Childhood publics in search of an audience: reflections on the children’s environmental movement

Abstract

The essay reflects on the children's environmental movement from the perspective of cultural theory, as well as the authors' own and others' research on children's encounters, experiences and engagement in public life. The concepts of political knowingness, childhood publics, and listening publics are evoked to think through the surprise that the children's environmental movement generated in the public sphere. The idiom is positioned as an audience 'hearing aid' for turning babbling into political messages. In so doing we find that the messages from the children's environmental movement are not out of place in the current humanities and social sciences literatures on the Anthropocene.

Emotions in the mediated civic context of the family: Understanding children's and parents' mutually constitutive mediation environment

“…For instance, research on political talk in family context shows that children can draw the attention of their parents to political discussions (George, 2013). One of the most challenging and currently prominent topics of discussion at home, and one that lets children's agency most manifestly emerge, regards environmental debates (Nolas, 2021). In the meantime, research points out that environmentalism is more distinctly developed among children and young people, compared to their parents (Larsson et al, 2010), especially in Nordic and Western European and North American countries.…”

Young people’s everyday climate crisis activism: new terrains for research, analysis and action

“…Speaking from a social psychological perspective, she argues that trust in climate science (or otherwise) affects young people's emotional responses to the climate crisis, whether it relates to worry, denial or hope, as well as their receptiveness to behavioural advice. Nolas (2021), in her critique of publics discrediting, or being surprised by the (environmental) acts of children, argue that 'listening' to children has agentic capacities, allowing us to be moved by their actions, and recognising children's concern for the non-human world. The papers by Börner, Kraftl, and Giatti (2020), Ojala (2020) and Nolas (2021) open up new understandings of the way in which young people's climate crisis activism is simultaneously constitutive of and constituted by a myriad of non-human agencies that are otherwise effaced by assumptions that young people and their contexts can be meaningfully talked about as separate entities.…”

“…Nolas (2021), in her critique of publics discrediting, or being surprised by the (environmental) acts of children, argue that 'listening' to children has agentic capacities, allowing us to be moved by their actions, and recognising children's concern for the non-human world. The papers by Börner, Kraftl, and Giatti (2020), Ojala (2020) and Nolas (2021) open up new understandings of the way in which young people's climate crisis activism is simultaneously constitutive of and constituted by a myriad of non-human agencies that are otherwise effaced by assumptions that young people and their contexts can be meaningfully talked about as separate entities. Moreover, the authors show that by adopting a post-humanist perspective, exploring the agentic capabilities of particular phenomena, researchers are more likely to 'discover' the realities of young people and uncover more pluralistic notions of agency, which do not fall into the stereotype of 'heroic practices'.…”

“…They go on to contend that the act of negating the climate crisis can constitute a form of agency, or activism (O'Toole et al 2003). Future research into young people's climate crisis activism needs to go beyond the 'giving voice' agenda, and instead explore the value, challenges and disruptions associated with establishing 'infrastructures of listening' (Nolas 2021), across the spectrum of research, analysis and action.…”

Articulating encounters between children and plastics

“…Secondly, fears about plastic pollution are set within wider generational logics of discourses about environmental change. That today’s and future generations of children will have to live with the effects of environmental degradation are powerful drivers of environmental debate (Nolas, 2021; Raby and Sheppard, 2021). A third and arguably consequent association between childhoods and plastics is that children are a key group targeted by interventions, particularly in terms of education about plastics.…”