Ecological kin‐making in the multispecies muddle: An analytical framework for understanding embodied environmental citizen science experiences

Abstract

Despite the current proliferation of citizen science projects, the affordances of ecological citizen science to generate transformational thinking amongst project participants are seldom considered. This study investigated citizen science as an experiential ecopedagogic praxis that may provide a context for developing relational perspectives and sensorial engagements between human and non‐human participants. A new humanist, phenomenological standpoint and narrative analysis framework were adopted. The narratives of five river monitoring citizen science participants are presented herein to illustrate an emergent Ecological kin‐making through citizen science framework. Participants’ narratives demonstrate how individuals engaged in caring practices through six embodied stages of ecological kin‐making through citizen science: encountering the river (1); recognising the non‐human world (2); river‐bank identification (3); developing a sense of response‐ability (4); enacting responsibility (5); and enhanced ecological kinship (6). As characterised by the infinity‐loop framework, citizen science emerges from this study as an attuned, ongoing, and caring praxis of ecological kin‐making. New co‐species kinship relationships are formed, maintained, and strengthened through participation. The study highlights that where citizen science projects are designed with a participant community focus, they can create the conditions for self‐directed and lifelong ecopedagogy that could be transformational for humans and non‐humans in times of ecological and climate crisis. The study implies the catalytic validity of citizen science to provide a space‐time context for participants to enact a ‘response‐ability’ toward local environments and human and non‐human dwellers, vital to enabling participants to experience a sense of agency and to take local action on environmental issues.

Conceptualising HE educators’ capabilities to teach the crisis: towards critical and transformative environmental pedagogies

“…While initially concerned with questions of human well-being and social arrangements, the capabilities approach has subsequently been applied to concerns about ecological integrity (Schlosberg, 2012), animal rights (Nussbaum, 2023) and multispecies justice (Cripps, 2022). Thus, it has the potential to prompt reflection about how we can learn to live well together with non-human species and ecosystems in the context of the environmental crisis, and how we might promote opportunities for ecological kinship with other species (for example see Dunkley, 2023).…”

“…As Kopnina (2020) suggests, this may lead educators to consider incorporating critical perspectives and non-standard pedagogies which are ethically and epistemologically open to non-Western knowledge and culture and ecocentric values. For example, they may draw on indigenous knowledge, local and traditional forms of learning as well as heterodox economic perspectives and notions of multispecies justice and kinship, putting ecological concerns before the interests of humans and capital (for example see Taylor andPacini-Ketchabaw, 2015 andDunkley, 2023). Such pedagogies could promote opportunities for participants to imagine alternative economic, political and ecological futures.…”

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a form of human–wildlife conflict: Why and how nondomesticated species should be incorporated into AMR guidance

“…This is concerning given that wildlife is a key component of life on Earth and intersects with the expanding human population more frequently than ever (Bresalier et al, 2015; Otu et al, 2021; Shaheen, 2022). Wildlife and nature‐based interactions are also recognized to have positive impacts on the physical and mental health of humans (Brymer et al, 2019; Dobson et al, 2021; Dunkley, 2023; Pooley et al, 2021). Thus, safeguarding wildlife from AMR is likely to have a multitude of One Health benefits, including the protection of valuable connections between humans and nondomesticated species.…”