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The secret language of trees - Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard

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Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations

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The Secret World Under the Trees | Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination

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Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene

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invites you to explore the ecological worlds created when nonhuman entities become tangled up with human infrastructure projects. Seventy-nine field reports from scientists, humanists, and artists show you how to recognize "feral" ecologies, that is, ecologies that have been encouraged by human-built infrastructures, but which have developed and spread beyond human control. These infrastructural effects, Feral Atlas argues, are the Anthropocene.

Playful, political, and insistently attuned to more-than-human histories, Feral Atlas does more than catalog sites of imperial and industrial ruin. Stretching conventional notions of maps and mapping, it draws on the relational potential of the digital to offer new ways of analyzing-and apprehending-the Anthropocene; while acknowledging danger, it demonstrates how in situ observation and transdisciplinary collaboration can cultivate vital forms of recognition and response to the urgent environmental challenges of our times.

"To fix a problem we have to understand it. Feral Atlas helps us do just that. It illuminates the ways in which we are shaping the world and gives us the information we need to be able to act."
-Annie Leonard, Executive Director, Greenpeace USA

"Being part of the onrushing Anthropocene often makes me feel like a number, some machine part of eight or nine billion people. -Stephen Palumbi, Stanford University Feral Atlas throws me into a future that swirls with art, poetry, dark facts, and ironic humor. It keeps the impending future in human focus, smashing together calamity and humanity."

"Feral Atlas is the most innovative digital humanities or sciences project I've ever seen. After being immersed in this transdisciplinary, multimedia, polysensuous, and open-access experiment, you will emerge more attentive to the feral qualities and patchy infrastructures of the Anthropocene."
-Craig Santos Perez, University of Hawaiʻi, Mānoa

- CURATED AND EDITED BY -
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Jennifer Deger

Alder Keleman Saxena

Feifei Zhou

- DESIGNED AND BUILT BY -
Lili Carr (Map Director)

School: Andrew Herzog and Nicky Tesla, with Emma Rae, Lukas Eigler-Harding, Rahul Shinde

Art Camp: Santiago Carrasquila, Jos Diaz Contreras, Eugene Lee, Ningfeng Zhao, Heewon Kim

Victoria Baskin Coffey (Visual Editor)

Jovan Maud (Copy and Digital Editor)

Gabby Miller (Wrangler)

- LUMINARY ESSAYS -
Sven Beckert

Amitav Ghosh

Gabrielle Hecht

Karen Ho

Simon L. Lewis & Mark A. Maslin

David M. Richardson

Will Steffen

Terra Forma: Frédérique Aït-Touati, Alexandra Arènes, & Axelle Grégoire

- TIPPER VIDEO ARTISTS -
Studio Armin Linke: Armin Linke, Giulia Bruno, Giuseppe Ielasi, Martina Pozzan, Katalin Simon

Trevor Birkenholtz & Bruce Rhoads

Isabelle Carbonell

Anna Friz & Rodrigo Ríos Zunino

Duane Peterson

- FIELD REPORTS BY -
Ernest Alfred

Russell Ngadiyali Ashley

Tom Bassett & Carol Spindel

Susanna Blackwell

Gillian Bogart & Gde Putra

Clive Brasier

Nathalia Brichet

Jericho Brown

Kate Brown

Dieter Bruneel, Hanne Cottyn, & Esther Beeckaert

Nils Bubandt

Matthew Buttacavoli & Geoff McPherson

Zachary Caple

Isabelle Carbonell

Marcela Cely-Santos

Rachel Cypher

Lionel Devlieger

Jacob Doherty

Adrian Drummond-Cole

Pierre Du Plessis

Paulla Ebron

Bettina Fach & Baris Salihogu

Lyle Fearnley & Christos Lynteris

Elizabeth Fenn

Rosa E. Ficek

Irwin N. Forseth & Anne F. Innis

Scott Frickel

Anna Friz & Rodrigo Ríos Zunino

Peter Funch

Jennifer Gabrys

Elaine Gan

Matteo Garbelotto

Scott F. Gilbert

Deborah M. Gordon

Michael G. Hadfield

James M. Hassell, Michael Begon, Melissa J. Ward, & Eric M. Fèvre

Gabrielle Hecht

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger

Iftekhar Iqbal

Norio Ishida & Daisuke Naito

Chris Jordan

Frédéric Keck

Alder Keleman Saxena

Jonathan Kolby & Lee Berger

Agata Kowalewska

Lead Belly (Huddie William Ledbetter)

Alex Liebman & Robert G. Wallace

Audrey Lin & Morgan Myers

Andrew B. Liu

David Mackenzie

James Maguire

Andrew Mathews

John R. McNeill

Anne-Sophie Milon & Jan Zalasiewicz

Lina Mounzer

Ursula Münster

Kelsi Nagy

Katy Overstreet

Alyssa Paredes

Ivette Perfecto

Stephen Pyne

Evelyn Reilly

Bitty A. Roy, Helen M. Alexander, Jennifer Davidson, Faith T. Campbell, Jeremy J. Burdon, Richard Sniezko, & Clive Brasier

Helene Schmitz

Jens Seeberg

David Skelly, A. Z. Andis Arietta & Max Lambert

Nathan Snow & Gary Witmer

Juliana Spahr

Serena Stein

Lesley Stern

Bettina Stoetzer

Lucienne Strivay & Catherine Mougenot

Mike Sugarman

Heather Anne Swanson

Michael G. Vann

Michale Vine

Martin Vodopivec, Tjaša Kogovšek, & Alenka Malej

Marissa Weiss

Sue Wright

Lei Yang & Fangkai Zhao

Jerry Zee

Alexis Zimmer

- DETONATOR LANDSCAPE GUEST ARTISTS -
Larry Botchway

Andy Everson

Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho

Nancy McDinny

- OTHER CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS AND POETS -
Bayla Arietta

Tavish Campbell

Amy Clampitt

Liz Clarke

Ken Cockburn

Imitiaz Dharker

Beth Ann Fennelly

Stanley Tan Hanjie

Jane Hirshfield

Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner

Jaś Kapela

Hiroshi Kawigashi

Rejin Leys

Emmy Lingscheit

Takashi Morizumi

Ruth Padel

John Rego

Nova Ruth

Craig Santos Perez

Valencia Robin

Jared Shomo

Kim Stringfellow

Shaun Tan

Ryan Walsh

- WITH GRATITUDE TO -
A. R. Ammons

Mohamad Arief

Inger Christensen

Augustus deMorgan

Seamus Heaney

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Marianne Moore

William Shakespeare

Wislawa Szymborska

- SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -
Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene

Cooking Sections: Daniel Fernández Pascual & Alon Schwabe

Gapuwiyak Culture and Arts Aboriginal Corporation

Stanford Digital Projects: Friederike Sundaram, Jasmine Mulliken, Greta Lindquist, Alan Harvey

Zander Bamford-Brown

Nils Bubandt

Andrés Camacho

Isabelle Carbonell

Paulla Ebron

Anna Friz

Peter Funch

Elaine Gan

Jennifer González

Donna Haraway

Bruce Keleman

Caleb Kingston

Mia Korsbæk

Adrian Lahoud

Jessica Madison Pisatá & Kathryn Gougelet

Fabio Malfatti

Warren Sack

James Scott

Jane Sloan

Abram Stern

Heather Swanson

- RESEARCH ASSISTANTS -
Maria Breil

Rachel Cypher

Kirsten Keller

Sathvik Nori

Katy Overstreet

Pierre Du Plessis

S. M. Prius

Zahirah Suhaimi

- DESIGN & UPLOAD ASSISTANTS -
Nicole Deger-Beauman

Matthew Buttacavoli

Matthew Darmour-Paul

Mirana Rideout

Fikriyah Winata

Kathryn Gougelet (Janet Batz, Riley Block, Rueben Cantacuzino Levy, Brandon Cornell, Queenie Don, Joseph Duerr, Chiara Fishburne, Nona Golan, Benjamin Gonzalez Cueto, Natalie Griffin, Yingshi Liang, Tara McAteer, Alejandro Morgana, Woodlyn Rhodes, Samuel Webster)

- DRAWING ASSISTANTS -
Maria Saeki

June Tong

Limal Harris

- WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR FUNDING FROM -
Danish National Research Foundation

James Cook University

Aarhus University

Aarhus Universitet Forskningsfond

University of California, Santa Cruz

Royal College of Art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Feral Atlas invites you to explore the ecological worlds created when nonhuman entities become tangled up with human infrastructure projects. Seventy-nine field reports from scientists, humanists, and artists show you how to recognize "feral" ecologies, that is, ecologies that have been encouraged by human-built infrastructures, but which have developed and spread beyond human control.

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Walking in rhythm with Deleuze and a dog inside the classroom: being and becoming well and happy together

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Walking in rhythm with Deleuze and a dog inside the classroom: being and becoming well and happy together

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Walking in rhythm with Deleuze and a dog inside the classroom: being and becoming well and happy together

Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Correspondence to Donna Carlyle, Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK; Donna.carlyle{at}northumbria.ac.uk

Abstract

This paper plateau describes children's interspecies relation with a classroom canine, utilising posthumanism, post-structuralism and new materialism as its research paradigm and methodology. Once feelings are cognitised or articulated, their true essence can be lost. Therefore, elucidating moment-to-moment child-dog interactions through the lens of affect theory attempts to materialise the invisible, embodied, 'unthought' and non-conscious experience. Through consideration of Deleuzian concepts such as the 'rhizome' and 'Body-without-Organs' being enacted it illuminates new, 'situated knowledge'. This is explicated and revealed using visual methods with 'data' produced by both, the children and their classroom dog such as photographs and video footage mounted on the dogs harness, from a GoPro micro camera. In addition, individual drawings, artefacts and paintings completed by the children are profound points in the research process, which are referred to as 'plateaus'. These then become emergent as a children's comic book where their relationship with 'Dave', their classroom dog is materialised. Through their interspecies relationship both child and dog exercise agency, co-constitute and transform one another and occupy a space of shared relations and multiple subjectivities. The affectual capacities of both child and dog also co-create an affective atmosphere and emotional spaces. Through ethnographic, participant observation and the 'researcher's body' as a tool, they visually create illustrations through the sketching of 'etudes' (drawing exercises) to draw forth this embodied experience to reveal multiple lines and entanglements, mapping a landscape of interconnections and relations.

child health

education

inter-professional education

mental health care

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

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We have two languages: one is words, one is pictures and that is a way of expressing yourself and finding out who you are (Quentin Blake).

Introduction

Transforming children's mental health services outlines a key role for schools in supporting children's and young people's social and emotional well-being. 1 Nevertheless, detailed attention to the benefits of child-animal or child-dog interactions has been somewhat overlooked, despite the growing interest and body of research in the field of anthrozoology and the study of human-animal interactions, with Gee, 2 Bradshaw 3 and McCardle et al 4 suggesting a need for more qualitative, robust research methods which are longitudinal in design. Scholars such as Gee et al 5-7 have demonstrated that the mere presence of a dog in a classroom can improve children's executive functioning and performance. Yet, the precise mechanisms for this are yet to be known and explicated. This ethnographic (participant observation) and rhizomatic study is an exemplar of doing precisely that to explore, expose, reveal, illuminate and animate these important relational and embodied, interactional processes and mechanisms, seen, heard and sensed through children's perspectives and children's voices. In addition, by being literally 'drawn to see' 8 (through the use of sketches/etudes as embodied process), the ethnographer is engaging aesthetically with the fundamental embodiment and sensory nature of child-dog interactions and experiences through artwork. As Sousanis 9 exports incredible images and innovative graphic shape-shifting examples in his ground-breaking 'unflattening' project, he dismantles the flatness of sight and its one-dimensional state to open up the multiplicity and potentiality of space, time and experience; 'darting and dancing...animated and teeming with possibilities' (Sousanis p 16). 9 His emphasis is also on the moving dynamic and mode of sketching between artist embodiment and production of image. This resonates well with artist Klee's idea of a line which ' goes out for a walk' (Klee, p 103) 10 making the abstract appear multidimensional. As Sousanis (Sousanis, p 75) 9 so succinctly comments:

By orchestrating the relationship between elements and the space they inhabit, we can trigger correspondence with experience both seen and felt.

