New Nature Movement

In recent times, the ‘children in nature’ movement, the new nature movement, and nature/outdoor education have had a resurgence in public visibility. The resurgence has primarily been orchestrated around a fear that children are lacking opportunities to be connected to ‘nature’. The consequence of advancing technology and urbanisation and changing ‘childhoods’ are often cited as the reason that previous generations had more freedom, more time, and more immersion in natural environments. With children's relationship to ‘nature’ being popularised through the child in nature movement, I believe it is an important time to consider which influential views of ‘child’ and ‘nature’ are informing research, particularly when these views are being underpinned by powerful anthropocentric views such as: ‘(1) human societies used to be closer to nature, (2) our current way of life is unnatural or distant from nature, and (3) proximity to nature is a question of teaching and learning’ (Rautio, Reference Rautio2013a, p. 449). These sentiments support the perception that humans are not nature and it is possible for some species, namely humans, to be more or less nature, connected or disconnected from nature, and superior to or dominant over nature. Rather than continuing to reinforce these views, I am provoked to contemplate the possibilities that exist to challenge these enduring perceptions that position humans as exceptional. What new theoretical approaches, for instance, would be useful to deconstruct human/nature, object/subject binaries and promote more inclusive means of describing the nature-human collective, and to move away from cultural universalisms about the natured child?

Championing the ‘child in nature’ movement, Richard Louv, an American-based journalist, in his book Last Child in the Woods draws on a long history of work by prominent researchers in the field of children in nature (Carson, Reference Carson1956; Chawla, Reference Chawla1994; Cobb, Reference Cobb1977; Kahn & Kellert, Reference Kahn and Kellert2002; Orr, Reference Orr1992, Reference Orr, Stone and Barlow2005; Sobel, Reference Sobel1996). The task of the new nature movement, according to Louv (Reference Louv2005, p. 3) is: ‘. . . a reunion of humans with the rest of nature as it use to be’. By being firmly focused on the past, what the new nature movement fails to do is consider a new imagining of children's encounters with the more than human world that is relevant for a contemporary inclusive and culturally diverse set of 21st-century childhoods. This is ironic, seeing it is called the new nature movement, and yet its focus is on reconstituting the past reincarnation of child in nature. Louv (Reference Louv2005, p. 9) defines nature as the ‘the outdoors, anything that is natural — not human-made in the physical environment . . . when I use the word “nature” in a general way I mean natural wilderness, biodiversity, abundance — related loose parts in a backyard or a rugged mountains ridge. Most of all, nature is reflected in our capacity for wonder’. According to this definition, untainted or pure nature is ultimately the best type of nature for children. There is no direct reference to animals (domestic or wild) in his discussions, which assume animals, like humans, exist in relation to nature but are not nature, just as humans exist in relation to animals, but are not animals.

Dickinson (Reference Dickinson2013) is critical of the nostalgic view of ‘children in nature’ presented by the new nature movement literature, stating: ‘Fall-recovery narratives can be problematic in how they reify the human-nature split, obscure environmental justice, influence irresponsible behavior, and normalize contemporary conditions and relationships’ (p. 7). What she means by fall recovery narratives is a form of reminiscing where the past is always ‘good’ and ‘virtuous’. It is a utopian world where children were safer, had more freedom, explored nature (particularly wild nature) without adult interference. This emphasis on romanticising past generations of childhood normalises the ‘perfect’ childhood and a ‘perfect’ parent who should be reconnecting their child to nature. If not, then they are viewed as deficit. For those who are reporting on and reprimanding these deficit parenting approaches, namely White, middle class Americans, the vast array of experiences of childhood in less developed nations or those in their own disadvantaged communities are essentially invisible. Research illustrates that not all childhood encounters with the ‘natural world’ are as restorative, healthy or spiritually uplifting as the new nature movement seems to suggest (Hordyk et al., Reference Hordyk, Dulde and Shem2014). Louv (Reference Louv2014) not only idealises his own White, male, middle class life in his very public blog entries, but also his own parents’ ‘idyllic parenting’ approach. This naive view not only positions parents in a deficit for denying their children from having this restorative, nature-rich childhood, but it assumes that all parents experienced this idealised nature-rich childhood. Louv, in a recent blog on ‘hummingbird parenting techniques’, postulates this well when he wrote:

