On Care, Carnality, and the Problems of Selves and Others in Environmental Education

• In Event: Caring for Social-Ecological Systems through Science, Engineering, and Environmental Education: Models, Tensions, Affordances
  In Structured Poster Session: Caring for Social-Ecological Systems Through Science, Engineering, and Environmental Education: Models, Tensions, Affordances

Abstract

Objectives/purposes: Whether one finds value in its naming or not, the Anthropocene era is equated with realities that until now seemed distant. Climate change, species extinction, and all of the familiar threats to social and ecological wellbeing have accelerated. As environmental educators and researchers identify new discursive and theoretical ground that may provide paths forward, we do well to revisit existing concepts as well. This poster presentation highlights emergent work centered around two theoretical constructs—feminist ethics of care and carnal hermeneutics—each with their own historical and present iterations. The goal is to consider how notions of self and other may be articulated better and troubled more pragmatically across various lines: species lines, cultural lines, gender lines, etc. As nature/culture binaries are dissolved in our field, we need to consider the discursive and material work, and potential damage, being done by other binaries built around similar logics (Plumwood, 2002).

Theoretical framework: Carnal hermeneutics (Kearney & Treanor, 2015) examines the body as a site of interpretation—of other bodies, of environments, of language, and of the sacred and sublime. It has not often been taken up as a starting point for analysis in EE, with one exception (Kopnina, Sitka-Sage, Blenkinsop, and Piersol, 2019). However, there are social and ecological applications worth considering in the field alongside more popular hermeneutic approaches (see Wood, 2015; Toadvine, 2015). Likewise, a hermeneutics of the body has significant potential for more thoroughly articulating what Puig de Bellacasa (2017) refers to as “matters of care,” that are often ambivalent but remain central to our socio-political lives within more-than-human worlds. The author seeks to bridge these areas.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry: This poster accounts for theoretical exploration, discourse analysis, and hermeneutic phenomenological analysis around teaching and research in EE. It also incorporates autobiographical reflections.

Data sources: Theory connects to practice in the form of several questions about selfhood and otherness that we attempt to address with discourse and content analysis from materials in EE (journal articles and book chapters, web-based materials, etc.) as well as reflections on our own teaching and research practices. How do lived experiences of selfhood and otherness figure into our ethical perspectives regarding teaching and research in the Anthropocene (questions of carnality)? How might environmental educators and researchers envision and enact better relationships with students and/or participants, both human and non-human (questions of care)? To what extent is care of others entangled with care of self in EE?

Results: The perspective and arguments addressed here further discourses concerning care, ethics, and the more-than-human world and are in conversation with recent publications in the field of EE (Pacini-Ketchabaw & Nxumalo, 2015; Taylor & Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2015; Lloro-Bidart, 2017; Lloro-Bidart & Semenko, 2017; Maina-Okori, Koushik, & Wilson, 2018; and Pitt, 2018).

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work: This poster presentation highlights new pathways forward in the theoretical foundations and discourses within EE that are pertinent to ongoing scholarly work and educational practice.

Author

• Joshua James Russell, Canisius College