This 'unflatterning' 9 approach and two-dimensional viewing of experience through a visual and affective methodology which goes 'beyond text' 11 is significant; it opens up a greater appreciation of human and non-human relationships in terms of the multiplicity of experience or 'being' and 'becoming' in the world. This allows experience to be viewed as constantly evolving in states of 'flow and flux'.

Deleuze's interest in art and cinema can be taken and reformed as methodological praxis and become what Haraway 12 refers to 'situated knowledge'- combining theory and social phenomena. Such an exposition enables the production of new knowledge and understanding. Through the animation of Deleuze and Guattari's abstract concepts, they become enactments that explore roles, making them meaningful and tangible, offering an alternative lens with which to view the complex mechanisms at play during child-dog interactions within the classroom setting.

Ways of materialising embodied encounters

Deleuze's perception of vitalism and affect theory enables us to apprehend a more-than-human and posthuman world. He enables a way of seeing the world which accounts for what can go unseen, the affective intensities of experiences which are often felt and sensed, yet can go uncognitised 13 and therefore unknown. Through affective methods and by drawing on our visceral, corporeal and embodied experiences, we can endeavour to reveal these important aspects of human and non-human well-being and flourishing. Interestingly, neuroimagery and neurological flux is not well established in neuroscience research because these images are 'snapshots of a certain moment of physical materiality' (Schmitz and Hoppner, p 5) 14 which thus, escapes capture as they are more than fixed points in time. In static form, they do not reflect movement and change and can therefore be viewed as neuroreductionist. Although a technological advancement, neuroimages and scans do not allow for the processes and mechanisms of experience to be fully understood and in this sense, experience is 'flattened'. As physicist Barad describes, visually animating and enacting scenes of entangled child-dog relationships can illuminate a mapping of experience which she refers to as 're-configuring space-time-and matter' (Barad, p 179). 15 Through this 'unflattering' of experience and synthesis of both art and science, we can reveal the dynamic and vibrant relationship between Dave the dog and the Year 6 children.

Through illustration of his concepts such as the rhizome (eg, through pendulum painting), the children develop their affective and visual vocabulary or visual narrative. 16 This botanical metaphor described by Deleuze and Guattari 17 can be used creatively in research through Deleuzian action as a data collecting method which allows for the children's consideration of autonomous, unrestricted movement and rhythm. As the rhizome (an underground stem and root system) stretches and freely expands (lines of flight) so too can the children's expression of their experience with Dave in the spaces and places shared within the classroom. These then become 'plateaus'-points of reflection where meaning making is reached and crystallised. These plateaus are visual and textual. They merge and mingle. Rather than thinking of language in itself, Deleuze and Guattari helps us see in pictures and 'images of thought' (Deleuze and Guattari, p 16). 17

Methods

Participants

This ethnographic, participant observation study was longitudinal, being completed in two phases over a full academic year. The participants were 30 Year 6 boys and girls, aged 9-10 years, their class teacher and school dog, Dave. The children included were from differing cultural backgrounds. The study was carried out in a Northeast of England Primary School with mixed demographics. In the spring of 2015, when the country was in the grip of a General Election, the school decided to teach the children about politics and elections by asking them to form their own political parties. Led by Year 6, each party of children decided what their policies would be and what they would like to see change about their school. The different parties pitched their ideas in assembly to the whole school. Every child in the school was then given a vote, which they popped into a ballet box in a voting booth. The winning party, who pitched to have a school dog, won by a landslide victory. The Head teacher respected the result of the election and set about finding a dog for the school. After a few weeks, an English springer spaniel puppy, called Dave, joined them. He was 18 months old at the beginning of the research project and he is now 3 years old.

Study design

Data was collected through multiple means-photographs and short video clips taken by the children with a GoPro camera which they chose to wear on their wrists. Dave also wore the Go Pro Camera on his harness showing his movements and interactions in the classroom setting during lessons. In addition, I documented my observations through fieldwork notes, and I also compiled sketches which I referred to as 'etudes' (drawing exercises) to sharpen my ethnographers gaze and attune me to the sensory and tactile nature of child-dog encounters. Three creative workshops were then introduced, with each lasting for a period of 2 hours. These later became emergent as three interlinked 'plateaus'-which is used in the research to describe points of reflection where meaning making was reached and crystallised.

Walking in rhythm with Dave and the children

Ideas and concepts can set the rhythm and stride of fieldwork and participant-observation. As Fetterman 18 posits, developing a rhythm and pace can guide the ethnographic process. This then becomes a strategy, which an ethnographer uses in the setting in order to focus in on the cultural phenomenon of inquiry. The research actions and methods help to also introduce each workshop task, guiding its visual materialisation of how the children explore their interactions with Dave. This enabled the consideration of the underlying mechanisms at play and how the cultural and peer system functioned. The creative workshops were a focal point for commonly shared thoughts and ideas of how the children expressed through both language and pictures, the ways in which they moved and used space within the classroom with Dave. Far from feeling in the role of a researcher/ethnographer, this became a sense of 'kinship' between the children, Dave and ethnographer-participant observer. This enveloped a holistic orientation, creating a whole picture of the culture, with each scene or event being viewed as multifaceted and connected. In this sense, the ethnographer became a human instrument, process mapping the children's and Dave's interactions and encounters.

Data generation and diffraction: flexible and emergent

The researcher's protocol can be viewed as a map to guide the journey and process. By bringing together affect theory with Deleuzian and Guttiarian 17 philosophical concepts (such as rhizome and a Body-without-Organs (BwO)) helps to understand how they fit together to produce and reveal new situated knowledge through ethnographic, participant-observation. Such an 'insider' and 'emic' perspective, becoming deeply immersed in the culture, provides a deeper understanding of what the children and Dave do, and why they do it. It draws me to multiple ways of being and ' seeing '.

The intertwining of Deleuzian actions can be seen in the example of the rhizomatic movement involved in pendulum painting (see research protocol: table 1). Such an exposition enables the production-meaning making, new knowledge and understanding. However, it quickly became apparent that I needed to be adaptive and flexible during the creative moments with the children and my research changed in response to the children's requests and conversations with me. In this sense, it was primarily driven by the children and as the workshops and fieldwork progressed, they enacted greater autonomy. This is evident particularly in workshop three when they envisaged a comic with which to tell their story of having Dave in the classroom with them. This giving of greater autonomy to the children also included use of the GoPro camera, when the class teacher and I were happy to give them control in when and how they used it. In this way, the research became emergent and free flowing, indeed rhizomatic, and generated new lines of inquiry. Through this playfulness with the camera as a research tool, events unfolded spontaneously and any strict adherence to a protocol did not seem pivotal to the overall emergent process.

Workshops

Plateau #1 movement: pendulum painting

The first workshop is suggested to the children as a way to explore how they moved around with Dave in the classroom together. Using pendulum painting, it was hoped that the motion of the pendulum (cup and string attached to the authors large camera tripod) swinging back and forth would enact and provoke thoughts of how the children's movements with Dave could visually materialise and map the corporal, affectual and visceral embodied process ( figure 1).

These culminated in emergent ideas from the children about our bodies and gravity (curiously their use of creativity and art connecting with science). The use of words 'wild' and 'butterfly' by the children materialise the visual patterns in an important embodied process-a merging of image and text. These artwork activities are not 'capturing' or reducing the children's experiences but clearly depicting how there are multiple subjectivities and multiple truths. They continually move and change and hence are non-representational 15 (a focus on practices and embodied experiences, prior to conscious thought). Like expansion of space these movements can be considered as globes, bubbles or 'rhizospheres' (Deleuze and Guattari, p 278) 17 where the child-dog relationship is mutually co-productive in terms of increased agency and spatiality. These vectors of intensity have potentiality and motion. Within these spaces new ways of interacting are emergent. The attunment, rhythm and tone (or musicality) 19 of their moving bodies afford close physical contact. The moments of intricate and intimate touching and stroking occurring in a 'smooth' space (unregulated) which is safe and part of the classroom (sub) culture. The classroom also becomes a 'sensoryscape' of relational encounters and events. These assemblages of well-being are ones in which affective sensitivities collide through relational dominions which are embodied and transforming. The following extract from field note assemblages highlights this dynamically and wonderfully in the teacher's reflections and comments:

Extract from field note assemblage 11/07/2017 (Observation 10):

Because of Dave I have become a very popular teacher; I stroke and hug the children, just like I do with Dave. I stroked Billy's head last week when he was crying and upset, it's like I am an extension of Dave and he's helped me feel able to comfort them through touch or a hug, when this is often not seen as 'politically correct.

Deleuzian attention to creative processes, as well as being deconstructive, allows for the consideration of the affective dimensions of the classroom atmosphere and environment, given its relevance to fruitful learning.

Plateau #2 space(s): craftwork

Workshop 2 entailed the children selecting whichever medium they wished to show their favourite places and spaces they shared with Dave in the classroom. Materials such as fuzzy felt, feathers, cotton, string, lace, craft wire, buttons, pegs, straws, tissue paper, cloth, sandpaper, etc were made available. Some of the children used string and lace to described how 'Dave makes pathways that connect us' (see figure 2). Dave would initiate many of these 'pathways' through his 'rhizomatic' ball game, in which he would roll his ball back and forth between the children. This had a notable element of communication, with some of the children whose first language was not English, using this game to engage with other children and connect with them in a non-verbal manner.

Sitting on the classroom carpet became a point of reflection in the children's pictures, a space where they would regularly sit and join Dave, either during lessons or outside lesson time. This space enabled feelings of playfulness, a becoming-with, a becoming-together of Dave and the children. As Deleuze and Guattrai 17 purport, these movements, flows and affects are relative to mutual well-being and feelings of self-control. Dave then affords movement, freedom, control, motivation, enthusiasm, participation and more choices, as denoted by Ryan and Deci, 20 as important attributes which enhance well-being and self-determination.

Some of the children used craft wire which was shaped into 'bundles' and described by them as 'bundles of love' (curiously emblematic of a tuber/root system) or Dave and child/children entwined together ( figure 3).

Several of the children decided to use other mediums and draw or sketch with pencil or crayon. Jenny drew two pictures alongside one another, one in which the landscape looks sad and gloomy, then the other which is happy and colourful (when Dave is in the space). Some of her classmates referred to this as a 'comic strip' and a couple of boys fetched their marvel comic books from their drawers to share with me. They then collectively decided that a comic book would be a good idea through which they could tell their story of being with Dave in the classroom. The third plateau was then emergent as a 'rhizo-comic' ( figure 4).

Plateau #3 being and (be)coming together: photo assemblage and emergent children's comic

The third workshop was introduced through the idea the children had of making a comic to tell their story about when they came together with Dave ( figure 5).

The children accumulated over 300 photographs they had taken of which 50 were selected for the workshop and consequent third plateau 'being and (be)coming together'. The 50 photographs were assigned to five table-top assemblages. The children, with Dave alongside them, then laid them out in panels on a large piece of paper, in any sequence or order they wished. They then added speech and thought bubbles as well as shapes, colour and captions to tell their comic story. Once all the photographs were collated, the pages were brought together 'rhizomatically' (non-linear, non-hierarchical, dis-organised) culminating in the completed comic. The children also voted to rename Dave as 'Tails' and agreed the title ' The Terrific Tale of Tails! An amazing School Dog' for the emergent comic. This 'othering' of Dave being renamed as 'Tails' further exemplifies how he was given an alternate role and deterritorialised (liberated from the structure and order of the classroom system) . In doing so, the children could also be viewed as becoming deterritorialised themselves, freeing them up from being 'pupils', to becoming creative storytellers and nomadic explorers. This material-semiotic process illuminated the children's affective encounters with Dave, making visible the invisible (the transmission of affect), non-conscious, unthought, sensory elements which are grounded in Deleuzian actions and concepts. This enabled a two-dimensional 'unflattening' of the experience to see and view the surface below the experience which is 'teeming with possibilities' (Sousanis, p 16). 9

Enacting scenes of entanglement through a 'rhizomorphic' comic

The children and Dave becoming a BwO

One of Deleuze and Guattari's 17 lexicons is the concept of a BwO. This inimitable idea offers a way of seeing how relationships can become subject to societal structures of organisation. It is a surface (philosophically), not a physical body, where social energies interact. Far from it conjuring up any idea of an 'embryonic' state, it is emblematic of the need for agency and autonomy to be acknowledged in childhood (and animalhood for that matter), thus, challenging the 'striations of space by the State' (Luhssier, p 45) 21 and social construction of children in particular, as requiring control and regulation. It provides a way in which to experiment and enact experiences in the world and how they are constantly being rewritten and changing. Hence, Deleuze and Guattrai's BwO being in opposition to the 'territorialisation' and deliberation of the body. Our ethics of care towards children and animals means by 'becoming together' in multispecies relations and entanglements we must reconfigure non-human relationships and give their significance greater attention. Through such rhizomatic thinking, we can become well together and flourish alongside one another. The children's and Dave's rhizocomic shows such a dynamic and exemplifies the rhythms of affect which ultimately expand our understanding of the significance of animal-human relationships, Tim Edensor (2010) This co-creation between the children and Dave reveals a distinct relationship in which spaces are shared equally and disrupted dynamically from being territorialised to becoming deterritorialised. As we can see in the pictures, the children and Dave share 'common worlds' 22-where they both co-exist in the classroom together and enjoy an egalitarian relationship on the same level quite literally (becoming an assemblage sitting on the floor together, and Dave's body sharing chairs and tables (see comic panels B and D in figure 6). As Donna Haraway states 'learning how to flourish together in difference' (Haraway, p 301) 23 being exemplified. This difference is a non-human difference with Dave enabling a non-human relationship that is fundamentally sensorial in nature (tactile, visual, olfactory and auditory) and equal. Through his material, unboundaried body Dave avails himself for touch. Detailed observations and etudes revealed that these touches were carried out in varying, intricate ways, either patting, stroking or massaging the contours of his body. His ears and face were regularly stroked rhythmically, much to Dave's delight! Eye contact was also a noteworthy feature of interactions where Dave and the children mutually gazed at one another for sustained moments during physical contact. This interesting aspect of their close relatedness through Dave allowing them safe permission to touch, clearly showed a mutual sense of connectedness, which is essential not only to the children's enhancement of sensory and perceptual awareness but also of their shared sense of well-being and flourishing.

Closely observed hand movements, animated through the researcher's etudes, on Dave's body showed varying ways in which the children used his body and fur in a rhythmical and regulatory way. Children's fingers and hands would circle, flick, sweep, scratch, tap, ruffle and flounce Dave's body fur, limbs, muzzle or ears. This orchestration of movement resembled what the author considered to be like 'piano fingers'-the children's fingers lightly touching and pressing Dave's body as if it was a musical keyboard. The hand patting also became reminiscent of gently tapping motions, like percussion and beating on a bongo drum.

In addition, Dave in becoming part of the children's material culture is affording 24 the children more spaces and more places for becoming agentic, autonomous, competent and powerful. Such a position is referred to as 'emplacement' by Pink (p 62) 25 in her personification of the value in sensory ethnographic (affective) methodologies and how our sense of emplacement continually shifts and changes through embodied and sensory ways of knowing and learning. Thus, the children state how Dave makes the classroom 'feel like home' (see comic panels B and C in figure 6) and how such material, multisensory memories, evoke and play a part in changing and transforming the atmosphere and structured, authoritarian power of the classroom environment.

It is an unfolding companionship between the children and Dave in a process of 'becoming-liberated' and being-well-together during challenging times (such as SATS) when touching and stroking of Dave occurs in rhythms of movement and sensory engagement. These 'striated' spaces are made 'smooth' and nomadic, with the nomad (Dave) and the children inhabiting this space and not attempting to dominate it but expand its energy and rhythm. These striations are aspects of the territorialisation of the classroom landscape, which is structured, laden with order, power, and control. Indeed, the researcher's own body became nomadic and hybrid, as they regularly negotiated their researcher-ethnographer-explorer-learner-becoming-native (participant-observer) roles. My being and becoming nomadic researcher, similar to Dave, resonates in the following extract from the researcher's field note assemblage, in which they became an embodiment of Dave.

Extract from field note assemblage 27/10/2017 (Observation 25):

As I am sketching my observations, Billy, who is sitting next to me, reaches out, smiles broadly and strokes my arm then rubs circles on my back saying, "you are Dave." In that moment, I feel profoundly aware of my physical presence in the classroom and how I seem to embody Dave. As an ethnographer, this was not only amazing in terms of my 'position'-becoming an egalitarian figure in my relationship with Billy, but how I seem to have truly become an instrument and 'tool' in the research process through my apparent 'embodiment' of/as Dave. I feel very humbled and moved, but more so very connected to Billy. I smile back at him and respond by also stroking his arm. The teacher's previous comments now resonate loudly in my head, that she too has felt like an 'extension' of Dave and how he affords her 'permission' to touch the children 'safely'. I can appreciate fully how the teacher (and now myself) experiences this as a natural encounter and how Dave is affording a different kind of relationship with others in the classroom. It feels hugely monumental.

Understanding the researcher's own responses as 'enactments' as well as the children's, which are contained in both our bodies, then mediated through a social field, provides dynamic moments of 'affective attuning' (Cho, p 24 and 33) 26 producing affective moments in which the data 'glows' (Knudsen and Stage, p 7) 27 and resonates. These are the non-narrative, unspoken aspects of knowing through the rhythm and tone between bodies within the classroom environment.

Moving diffractively between the artwork and GoPro photographs, in a meandering, rambling motion (considering the camera neither deflecting or reflecting reality), the researcher refers to as making 'plateaus' and creates a diffractive analysis 12 15 (breaking apart and reconfiguring). This diffuses the affective encounters being explored; thereby creating new formulations, patterns and understanding through incorporation of the researcher's mutual embodiment and entanglement in the process. Thus, moving and weaving through the data in a non-representational way, 28 avoiding any codification and stratification of the 'data', allowing it to remain emergent and in a constant state of change and 'becoming'. This encapsulates the researcher body as 'tool' and 'instrument', magnifying the compelling nature of embodied processes. The key aspect of the consideration of the researcher 'body' as part of participant observations allowed them to feel and see in more depth what unfolded in the intimate encounters between Dave and the children, and Dave and ethnographer. The ethnographer's embodiment in the experience enables a deep immersion in the experience and revealed rich data in itself, in order to consider and show the affective mechanisms and sensorial aspects involved in child-dog interactions. In operationalising the idea of the researcher's body becoming a BwO' similar to Dave, they moved in a nomadic way around the classroom, deterritorialised and liberated. However, there are times we both inevitably return to being territorialised and it is this state of oscillation between the two, which opens up spaces of becoming other, breaking boundaries with the authoritarian, ruling, structured and organised environment. Importantly, these spaces are transitional, which then enable alternative ways of being and becoming together. The children becoming something more than a 'learner' who takes in knowledge, and Dave becoming something other than a school dog to a character in a comic with a mind and voice of his own. He is given a 'comic hero' type of status, therefore not being considered as a Pets as Therapy dog, assistance dog, emotional support dog or even a pet, but a friend and supporter. As Haraway (p 7) 23 has previously asked 'whom I touch when I touch a dog' is a question the author has contemplated many times as an ethnographer. Touch can be soothing, rhythmic and self-regulatory. In this study, when Dave is touched and stroked by the children, he affords them something more such as the role of playmate (ball games, tummy rubs, chase and fetch) and friend. As Buchanan 29 purports he also becomes a 'converter' of the social assemblage when he comes together with the children. This 'converter' means he disrupts and transforms the classroom environment and atmosphere, becoming space-maker and disrupting operations of power. This expansion of space within the classroom reflects both human and non-human agency and how child-dog interaction is mutually co-constitutive and deterritorialising (liberation from the usual boundaries and structures of the classroom routine). This includes the development of new subjectivities and new modes of embodiment for the children. This is also revealed in quotes from the children such as ' he gets inside your boots' (see comic panel D in figure 6) the children animating Dave's capacity for empathy, bringing it to life that which may otherwise be lost in purely intertextual methods.

On completion of the comic, the children were asked to make any comments on their artwork. One over-riding and recurring expression from nearly all of the children was that Dave made them feel 'happy'. The deterritorialising potential in the BwO allegory translates into a sense of well-being that could not be apprehended by more concretised measures. It then escapes any bio-medical discourse and territorialisation within the territory-classroom setting. This is then not confined to the reductionist codification, classification and stratification of human-animal interactional measures, ensuring affective experience is augmented. The happiness that the ethnographer witnessed and was 'drawn to see' could be seen and emotionally felt through the children's glowing faces and beaming smiles. The ethnographer felt it too, as a warmth in their body and relaxation of tension in their neck, shoulders, arms and legs. It can also be seen and felt through the reading and viewing of the comic panels in the process of pixilating the images and 'lit up' faces ( figure 7), thereby connecting us more profoundly with the corporeal, embodied and aesthetic nature of the experience. The comic panels C and E ( figure 6) reflect something similar in which the children use image and text to show us the sensations and states which can emanate and radiate from bodies; yellow lines emanating from Dave's body and the use of yellow with the word 'refreshing' ( figure 6).

As Hague, 30 highlights, 'reading a comic is not just a visual process it is a multi-sensory experience', (Hague, p 25) 30 and we are drawn to look at the sensorial elements, that is, the tactile and affective actions shown through the pixilated images. Ultimately, the comic is therefore able to convey a visual narrative which text alone would omit. This method is then a powerful affective tool as opposed to mere conversational and interview approaches to data collection, due to its unique embodied nature. Scott McCloud 31 provides an intriguing perspective on the use of panels. He expands:

Comic panels fracture both time and space, offering a jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected moments. But closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality (McCloud, p 67). 31

In that sense McCloud's assertion aligns very well with the ethnographer's diffractive methodology and approach to the 'data' analysis. This is also in keeping with Thrift's idea of non-representation, and Deleuzian concept of rhizomatic thinking.

The 'happiness' that Dave gives the children could be seen as an affective embodied, reciprocal encounter, not just as a result of their biophilia, or an innate need to connect with nature. Importantly, Dave is not passive, subordinate or boundaried entirely. He is free to roam and wander, avail himself to the children, initiate his rhizomatic ball game or 'tummy rubs' through his charismatic and cute 'springer sprawl'. His physical bodily presence is a palpable part of the classroom rhythm and tone( James Ash, 2013). This is a significant consideration with regard to the place of multispecies relationships in childhood and how they have potential effects on well-being and flourishing, see Timmy and Dave 'snuggling in' together, etude 13 ( figure 8). Given that children in the UK are considered less happy than many of our western counterparts, 32 this is very pertinent in terms of enhancing children's social and emotional well-being.

Results/findings

The 'experiments' in which the children are exploring their encounters (intra-actions) and relationship with 'Dave' is dynamically produced, allowing an unfolding of narrative that is described by several of the children as 'wild' ( figure 1) a destratifying process as it were-a co-constitution and transformative experience for both child and dog. These are shared moments in which Dave was equally as animated as the children, almost participating in the painting with his paws stepping in and around the canvas. This in itself becomes the 'refrain', a map of an event fitting together functionally, a setting-off of a rhizome, lines of flight, a breaking free from the flattening of stratification. This marking of territory, produces regularity and repeated, changing patterns of sound, place and space. It therefore becomes an affective space feeling 'like home', an affective atmosphere and a sensoryscape, through its movement in the constitution of a territory. As McCormack (p 55) 33 illuminates:

bodies have the potential to generate spaces in the process of their movement...moving bodies have an animating quality inextricable from space and time

This flow of connectivity between bodies knows no boundaries or restrictions during the deterritorialisation of space. Therein lies a transformative aspect where Dave is seen as not just 'cute' but providing a sense of 'hope' (see comic panel E in figure 6). Thus, the child-canine assemblage enables children to move from one state of being to another, for example, low to high, sad to happy (see comic panel B in figure 6). He is an assemblage converter, which changes emotional states and emotional atmospheres.

In paying attention to these affective moments as events, the 'data' appears to glow and shine, and thus takes on much greater significance.

Rhizomatic rhythms matter a great deal to our understanding of affect, animal-human relationships and well-being. The three emergent paper plateaus show how the children helped to co-create an affective experience with Dave and highlight the distinct relationship developed between children, Dave and researcher-participant observer-ethnographer.

These connective assemblages fundamentally afford touching, social bonding and communication between the children and Dave, thereby enhancing well-being and flourishing across human and non-human multispecies relationships

Discussion

As animals, particularly dogs (including 'school' dogs) seem to be an increasing part of children's family life and material culture, it is important that settings ensure an ethic of care framework 34 which encompasses and acknowledges both children's and dog's agency. Both have a voice and a need to become more 'visible' in the spaces and places they inhabit to ensure their ongoing growth of competence, autonomy and relatedness. This links with the children developing a eudaimonic sense of well-being through the care-giving behaviours that Dave activates in them, and their acquisition of virtuous and moral behaviours that strengthen their character. Its bidirectionality enables a mutual flourishing, being and becoming well together. This attuned relationship moves beyond hedonistic desire or pleasure as Dave's vitality and energy-'thing power' (Bennett, p 18) 35 permeated the rhythm and tone of all inhabitants inside the classroom. 36 The collective nurturing (of both Dave for the children and the children for Dave) witnessed in the classroom materialised regularly in the ethnographer's sketches/etudes. This patterning of affects, movement and interaction is embodied and vibrant. As Deleuze and Guattari 17 assert, these are relative to the ideas of what constitute well-being.

Child and canine bodies should not be viewed as passive and subordinate. Each affords the other a multispecies relationship which is mutually co-constituting and transformative (through touch and sensory processing) to one another's sense of well-being and happiness. For example, the deep muscle pressure that Dave and the children provide for one another, during 'snuggling in' together, seen in etude 13 ( figure 8) and the warmth, softness and sensation of weight and pressure from one another's body is calming and emotionally regulating both their shared states of mutual becoming's.

Dave's gentle breathing and snoring involve differing vibrations, which also have a regulatory, rhythmic and synchronistic quality from body to body. This tactile and embodied process seems to be both comforting and enriching for both the children and their teacher, in increasing their capacity for both verbal and non-verbal communication, through visceral and kinaesthetic ways of being and knowing. This mode of connecting and creation of 'pathways' for interacting is significant and visually materialised in figure 2. The author also recalls being physically and emotionally regulated and contained from the sensation of deep muscle pressure, particularly during times of change and uncertainty, when Dave would rest his head on their feet. His warm touch and presence infusing and shifting their bodily state. The following field note extract features this corporeal experience.

Extract from Field note assemblage 22/05/2017 (Observation15):

As I become more aware of my own bodily sensations the gentle pressure on my feet from Dave is somehow making me feel grounded and connected to everything around me. It reminds me of the important function of 'swaddling' a baby and how the light sheet 'holds' them-not only just physically but emotionally. It's like Dave is providing me with the same sense of a 'holding and containing' environment and a 'second skin' to comfort and sooth me. The children often sit with Dave, looking as if both their bodies have 'merged' and I now see this in a very different sensory way. It feels an important function of Dave in the class, and how he affords these moments of security and well-being.

Professionals across multiple setting such as hospitals, clinics, schools and even the family home are all spaces and places in which human and non-human cultures and relationships are enacted and subject to varying rules, regulations (territorialisation) control and dependency. This study can consider how children's bodies and animal's bodies can be reconfigured as BwO's. This study exemplifies and challenges visually, how institutional power dynamics are played out and altered by the child-dog assemblage(s) ( figure 6) showing examples of where power is negotiated and shared between Dave and children, for example, sitting on the floor, sharing a chair or desk, going beyond designated 'lines' and 'boundaries' together.

There is a spatiality to well-being, a bubbling and expansion of spaces and places of transition for children to become playful vectors, connected to one another and Dave through their innate desire for human and human-animal relationships and encounters, which extend beyond cute, cuddly charisma. Organisations can then give animals a 'voice', making them 'visible' and part of an ethic of care 34 that is beneficial for both human and non-human in becoming and being well together.

Conclusion

Gallacher and Gallagher 37 argue that researchers must have methodological 'immaturity' as a means to fully include children's voices and participation in research; children being active rather than passive. The interesting choice of the genre and medium of a comic creation by the children could be an exemplar of my allegiance and adaption to this 'immaturity', enabling the children's performative (doing things themselves) production in which both their voice and in part, Dave's voice is heard.

In addition, by including Dave as a methodological axis of difference in the research offers a potential mechanism to understand and redress forms of human exceptionalism. In his embodied canine form, he produces movement (and non-human data) differently, altering our perspective of space and time. This involved filming child-animal action (use of a GoPro micro-camera attached to Dave's harness), agency (affect) and reconsidering Dave's role in social/human life. This 'canine-cam' generation of data quite literally helps us see things through a non-human lens. His lively biogeography and non-human charisma animated in action. 38 What is evident is Dave's appeal clearly extending beyond 'non-human charisma' of being cute and cuddly Jamie Lorimer (2007). As the children show through their comic, Dave is a sentient being with an 'animal mind' and this corresponds with current research findings by Menor-Campos et al 39 with Spanish Primary School children. This study also amplifies, both visually and materially, how Dave and the children create and re-enact 'contact zones' (Haraway, p 4) 23 which open up spaces of shared becoming's and multiple subjectivities. These can also be considered as rizospheres and social assemblages created through Dave's nomadic and rhizomatic movement, etude 6 ( figure 9).

This study's rhizomatic format is one, which crosses the lines between different types of disciplines, and it can make connections across several modes of being (biological and social domains can be compared and connected through a process model). It therefore offers an innovative lens with which to view and understand the nuanced mechanisms of child-dog relationships and their shared spaces and places of well-being and flourishing. In the present climate that has seen a rise in therapeutic education, where therapeutic training programmes are becoming part of children's 'curricula' in schools, this study stands out rather distinctly. The role of Dave as nomadic explorer, friend and companion, clearly opens up spaces for childhood agency and flourishing-through his becoming a comic 'crusader' Dave has metamorphosed into is a champion for children's well-being. His own well-being and flourishing is emergent alongside them, bringing together common worlds for improved learning communities.

Notes

1. Department of Health & Department of Education (2017), "Transforming Children and Young People's Mental Health Provision: A Green Paper (Cm 9523)." Accessed March 7, 2017. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/664855/Transforming_children_and_young_people_s_mental_health_provision.pdf

2. Nancy R Gee (2018), "Research methods used to consider the impact of HAI on older adults' health", Animals in Our Lives: Multidisciplinary approaches to the study of human-animal interactions, University of Sydney, Australia, 2018.

3. John Bradshaw (2018), The Animals Among Us: The New Science of Anthrozoology. Great Britain (Allen Lane): Penguin Books, 2018.

4. Peggy McCardle et al. (2011), How Animals Affect Us. London, England: American Psychological Association, 2011.

5. Nancy R Gee et al. (2010), "Preschoolers make fewer errors on an object categorization task in the presence of a dog", Anthrozoos 23, no. 3 (2010): 223-30.

6. Nancy R Gee et al. (2012), "The presence of a therapy dog results in improved object recognition performance in preschool children", Anthrozoos 25, no. 3 (2012): 289-300.

7. Nancy R Gee et al. (2007), "The role of therapy dogs in speed and accuracy to complete motor skills tasks for preschool children", Anthrozoos 20, no. 4 (2007):374-86.

8. Andrew Causey (2017), Drawn to See: Drawing as an Ethnographic Method, vol. 2017. Canada, New York USA, Plymouth UK: University of Toronto Press, 2017.

9. N Sousanis (2015), Unflattening. London: Harvard Press, 2015.

10. Paul Klee (2018), The Notebooks of Paul Klee: The T hinking E ye, vol 1. London: Lund Humphries, 1961.

11. Alexandra E Sexton et al. (2017), "Better than text? Critical reflections on the practices of visceral methodologies in human geography", Geoforum 82 (2017): 200-1.

12. Donna Haraway (1988), "Situated knowledge: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective", Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575-99.

13. N Katherine Hayles (2017), Unthought. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

14. Sigrid Schmitz and Grit Höppner (2014), "Neurofeminism and feminist neuroscience: a critical review of contemporary brain research", Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (2014): 546.

15. Karen Barad (2007), Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007.

16. Will Eisner (2006), Comics and Sequential Art. New Jersey: Paramus, 2006.

17. Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (2013), A Thousand Plateaus. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

18. David M Fetterman (2010), Ethnography. Step-by-Step, vol. 17, 3rd edn London, UK: Sage, 2010.

19. Colwyn Trevarthern (2011). "The Connected Baby DVD", In T he R ythm and M usicality of C ommunication, Zeedyk SD and Robertson J, (Producer) 2011 mins.

20. R M Ryan and E L Deci (2000), "Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development and well-being", American Psychologist 55, no. 1 (2000): 68-78.

21. Monique Lhussier (2009), Quality of Life: Nomadological Insights. A Nomadic Exploration of quality of Life in Long-Term Conditions. Germany: VDM Publishing House, 2009.

22. Affrica Taylor and Miriam Giugni (2012), "Common Worlds: reconceptualising inclusion in early childhood communities", Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 13, no. 2 (2012): 108-19.

23. Donna Haraway (2008), When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

24. James J Gibson (1979), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. New Jersey: Lawrence Elbaum, 1979.

25. Sarah Pink (2015), Doing Sensory Ethnography, 2nd ed. London, UK: Sage, 2015.

26. Grace Cho (2008), Haunting the Korean Disapora: Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten War. Minneapolis: University of Minesota, 2008.

27. Britta. T Knudsen and Carsten Stage (2015), Affective Methodologies: Developing Cultural Research Strategies for the Study of Affect. Hampshire, UK and New York USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

28. Nigel Thrift (2007), Non-representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. London and New York: Routledge. Taylor and Francis Group, 2008.

29. Ian Buchanan (2014), "Assemblage theory and schizoanalysis", Panoptikum 13, no. 20 (2014): 115-25.

30. Ian Hague (2014), Comics and the Senses: A Multi-sensory Approach to Comics and Graphic Novels. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2014.

31. Scott McCloud (1994), Understanding Comics; The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.

32. OECD (2015), PISA 2015 Results (Volume III): Students' Well-Being. Paris: OECD, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264273856-en

33. Derek P McCormack (2013), Refrains for Moving Bodies: Experience and Experiment in Affective Spaces. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013.

34. Lucy Connolly and John G Cullen (2018), "Animals and organisations: an ethic of care framework". Organization & Environment 31, no. 4: 406-24, doi: 10.1177/1086026617712975.

35. Jane Bennett (2010), Vibrant M atter: A Political Ecology of Things. USA: Duke University Press Durham and London, 2010.

36. J Ash and L Gallacher (2010), "Becoming attuned: objects, affects and embodied methodology". in Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 4, edited by Perry M and Medina CL, 356-66, 2010.

37. Lesley Gallacher and Michael Gallagher (2008), "Methodological immaturity in childhood research? Thinking through 'participatory methods'", Childhood 15, no. 4 (2008): 499-516.

38. James Ash (2017), "Visceral methodologies, bodily style and the non-human," Geoforum 82 (2017): 2006-07.

39. David José Menor-Campos et al. (2018), "Belief in Animal Mind among Spanish Primary School Children." Anthrozoos 31, no. 5 (2018): 599-614.

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Walking in rhythm with Deleuze and a dog inside the classroom: being and becoming well and happy together

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This paper plateau describes children's interspecies relation with a classroom canine, utilising posthumanism, post-structuralism and new materialism as its research paradigm and methodology. Once feelings are cognitised or articulated, their true essence can be lost. Therefore, elucidating moment-to-moment child-dog interactions through the lens of affect theory attempts to materialise the invisible, embodied, 'unthought' and non-conscious experience.

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Robin Wall Kimmerer and Lucy Jones on Gathering Moss | 5x15

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On Mistaking Whales | Bathsheba Demuth | Granta

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Before a gray whale becomes a home, or a barrel of oil, or a metaphor, before she enters the realm of human meaning, she is a being complete in herself. Born as most gray whales are on an early January day off northwestern Mexico's Baja Peninsula, her mother swims upside down, tail lifted, straining up, up, and she emerges head first not into water but into the air. Two thousand pounds of smooth pewter muscle born facing the sky. For the next three months, she practices pacing her breaths, the rise to the surface that keeps her from drowning in the water that is her home. In the calm lagoons, she grows more than a ton each month.

In April, the gray whale and her mother begin traveling north. They are often in sight of land, desert scrub becoming grassland, grassland turning to redwood groves and temperate rainforest as they move up the long arc of the North American continent. Their nearshore waters are punctuated by din: the ports of Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle and Vancouver, each calling in its braided lanes of shipping traffic. In June, as they reach Unimak Pass in the Aleutian Islands, there is less clamor. They have swum more than 4,000 miles not for quiet but for the Bering Sea's pastures of clams and tube worms below them in the muck, creatures that have rounded generations of the whale's kin in blubber. As mother and calf scoop up the benthic riches, muddy blooms rise and trace across the sea's surface.

In midsummer, the feeding path of the gray whale and her mother turns west toward Russia, toward good eating and shelter amid the bays and inlets of the Chukchi Peninsula. Their route meanders across the International Date Line, between today and tomorrow, yesterday and today. A demarcation as meaningless to a whale as a day - that contained pulse of light and dark - is to a human being in the endless sun of an Arctic summer.

In one such Arctic summer, I go to Chukotka, crossing the Date Line to the Bering Sea to look for whales. A historian by training, I had for several years been gathering records about gray whales and their meanings: Indigenous Yupik and Chukchi histories transcribed in St Petersburg; whalers' logbooks in New Bedford, Massachusetts; Soviet economic plans on onion-skin paper in Vladivostok; the minutes of International Whaling Commission meetings in Washington DC. I spent that time imagining a whale, the contours of her life. Arriving in Chukotka, what I have are fragments. I am here, in the easternmost region of Russia, out of a kind of compulsive hope that in visiting the origin of these fragments, the place that has hosted centuries of varying relations between my species and the gray whale, I might find the line of a story. I am on the dawn-land edge of Eurasia looking for the plot.

I have a temporary apartment in Provideniya, a Soviet-era concrete town in the middle of Beringia National Park, its bays and beaches thick with whales and whaling sites. Seeing them is not simple. Alaska is close enough to be visible from points along this coast, so the Russian government considers all 737,700 square kilometers of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug to be a border zone. Foreigners can travel here only with a propusk, a pass stamped by the governor and the Federal Security Service, or FSB. My propusk lists whether I have a curfew and what settlements I can visit. I also require minding; for anything further afield than a stroll, I am supervised by Nikolai Ettyne, a park guide. He makes our plans based on the weather and places in the park he has the vehicles and need to go. Or to avoid; one plan was scrapped because thousands of walruses had hauled themselves out onto the beach we were to see, and our presence might have caused them to stampede, crushing their young in a panicked heave toward the safety of the sea.

On a morning with fast-moving clouds and no rain, Nikolai collects me at my apartment. He is Chukchi, his ancestors native to this peninsula for generations, but not from here, he explains, as he was born 160 kilometers north in Lavrentiya. So it is good to travel with locals. Today, Alexei comes with us, driving the park's Trekol. It is clear, once we are outside town, why we need the vehicle's four-foot tires. Our way is along a narrow lake held by parallel ridges, their lichen-dark tops snow-boned, with barely a track ahead and no gentling of the incline where hill becomes lake. Americans, Alexei explains as water splashes over our hood, make roads. Russians make vehicles that do not require roads.

After a jolting hour, Alexei turns east. The Bering Sea is immediately on our left, the lake to the right; once, I think, the lake was a fjord, open to the sea, but the waves chose over some years to close the mouth with sand. Ahead is a low grassy hill, radiant green and rippling silver where the wind flips over the larkspur leaves. Clusters of beams rise pale and weathered. I take them to be wood, the edges worn ovoid and organic, but the beams are arrayed with the kind of order that marks to the eye things made by people.

As we walk up among them, I see that the beams were born. Slipped into the sea as the internal architecture of whales. The largest, ribs wide as I am, grew inside bowheads, the smaller come from grays. As we walk among them, I can see the bones are the ceilings of half-underground spaces. Many are sunk now below the larkspurs and monkshood, their sentinel ribs fallen to earth. These were houses, Nikolai says. This was the village of Eunmyn, that's the Chukchi name. In Yupik, they call it Avan.

Avan: a name I know from libraries. People have made houses from whale along the Bering Strait for thousands of years; the practice is more recent in Avan, starting perhaps a millennia ago. Over the subsequent centuries, waves of inhabitants, drawn to this place because of its vantage for hunting whales, left strata of tools and dwellings. At a museum in St Petersburg, I saw photographs from the 1920s, when this was a Yupik settlement. The Avatmiit, the Yupik of Avan, lived in walrus-hide tents, not these bone homes, and did not trace their ancestry to the builders. When Vasilii Ankatagin, born here in 1924 or 1925, gave an account of Avan to anthropologist Igor Krupnik in the 1970s, he described it as 'a good place: good hunting, many sea animals, fish, birds. To live here was good.'

There is a thrumming life still, among the houses where Vasilii must have run as a child, trampling the grasses as we do, hearing peregrine falcons keen as they ride the thermals high above. Perhaps he also touched the old whale bone, feeling how pliant it is with age. Or perhaps the sense of retained memories echoing up from these pits was too acute. I approach one house by crawling on my belly to peer down. In the dimness, the pale heavy brow of a whale's skull holds back the earth. A bone wall. The people who lived here lived in the heads of whales.

In twenty-first-century New England, the time and place that I live, whales are usually the subject of awe and benevolence. I have had neighbors tell me they love them, sentiments that do not require regular observation or even the precision of a species. Here whales have been homes. A practical space, shelter and host to meals and births and deaths. Host to the least abstract kinds of love. Familial, romantic, parental. Here whales have made those intimacies, by giving people the capacity to live.

I pick myself up and walk with Nikolai down to the gray sandy beach. The sea, which is constrained less and less each year by the tempering presence of sea ice, is eroding the embankment that separates Avan from the water, exposing the skull foundations of another house. At my feet are pieces of bone. Some were clearly tools, things worked by human hands. Among them, incongruously bright, is a Yoplait yogurt container, the English on the sea-worn plastic still legible: fat-free strawberry.

We turn and look for whale spouts. You can tell the species by their plumes of breath, Nikolai tells me. Gray whales exhale in heart-shapes. The horizon is a clean line between blue-green water and a sky purpling with more rain. We see no whales.

I had seen whales on my way to Provideniya, the week before. I was in Nikolai's village, Lavrentiya, waiting for the Kapitan Sotnikov, a small cargo ship heading for Provideniya, to set off. Young men in jeans and black windbreakers lashed bags of reindeer antlers onto the deck. Gathered from the inland herds and bound for China, Gena Zelensky told me. I had known Gena for some years; he is a master of Chukotkan logistics, fixer of my propusk and first port of call if things go awry. And they had. My plan was to fly straight to Provideniya from the regional capital of Anadyr, but there was an issue with my ticket - the sort of Russian bureaucratic problem that is never clear except in its outcome - and no empty seats for weeks. Gena improvised: I could go via Lavrentiya, where he lives in the summer, then take the Kapitan Sotnikov thirteen hours down the coast.

Lavrentiya was not listed on my propusk, however. As we waited for the ship, two plainclothes men from the security services asked me questions. We spoke in Russian. They mentioned my husband by name, casually, but also to make clear they knew things about me, things written in a file somewhere that I had not told them. After they left, Gena grumbled: what do they think you're going to do, steal the damn reindeer? Spy on the whales?

That evening I climbed from the diesel-scented passenger area of the Kapitan Sotnikov, in search of a horizon. The view through the portholes kept moving up and sideways or down and backward, leaving my stomach in transit between. I tried focusing on the flat-screen television playing a dubbed version of Air Force One on a continual loop, which was worse. On deck the cold wind knocked me breathless but took the nausea with it. The evening was silvery, the late sun filtering through low clouds and breaking through, here and there, in streamers of light.

I thought about the FSB men. A century and a half ago, a person in Chukotka from New England was a kind of robber. They sailed from New Bedford and Nantucket and other port cities to skin the fat off of whales and refine it into lamp oil. The want for light decimated Atlantic whales, sending hunters to harrow the Pacific. In 1845, commercial ships reached Baja California, where gray whales give birth in sheltered inlets each winter, the southerly reach of a migration that brings them north to the Bering Sea in summer. Gray whales gave little oil, of poor quality. But whalers were paid their share of a voyage's take only after its sale back in port. Every hand aboard knew the fastest way home was through killing any animal they could. So they lowered their small boats with the long harpoons into the nursery lagoons.

Within a few years, the whalers' pursuit of oil trailed the grays north to the Bering Sea. Gray whales learned that the ships brought danger and attacked their tormenters. Whalers feared and hated them for it, calling them devil fish or scrags. In waters not far from the Kapitan Sotnikov 's route, one ship's mate described 'chasing devil fish' only to have 'the head of the boat knocked off'. So many meetings between whales and people took place in which the singular experience was terror. For such people, the meaning of a whale was reduced to present injury risked for future profit. And for the whale? As seen from the surface by her killers, she raged.

It did not stop the slaughter. Thirty years on from the first commercial kill, there were perhaps 4,400 gray whales left to migrate between Baja and the Bering Sea. The sea floor was littered with thousands of bones that never became houses. New England sailors did not even eat much whale. Many judged the Yupik and Chukchi who did as lacking 'habits of industry', as one captain wrote, in part because they killed few whales and did not sell the blubber. But the commercial fleet was aware that whale was to Chukotkans what grain was to New Englanders. In New Bedford newspapers, ship captains castigated themselves for the famines they had caused, for how commercial slaughter was 'taking bread out of [Yupik and Chukchi] mouths'.

On the deck of the Kapitan Sotnikov, I watched three crepuscular sunbeams touch the rocking surface. In the shadows between, a back rose and split wide the sea in blasting exhale. A second followed. A mother gray and calf, by their sizes, and distinct from humpbacks or bowheads for having no dorsal fins. They were two of the nearly 27,000 gray whales then alive, descendants of those who survived being known by commerce.

What is it Herman Melville wrote? Quoting Daniel Webster, early in Moby-Dick: whalers added 'largely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry'. Melville had spent long enough in the gore and fear of whaling ships that the quote was ironic, but not untrue; he knew how in New England, on streets lit by blubber, remorseless havoc was made into a story of triumph. Light by which to read an American plot of progress.

The whales swam for a time in and out of the luminescence, pooling and dispersing on the water, the tips of the small waves shattering into fragments of light.

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On Mistaking Whales | Bathsheba Demuth | Granta

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Before a gray whale becomes a home, or a barrel of oil, or a metaphor, before she enters the realm of human meaning, she is a being complete in herself. Born as most gray whales are on an early January day off northwestern Mexico's Baja Peninsula, her mother swims upside down, tail lifted, straining up, up, and she emerges head first not into water but into the air.

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Symbiotic Earth (on Vimeo or Amazon Prime)

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Symbiotic Earth (on Vimeo or Amazon Prime)

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Symbiotic Earth: How Lynn Margulis Rocked the Boat and Started a Scientific Revolution

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Fantastic Fungi, Official Film Trailer | Moving Art by Louie Schwartzberg

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My Octopus Teacher (available on Netflix)

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My Octopus Teacher (available on Netflix)

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My Octopus Teacher | Official Trailer | Netflix

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This is part of our special feature, Rethinking the Human in a Multispecies World. Posthuman thinking Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that. Some of us are not even considered fully human now, let alone at previous moments of Western social, political and scientific history (Braidotti 2013, 1).
"Is there anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and 'felt the atmosphere?'" So asks Teresa Brennan in her 2004 book The Transmission of Affect ―a beautiful exploration of the affective power of social and physical relations. Affect, according to Anna Hickey-Moody, is "...the virtuality and materiality of the increase or decrease effected in a body's power of acting" (2016, 259) and manifests through social relations but also human/non-human intra-actions. While the idea that humans are affected by their environment, the energies of others, or even the objects or decor of a room is often acknowledged in conversations about teaching, no-one seems quite sure what to do with this knowledge. The transmission of affect is therefore, as Brennan suggests, a "conceptual oddity;" a phenomenon that doesn't fit in a world where education is individualized; where knowledge is measured by cognitive load on the brain, and the body is overlooked (unless unruly, and in need of managing in some way). Teaching decisions are nonetheless made every day that relate in some way to "atmosphere" and the role of non-humans in its creation: the placing of furniture, the seating arrangements of children, the choice of classroom and the selection of pedagogical activities. This essay therefore raises the questions: what happens when we pay attention to the way in which objects and things interact with us? And what might change for education when we re-inscribe teaching as a process of dealing with multiplicities of bodies-in-relation?

