Education in/for a Multispecies Commons: From Violence to Flourishing

• In Event: Education and Multispecies Equity: Collective Understandings Toward Transformations

Abstract

Schools can be seen to be closely connected to “hotspots of violence” against animals (Wadiwel, 2015) or sometimes themselves serve as sites of violence where various, often conflicting, human-animal relations (re)produced, creating “common violent worlds” between children and animals (Saari, 2021). While several animal-inclusive educational approaches that seek to foster multispecies flourishing have been proposed (e.g., Gunnarsson-Dinker & Pedersen 2016, Lupinacci & Happel-Parkins 2016; Lloro-Bidart 2019; Russell, 2019; Taylor & Pacini-Ketchabaw 2019), little progress has been made in moving towards the systemic transformations the urgency of the climate crisis, escalating violence against other animals and our path towards unlivable futures would require. Calls have rightly been made for greater attention to be paid to the connections between education and the animal-industrial complex (e.g., Russell & Spannring 2019, Saari, 2021). To imagine and enact just multispecies futures and understanding multispecies equity it may help to begin by understanding how multispecies inequity operates in educational contexts.
This paper explores the question of how educational policy and practice could attend to fostering more just multispecies co-existence by critically examining the conceptual tools that are used as guiding core principles in the Finnish education system, including the concept of sustainable development. Attending to the challenges posed by anthropocentric foundational principles, which are interwoven into different dimensions of educational policy, I draw on recently completed doctoral research that explored how we might move towards an educational reform for interspecies sustainability where animals too are understood as stakeholders (Saari, 2021). This paper explores how schools might serve as “spaces of peace” (Wadiwel, 2015) based upon the premise that flourishing and sustainable futures require the disruption of dominantly violent relations. The dairy industry and human-cow relations are used a case example, given the stronghold the dairy industry continues to have in the (Finnish) education system.
To attend to multispecies equity in education we might find fruitful guiding concepts by drawing on (critical) sustainability studies (Bergmann, 2019, 2021; Rupprecht et. al. 2020) and political theory (e.g. Celermajer et. al., 2020; Cochrane, 2018; Wadiwel, 2015). Interspecies sustainability (Bergmann, 2019) and multispecies justice (Celermajer et. al., 2020) can offer pathways for critically attending to knowledge claims about who or what matters in our communities and the power relations in who draws the line. These frameworks can offer useful tools to critically challenge anthropocentric conceptions of sustainability and the commons, where animals and nature are often relegated to ‘resources’ rather than stakeholders in their own right. This paper concludes by asking what multispecies reconceptualizations of the commons and sustainability might mean for educational policy and practice and the opportunities and challenges for educating in/for a just multispecies commons are explored, with suggestions on how to move forward through collective strategizing.

Author

• Maria Helena Saari, University of Oulu
  Presenting Author