Dickinson (Reference Dickinson2013) supports my view here when she writes how the child-nature reconnect as conceptualised through the current child in nature movement is a ‘. . . white, middle class, male, heterosexual cultural past that obscures race, class and gender politics’ (p. 7). By doing this ‘nature education’ so narrowly, these public commentators have created a blind spot to the realities of the majority of the world's children, who live in a diversity of ‘childhoods’. This blinkered view also de-emphasises a long history of environmental degradation and disconnectedness, where being in ‘nature’ may not have been possible or positive for children. For some parents, their desires to keep children safe from the contaminants of the natural world may have meant they purposely limited children's movements (Malone, Reference Malone2001). Hordyk et al. (Reference Hordyk, Dulde and Shem2014), for example, reporting on their study of immigrant and refugee children in Canada, revealed that for children coming from developing nations: ‘Nature was not a utopian ideal waiting to be experienced by children’ and ‘human and animal predators made walks in a forest dangerous past-times’ (2014, p. 6). Dickinson (Reference Dickinson2013) argues that: ‘Fall-recovery, then, is a subjective cultural creation in how it positions the kind of nature and childhood to which humans should return’ (p. 7). Clarke and Mcphie (Reference Clarke and Mcphie2014) also share similar concerns around how the child disconnect in the fields of outdoor and environmental education research is being situated. They wrote there is ‘. . . the impossibility of a “disconnection”’ (p. 11). Quoting from the work of Tim Morton who wrote Ecology without Nature, they stated we cannot mourn for the loss of a connection to nature ‘because we are so deeply attached to it — we are it’.

This article aims to disrupt the Cartesian divide between human and animals, and challenge the simplistic dichotomies of animal/human, nature/culture (Tipper, Reference Tipper2011) that often construct what has come to be ‘viewed as nature’, what is ‘valued about nature’, and what happens when children are ‘placed “in nature”’. The article seeks to consider what happens if we take children outdoors to be with ‘nature’ and through an understanding that accounts for the complexities of culturally diverse ‘childhoods’.

From this discussion on the challenges and tensions in the education movement, I have identified three key propositions that I believe limit the new nature movement and child in nature debate:

1. 1. Children are viewed as outside of nature;

2. 2. Nature is viewed and described as an inanimate object;

3. 3. Childhood is idealised as white middle class America.

Child-Dog in La Paz

‘This is my photograph of my dog,’ says Fernando, aged 11 years, from Munaypata, as he hands me two photographs of the same dog sitting in the sun. ‘My little dog, Regina is the only animal that I have, because she is my best friend and keeps me company when I am alone. We play in the forest together.’ ‘My dog's name is Black,’ says Ricardo, aged 10, from Cotahuma. ‘He is beautiful and every time I bath him he gets dirty again. He comes with me when I play with my friends.’ Nora, aged 9, tells me, ‘This photo is of my neighborhood and that is where my house is, it is big and I live with my dad my mum and my sister. My house has many rooms, my dog lives on the street and takes care of me a lot.’

Nora's photograph is taken from the roof of her house with her dog. While these comments from Fernando, Ricardo and Nora might seem quite mundane and everyday — bathing a dog, sitting on the house roof with your dog — they remind us of the everydayness and sameness of the places the child-dog shares.

The relationship of child-dog in the slums of La Paz creates a unique boundary around what it means to be in this ‘place’, the interconnected nature of humans and nonhuman is revealed, exposing a deep attachment to being ‘nature’. ‘Being with the world’ is how Rautio (Reference Rautio2013b) describes forming a different view of ourselves as human in relation to nonhumans: ‘. . .it is about realizing that the relation is always already there, and as much influenced by behaviour and existence of other co-existing species as it is by our intentional or unintentional actions’ (p. 448).

Through Rosario's images, the child photographer is situated with dogs, revealing the messy complex engagement of what it ‘means to live as a child’ in the place, La Paz. The photographs from Rosario present the story of child-dog thrown together in the communities of La Paz. The dogs are present and central to both photographs. In Dogs in the Streets there are a group of dogs in the middle of the road and the neighbourhood is empty, which can sometimes create a air of danger, but the dogs are playful and the child is taking photographs. It confirms the sentiment of the community space as occupied by child and dogs. In On the Way to School, the tail of a dog sticks out from the rubbish dump — I am drawn to the children in the distant. Is the child photographer with them or just following behind? The dog and child are connected through the lens, and the story the child is devising about the space confirms a focus on rubbish and garbage as central to co-merging child and dog lives. Miriam Giugni, in her study of the ethical dilemmas of child-chook cohabitation in an early childhood setting, does similar work to what I have tried to capture here (Taylor, Blaise, & Guigni, Reference Taylor, Blaise and Guigni2013). Her use of Haraway's concept of ‘becoming worldy with’ (Haraway, Reference Haraway2003, Reference Haraway2008) could provide further possibilities for reading these tricky contributions animals make as material agents cohabiting with children. While this analysis work was retrospective and the intention was not to ask children to consider the relationship through their images, it is the spontaneous accounts of child-dog-place that drew me in to their stories and depictions. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1:

(a) Dogs in the streets; (b) On the way to school. Photographs taken by Rosario, aged 12, Munaypata.