Before I explore affect and the non-human further, I want to explain a little more about posthuman philosophy. I first engaged with the theory back in 2013, at Professor Rosi Braidotti's Posthuman Summer School at the University of Utrecht. At the time, I was working in teacher training, preparing people for work in schools, colleges, and community education, and had become disillusioned with the instrumental and transactional nature of current systems and practices. I wanted to explore alternative paradigms which accepted the complexity of our times while offering new approaches.

The critical posthumanism of Braidotti and others differs from other strands (actor network theory, transhumanism, anti-humanism, and so on) in that it is not philosophy as such, but a "...theoretically-powered cartographical tool" (Braidotti 2013, 12), or a lens through which to read the world. The latter is a fitting analogy for a practice which draws heavily on the work of Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher and optical lens grinder. Posthumanism is essentially a final call to "...mark the end of the self-reverential arrogance of a dominant Eurocentric notion of the human, and to open up new perspectives" (Braidotti and Hlavajova 2018, 3). It requires us to make a double move; the first, going beyond, or after humanism as we augment and reposition the voices of those overlooked and oppressed by Enlightenment ideas of "humanity." The second move is post-anthropocentrism; the decentering of the human and elevation of other species and ecological systems which have been relegated beneath "Man" in an exploitative and limiting hierarchy. This convergence of ideas - which are often dealt with separately - necessitates complex, non-binary responses to the questions of our times.

Taking a "posthuman turn" in education therefore involves a shift from learning-as-cognition to a focus on connections between humans and non-human others; a move from the primacy of the written and spoken word to the re-emergence of the embodied self; and a recognition that other-than-human agents are always present in processes of learning. It is important to remember here however, as Zoe Todd (2016) reminds us, that many of these ideas are not new but have been enacted and inscribed as part of Indigenous cosmologies for centuries. While some notions of posthumanism continue the colonial erasure of Indigenous thought and practice, posthumanism with an ethics of relational reciprocity calls us to account for and augment the voices of those silenced in preference of those from the overwhelmingly white, male, and Western academy. Avoiding the co-opting of traditional worldly-knowings as "new" discoveries or novel contributions to knowledge thus requires a deliberate inclusion of Indigenous scholars. For example, the notion of "affective pedagogies" is akin to the idea of "learning spirit" spoken of by the Mi'kmaq First Nations people (Battiste 2013); a long-articulated belief and understanding of the world. There is therefore an ethical imperative to turn to non-Western Indigenous ontologies, not via a process of "cognitive colonialism," but with ethical hesitation and humility (Wu et al. 2018). As Braidotti states in her acknowledgement, we need to account for different perspectives: "We are in this together; but we are not one and the same" (2019, 52). For myself, this is an ongoing process of learning and reflecting.

A posthuman approach to pedagogy therefore brings in a range of perspectives from different fields of scholarship that together act to decenter the humanistic values which privilege the individual (and certain kinds of individual at that) while also resisting Cartesian dualisms which separate body from mind, teacher from learner, and human from non-human others. Thus, in the words of Carlson (2015, xi)

The posthuman challenge...calls for forms of democratic education, curriculum and pedagogy that deconstruct the commonsense, taken-for-granted naturalness of humanism, not from an anti humanist perspective but as a movement beyond...whilst still maintaining the modernist and humanists projects of rights, justice, equity and freedom.

After studying these ideas, I returned to my own classes of student teachers inspired and yet keen to cut through some of the more inaccessible "high theory" which surrounds posthuman thinking. As a practitioner, I wanted to explore alongside my students questions like:

What would a post-human teacher education curriculum look like?

How can we elevate the non-human agents that impact so significantly on our practice?

How can we transform scholarship to promote ontologies which have been derided and left out of academic discourse?
The posthuman turn Humans can no longer ignore nonhumans...they end up haunting the words we use and interrupting everyday talk. (Timothy Morton)
And, while doing all this - how can we stay with the trouble of being part of the systems we resist?

Our educational establishments in England, in the mainstream at least, have changed little over the past century. Separate disciplines, standard buildings and classroom layout, fixed patterns to the school day, standardized testing, and strict uniform regulations all speak to a hegemonic view of what schooling is, or should be. Despite the shift to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, the discourse of "return to normality" has reified the traditional model of schooling and situated the idea of education as contained and centralized firmly in the traditions of schooling-as-usual. Nevertheless, the idea of schools as symbiotic and living environments, infused with non-human actors (objects, organisms, viruses, and so on) speaks to an increasing sense of blurred boundaries, further emphasized by the lived reality of COVID-19. This challenge to the dualistic beliefs (which have previously separated humans both physically and ideologically from the natural world) bring to mind Stacy Alaimo's (2016, 17) thoughts on the home, which could equally apply to educational establishments: "...domestic space has served as the defining container for the Western 'human,' a bounded space, wrought by delusions of safety, fed by consumerism, and fueled by nationalist fantasies." By focusing only on the (human) individual as "man of reason" in pedagogical and curriculum design, what other agents and experiences are being missed?

Snaza et al (2014, 40) invite us to consider material things that make schools:

...sites that contain: networks of wire and pipe linking the buildings' architecture to the subterranean infrastructures of cities and beyond that to the swirls of the oceans and global deposits of prehistoric dead organisms waiting to be mined and refined; dead nonhuman animals on plates in cafeterias, as well as on feet, human bodies, athletic equipment, and biology dissection trays; innumerable microorganisms, weeds, and insects colonizing every nook and cranny...

Starting from the assumption that educational experiences are not simply about the actions of teachers and students thus invites new possibilities and understandings. An interesting starting point, or provocation for educators is to invite them to consider the everyday objects or phenomena that intra-act with their teaching practice and elevate them to consciousness, thus acknowledging the "thinginess of things" (Bennett 2010). This brings into focus the material agents in classrooms; the things that are present and yet so often ignored.
More-than-human education Without stories of progress, the world has become a terrifying place. The ruin glares at us with the horror of its abandonment. It's not easy to know how to make a life, much less avert planetary destruction. Luckily there is still company, human and not human. We can still explore the overgrown verges of our blasted landscapes - the edges of capitalist discipline, scalability, and abandoned resource plantations. We can still catch the scent of the latent commons - and the elusive autumn aroma (Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing).
Educating for and about a world that is not only "for us" but one that elevates animals, plants, and the wider eco-systems on which we rely is a further vital shift in times of ecological destruction. For Wallin, this is a pedagogy that teaches using "the filthy lesson of symbiosis" (Wallin, in Carstens 2018). In this trans-species paradigm, the Earth becomes "Gaia," a self-regulating organism within which species are interconnected and interdependent; or "Sila," the Inuit conception of life force (a concept that is difficult for non-Indigenous scholars to put into words, but one that expands notions of climate and weather into knowledge and wisdom; see Qitsualik, 2001). Along similar lines, UNESCO in late 2019 instigated the "Futures of Education: Learning to Become" global initiative, which attempts to shape the future of the planet by addressing learning in a world of complexity, uncertainty, and precarity (UNESCO 2019). The project, which describes learning as "a continual unfolding that is ongoing and life-long" (ibid.) resonates with posthuman and Indigenous ideas of process, potentiality, and different ways of knowing. The Common Worlds Research Collective, an interdisciplinary network of new materialist and feminist scholars, was commissioned to produce a background paper to assist in the drafting of the final report; its vision, which draws on Indigenous epistemologies, contains seven visionary declarations for education. The paper begins by outlining the problems posed by educational systems that are rooted in anthropocentric thinking, and concludes with a commitment to collectivist ethics (Common Worlds Collective 2020).

How, then - in a practical sense - can educators defamiliarize themselves from ideas of education-as-usual and turn to non-human agents? In the final section of this essay, I will explore some examples of educational practice that go beyond the human-centered model of understanding learning and development to enact the kind of philosophies described above.

Pedagogies of affect and matter have been particularly explored in early childhood education whereby children are seen as being closer to the material world and there is greater acceptance of embodied responses to human and non-human agents. Bessie Dernikos, (2020) for example, turns to the role of soundscapes in the primary classroom as affective sites, which, once noticed and analyzed, expose the social norms of whiteness. In Dernikos' inquiry, paying attention to sound reveals that some noises are viewed as significant while others are ignored or demonized. For example, while the excited involuntary exclamations of childrens' joy and laughter (while reading) were frowned upon and silence was continually reinforced, other noises (school bells or announcements; traffic; music outside) were not; demonstrating that certain sounds (and who is making them) matter. Dernikos also describes the way in which children related differently to a particular book when the character shared their first name; reading shifted from a collective to a group activity and the normative pedagogical ideal of silent reading was disrupted. The intra-action of sound, book and children "... [created] temporal complications and anachronistic episodes that disturb [ed] the linear time of progress" (Eshun, in Dernikos 2020, 152). In this way, attending to "fleshy frequencies" (material, embodied responses to teaching stimuli) which draw lines of flight from the status quo of normative classroom behavior can offer new insights into the way that learning is enacted.

Other feminist thinkers have taken similar ideas and enacted them in research studies that promote the agency of material items such as school uniforms, advertisements, and slippers (Wolfe and Rasmussen 2020; Ringrose and Regehr 2020; and Taylor 2018, respectively). The acknowledgement that we, as humans, are always partially constituted by the non-human is an important recognition, which de-centers "Man" as other entities are brought into focus. The teachers' role then expands to take account of interactions between bodies and materials; as Snaza (in Dernikos et al. 2020, 113) states

Classrooms are not just spaces where ideas are aired, shared, critiqued and debated; they are sites where affects emerge, circulate, and enter into conflict. (And this circulation far exceeds the human). Pedagogy is at least as much a matter of affect modulation as it is a question of theories, evidence, argument and genealogies.

In my own practice, I have evoked the role of "pedagogista" in order to explore the idea of affect modulation with other teachers. Drawn from the Reggio Emilia program of anti-fascist schooling, a pedagogista' is "someone who is devoted to thinking about pedagogical possibilities" (Vinitmilla 2018, 21). The pedagogista traditionally troubles and problematizes engrained assumptions and ways of understanding education by "being-in-question" and "putting-into-question" (ibid., 22), moving between educational centers in a role that works similarly in a procedural sense (but conceptually and ethically very differently) to a state educational advisor. In this way it offers a counter-point to standard continuing professional development (CPD) processes of observation, leadership development, and coaching/mentoring which typically individualize and promote linear solutions to complex educational issues.
New ecologies of belonging
In these pedagogical experiments, I invited teachers to delve into their non-human educational landscapes. We explored the various assemblages of items that made up our classroom environments and considered the stories they told-social, cultural and material-and how these affected the ways in which students and teachers interacted with them. Using artistic practices, such as poetry and art allowed us to connect with our embodied (as well as cognitive responses); creating raw, collaborative art works allowed us to better represent our entangled and complex experiences. In this way educators were able to explore and disrupt understandings of education-as-usual and subsequently reflect on the implications of this for their own future teaching roles.

The discussions and explorations around the role of the non-human in education strike at the very heart of what it means to be human in the twenty-first; and test the engrained beliefs of Enlightenment thinking and their validity for our present times. Transdisciplinary development practices involving art, dialogue, and engagement with posthuman philosophies can thus offer new insights and agency.
Kay Sidebottom is a Lecturer in Education and Childhood at Leeds Beckett University. Her current research explores how teachers can work with posthuman ideas to facilitate meaningful and disruptive education spaces for our complex times. With a background in community and adult education, her pedagogical specialisms include radical and anarchist education, arts-based practice, and community philosophy. She can be found on Twitter @KaySocLearn.
By breaking with ideals that center the human (and by troubling what kind of humans have been centered at the expense of others), posthumanism offers new ecologies of belonging to both each other and the wider environment (Braidotti 2013). Our current predicament calls for a curriculum that encourages notions of kinship with non-human others; accepts complexity; and reframes our attachment to a shared world. Posthumanism can offer a much-needed affective turn towards the kind of social justice that accounts for difference; enacted through a process of de-familiarization from the dominant vision of education.

