and flourish. Since a posthumanist critique towards natural sciences has mostly leaned on questioning the premise of human subjects making sense of objectified nature, little effort has been made to explore if and how scientific research and posthumanist approaches might intersect and co-exist without abandoning their respective aims. In this paper, we analyse a case of ecological citizen science inquiry on urban rats to explore theoretical and practical opportunities for environmental education that arise from bridging the posthumanist call for attentiveness towards multispecies worlds with ecological research endeavor. We reconceptualize ecological inquiry as sharing atmospheres with other animals as well as through its material aspects to articulate conceptual tools to disrupt the subject-object division of knowledge creation between humans and other animals.
ISSN:1350-4622
1469-5871
DOI:10.1080/13504622.2024.2314037