Allying With The Plants: A Pedagogical Path Towards The Planthroposcene

Irida Tsevreni

doi:10.21601/ijese/10985

Full Text (PDF)

Irida Tsevreni ¹ ^*

More Detail

¹ Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Thessaly, GREECE^* Corresponding Author

Abstract

The notion of the Planthroposcene is based on an attempt to disconnect from the sustainability rhetoric of the Anthropocene and to choose to overcome the ecological crisis through an ecocentric path. In the current research, students of a Pedagogical Department at a University in Greece were encouraged to investigate their relationship with plants, to ally with them and to reflect on their experience, experimenting in an alternative way of empowering their ecological consciousness, away from the traditional environmental education practice based on sustainability. They designed and proposed activities, exploring and strengthening their connection to plants. Their activities were implemented through mindfulness techniques (meditation, yoga), art-based practices (drawing, dramatization, poem writing, dance) and taking action. The data analysis revealed that the students through their activities practiced participatory observation, communication, sensorial and embodied experience with plants. The manifestation of empathy for the otherness of plant-being also took place.

Keywords

Planthroposcene
human-plant connection
ecocentrism
ecological consciousness
environmental education

License

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

INTERDISCIP J ENV SCI ED, Volume 17, Issue 4, 2021, Article No: e2249

https://doi.org/10.21601/ijese/10985

Publication date: 17 Jun 2021

Article Views: 2079

Article Downloads: 1576

Open Access References How to cite this article

References

Abram, D. (1997). The spell of the sensuous: perception and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage Books.
Aloi, G. (ed.) (2018). Why look at plants? The botanical emergence in contemporary art. Boston: Brill.
Bonnett, M. (2007). Environmental education and the issue of nature. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 39(6), 707-721. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220270701447149
Boyatzis, R. E. (1998). Transforming qualitative information: thematic analysis and code development. London: Sage.
Braun, V., & V. Clarke (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Carson, R. (1956). Help your child to wonder. Companion, July, 24-27/46-48.
Common Worlds Research Collective, (2020). Learning to become with the world: Education for future survival. Paper commissioned for the UNESCO Futures of Education report (forthcoming, 2021).
Crutzen, P. (2002). Geology of mankind. Nature, 415, 23. https://doi.org/10.1038/415023a
Hall, M. (2011). Plants as persons. A philosophical botany. Albany: SUNY Press.
Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Latour, B. (2004). Politics of nature: how to bring the sciences into democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2009). A collective of humans and non humans: Following Daedalus’s labyrinth. In D. M. Kaplan (Ed.), Reading in the philosophy of technology (pp. 156–172). Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield.
Latour, B. (2013). An inquiry into modes of existence. An anthropology of the moderns. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Marder, M. (2013). Plant-thinking: a philosophy of vegetal life. New York: Columbia University Press.
Marder, M. (2014). The philosopher's plant: an intellectual herbarium. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mitman, G. (2019). Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing. https://edgeeffects.net/haraway-tsing-plantationocene/
Moore, J. (Ed.) (2016). Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism. Oakland, CA: PM Press.
Morton, T. (2017). Humankind: solidarity with nonhuman people. London, Brooklyn, NY: Verso.
Myers, N. (2015). Conversations on plant sensing: Notes from the field. NatureCulture, 3, 35–66. https://doi.org/10.18910/75519
Myers, N. (2017). From the Anthropocene to the Planthroposcene: designing gardens for plant/people involution. History and Anthropology, 28(3), 297-301. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2017.1289934
Myers, N. (2018). How to grow livable worlds: Ten not-so-easy steps. In K. O. Smith (ed.), The World to Come (pp. 53-63). Gainsville, Florida: Harn Museum of Art.
Naess, A., Drengson, A. R., & Devall, B. (2008). Ecology of wisdom: Writings by Arne Naess. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint.