References

Alaimo, Stacy. 2016. Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasure in Posthuman Times. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Battiste, Marie. 2013. Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit. Saskatoon, SK: Purich Publishing Ltd

Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2019. Posthuman Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Braidotti, Rosi, and Maria Hlavajova. 2018. Posthuman Glossary. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Brennan, Teresa. 2004. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Carlson, Dennis. 2015. "Forward." In Posthumanism and Educational Research edited by Nathan Snaza and John Weaver, viiii-xii. New York: Routledge.

Carstens, Delphi. 2018. "The Politics of Animality and Posthuman Pedagogy." In Socially Just Pedagogies: Posthumanist, Feminist and Materialist Perspectives in Higher Education edited by Vivienne Bozalek, Rosi Braidotti, Tamara Shefer and Michalinos Zembylas. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Common Worlds Research Collective (2020). "Learning to become with the world: Education for future survival." UNESCO Futures of Education report (forthcoming, 2021).

Dernikos, Bessie. 2020. "Tuning into 'fleshy' frequencies: A posthuman mapping of affect, sound and de/colonized literacies with/in a primary classroom." Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 20, no.1, 134-157. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798420914125

Hickey-Moody, Anna. 2016. "A Femifesta for Posthuman Art Education: Visions and Becomings." In: Posthuman Research Practices in Education edited by Carol A.Taylor and Christine Hughes. London: Palgrave.

Morton, Timothy. 2017. Humankind: Solidarity with Non-human People. London: Verso.

Qitsualik, Rachel Attituq. 2018. "Learning to observe, read Sila important to Inuit." Indian Country Today. Accessed 10 September 2021. https://indiancou ntrytoday.com/archive/learning-to-observe-read-sila-all-important-to-inuit

Ringrose, Jessica, and Kaitlyn Regehr. 2020. "Feminist Counterpublics and Public Feminisms: Advancing a Critique of Racialized Sexualization in London's Public Advertising." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 46, no.1. https://doi.org/10.1086/709362

Snaza, Nathan, et al. 2014. "Towards a Posthumanist Education." Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 30, no. 2, 39-55.

Snaza, Nathan. 2020. "Love and Bewilderment: on Education as Affective Encounter." In Mapping the Affective Turn in Education (Theory, Research and Pedagogies) edited by Bessie Dernikos, Nancy Lesko, Stephanie D. McCall, and Alyssa Niccolini, 108-122. New York: Routledge.

Taylor, Carol. A. 2018. "Edu-crafting posthumanist adventures in/for higher education: A speculative musing", Parallax, 24, no. 3, 371-381. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2018.1496585

Todd, Zoe. 2016. "An Indigenous Feminist's Take On The Ontological Turn: 'Ontology' Is Just Another Word For Colonialism", Journal of Historical Sociology, 29, no.1, 4-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12124

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possiblity of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Vintimilla, C.D. 2016. "Encounters with a Pedagogista". Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 19, no.1, 20-30. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463949116684886

Wolfe, Melissa, and Mary Lou Rasmussen. 2020. "The Affective Matter of (Australian) School Uniforms: The School Dress that is and does." In Mapping the Affective Turn in Education (Theory, Research and Pedagogies) edited by Bessie Dernikos, Nancy Lesko, Stephanie D. McCall, and Alyssa Niccolini, 179-193. New York: Routledge.

Wu, Jinting, et al. 2018. "Perturbing possibilities in the postqualitative turn: lessons from Taoism (道) and Ubuntu." International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 31, no.6, 504-519. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2017.1422289

Photo: Relationships in Texture series. Composition of people faces, colors, organic textures, flowing curves suitable as a backdrop for the projects on inner world, love, relationships, soul and Nature | Shutterstock

Published on November 9, 2021

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This is part of our special feature, Rethinking the Human in a Multispecies World. "Is

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Toto Too? Paper for Posthuman Voice Symposium 2021 

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Toto Too? Animal Companions and Reflective Practice

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Toto Too? Animal Companions and Reflective Practice

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Guilty of Loving You - A Multi-Species Narrative

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Guilty of Loving You - A Multi-Species Narrative

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Pedagogies of Diverse Bioregions: An Ecotistical Move from Ego to Eco

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Pedagogies of Diverse Bioregions: An Ecotistical Move from Ego to Eco

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This is part of our special feature, Rethinking the Human in a Multispecies World. Learning to unlearn dominant worldviews: challenging human supremacy and anthropocentrism
Over the past two years, the modern world has seen unprecedented struggle at the hands of a brutal tyranny of capitalism and a global pandemic―both coupled closely with the undeniable impacts of climate change. Given the political moment, we argue that any potential solutions to the current ecological crises require fundamental cultural, ideological, and social relations paradigm shifts. Any "solutions" to combat climate change that are still rooted in discourses of exploitation and oppression will ultimately only continue the practices and belief systems that got us to this mess in the first place. One of these is the ego-centric worldview that posits humans at the top of a value hierarchy over the more-than-human. In part, this logic system implies that the world organizes around individuated nation-states that largely emphasize human individuals and consumer market ideologies, while neglecting social justice, bioregional diversity, and the health of ecosystems. Such a practice largely limits any possibility for an Earth Democracy, and enables discourses of inequity: separate [countries] but [in]equal. We argue for an ecocentric worldview and its implications for bioregions as alternatives to nation-states. To do so, we examine the role of education and propose to rethink schools and classrooms as potential domains for unlearning dominant worldviews. We encourage this shift through thinking and acting in accordance with what we set forth as eco centric perspectives and practices. Furthermore, with this switch, we challenge current ways of living to better address the looming existential climate crisis, as well as unjust human suffering and related cruelty to the more-than-human world.

As ecocritical educators working to facilitate and encourage a change in mindsets for learning and leadership, we focus on anthropocentrism -or human-centered thinking-as the basis of an egocentric worldview that is convinced that human beings are superior to other forms of life/matter and that human wants and needs supersede those of everything else. This worldview, an extreme version of anthropocentrism extended into human supremacy, inherently situates human beings at the top of a value hierarchy, with more-than-human species beneath them as seen in Figure 1:

Figure 1. Egotistical Worldview adapted from "Differing Worldviews" (Martusewicz et al. 2021, 10).

Illustrating the socially constructed hierarchical worldview of Western industrial culture, Figure 1 emphasizes the need to engage in recognizing an anthropocentric worldview-that is, one that takes humans as the reference point superior to everything Earthly-and how that worldview is culturally constituted and maintained. In the context of schools, educators can play a vital role in challenging this egocentric worldview that reflects our culture's extreme anthropocentrism. They have the ability-and arguably, the social and ethical responsibility-to work toward preparing a global citizenry where diverse communities of human cultures understand the need for and potential of (re)constituting this problematic and currently dominant worldview. Such a shift to an ecotistical worldview (Figure 2) would be more supportive of social justice and sustainability.

Figure 2. Ecotistical Worldview adapted from "Differing Worldviews" (Martusewicz et al. 2021, 10). This figure illustrates an ecologically balanced worldview often overlooked and devalued in Western industrial culture.

As it challenges the egocentric worldview, an important premise of an ecocritical shift is that the human-supremacist worldview (an extreme version of anthropocentric thinking) is a cultural construct. In other words, this stance asserts that we, as humans, have learned to think and behave according to culturally constructed, relational ways of understanding, which we use to interpret relationships and thus create meaning. An ecocritical framework focuses on the ways in which meaning is constructed as to be supportive of the health and well-being of the entire community. Our cultural constructions can be interrupted and shifted when we learn to think differently about our relationships to each other and to the natural world. Thus, recognizing an anthropocentric worldview is an important entry point for rethinking human-centrism and the role of educators in teaching toward (un)learning the injustice and pervasive violence of Western industrial culture.

An essential role of educators and researchers committed to eco tistical pedagogies is to recognize and value teaching and learning that do not explicitly perpetuate human-supremacy, and in so doing, work to identify and revalue the critical practices of valuing diversity, mutual aid, and interdependence that still exist in communities all over the world. To help explain this process and in our working with current and future teachers, we compare a human-centered to an ecological worldview. Figures 1 and 2 provide an opportunity for dialogue about the ways in which worldviews can support or conflict with our educational efforts to address the challenges of the twenty-first centuries. As educators engage in a critique of anthropocentrism, they can develop the capability to cultivate habits of mind that support and sustain all species, not just humans. These habits of mind help to challenge destructive assumptions and practices promoted by anthropocentric egotistical assumptions about ourselves and our relationships. Recognizing the ways in which language influences culture and culture influences language is essential as we conceptualize and implement changes to what could and ought to be truly inclusive communities. Language plays an important role in how we interpret and examine the relationship between these two differing, and often conflicting, worldviews. For instance, understanding our work as educators and educational leaders conceptualized through an ecocritical framework challenges the prominence of dualistic and binary thinking in Western industrial culture and the associated culture/nature dualism. This process includes analyzing hierarchized superior/inferior dualisms (like culture/nature, male/female, mind/body, rational/emotional, civilized/savage, etc) in order to identify how such thinking works to uphold and perpetuate a problematic value-hierarchy that frames our understanding of our relationships with one another, ourselves, and the more-than-human communities to which we all belong.

Current governmental responses to climate change are still too often rooted in anthropocentric societal organizing, i.e. the nation-state, which takes the form of many segmented groups individually practicing their own top down politics and interests. Ecosystems, especially those of bioregions which can span across multiple nation-state spaces, are often neglected in priority. We have found Vandana Shiva's (2015) conceptualization of Earth Democracy to be of most use in rethinking the role of education―more commonly schooling―and social organizing in support of the development of a global citizenry that is not a monoculturalization of Eurocentric ideals, but rather a planet of diverse democracies.

Shiva defines Earth Democracy as "consisting of the local, decentralized communities which include (and protect) all diversity in nature and culture" (Shiva 2015, 8-9). Through the practice of a living democracy, decisions are made not only by those making the decisions at the most local levels, but in defense of more-than-human-species. This decentralized approach, described as localization by Shiva (2015) is:

Based on the interdependence between nature and culture, humans and other species, local and global, micro and macro. Localization treats every place as the center of the world, placing every person, every being as the center of ever widening circles of compassion and care (73).

Thus, aligning with an eco tistical perspective put into practice, Earth Democracy prescribes "self-rule and self-governance" to the communities and ecosystems of which they are a part (Shiva 2015, 9). It challenges the nation-state model as the dominant form of social organizing globally where individuated populations are governed largely by a political minority (be it a few representatives or even a single figure). In an Earth Democracy model, political power begins and emanates from the bottom up and "authority is delegated to more distant levels of government on the principle of subsidiarity: things are most effectively done at the level closest to where the impact is felt" (Shiva 2015, 57). This change from globalized market economies (based on greed and violence) to a "living economy" (based on compassion and care) cultivates better capacities of humans and the nurturing of living democracies for diverse species (Shiva 2015, 75).
Pedagogies of diverse bioregions
Contrary to living economies and bioregionally organized Earth Democracies, the modern nation-state is intimately bound with a necessity for segregation through nationalism and patriotism. According to Giddens (1985), the nation-state can be understood as "a set of institutional forms of governance maintaining an administrative monopoly over a territory with demarcated boundaries (borders), its rule being sanctioned by law and direct control of the means of internal and external violence" (121). Existing in relation with other nation-states, each works within a political framework of capital as the state (Öcalan 2020, 210), a homogenization of national identity and culture (Öcalan 2011), a monopoly of violence, and an extreme enforcement of the control through militarized violence (Smith and Smith 2013). As history continues to repeat itself in vicious cycles of tyrannical governments usurping power from local democracies―often in the proclamation of democratization―we posit that any potential solutions to environmental and social injustices among nation-states have arguably been symbolic, continuing to prioritize the interests of capital over ecosystems. Contrary to this dominant form of authoritarianism masquerading as democracy, we turn our attention toward asking: How might we embrace and value diversity in our social decision-making structures? What might it be like to learn from and with local systems of shared governance that nurture ecojustice, political autonomy, and accountability through bottom-up democracies? When asking these questions and imagining such possibilities, we examine the role of the modern nation-state in maintaining and reproducing an egotistical framework, and alternatively finding hope in Vandana Shiva's ecotistical Earth Democracy.

