Practicing Belonging in Kindergarten: Children’s Use of Places and Artifacts

(Re)imagining Entangled Sustainability: A Human and Nonhuman Theorisation of Belonging to Safeguard Sustainability’s Holism

“…What we propose is departing from a phenomenon associated with one of the pillars and theorising it in a way that embraces and encompasses the other pillars. In this article we focus on the sense of belonging, which is associated with social sustainability [7,8,12,13]. However, when this concept is theorised with posthumaninspired theories, economic and environmental aspects are shown to be meaningful.…”

“…These questions are anchored in the politics of belonging, which Nagel [23] recognises as a process in which the boundaries of group membership are produced and reproduced. Boldermo's works [12,13] present the role of artefacts, surroundings and particular toys in creating criteria for membership, while agency and subjectivity remains with humans. The artefacts and places are 'taken into use by humans' [12] (p. 64), and function as instruments/objects in or around human activity and meaning making [10].…”

“…Boldermo's works [12,13] present the role of artefacts, surroundings and particular toys in creating criteria for membership, while agency and subjectivity remains with humans. The artefacts and places are 'taken into use by humans' [12] (p. 64), and function as instruments/objects in or around human activity and meaning making [10]. The same happens when Sumsion and Wong [24] try to embrace the rich dynamics of the politics of belonging by putting it on three axes of: (a) categorisation; (b) resistance and desire; and (c) performativity.…”

“…Research conducted by Boldermo [12,13], but also others [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] departs from the assumption that generating more knowledge within social sustainability (automatically) contributes to holistically sustainable ECEC policies. Boldermo's [12,13] research shows how very young children can experience moments of togetherness and negotiate criteria for membership that are not based on ethnicity, gender or culture [13]. No less important is the endeavour to show how artefacts (for example, a football) and places (such as a football pitch) can entwine in developing a human sense of belonging [12].…”

“…Current distinctions between particular pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic and social) are so well established that even interdisciplinarity connected to sustainability research emerges within rather than across the pillars. By theorising the sense of belonging with the use of post-human inspirations, we try to open up this phenomenon ascribed to social sustainability [7,8,12,13] to economic and environmental aspects.…”