A Feminist Posthumanist Multispecies Ethnography for Educational Studies

Abstract

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.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank participants at the American Anthropological Association Annual meeting's (2015) “Methodology Roundtable: The Implications of New Ontologies for Undoing Injustice and Understanding Interdependencies in Anthropology” organized by Dr. Stephanie Daza. I also thank Dr. Paul Hart for the opportunity to discuss animals in educational research at the North American Association for Environmental Education (2016) keynote panel “Crossing Boundaries—The Makings of High Quality EE Research.” Participants at both conferences provided invaluable insight. And finally, I thank the article's anonymous reviewers, as well as my friend and mentor, Dr. Connie Russell, for their generous feedback.

Notes

1. Just after the turn of the new millennium, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Crutzen, began to popularize a claim made by biologist Stoermer in the 1980s: The human impact at multiple planetary levels is now so significant that humans, anthropos, have ushered in a new geological epoch that should be called “The Anthropocene” (Crutzen, 2006; Crutzen & Steffen, 2003). Besides significant changes to geologic strata and the composition of atmospheric chemicals, the Anthropocene has also ushered in the Sixth Mass Extinction event. For a more significant discussion of the Anthropocene in the context of education, see Lloro-Bidart (2015a). For debates about the meaning of the Anthropocene, see Haraway (2016).

2. I focus specifically on animals, which I simply refer to as animals or nonhuman animals and not nature, nonhuman, more-than-human, and other umbrella terms that lump animals together with nonsentient beings or even the nonliving environment. Following Russell (2005) the distinction is critical because animals are politically deployed in an array of educational processes, often with little thought given to their cognitive capacities, sentience, and [unfortunate] capacities to suffer. I also acknowledge that the term nonhuman animal can be essentialist, as it seems to define animals dialectically in opposition to humans; however, the other terms currently available are also not free of these complications so I retain animal or nonhuman animal for brevity. For a recent review of animal-focused education research, see Spannring (2017).

3. I do not mean to downplay the contested nature of all methodological practices with respect to questions about interpretation, legitimization, and representation when doing research with humans. See, for example, Shava (2013) and St. Pierre (2013). I simply emphasize that these issues are uniquely complex when working to capture the subjecthood of other animals because of species differences in communicative capacities (Donovan, 2006; Pedersen, 2012; Pedersen, & Pini, 2016; Russell 2005).

4. Multispecies ethnographers also interact with a vast array of other living beings in their research (e.g., Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010).

5. Watson (2016) used the term animal anthropology as he focuses on multispecies ethnographic accounts of animals versus those of bacteria, fungi, or plants. Kopnina (2017) similarly critiques multispecies ethnography for ignoring animal justice, rights, and welfare.

6. French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1993), whose work preceded that of Rene Descartes, actually recognized animals as conscious, sentient beings in his “Apology for Raymond Sebond” (1910).

7. I focus primarily on engagement with ethological knowledge because of my own background in the natural sciences and because I have employed this technique in my own research. Other educational scholars concerned with animal worlds, particularly questions about their identity and experiences, have explored engagement with diverse disciplines and frameworks. See Spannring (2017) for a recent review.

8. As a cis-gendered, able-bodied, White feminist committed to multiple, intersecting injustices, my use of intersectionality is not meant to downplay the importance of race in intersectional analyses. Indeed, in other work Lloro-Bidart (2017b, 2018), I rely on feminists who theorize the intersections of race and species, such as Deckha (2012); Kim (2015), and Subramaniam (2014), to unpack the complex ways in which race and species—and humanity and animality—are problematically invoked to oppress both people and animals.