An example aligned with Earth Democracy that is explicitly a critique of the modern nation-state is the ongoing communalist political experiment in Northern Syria, Rojava-a democratic confederalism (Öcalan 2011) grounded in democratic autonomy and women's liberation (Knapp et al. 2016; Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness 2015). From an ecotistical perspective, we argue that alternatives to nation-states ought to consider in their practices of democracy the more-than-human species and the local ecosystems. Expanding upon an eco tistical paradigm, we advocate for pedagogies that include and focus on diverse bioregions.

Now more than ever, educators need to engage in pedagogies that encourage recognition of (and resistance to) all forms of domination. Doing so furthers the potential of fostering spaces of learning together to recognize harmful assumptions and actions that undergird social and ecological injustice. We admire, value, and are firm supporters of a shared commitment to respond to the undeniable atrocities that we--as humans--enact on one another. But we also believe that these atrocities are inextricably connected to the cruelties we perpetuate against non-human animals and the environment. None of these atrocities occur in isolation; they are all interconnected. Hence, the importance of focusing on the social and ecological: diverse bioregions. To confront human supremacy together with other forms of supremacy in education, educators must work as committed allies to those suffering while challenging and confronting the systemic roots of oppression on our respective fronts. An eco tistical approach focusing on the pedagogies of diverse bioregions can help highlight the interconnectedness of the social and environmental.

Drawing on work from EcoJustice Education (Martusewicz et al. 2021), Ecopedagogy (Kahn 2010), Ecocritical Pedagogies (Lupinacci et al. 2019), Critical Place-based Ed (Gruenewald 2003; Gruenwald and Smith 2014), and Indigenous and Land Pedagogies (Basso 1996; Tuck et al. 2014; McCoy et al. 2017; Jacob et al. 2021), pedagogies of diverse bioregions invites educators to address social and environmental injustices occurring at the local and global through an ecotistical perspective. The models for thinking through these oppressive mindsets in educational contexts are useful when we teach with folkx within cultures that predominantly are based in what we presented as egotistical. We want to be clear that what we present for teaching purposes as ecotistical represents what many diverse Indigenous cultures have as a fundamental understanding of self in relationship to community. We aim to expose how Western industrial cultures deeply entrenched in patriarchal, white, and human supremacism combine with hyper-capitalism and ableist heteronormative individualism to constitute deeply problematic relationships among humans and between the human and the more-than-human world. We acknowledge that diverse Indigenous cultures do not need this process and that what we share is not in any way new. Rather, our hopes is that the kind of work we are sharing and proposing aids in developing the awareness, knowledge, and abilities for educators in Western industrial culture. Furthermore, extending from hopes to action, we encourage the practice of recognizing diverse knowledge systems and intentionally working to value different eco tistical epistemologies that for centuries have sustained human communities living in accordance with the diverse species, geographies, and climates in their bioregions.

If we do not rethink the cultural framework rooted deeply in our language, by which dominant meanings are socially constructed, we are destined to re-create and perpetuate many of the problematic relationships that we, as radical educators, often set out to change. We must listen to and learn from social movements and the activists like the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, The Women's Revolution in Rojava, or Water Protectors on occupied Indigenous and First Nation territories. We must also take some actual steps in our studies and enactments of pedagogies in our classrooms toward cultural change. It is an unapologetic pedagogy of democratization, reconciliation, and community expanded beyond the human species.

Pedagogies of diverse bioregions also require a fluidity of learning and doing in both the material and the cultural. Recognizing and protecting local watersheds from profit margins (see Elwha Dam Indigenous protests); engaging in guerilla gardening (Reynolds 2014) to circumvent private property and food deserts-these are just some examples of engaging in pedagogies of diverse bioregions. As educators and teacher educators, we can begin to challenge oppressive cultural discourses in our classrooms. We share ways in which we might begin to utilize an ecocritical framework toward diverse pedagogies of bioregions in our classrooms.
What does it mean to refer to stacks of trees or the waterways on the planet as "natural resources?" What does it look like to advocate for the diverse species of our bioregions? What language further perpetuates social inequalities and undermines human rights in our communities?

Engage in teaching and learning that explore diverse projects to rethink the dominant assumptions influencing how we, as humans, construct meaning and thus learn to relate to each other and the more-than-human world.
What does it mean to be human beings in our diverse communities of life? Who/what benefits and who/what suffers? How are learning relationships in our classrooms influenced by value-hierarchies and cultural assumptions? What does it mean to teach toward the abolition of superior/inferior (either/or) thinking? What would it look like to make decisions together in community that are in support of challenging human supremacy? How can challenging human supremacy also be an act of anti-racist and feminist teaching?
We must make the commitment to critically and ethically examine how, as teachers, we individually and collectively understand educating, organizing, and taking action toward supporting healthy communities that include all beings. We must acknowledge the intrinsic value of recognizing, respecting, and representing the right of all beings to belong to and live peacefully within an ecological system. For example, we should critically engage in questioning how we language our world:

We must also think about how we might frame lessons that include ecocritical questions that disrupt dominant worldview assumptions:
Who and what might we be ignoring when we think about who is considered in decisions in our neighborhood community? What animals and plants live and make homes in our community, and how are we interrelated to them? What are we doing to practice reciprocity with our diverse human and more-than-human neighbors?

Engage in critical and ethical examinations of community as we come to learn about and live with diverse species in our bioregions.

As notions of community are all too often constructed in terms of white supremacy, patriarchy, and human-centered exclusion, it is important to reconsider community based on who and what is included in its definition and how it contributes to either supporting or undermining the right of all beings to coexist in peace.

As educators, we can work with students to learn deeply about the local and to imagine how decisions might be made that consider more broadly diverse voices, ideas, abilities, and experiences away from the historical dominance of white male colonial voices. We should aim at engaging students in listening and being responsive to diverse language systems like breathing, smelling, listening to sounds, seeing gestures, and recognizing the diverse weather, climate, water, soils, birds, insects, fungi, forests, and other mammals and animals in our bioregions. Specifically, we ought to work towards identifying-or seeking out-a more-than-human teacher in our specific bioregion (something/one to learn from and intentionally engage in a learning relationship). At first, this is just about making a commitment to learning from this different kind of teacher-student relationship in a way that interrupts habits and assumptions of anthropocentrism and human-supremacy. Then, you could journal over the course of the semester and share your experiences about who you learned from and learned to listen to, and about your ecological surroundings. You would then be committing to learning about the ways in which oppressed communities have suffered and survived the extreme violence of white-male heteronormativity and to not reproducing or existing in complicity with these atrocities.
How can single-issue or locally focused social justice groups make alliances with other social and/or environmental justice groups? How can we as educators connect with and start conversations between these kinds of organizations, our classrooms, and communities?

Engage in examining community in terms of inclusion by recognizing, respecting, and finding diverse ways in which teaching and learning among all members represent both cultures and species in support of a system of diverse bioregions.
How might we learn to teach from the Black Lives Matter at Schools resources? What might it be like to teach or be a student in Rojava and what might we learn about other movements in different places that help us locally to resist the antidemocratic violence often coupled with nation-state identities?
Specifically, we engage in recognizing the role activist networks play in alleviating and eliminating unjust suffering in our communities, by also building networks of solidarity with these organizations.

For example, in our community, we ask what commonalities and bridges might there be between Water protectors, ANTIFA, Planned Parenthood, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Sierra Club.This type of questioning starts with learning about who is already having these conversations and how to support their attempts. Additionally, shifting classroom communities is useful to encourage collaboration rather than competition, for example by focusing lessons on fostering and developing skills of community collaboration rooted in mutual aid and interdependence. School and community gardens can be a site of such teaching and learning.

Engage in supporting the diverse approaches to taking up resistance and healing from Western industrial culture and, in solidarity, show respect for epistemologies that differ from the current dominant discourses of Western industrial culture.
Brandon Edwards-Schuth is a Doctoral Candidate of Cultural Studies and Social Thought in Education at Washington State University. Their research is situated at the intersections of democratic education, social ecology, and sound curriculum/podcasts and focuses on radical possibilities for reimagining education.
We must support the ways in which diverse forms of resistance challenge dualisms that perpetuate value-hierarchized thinking. For example, we can explore how local groups in the community are fighting against past and present acts of colonization. Imagine how educators might teach lessons that question progress rooted in hyper-consumerism and global market ideology. For example, you could have students explore barter and trade in efforts to make explicit that economic systems do not need to be rooted in capitalism, or have students identify non-monetized activities that exist in the community. Additionally, students could explore the speciesist, racial, and gendered dimensions of non-monetized caring work and how, along with commitments to antiracism and feminism, it upholds and strengthens communities and democratic possibilities bioregionally.

Above all, and in addition to the attempts to disrupt institutionalized Western industrial culture that is perpetuated through and within educational spaces, we can also commit to the daily effort of turning our attention to learning toward the local and fostering critical friendships with other humans and non-human animals. Furthermore, as part of building such radical friendships, we advocate for engaging with adversaries, and sharing stories of hope and resilience, while critiquing local and international relations of domination and hierarchies in favor of bioregional Earth Democracies. In such volatile, authoritarian times, it is important that critical educators challenge dominant perceptions of what currently constitutes schooling, education, and knowledge. Collectively, we must imagine with open hearts and minds what is possible when we commit to learning to be members of bioregional Earth Democracies that work locally and in support of living systems.

John Lupinacci, PhD, is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Social Thought in Education at Washington State University. His work as an ecocritical scholar in teacher education, environmental education, and curriculum studies contributes to his research on teaching to address the conditions of the Anthropocene in K-12 schools and higher education.

References

Basso, Keith H. 1996. Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Giddens, Anthony. 1985. The nation-state and violence. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Gruenewald, David A. 2003. "The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place." Educational researcher 32, no. 4: 3-12.

Gruenewald, David A., and Gregory A. Smith, eds. 2014. Place-based education in the global age: Local diversity. Routledge.

Jacob, Michelle M., Stephany RunningHawk Johnson, and Deanna Chappell. 2021. "Do You Know Where You Are? Bringing Indigenous Teaching Methods into the Classroom." Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 7, no. 2: 278-283.

Kahn, Richard. V. 2010. Critical pedagogy, ecoliteracy, & planetary crisis: The ecopedagogy movement. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Knapp, Michael, Flach, Anja, Ayboga, Ercan, Graeber, David, Abdullah, Asya, and Biehl, Janet. 2016. Revolution in Rojava : Democratic Autonomy and Women's Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan. London: Pluto Press.

Lupinacci, John. 2017. Addressing 21st Century Challenges in Education: An Ecocritical Conceptual Framework toward an Ecotistical Leadership in Education. Impacting Education: Journal on Transforming Professional Practice. Vol. 2: 20-27.

Lupinacci, John, Alison Happel-Parkins, and Rita Turner. 2019. "Ecocritical pedagogies for teacher education." Encyclopedia of Teacher Education, 1-7.

Martusewicz, Rebecca A., Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci. 2021. Ecojustice education: Toward diverse, democratic, and sustainable communities. Routledge.

McCoy, Kate, Eve Tuck, and Marcia McKenzie, eds. 2017. Land education: Rethinking pedagogies of place from Indigenous, postcolonial, and decolonizing perspectives. Routledge.

Öcalan, Abdullah. 2011. Democratic confederalism. Shreveport, LA: Transmedia Publishing Ltd.

Öcalan, Abdullah. 2020. The sociology of freedom: Manifesto of the democratic civilization. PM Press.

Reynolds, Richard. 2014. On guerrilla gardening: A handbook for gardening without boundaries. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Shiva, Vandana. 2015. Earth democracy: Justice, sustainability, and peace. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Smith, Anthony D., and Anthony Smith. 2013. Nationalism and modernism. Routledge.

Strangers In a Tangled Wilderness. 2015. A Small Key Can Open a Large Door: The Rojava Revolution. New York, NY: Combustion Books.

Tuck, Eve, Marcia McKenzie, and Kate McCoy. 2014. "Land education: Indigenous, post-colonial, and decolonizing perspectives on place and environmental education research." Environmental education research. 20 no. 1: 1-23.

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Pedagogies of Diverse Bioregions: An Ecotistical Move from Ego to Eco

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This is part of our special feature, Rethinking the Human in a Multispecies World. Learning to unlearn dominant worldviews: challenging human supremacy and anthropocentrism Over the past two years, the modern world has seen unprecedented struggle at the hands of a brutal tyranny of capitalism and a global pandemic―both coupled closely with the undeniable impacts of climate change.