Enchantment and digital technologies: Cultivating children’s enchantment with the more-than-human through video-walks in local places

Abstract

This paper considers how digital technologies contribute to awakening primary-school children’s enchantment with local places. We draw upon Bennett and Thoreau to theorize enchantment and adopt “enchantment as method” from Stainova to guide the research process. We analyze the contrasting digital artifacts produced by three children through video-walks in their backyards. In one case, Kay, the digital artifact reveals how her enchantment was produced through the video-walk. Accessing data beyond the video-walk, we show that the other cases, Connor and Leila, had experienced enchantment and this experience evoked ethical concern and moral action. The implications of our analysis of these cases for a pedagogy of enchantment are critically considered.

Keywords:

• enchantment
• digital technologies
• local places
• enchantment as method

Data availability statement

The data used in this paper are stored on the Research Data Management site https://rdm.uq.edu.au/ under the project title, Digital Mediation of Children’s Interaction with the More-Than-Human World.

Notes

1 Entangled is used here in the sense articulated by Bennett (2010) to indicate the affect that “circulates between human bodies and the animal, vegetable, and mineral forces they encounter. Entangled references what Bennett calls “thing-power” and the distributed agency that produces experiences in the world.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council, Grant DP190102067: Renshaw, P., Tooth, R., & Kumpulainen, K. (2019). Digital mediation of children’s interaction with the more-than-human-world.