Figurations of the child and more than human politics of childhood for the post-Anthropocene: The fossil, the microbe, the weather

This research examines the atmospheres of growing up in the time of environmental crises and develops figurations of the child and
directions for non-anthropocentric politics of childhood. Recent debates within the frame of the Anthropocene have offered theoretical
insights into the complex and unequal ways humans entangle with material and geological forces and other than human species. They
highlight the environmental crisis as a crisis of emotions, and as a crisis of ontology, which calls for redefinition of long-held, divided
ideas of human, nature and animal. Children and childhoods have not been fully included in these theoretical discussions. Even if the
environmental crises are particularly pressing for the younger generation, there is relatively little research on how phenomena such as
global pandemics, energy crisis, and climate change manifest materially and affectively in children’s lives, and the concept of childhood
underlying current politics and pedagogies has remained anthropocentric.
The project begins by ethnographic research conducted in informal education contexts. Using the concept of affective atmospheres, as
well as narrative and arts based methods, the research focuses on changing nature-human-animal relations in children's everyday
assemblages. It also examines emerging forms of multispecies collaborations these educational practices might offer. After that, a crossdisciplinary
conceptual engagement follows, guided by the “pull foci” of (a) the microbe, (b) the fossil, and (c) the weather. All of these
interconnected foci address current environmental challenges while also gesturing to contemporary theoretical discussions in the fields of
environmental humanities, multispecies studies and feminist new materialisms. When reconnected with notions of childhood, these foci
reconfigure them by distinct sets of nature-human-animal relations, affects, temporalities, and politics.
The outcomes of this project will be stories, figurations, political directions and methods directed at understanding childhoods in a more
than human world. Through employing nontraditional representational modes and non-anthropocentric language, the research advances
sensitivity and attentiveness to more than human entanglements in society. It contributes to the ways young people, educators and policy
makers can re-assess their actions and emotions in the times of pressing crises and builds more just post-Anthropocene futures.