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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• aquariums
• animals
• feminism
• multispecies ethnography
• political ecology of education
• posthumanism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by the University of California, Riverside Dissertation Year Fellowship and the Robert C. Calfee and Nel Little Endowed Doctoral Graduate Student Fellowship.

Notes

1. In using the term ‘nonhuman’ here, I acknowledge that it is fraught, but find it useful shorthand. Longer terms such as ‘other-than-human’ and ‘more-than-human’ still center the human and ‘nature’ is too vague in this context. My intent here is not to dialectically define other living creatures in opposition to the human, but simply to use a term more specific than ‘nature’ and not as cumbersome as other terms.

2. In this paper I focus primarily on a ‘multispecies community of knowers’ as inclusive of humans and other animals. However, this community also includes insects, plants, fungi, and other living entities.

3. Deckha (2012) invokes the term ‘posthumanist feminist theory.’ I use ‘feminist posthumanist’ to indicate that the framework I develop brings a feminist theory lens to bear on posthumanist thinking.

4. This framework, as I further outline, is deeply indebted to the work of Josephine Donovan, Kay Milton, Neera Singh, and Mick Smith.

5. Haraway is reticent to describe herself as posthuman. See Gane (2006).

6. Also see Pacini-Ketchabaw and Nxumalo (2015) and Pacini-Ketchabaw and Taylor (2015) for similar approaches in education that specifically work to challenge colonial legacies that perpetuate hierarchical human–nature divides.

7. See Hill (2008) for a description of the Aquarium’s early history. Lorscheider (2012) details the history of the region’s political economy, including the closing of naval facilities and the drug epidemic sweeping Long Beach in the 1980s.

8. Based on the Aquarium website description, program animals are those which ‘staff take around the Aquarium to interact with guests.’

9. In order to maintain Jennie’s anonymity, I do not fully describe all of her Husbandry positions.

10. Education volunteer staff members generally rotate from exhibit to exhibit every 30 min, unless they make special requests to rotate less often.

11. All nonhuman animals in this article, like humans, have been assigned pseudonyms to ensure anonymity. To further protect participant identities, these pseudonyms do not necessarily reflect the gender of the persons or animals whom they represent.

12. The AZA, a national accreditation and membership body for zoos and aquariums in the United States, also sets forth standards for management and care of animals in zoos and aquariums. See: https://www.aza.org/uploadedFiles/Accreditation/AZA-Accreditation-Standards.pdf. The Animal Welfare Act, which ‘is the only Federal law in the United States that regulates the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and by dealers …’ governs the lives of bird bodies at the Aquarium. The Act (as of 2015) now includes birds used for laboratory research, though it still does not cover those birds destined to serve as food for humans, such as chickens in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) or factory farms. See: http://awic.nal.usda.gov/zoo-circus-and-marine-animals and https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wps/portal/aphis/ourfocus/animalwelfare?urile=wcm%3Apath%3A%2Faphis_content_library%2Fsa_our_focus%2Fsa_animal_welfare%2Fsa_awa%2Fct_awa_program_information.

13. In formal school spaces, the institutional curriculum includes documents like frameworks and standards. While the Aquarium has no such documents, its mission and vision statements, staff handbooks, and funding structure all influence practice. The enacted curriculum, or ‘what teachers and students actually experience,’ (Doyle 1992, 493) at the Aquarium includes what staff, visitors, and the animals actually experience.