Painting trees in the wind: socio-material ambiguity and sustainability politics in early childhood education with refugee children in Denmark

Abstract

In this article, we explore new materialist ‘common world’ approaches to early childhood environmental and sustainability education and the ambition of these approaches to challenge social–material and nature–culture dichotomies often taken for granted in Western education systems. Firstly, we point out the socio-cultural inequalities inherent in taken-for-granted approaches to children and nature in Denmark, and argue that attention to children’s relationships with the more-than-human should not overshadow the consideration of social justice agendas; rather, these should be seen as fundamentally linked. Secondly, while we support a greater attention towards children’s experiences of living with other beings in entangled, enmeshed common worlds, we nevertheless argue against completely erasing or overlooking the extent to which these experiences are also intertwined with experiences of being separated from the world. Acknowledging the fundamental ambiguity of simultaneous immersion in, and detachment from, the world, we propose, is of key importance in terms of becoming able to take action for social and ecological sustainability.

Keywords:

• Early childhood
• new materialism
• ambiguity
• refugee children
• aesthetic sustainability education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The research was carried out in collaboration with Susanne Bregnbaek, Annelise Arent and Hanne Ellegaard under the auspices of University College Copenhagen in Denmark.

2 In this situation, the researcher shifted between the positions of participating in the art activities with the children, observing, and conducting a dialogue with the adults.

3 New materialist approaches have been developed in reaction to the strong dominance of what Coole and Frost term ‘the cultural turn’ in social theorizing of the last decades of the twentieth century. They argue, in their widely cited introduction to the book ‘New Materialisms’, that the analytical privileging of language and discourse has to a large degree neglected material processes (Coole and Frost 2010, 3). While many new materialist thinkers draw on earlier materialist philosophies, Coole and Frost insist that there is something new in the ways in which these older materialist traditions are pushed ‘in novel, sometimes experimental, directions towards fresh applications’ (Coole and Frost 2010, 5). The ‘horrors of the Anthropocene’ (Haraway 2016, 3) have played an important part in the push for rethinking materialism.

4 A revised version of the learning curriculum passed in 2018 renames the topic ‘nature, outdoor life and science’. Sustainability has only recently become a term used more widely in the context of early childhood education, and the new curriculum, for the first time, includes references to sustainability (Børne- og Socialministeriet 2018b).

5 ‘Social educator’ is the official Ministry of Education translation of the Danish term paedagog; a member of staff trained in pedagogical theory and practice in relation to younger children.

6 By highlighting this approach, we do not mean to suggest that teaching children words and concepts for natural phenomena is wrong; rather, we propose, this is not the only way to approach education for sustainability, and Jenny’s approach with its focus on sensuous and aesthetic experience constitutes one alternative.

7 It should be noted that an approach that downplays the differences in children’s backgrounds may also have disadvantages, if it assumes that all children have equal possibilities for participating in the activities of Danish day care institutions which in many cases reflect white Danish middle class norms and priorities (see, e.g. Bundgaard and Gulløv 2008).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nanna Jordt Jørgensen

Nanna Jordt Jørgensen is a social anthropologist, she holds a PhD in Education for Sustainable Development, and is an Assistant Professor at University College Copenhagen. Her research interests revolve around the agency of children, young people and their families in relation to education, sustainability, development and immigration. She has carried out research in Southern and Eastern Africa, and in Denmark.

Asger Martiny-Bruun

Asger Martiny-Bruun holds a master's degree in Social Anthropology and is an Assistant Professor at University College Copenhagen. He has done research on the social and political role of art-based activism in South Asia, and is currently interested in the role of play, gender, ethnicity and social mobility in early childhood institutions in Denmark.