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water/watery/watering: Concepts for Theorising in Environmental Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2020

Alexandra Lasczik Open the ORCID record for Alexandra Lasczik [Opens in a new window] ,
David Rousell ,
Yaw Ofosu-Asare ,
Angela V. Foley ,
Katie Hotko ,
Ferdousi Khatun  and
Marie-Laurence Paquette
Alexandra Lasczik*
Affiliation:
School of Education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast Campus, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
David Rousell
Affiliation:
School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Yaw Ofosu-Asare
Affiliation:
School of Education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast Campus, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Angela V. Foley
Affiliation:
Western Sydney University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Katie Hotko
Affiliation:
School of Education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast Campus, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Ferdousi Khatun
Affiliation:
School of Education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast Campus, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Marie-Laurence Paquette
Affiliation:
School of Education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast Campus, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
*
*Corresponding author: Email: Lexi.Lasczik@scu.edu.au
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Abstract

The assemblage of water/watery/watering is a lively cartography of how water may be accounted for when theorising with and through environmental education research. Challenging the universalising claims of Western technoscience and the colonial logic of extraction, the article develops an alternative theoretical mapping of environmental education through engagements with Ingold’s (2007, 2012, 2015) concepts of lines, knots, and knotting. For this article and for the Special Issue in which it is housed, the concepts of such knottings are defined as an assemblage of haecceities, lived events that are looped, tethered and entangled as material and conceptual agencies that inhere within situated encounters. Thus, this article grapples with the need to account for water differently in contemporary posthuman ecologies. To overcome anthropocentric and mastery-oriented approaches, various other ways to account for water in science or environmental education will continue to come to the surface, bubbling and rushing like a waterfall as they have done in this work. Some of these will include thinking with water, which will be central to a theoretical mapping of water that seeks embrace sticky knots. The article explores a (re)turn to artful practices and encounters as spaces in which posthumanist concepts for environmental education might be cultivated.

Keywords

waterwatery conceptsarts-based researchwalkingenvironmental education theorytheory knotsvisual essay
Type
Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 36 , Special Issue 2: Mapping-making philosophy in environmental education: Lines, knots and knotting , July 2020 , pp. 146 - 168
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Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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