Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Research Handbook on Childhoodnature pp 1–23Cite as

Rats, Death, and Anthropocene Relations in Urban Canadian Childhoods

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

Abstract

In the Euro-Western intellectual, or minority world, tradition death is often framed as something to avoid in the creation of “optimal” childhoods. Foregrounding a West Coast Canadian early childhood center’s unexpected encounter with a dying rat, this chapter looks at the role ethical frameworks play in shaping uneasy more-than-human engagements to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about animal death in urban early childhoods and grapple with the limits of ethical engagement. In it, understandings of childhood and nature are situated within the schism of romanticized narratives and challenges of a so-called new Anthropocene era, to reconfigure encounters at the intersection of life and death as generative in their ability to destabilize the precepts of a humancentric worldview that orders urban spaces and relations in particular ways. Using a hybrid multispecies ethnographic and common worlding approach, this chapter explores possibilities for cultivating new modes of attention to promote expansive approaches to thinking and doing in early learning pedagogy and practice. How might we resist shoring up colonial and other universalizing narratives when death emerges through everyday encounter? What stories help us matter differently as we continue to world with others in this time of rapid change? This chapter proposes tending to multispecies relations, including those considered uncomfortable, as deeply entangled and consequential to open up new possibilities for ethical responses to living and dying together in these troubling times.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

References

  • Baynes-Rock, M. (2013). Life and death in the multispecies commons. Social Science Information, 52(2), 210–227.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Belcourt, B. (2015). Animal bodies, colonial subjects: (Re)locating animality in decolonial thought. Societies, 5, 1–11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, J. (2010). Frames of war: When is life grievable? London, UK: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collard, R., Dempsey, J., & Sundberg, J. (2015). A manifesto for abundant futures. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 105(2), 322–330.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Common World Childhoods Research Collective. (2017). Children’s relations with place, with materials, and with other species. Retrieved from http://commonworlds.net/research/

  • Davis, H., & Todd, Z. (2017). On the importance of a date, or decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 16(4), 761–780.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dirzo, R., Young, H. S., Galetti, M., Ceballos, G., Isaac, N. J. B., & Collen, B. (2014). Defaunation in the Anthropocene. Science, 345(6195), 401–406.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fawcett, L. (2014). Kinship imaginaries: Children’s stories of wild friendships, fear, and freedom. In G. Marvin & S. McHugh (Eds.), Routledge handbook of human-animal studies (pp. 259–274). New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gelonesi, J. (2014). Philosopher Undine discusses sex, flies and fairy tales. The Philosopher’s Zone @ ABC Podcast. Podcast retrieved from [ABC Audiofile]. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/sex2c-flies2c-and-fairytales/5519320

  • Gibson, K., Rose, D. B., & Fincher, R. (Eds.). (2015). Manifesto for living in the Anthropocene. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ginn, F., Beisel, U., & Barua, M. (2014). Flourishing with awkward creatures: Vulnerability, togetherness, killing. Environmental Humanities, 4(1), 113–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haberstroh, M. (2017). Bird rescue centre raises concerns about rat poison. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/birds-poison-1.4468165

  • Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. (2012). Awash in urine: DES and Premarin in multispecies response-ability. Women’s Quarterly Journal, 40(1–2), 301–316. https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2012.0005

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. (2015). A curious practice. Angelaki, 20(2), 5–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039817

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heise, U. K. (2016). Imagining extinction: The cultural meanings of endangered species. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • High, K. (2006). Embracing animal. Retrieved from http://kathyhigh.com/project-embracing-animal.html

  • Hird, M. J. (2010). Coevolution, symbiosis and sociology. Ecological Economics, 69, 737–742. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2008.10.011

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holm, M. (2014). Rats! Black rats spreads to BC interior. Retrieved from http://www.farmwest.com/node/1356

  • Jackson, Z. I. (2014). Animal: New directions in the theorization of race and posthumanism. Feminist Studies, 39(3), 669–685.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jorgensøn, K.A., & Sanders, D.L. (2017). Children’s encounters with death and decay in the ‘more than human world’. European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA): Early Childhood Education Beyond the Crisis: Social Justice, Solidarity and Children’s Rights (conference presentation).

    Google Scholar 

  • Klinkenberg, B. (2017). E-Fauna BC: Electronic atlas of the fauna of British Columbia. Retrieved from http://ibis.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/efauna/AlienSpeciesinBritishColumbiaHistoricalRecords.html

  • Malone, K., & Truong, S. (2017). Sustainability, education, and anthropocentric precarity. In K. Malone, S. Truong, & T. Gray (Eds.), Reimagining sustainability in precarious times (pp. 3–16). Singapore, Singapore: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • McArthur, J. (2016). Who is acceptable to grieve? In M. DeMello (Ed.), Mourning animals: Rituals and practices surrounding animal death (pp. 201–204). East Lansing, MN: Michigan State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCue, D. (2015). Vancouver daycare teaches toddlers about Indian residential schools. CBC News [online]. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/vancouver-daycare-teaches-residential-schools-1.3243358

