ABSTRACT

Dog fouling is recognised as antisocial, unhealthy and illegal in England, yet it persists. Much action against dog fouling happens in communities and impacts are largely unrecorded. Here, we report an activist project with primary-aged children in Bristol, England that resulted in dog fouling reductions near schools and reflects on the role of children in effecting social change in their local environment. The paper takes a New Materialist turn, de-centring experience from the individual child to the child in assemblages of more-than-human relations. Photos of children’s interventions against dog fouling are presented to explore how they have used material resources and creativity to emphasise the health and social risks of faeces from a child’s perspective. This provides a focus on child–faeces–environment assemblages where children adopt methods of activist art that comprise matter including the faeces to convey a new relational ontology of dog fouling and a reifying of the ‘problem’.

摘要

在英格兰，狗的污秽被认为是反社会的、不健康的和非法的，但它仍然存在。许多针对狗污秽的行动发生在社区中，其影响基本上没有记录。在这里，我们报告了英格兰布里斯托尔的小学适龄儿童的激进项目，该项目导致学校附近的狗粪减少，并反思了儿童在影响当地环境的社会变革中的作用。这篇论文转向了新唯物主义，在超人类关系的组合中将经验从个体儿童转移到儿童。展示了儿童针对狗污渍进行干预的照片，以探索他们如何利用物质资源和创造力从儿童的角度强调粪便的健康和社会风险。