Child-Animal Entanglements: Postcolonial and Posthumanist “Common Worlds” Perspectives

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium draws upon postcolonial and more-than-human ‘common world’ (Latour, 2004) perspectives to explore the entanglement of children and animals in three ex-British colonial contexts. The presentations trace the historical continuities and geographical dispersals of multispecies relations across these colonized ‘common world’ sites, including pre-school children’s encounters with kangaroos in the Australian bush capital, Canadian pre-school children’s entanglements with bears in the forest, and Hong Kong child/dog entanglements in urban parks. Ethnographic film footage from each of these common world sites will be shown. The audience will be invited to consider the ethical, political and pedagogical implications of addressing the colonial histories and material geographies that shape children’s multispecies relations within their own postcolonial ‘common worlds’.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Perspectives on Early Childhood Education

Chair

• Margaret Jean Somerville, University of Western Sydney

Papers

• Meeting “Skippy” in the Bush Capital: Child-Kangaroo Encounters and Entanglements in Postcolonial Australia - Affrica Taylor, University of Canberra

• Frictional Bear-Child Stories in Colonialist Spaces of Canadian Childhood - Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, University of Victoria

• (Re)indigenizing the-Dog-as-Child In and Around Hong Kong Urban Parks - Mindy Blaise, The Hong Kong Institute of Education