The student is not the fisherman: temporal displacement of young people's identities in Tanzania

This paper examines how young Tanzanians have their identities as environmental actors displaced into the future by local adults, teachers, educational institutions and teaching materials which seek to educate them about environmental sustainability and conservation. Whilst there has been considerab...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social & cultural geography 2014-10, Vol.15 (7), p.786-811
Main Author: Smith, Thomas Aneurin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Conservation
Decisions
Educación
Education
Educational institutions
Environment
Environmental justice
environnement
Identidad
Identity
Identité
Instituciones
Institutions
jeunes
Jóvenes
Medio ambiente
Non-governmental organizations
Schools
Students
Tanzania
Tanzanie
Teachers
Teaching
young people
Youth
éducation
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Summary:This paper examines how young Tanzanians have their identities as environmental actors displaced into the future by local adults, teachers, educational institutions and teaching materials which seek to educate them about environmental sustainability and conservation. Whilst there has been considerable attention to young people's agency in reproducing their own identities, I argue here that the temporal displacement of young identities operates through a network of interlinked structures which act on young people's lives, including the identity work of young people themselves. Educational material produced by non-governmental organisations and the discursive work of adults both seek to position young people as having agency to act in and make decisions about the environment at an undetermined time in the future. Young people themselves can perform different identities within the space of the school and in the community or family, yet they may also understand their own identities as only having agency at a temporally distant point. The displacement of young identities has important implications for pedagogy which relates to environmental education, and for how the reproduction of young people's identities is conceptualised.
ISSN:1464-9365
1470-1197
DOI:10.1080/14649365.2014.926562