Teresa Lloro-Bidart

A feminist posthumanist political ecology of education for theorizing human-animal relations/relationships

This paper contributes to a nascent conversation in environmental education (EE) research by using ethnographic data and extant theory to develop a feminist posthumanist political ecology of education for theorizing human–animal relations/relationships. Specifically, I (1) engage feminist methodologies and theories; (2) give epistemological and theoretical attention to nonhuman animals; and (3) address the field of EE’s minimal engagement with the interdisciplinary research agenda of political ecology. The paper begins with a literature review examining how feminist and/or posthumanist scholars have theorized human–animal (or human–nature) relations/relationships. Next, I outline the conceptual frameworks guiding the analyses of ethnographic data I collected at Long Beach, California’s Aquarium of the Pacific and follow with a brief overview of the study. I conclude by outlining the major tenets of this article’s conceptual framework, which contributes to a growing conversation in EE regarding human–animal relations/relationships and lays the groundwork for other political ecologies of education.

Neoliberal and disciplinary environmentality and ‘sustainable seafood’ consumption: storying environmentally responsible action

This article invokes a neoliberal and disciplinary governmentality lens in a political ecology of education framework to analyze educational programming at Long Beach, California’s Aquarium of the Pacific. I begin by briefly describing governmentality as Foucault and neo-Foucauldian scholars have theorized the concept, followed by a discussion of the emergence of green governmentality and environmentality in political ecology. Next, I invoke a political ecology of education framework informed by neoliberal and disciplinary environmentality to analyze institutional and teaching practice at the Aquarium. In this analysis, I demonstrate how the institution’s funding structure, placement within the entertainment markets of the southern California area, and commitment to ocean conservation education all influence how the Aquarium conceptualizes itself and its work. I focus on the case of the Blue Cavern Show and the Seafood for the Future program, which work in tandem to define a problem (declining fish stocks; possible seafood shortages) and then structure a neoliberal solution through the market (sustainable seafood consumption). I conclude by discussing the implications of this research for environmental education, which include unpacking how neoliberalism impacts teaching practice, especially as it relates to notions of framing environmentally responsible action.

Toward a feminist ethic of self-care for environmental educators

ABSTRACT Feminist theory and philosophy have examined how dominant ideologies oppress women, nonhuman animals, and the environment. Feminist scholars also have begun to discuss how neoliberalism problematically re-inscribes women as the primary providers of care, regardless of the impact of this care work on their own well-being. This article synthesizes feminist writings about temporality, relationality, and self-care alongside Foucaults ideas about “care for self” and feminist environmental education scholarship that considers care in order to develop a feminist ethic of self-care for environmental educators that challenges neoliberal ideologies.

When ‘Angelino’ squirrels don’t eat nuts: a feminist posthumanist politics of consumption across southern California

Abstract Eastern fox squirrels (Sciurus niger), reddish-brown tree squirrels native to the eastern and southeastern United States, were introduced to and now thrive in suburban/urban California. As a result, many residents in the greater Los Angeles region are grappling with living amongst tree squirrels, particularly because the state’s native western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus) is less tolerant of human beings and, as a result, has historically been absent from most sections of the greater Los Angeles area. ‘Easties,’ as they are colloquially referred to in the popular press, are willing to feed on trash and have an ‘appetite for everything.’ Given that the shift in tree squirrel demographics is a relatively recent phenomenon, this case presents a unique opportunity to question and re-theorize the ontological given of ‘otherness’ that manifests, in part, through a politics whereby animal food choices ‘[come] to stand in for both compliance and resistance to the dominant forces in [human] culture’. I, therefore, juxtapose feminist posthumanist theories and feminist food studies scholarship to demonstrate how eastern fox squirrels are subjected to gendered, racialized, and speciesist thinking in the popular news media as a result of their feeding/eating practices, their unique and unfixed spatial arrangements in the greater Los Angeles region, and the western, modernist human frame through which humans interpret these actions. I conclude by drawing out the implications of this research for the fields of animal geography and feminist geography.

A Feminist Posthumanist Ecopedagogy in/for/with AnimalScapes.

ABSTRACT Extending and challenging Arun Appadurais anthropocentric “scapes,” this article converses with feminist posthumanism, ecofeminism, and the political ecology of education to develop a more-than-human ecopedagogy in/for/with animalScapes. After outlining the articles theoretical framework, I briefly discuss the research cases informing ecopedagogies in/for/with animalScapes, each of which attends to embodiment, affect, and emotion, as well as the salience of political ecological/economic contexts. To conclude, I discuss the empirical and conceptual/theoretical limitations of this ecopedagogy, tentatively exploring how some of these limitations might be partially surpassed in practice, as well as in environmental education research tasking itself with decentering the human.