‘This is my house, it is on an incline,’ says Juan, aged 11, from Cotahuma. ‘It is peaceful where I live, there is not much noise, and we can see a street dog called Max, but we don't have any food for him. My dog, which is what I like most, is not in my home. There are lots of street dogs. I don't like the dogs breaking things, everything gets dirty, there are many dogs. My mum and Max are important to me.’ (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2:

(a) Max the street dog; (b) Most important Mum and Max. Photographs taken by Juan, aged 11, Cotahuma.

Diego, aged 12, from Cotahuma, had taken a number of photographs of the stray street dogs (see Figure 3) that often accompanied him as he also walked around the streets. He handed me one where I could see a dog high up on a roof alone, looking down. Diego explained: ‘This photograph is of a dog that I take care of because it doesn't eat. The dogs are badly treated and the people beat them for no reason [pause] a bit like the children [he giggles as he looks at his photograph] sometimes we hide on the rooftops to be off the streets with the dogs.’ The other photograph? ‘That is the dog that sometimes gets beaten, the streets are dangerous.’

Figure 3:

(a) Roof a safe place to hide; (b) Dangers of being on the streets. Photographs by Diego, aged 12, Cotahuma.

The street dogs are urban scavengers, not Western-style, house-dwelling, middle class ‘family pets’; and children spend long periods of unsupervised time on the streets with the dogs, where the dogs live; they coexist as dog-child, as a unique body, as a street collective entity. Many children look after or feed street animals and told me they felt distressed when dogs and children were treated badly by local adults or strangers in the neighbourhood. Throughout my materialist reading of child and dog encounters in La Paz, children seem to explore what Tipper (Reference Tipper2011) calls ‘the tactile and embodied reality of knowing animals’ (p. 153), the fleshy detail of the physicality of the relationships.

Describing his relationship with Coco, Juan stated:

Juan's photographs (see Figure 4) show child and dog on a journey far from neighbourhood streets and into the upper reaches of the nearby valley. The land is steep, and due to landslides and floods, dangerous. Rubbish is often dumped here, too, and one photograph depicts a large dumping area for household rubbish on the way to the top of the valley. In one photograph we can see Coco the dog rummaging around among the rubbish looking for food. The second photograph, taken where Juan and Coco play in the natural environment, reminds us — as with the first photograph — of the less than ideal play spaces where child-dog encounters are located. Through the description of the friendship between Juan and his dog, we sense the intimacy and companionship both child and dog support. The ‘unromantic’ child-dog relations experienced by impoverished urban-dwelling children and dogs in La Paz contradicts a utopian dream of a past idealised childhood.

Figure 4:

(a) Dumped rubbish; (b) Steep valley areas for play. Photographs taken by Juan, aged 13, Cotahuma.

Child-Dog Interspecies Relations

La Paz is a city with around 500,000 dogs that mostly living in the slum communities, and the dogs experience freedom in these communities. This freedom could be understood as an ancient and respectful alliance: dogs are free to do as they please as long as they do not get in the way. Humans may or may not own them and everyone has the right to beat and kill them if they are sick or cause harm. Dogs are neither pets, strays, or wild; they are left to scavenge for themselves, loosely connected to families, coming and going, sometimes wandering into yards, but mainly hanging around on the streets. Once a year, the city holds a national dog day when the street dogs are rounded up and fed as much food at they can eat, and they are bathed and big ribbons placed around their necks.

‘Animals are a compelling part of the human experience of the natural world’ (Myers & Saunders, 2012, p. 153); they are responsive to actions and often provide special connections between humans and nonhuman that is dynamic and interactive. Haraway (Reference Haraway2003), in The Companion Species Manifesto, argues that co-evolution should be defined in broader terms than a visible morphological transformation of species. She argues that to describe adaptive transformations in dog species, for example, as a biological response to human communities, and transformations in human species as a cultural or purely inter-human development, is a mistake. ‘At the least,’ she writes, ‘I suspect that human genomes contain a considerable molecular record of the pathogens of their companion species, including dogs’ (p. 31).

La Paz is a city of around 2 million people; just under half of these are children. Large numbers of these children live in poverty. Children in La Paz only go to school for three hours in the morning and afterwards they make their way back into the neighborhoods that are essentially empty. It is a gendered space: in the afternoon young girls are mostly inside tending to domestic chores and caring for younger siblings, while the boys are free to do as they please. The biggest threat for children is kidnapping, domestic violence, pollution, and the degraded landscape.

