Arboreal methodologies: Getting lost to explore the potential of the non-innocence of ‘nature’
Article
Osgood, J., Axelsson, S., Cavaliero, T., Hanniffy, M. and McDonnell, S. 2023. Arboreal methodologies: Getting lost to explore the potential of the non-innocence of ‘nature’. Occasional Paper Series. 2023 (50), pp. 113-129. https://doi.org/10.58295/2375-3668.1499
Type | Article |
---|---|
Title | Arboreal methodologies: Getting lost to explore the potential of the non-innocence of ‘nature’ |
Authors | Osgood, J., Axelsson, S., Cavaliero, T., Hanniffy, M. and McDonnell, S. |
Abstract | This paper recounts a workshop that took place in a polytunnel in a forest school in Sligo, North-West Ireland on a cold day in early-December. The event sought to materialise ‘arboreal methodologies’ (Osgood, 2019; Osgood & Odegard, 2022; Osgood & Axelsson, 2023) which are characterised by the enactment of feminist posthumanist praxis to engage in world-making (Haraway, 2008) intended to unsettle recognisable tropes of biophilia that have come to frame both child and nature in narrow ways. The arboreal methodologies that adult participants were invited to mobilise were situated, material, affective, and involved metaphorical and material practices of ‘getting lost’ through ‘childing’. The workshop invited a sense of wonder at the ways arboreal methodologies might offer possibilities to confront human exceptionalism and wrestle with our complex, often contradictory relationships to ‘nature’ that might then go on to inform practice with young children. The approach taken involves methodologies without method (Koro-Ljunberg, 2016) to bring speculative, embodied encounters in the forest, together with unlikely tales of how forests work on and through us. We pursue a critical, tentacular engagement with the forest and take seriously its potential to agitate familiarity and strangeness, wonder and fear, nature and culture. In this paper we re-encounter embodied becomings-with the forest to think and sense other ways to take life in the Plantationocene (Tsing, 2015) seriously. |
Sustainable Development Goals | 11 Sustainable cities and communities |
Middlesex University Theme | Sustainability |
Publisher | Bank Street College of Education |
Journal | Occasional Paper Series |
ISSN | 2375-3668 |
Publication dates | |
Online | 29 Nov 2023 |
Jan 2023 | |
Publication process dates | |
Deposited | 08 Jun 2023 |
Accepted | 01 Jun 2023 |
Output status | Published |
Publisher's version | File Access Level Open |
Accepted author manuscript | File Access Level Restricted |
Copyright Statement | Copyright © 2023 Bank Street College of Education. All rights reserved |
Additional information | Recommended Citation |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.58295/2375-3668.1499 |
Language | English |
https://repository.mdx.ac.uk/item/8q672
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