Introduction: Synthesizing a political ecology of education

Educational scholars face a challenge. Critical pedagogues acknowledge that “education, every aspect of it one can imagine, is political” (Apple & Aasen, 2003, p. 1). Yet, this understanding of education as fundamentally political is in many respects disconnected from an analysis of how the politics and economics of education affect our relation to and utilization of the environment. Various critical schools of thought in environmental education have made important inroads into the political nature of our educational relationship to the environment (e.g., DiChiro, 1987, 2006; Fien, 1993, 2000; Hursh, Henderson, & Greenwood, 2015; Kahn, 2010; Payne, 1995, 1999, 2015, Robottom, 1987; Robottom & Hart, 1995; Russell & Fawcett, 2013; Stevenson & Evans, 2011). This special issue seeks to critically engage with and advance this scholarship by synthesizing insights from political ecology with recent debates in environmental education. Political ecology, as an interdisciplinary research agenda, has historically focused on the relation between the politics of knowledge, political economy, and environmental change (Biersack, 2006; Goldman, Nadasdy, & Turner, 2011; Robbins, 2004). In the introduction to this special issue, we help develop a nascent political ecology of education framework by synthesizing diverse areas of educational and political ecological scholarship. The resulting political ecology of education perspective sheds light upon how power relations, political economic processes, and their structural arrangements mediate education—from tacit to formal learning, influencing the management of natural resources, conceptions of nature-society inter-relationships, and interactions with the natural environment. Political ecology explores the relationships between environmental change and political, economic, and social processes (Greenberg & Park, 1994). It can be contrasted with classic ecology, which apolitically explores webs of relationships between organisms and their surroundings (Biersack & Greenberg, 2006). Political ecologists are keenly interested in the production, circulation, and application of environmental knowledge (Forsyth, 2004; Goldman et al., 2011). As Neumann (2005, p. 1) indicates in the opening to his text Making Political Ecology, “the environment and how we acquire, disseminate, and legitimate knowledge about it are highly politicized, reflective of relations of power, and contested.” Despite this clear articulation of the relations between the politics of knowledge and those of the environment, political ecology has itself traditionally lacked a framework for understanding how the reciprocal relations between political economic forces and pedagogical processes mediate resource access, control, and land use and landscape change. Our objective in this introduction is to help develop a political ecology of education framework to illuminate these interrelations, contributing to a better understanding of the ways education, particularly educational practices focused on the environment, are inherently political and fundamentally impact nature-society relations. We begin by briefly reviewing the formative debates in anthropology, geography, and agrarian studies that led to the development of political ecology as an interdisciplinary area of inquiry. Next, we sketch out some of the major thematic debates within political ecology, highlighting areas of potential synergy with environmental education. We then develop a definition for the political ecology of education by synthesizing traditional definitions of political ecology, and simultaneously integrating those definitions

Learning Science in Aquariums and on Whalewatching Boats: The Hidden Curriculum of the Deployment of Other Animals

While once primarily dedicated to the entertainment of the public in Western societies, zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens, and similar facilities now mostly self-identify as informal science or conservation education organizations. Parks and protected areas, within which wildlife-focused tourism often occurs, also identify education as a key part of their mission. Substantial educational research literature examines teaching and learning in such spaces, but largely fails to consider the real lived experiences of animals enrolled in these processes or to interrogate the hidden curriculum that can contradict intended messaging. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at two sites, a public aquarium in southern California and a national marine park in Quebec that is a popular site for whalewatching, we demonstrate how animals are politically deployed in educational processes when interpreters at “edutainment” sites aim to teach science to the general public in the name of conservation.

A Feminist Posthumanist Multispecies Ethnography for Educational Studies.

The animal or more-than-human turn in the humanities and social sciences has challenged nature/culture binaries in the fields of environmental education and early childhood studies, yet the field of educational studies has yet to confront its humanist roots. In this article, I sketch a nascent conceptual framework that outlines how multispecies ethnography, as a methodology informed by critical strands of feminist posthumanism, can begin to address and redress both social and species injustices in educational studies. To do this, I first provide a brief overview of educational humanism to situate the article within the animal and more-than-human turns in education. I then define multispecies ethnography and briefly review educational multispecies ethnographic research. Next, I sketch the conceptual framework, which is guided by feminist posthumanist theories of performativity and intersectionality, providing ethnographic examples from my own research projects and the research literature. I conclude by drawing out the implications for educational studies, with a consideration of how animal performativity and intersectionality open up new lines of inquiry to explore animal concerns, as well as social ones.

An ecofeminist account of cyberbullying: Implications for environmental and social justice scholar-educator-activists

ABSTRACT According to the American Association of University Professors and the Chronicle of Higher Education, instances of targeted faculty harassment are rising. I therefore begin this article by discussing how I ended up on the receiving end of a sweeping harassment campaign because of my critical scholarship on environmental and social issues. I then employ an intersectional ecofeminist lens to analyze articles written about me as well as the ensuing reader comments. Next, I explore how academic institutions, professional associations, academic publishers, and personal relationships can support, at the local and the “cyber” level, academics who are most vulnerable to these kinds of retaliation in the deeply vitriolic sociopolitical contexts of cyberspace. I conclude by teasing out the implications of this incident for critical researchers in environmental education and beyond.

Intersectional feminism for the environmental studies and sciences: looking inward and outward

Although hardly new, our current political climate has brought the specter of American injustice more explicitly into the public eye. The Black Lives Matter Movement, the Flint water crisis, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the various marches on Washington, among others, demonstrate the clear links between humans, nonhuman nature, and justice/equality. Now, then, is a critical moment for the field of environmental studies and sciences to evaluate how we “look outward” at the topics we study and “look inward” at how we conduct our ourselves and our work. Environmental studies and sciences (ESS) purportedly brings a transdisciplinary/multidisciplinary approach to research by linking the arts, humanities, social, and physical sciences in pursuit of more just socioecological outcomes. However, a cursory reflection on the field suggests continued disciplinary divisions that sort the nonhuman and human world into more-or-less distinct and sometimes problematically immutable categories. Further, manuscript discussion sections typically mix in issues of justice and equality ad hoc, rather than explicitly building them into research design and practice. In this article, we argue that feminist theory, and in particular theories of intersectionality, can critique and strengthen the ESS agenda by reforming current practice. Specifically, we draw on intersectionality to reframe how we organize the work we do (looking inward) and how we ask research questions (looking outward). We then use this theoretical framework to suggest how intersectional diversity can inform our future research programs, making the field more poised to meet the complex challenges of global environmental change.