Being nature: interspecies articulation as a species-specific practice of relating to environment |
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| Authors: | Pauliina Rautio |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland.;2. Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, Helsiniki, Finland. |
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| Abstract: | Rather than categorically teaching us ways to be less anthropocentric, environmental education could be about educating us of the ways in which we already are nature as human animals. In this paper, one species-specific practice of human relating to environment – interspecies articulation – is argued as one way of being nature. Interspecies articulation is about finding and composing connections to our surrounding nonhuman world with a focus on as if the joints comprising meaningful connections between us and the not us. The interest is in how humans and nonhuman animals continually create the conditions for each other's existence. The data of the Rautio's recent study on perceived beauty in everyday life environments speak for a need to decentralize the human agent as the sole author of his/her self-environment relation. A crucial aspect of the ‘making' of this relation through articulation was found to be a fundamental openness to the serendipitous agency of one's material surroundings – human as well as nonhuman and also inanimate. |
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| Keywords: | language articulation self-environment relation anthropocentrism interspecies articulation |
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