  • Meehitiya, L., Sanders, D., & Hohenstein, J. (2017). Life, living and lifelessness in taxidermy. In Natural history dioramas: Traditional exhibits for current educational themes (Vol. 2). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nelson, N., Coon, E., & Chadwick, A. (2015). Engaging with the messiness of place in early childhood education and art therapy: Exploring animal relations, traditional hide and Drum. Canadian Children, 40(2), 43–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nxumalo, F. (2015). Forest stories: Restorying encounters with “natural” places in early childhood education. In V. Pacini-Ketchabaw & A. Taylor (Eds.), Unsettling the colonial places and spaces of early childhood education (pp. 21–42). New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Nxumalo, F. (2015). Unruly raccoons and troubled educators: Nature/culture divides in a childcare centre. Environmental Humanities, 7, 151–168.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Taylor, A., & Blaise, M. (2016). De-centring the human in multispecies ethnographies. In C. Taylor & C. Hughes (Eds.), Posthuman research practices in education (pp. 149–167). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., Taylor, A., Blaise, M., & de Finney, S. (2014). Learning how to inherit in colonized and ecologically challenged lifeworlds: An introduction. Canadian Children, 40(2), 3–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the mastery of nature. New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2015). Ecological thinking, material spirituality, and the poetics of infrastructure. In G. C. Bowker, S. Timmermans, A. E. Clarke, & E. Balka (Eds.), Boundary objects and beyond: Working with Leigh Star (pp. 1–16). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rautio, P., & Jokinen, P. (2016). Children’s relations to the more-than-human world beyond developmental views. In B. Evans, J. Horton, & T. Skelton (Eds.), Play and recreation, health and wellbeing (pp. 35–49). Singapore, Singapore: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, D. (2011). Flying foxes: Kin, keystone, kontaminant. Australian Humanities Review, 50, 119–136.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, D. (2013a). Dingo kinship. Wildlife Australia, 50, 33–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, D. (2013b). In the shadow of all this death. In J. Johnston & F. Probyn-Rapsey (Eds.), Animal death (pp. 1–20). Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, D.B., van Dooren, T., Chrulew, M., Cooke, S., Kearnes, M., & O’Gorman, E. (2012). Thinking through the environment, unsettling the environmental humanities. Environmental Humanities, 1(1), 1–5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Russell, J. (2016). I remember everything: Children, companion animals, and a relational pedagogy of remembrance. In M. DeMello (Ed.), Mourning animals: Rituals and practices surrounding animal death (pp. 81–90). East Lansing, MN: Michigan State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanders, D. L. (under review). Stories of the dead rabbit and the dissected mouse: Encounters between children and the more than human world in early childhood science education.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, L. T. (2014). Research through imperial eyes. In A. M. Jaggar (Ed.), Just methods: An interdisciplinary feminist reader (pp. 58–68). Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stengers, I. (2015). In catastrophic times: Resisting the coming barbarism. (A. Goffry, Trans.). Open Humanities Press in collaboration with Meson Press. Dordrecht: Springer

    Google Scholar 

  • Sullivan, S. (2004). Rats: Observations on the history and habitat of the city’s most unwanted inhabitants. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • TallBear, K. (2015). Beyond life/not life: A feminist-Indigenous reading of cryopreservation, interspecies thinking, and the new materialisms. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE-gaDG-kLQ

  • Taylor, A. (2013). Reconfiguring the natures of childhoods. New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, A., & Giugni, M. (2012). Common worlds: Reconceptualising inclusion in early childhood communities. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 13(2), 108–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, A., & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2015). Learning with children, ants, and worms in the Anthropocene: Towards a common world pedagogy of multispecies vulnerability. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 23(4), 507–529.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, A., & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2016). Kids, racoons, and roos: Awkward encounters and mixed affects. Children’s Geographies, 15(2), 131–145.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, A. (2017). Beyond stewardship: Common world pedagogies for the Anthropocene. Environmental Education Review, 3(10), 1448–1461.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • The Vancouver Rat Project. (2017). Retrieved from http://www.vancouverratproject.com/vancouver_rat_project/home

  • Tsing, A. (2012). Unruly edges: Mushrooms and companion species. Environmental Humanities, 1(1), 141–154. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3610012

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Dooren, T. (2014a). Flight ways: Life and loss at the edge of extinction. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Dooren, T. (2014b). Life at the edge of extinction: Spectral crows, haunted landscapes and the environmental humanities. Humanities Australia, 5, 8–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Dooren, T. (2015). Vulture stories: Narrative and conservation. In K. Gibson, D. B. Rose, & R. Fincher (Eds.), Manifesto for living in the Anthropocene (pp. 17–21). Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Dooren, T., Kirksey, E., & Münster, U. (2016). Multispecies studies: Cultivating the arts of attentiveness. Environmental Humanities, 8(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3527695

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Dooren, T., & Rose, D. (2012). Storied-places in a multispecies city. Humanimalia, 3(2), 1–27. Retrieved from http://www.depauw.edu/humanimalia/issue%2006/pdfs/van%20dooren%20rose.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  • von Uexküll, J. (1992). A stroll through the world of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. Semiotica, 89(4), 319–391.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watts, V. (2013). Indigenous place-thought and agency amongst humans and non humans (first woman and sky woman go on a European world tour!). Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2(1), 20–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weir, J. K. (2015). Lives in connection. In K. Gibson, D. B. Rose, & R. Fincher (Eds.), Manifesto for living in the Anthropocene (pp. 17–21). Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

    Narda Nelson

Authors
  1. Narda Nelson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Narda Nelson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, Southern Cross University School of Education, Coolangatta, Queensland, Australia

    Amy Cutter-Mackenzie

  2. Centre for Educational Research, Western Sydney University Centre for Educational Research, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia

    Karen Malone

  3. Department of Education, University of Bath Department of Education, Bath, United Kingdom

    Elisabeth Barratt Hacking

Section Editor information

  1. School of Education, Gold Coast Campus, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

    Amy Cutter-Mackenzie

  2. Centre for Educational Research, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

    Karen Malone Ph.D.

  3. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

    Marianne Krasny

  4. James Cook University, Cairns, Australia

    Hilary Whitehouse

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Nelson, N. (2018). Rats, Death, and Anthropocene Relations in Urban Canadian Childhoods. In: Cutter-Mackenzie, A., Malone, K., Barratt Hacking, E. (eds) Research Handbook on Childhoodnature . Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_45-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_45-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51949-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51949-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation