Honeybee Non/Violence: Making Kin in Environmental Education

• In Event: Learning With Place and Nature in Posthuman Environmental Education

Abstract

Making kin in environmental education has become an increasingly crucial way to relate (and teach/learn) in the common world. In this paper, we think with honeybee non/violent behaviors as a way of practicing engendering (Latour, 2018) and alterbiopolitics (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017). A posthuman perspective of environmental education invites us to more fully explore “the shape [of] this kinship” (Haraway, 2016, p. 2) with honeybees by unmaking Anthropocentric narratives about honeybee utility and making nuanced, relational and complex multispecies stories. Specifically, thinking with honeybee kin-making through non/violence—and its tradeoffs—moves us away from a romanticized and binaristic view of kin relations and honeybees and puts us in dialogue with the daily realities of this more-than-human co-living and co-becoming.

Authors

• Amalie Strange, Arizona State University

• Mirka E. Koro, Arizona State University

• Gro Amdam, Arizona State University