Naess, A. (1973). The shallow and the deep, long range ecology movement. A summary, Inquiry, 16(1-4), 95-100. https://doi.org/10.1080/00201747308601682
Naess, A. (1988). Selfrealization: An ecological approach to being in the world. In J. Seed, J. Macy, P. Fleming & A. Naess, Thinking like a Mountain. Towards a Council of All Beings (pp. 19-30). Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers.
Nazir, J. & Pedretti, E. (2016). Educators’ perceptions of bringing students to environmental consciousness through engaging outdoor experiences. Environmental Education Research, 22(2), 288-304. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2014.996208
Orr, D. W. (1994). Earth in mind. On education, environment, and the human prospect. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Payne, P. (1997). Embodiment and environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 3(2), 133–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350462970030203
Plumwood, V. (2002). Environmental culture: The ecological crisis of reason. London: Routledge.
Pulkki, J., Dahlin, B., & Varri, V.-M. (2017). Environmental education as a lived-body practice? A contemplative pedagogy perspective. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 51(1), 214-229. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12209
Sitka-Sage, M. D., Kopnina, H., Blenkinsop, S., & Piersol, L. (2018). Rewilding education in troubled times; or, getting back to the wrong post-nature. Visions for Sustainability, 8, 20-37. https://doi.org/10.13135/2384-8677/2334
Somerville, M. (2019). Posthuman theory and practice in early years learning. In A. Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, K. Malone, & E. Barratt Hacking (Eds.), Research Handbook on Childhoodnature: Assemblages of Childhood and Nature Research (pp. 1-25). International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham.
Taylor, A., & Giugni, M. (2012). Common worlds: Reconceptualising inclusion in early childhood communities. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 13(2), 108-120. https://doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2012.13.2.108
Tsing, A. (2012). Contaminated diversity in ‘slow disturbance’: Potential collaborators for a liveable earth. In G. Martin, D. Mincyte, & U. Münster (Eds.), Why do we value diversity? Biocultural Diversity in a Global Context, RCC Perspectives 9, 95–97.
Tsevreni, I. (2021). Nature journaling as a holistic pedagogical experience with the more-than-human world. The Journal of Environmental Education, 52(1), 14-24. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2020.1724854
Tsing, A, (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Wilson. R. A. (1993). Fostering a sense of wonder during the early childhood years. Greyden Press.
Witteman, C. M. (2020). Body as prism: somatic pedagogy in the development of embodied ecological awareness. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 23(3), 74-91.
Wohlleben, P. & Flanery, T. (2016). The hidden life of trees: what they feel, how they communicate—discoveries from a secret world. Vancouver: Greystone Books.
Wolfe, C. (2010). What is posthumanism? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

How to cite this article

APA

Tsevreni, I. (2021). Allying With The Plants: A Pedagogical Path Towards The Planthroposcene. Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 17(4), e2249. https://doi.org/10.21601/ijese/10985

Vancouver

Tsevreni I. Allying With The Plants: A Pedagogical Path Towards The Planthroposcene. INTERDISCIP J ENV SCI ED. 2021;17(4):e2249. https://doi.org/10.21601/ijese/10985

AMA

Tsevreni I. Allying With The Plants: A Pedagogical Path Towards The Planthroposcene. INTERDISCIP J ENV SCI ED. 2021;17(4), e2249. https://doi.org/10.21601/ijese/10985

Chicago

Tsevreni, Irida. "Allying With The Plants: A Pedagogical Path Towards The Planthroposcene". Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education 2021 17 no. 4 (2021): e2249. https://doi.org/10.21601/ijese/10985

Harvard

Tsevreni, I. (2021). Allying With The Plants: A Pedagogical Path Towards The Planthroposcene. Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 17(4), e2249. https://doi.org/10.21601/ijese/10985

MLA

Tsevreni, Irida "Allying With The Plants: A Pedagogical Path Towards The Planthroposcene". Interdisciplinary Journal of Environmental and Science Education, vol. 17, no. 4, 2021, e2249. https://doi.org/10.21601/ijese/10985