Negotiating Naturechildhoods: An ethnography of relations with nature in kindergartens of the Anthropocene
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Profile
- Project leadership
- Anja Sieber Egger (PHZH), Gisela Unterweger (PHZH)
- Organisational unit
- F-BW-KSG (Kindheiten in Schule und Gesellschaft)
- Project phase
- Completed (1.5.2022 – 30.4.2026)
- Project type
- Research & development project
- Funding
- Swiss National Science Foundation
Description
In addition to questions of childhood theory on how children develop agency when they interact with their animate and inanimate environment, the project team are interested in identifying how precisely children themselves shape and understand these relationships. In terms of cultural analytics, close observation will be given to the role of materiality and non-human living beings in shaping environment relationships in common worlds (worlds produced by humans and other living beings as well as things). By not portraying the child as acting alone, the project questions the recent criticism of the sharp nature-culture divide. A framing element of the project is the examination of how – and which – societal images and ideas about nature and childhood are effective in the kindergarten classroom.
Through its ethnographic approach, description and analysis of the forms child-environment relationships take in the institutional context of the kindergarten, the project makes an important contribution to scientific debate on the Anthropocene age. Of particular relevance from a societal perspective is the ethical dimension of (sustainable) action in the context of environmental issues and the climate crisis.