Abstract

This article provides ethnographic insight into the more-than-human relationships enacted through young people’s participation in school grounds conservation activities. As a response to the escalating biodiversity crisis, conservation appears well-placed to facilitate young people’s development of an environmental ethic of care, and a capacity to work towards addressing environmental issues. Proponents of posthuman pedagogies, however, argue that the ‘stewardship’ perspective underlying these activities fails to achieve the radical shift in human-environment relations required in response to the Anthropocene, given its apparent reinforcement of a perceived human/nature binary, and narrow ‘solutions’-based approach. Considering these critiques, this article demonstrates that where there is openness to unplanned more-than-human encounters and the enactment of young people’s own ‘lived curricula’, conservation activities can nonetheless enable forms of ‘collective thinking with the more-than-human world’ that transcend any underlying ‘stewardship’ perspective. We therefore point to the potential role of conservation activities within posthuman responses to the Anthropocene, provided such openness is maintained.

摘要

本文提供了对通过年轻人参与校园保护活动而制定的超越人类关系的人种学见解。作为对不断升级的生物多样性危机的回应，保护似乎很适合促进年轻人培养环境关怀伦理，以及努力解决环境问题的能力。然而，后人类教学法的支持者认为，这些活动背后的“管理”视角未能实现响应人类世所需的人类与环境关系的根本转变，因为它明显强化了感知的人类/自然二元论，并且狭隘了。基于解决方案的方法。考虑到这些批评，本文表明，在对计划外的超人类遭遇和年轻人自己的“生活课程”的制定持开放态度的地方，保护活动仍然可以实现超越任何形式的“超人类世界的集体思考”形式。潜在的“管理”视角。因此，我们指出保护活动在后人类对人类世的反应中的潜在作用，前提是保持这种开放性。