In working with and through my data on the children and dogs of La Paz, I was enacting ‘intra-action’ as used within new materialism as a strategy to help to document the messy, heterogeneous relations between child and animal (Barad, Reference Barad2007; Rautio, Reference Rautio2013a, Reference Rautio2013b). Intra-actions acknowledge that object and subject are mutually constituted and are only relationally distinct; they do not exist as separate individual elements. A new materialist ontology therefore provided me with the tools to consider ‘a conception of agency not tied to human action, shifting the focus for social inquiry from an approach predicated upon humans and their bodies, examining instead how relational networks or assemblages of animate and inanimate affect and are affected’ (Fox & Alldred, Reference Fox and Alldred2014, p. 1). Therefore, the child body becomes more than a ‘naturalised child’, as in the reconnected child in Louv's imaginary stories, but they are the product of the assemblages, associations and relationships through which humans are connected to the more than human world in diverse and complex ways. What I am endeavouring to do with this approach is to decentre the human in the animal-child relationship by viewing interspecies encounters as ‘social’ and ‘ecological’. A feature of this ontological perspective is that it ‘shifts from conceptions of objects and bodies as occupying distinct and delimited spaces, and instead sees human bodies and all other material, social and abstract entities as relational’ and that these ‘. . . assemblages of relations develop in unpredictable ways’ (Fox & Alldred, Reference Fox and Alldred2014, p. 3).

Rather than thinking through the child's relations to dogs (nature) by elevating dogs to the status of the children, or de-elevating the child to the status of dog, a posthumanist reading of the child-dog in La Paz seeks to unpack political, ethical, and ontological questions without enforcing a traditional human-animal distinction. By shifting away from the child in nature as the only agential body and focusing on the materiality of child bodies and the bodies of other nonhuman entities as relational, it has allowed me to consider new imaginings for child-dog encounters: encounters that were connected to a deep sense of intra-species interdependence as children and dogs co-shape and co-emerge in shared places. Children and dogs in a place of cohabitation become deeply embedded in the ecology of my posthumanist meaning making. That is, by reimagining through a materialist fashion the nuances of interspecies relations, I paused to notice ‘the intricate web of interrelations that mark the contemporary subjects’ relationship to their multiple ecologies, the natural, the social, the physic’ (Bradiotti, Reference Braidotti2013, p. 98).

In the past, Uzzell (1988) has argued that in relation to children and their village or neighbourhood environment, there is a benefit in considering the idea of territoriality and attachment when describing a child's place encounters. This concept of territoriality is intimately related to how humans and nonhumans come to the environment, how they organise themselves in relation to place, and how they come to give meaning through attachment to a place. From this study, I imagined dog-child bodies being attached to a place and being allowed to have a greater identification and feelings of connectedness through newly imagined body-mind-place relations. Emplacement is likely to lead children to feel able to influence their environment, to embed themselves within it, to form a place/body identity. In place-based research the relationship between places to which one is attached can be varied: it may be ‘a safe haven where one can retreat from threats, problem-solving, and gain emotional relief’ (Scannell & Gifford, Reference Scannell, Gifford, Manzo and Devine-Wright2014, p. 26), or an ‘exploratory place to allow a sense of freedom, control and self-sufficiency’ (Derr, Reference Derr, Spencer and Blades2006, p. 119), or an imaginary place to create, dream and sense. The photographs revealed children with dogs retreated to ‘special places’ in the neighbourhood in order to create those opportunities for sensorial and tactile relations: the sun on their faces, the allure of the snow-capped mountains, the birds singing, the smell of the rubbish, the fear of strangers. Through the photographs and stories, children exposed their attachments to the real and imagined spaces they coinhabited with dogs as they share the experiences of the landscape, the fear of being unsafe or abducted, mistreated or exposed to environmental dangers. Noticing and attending to the embodiment of place-based qualities through the child-dog encounters provides an opportunity for considering a childnature collective deeply embedded in place, ‘to open up a new form of political enquiry which attends to the interconnectedness of the human and the more-than-human-world’ (Taylor, Reference Taylor2011, p. 432). There is the possibility that a focus on ‘place’ rather than ‘nature’ provides an opportunity for rethinking the position of humans as exceptional and outside of nature, although I heed the warning by Clarke and Mcphie (Reference Clarke and Mcphie2014, p. 14) that ‘we should look to be cautious of the language we use to depict the world’, even when supplanting dominant narratives of inequality and colonisation as I have done in this work.