Not as Strange as Dying: Reimagining U.S. Social Studies as Place-Based and Decolonialized (Poster 9)

• In Event: Toward a Stranger and More Posthuman Social Studies

Abstract

In this paper, we weave together place-based narratives of our own attempts to live well with our multi-species kin (Haraway, 2008; 2016; Kroeger, Myers & Morgan, 2019; Tsing, 2015). Place-based theorizations help us to process how we might view relations with non-human kin as mutually interdependent with an obligation of co-belonging along cultural contact zones (Somerville, 2013; Somerville & Nordstrom, 2019; Tuck & Mckenzie, 2015). We argue for environmental advocacy holistically, and within an abiding resonance with place (Cajete, 1994, p. 93). Moreover, we focus on kindergarten to third-grade social studies education from a U.S. perspective. Our territories are place dependent with monarch butterflies, milkweed, deer, vehicles, joggers, dogs, neighbors, and other non-human kin. We examine these natureculture relations through two interconnected events (Nxumalo, 2019; Taylor, 2013; Roseik, J., Snyder, J., & Pratt, S. 2020). Interconnected narratives of events accentuate the place-based histories of our locale, as we attempt to reconcile territories and our ethical becoming(s) in relation to species death and colonial occupations in the spaces in which we presently live (Cajate, 2000; McCoy, et al., 2020; Noske, 1997). Through two theorized narratives, we consider cour experiences with violence(s) to multi-species kin. We describe the appropriations of land as property and property as profit (Gómez-Barris, 2017). Additionally, we tell what it would take to move early and elementary education into a different territory of posthuman teaching/learning in a very specific strand of social studies (geography) in the elementary years (Boix-Mansilla & Jackson, 2011; Cole, 2020).

Authors

• Janice Kroeger, Kent State University
  Presenting Author

• Christine Widrig
  Presenting Author