Multiple environments: South Indian children’s environmental subjectivities in formation

Abstract

This article explores the formation of South Indian children's (11-15 years old) environmental subjectivities based on five months of qualitative fieldwork with children in their school and non-school lives. By doing so, this paper aims to widen the scope of the existing literature on children's environmental subjectivities, which so far focused on separate aspects of children's lives such as environmental education, social relations or children's life courses. To do so, I use [Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press] concepts of field, habitus and cultural capital along with a non-teleological notion of environmental subjectivity and insights from wider geographical literature on the formation of subjectivities. The paper shows how children's environmental subjectivities are constituted by and partially constitute the material environments and fields in which children live, their cultural capital and habitus, their movements through their life course and their environments and a wide range of practices through which children experience their environments. ARTICLE HISTORY

Engaging with Bourdieu: A Review of the Utilization of Bourdieu Within Children and Young People’s Geographies

“…In this way, the studies contribute to understandings of the tendency towards social reproduction in society, even to the extent to which aspirations have classbased origins (Gant, 2017, Holloway andPimlott-Wilson, 2011). However, the studies also illustrate how children can be seen to be active in the production of cultural capital and not merely passive receptors (Waters, 2014, Devine, 2009, de Hoop, 2017. Waters (2014) points out that this enables children to be seen as 'sites of accumulation' (Katz, 2008) as they are central to the 'accumulation strategies' of migrant families, enabling a more agentic position for cultural capital to be seen.…”

“…Cultural capital: Cultural capital has particular currency in the field of education; those who hold 'recognised' cultural capital are deemed competent and rewarded by long-term benefit for their educational pursuits (Devine, 2009). In turn, the prevailing way in which cultural capital has been applied within geographies of children has been in the context of education (for examples, see Asplund and Prieto, 2013, de Hoop, 2017, Hollingworth et al, 2011, Holloway and Pimlott-Wilson, 2011, Sparks, 2016), but also migrationwhich is frequently linked to education as well (Waters, 2006, Devine, 2009, Weenink, 2008. Cultural capital is a key influence on young people's identities, aspirations and subjectivities, as de Hoop ( 2017) demonstrates through her Bourdieu-informed study of south Indian young people's environmental subjectivities in the context of schooling, home life and understandings of modernity.…”

Conscientisation and Radical Habitus: Expanding Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice in Youth Activism Studies

“…Mannheim's [34] generational approach takes note of the specific contextual experiences of people born within a time and place, creating a shared habitus or a collective memory [35]. Habitus informs inner subjectivities and therefore can add understandings to the conditions in which practice takes place [36]. As a group of people born into a specific era and experiencing similar conditions and events, a generation is likely to have a particular habitus which informs their practice.…”

“…Yet as a result of the climate crisis of global warming and the resultant environmental devastation, young people have been rejecting pre-structured environments to enact politics in their own way. Pickard [36,56] has called this do-it-ourselves (DIO) politics. DIO politics relates to the perception that politicians are not doing enough, or are doing it wrong.…”