Children and Carbon Cultures

(presenting a paper co-written with Amy Cutter-Mackenzie, David Roussell and Sophie Hartley)Prof Anna Hickey-Moody

Carbon shapes the ways in which humans live and how we see ourselves. It is, of course, more than human. As such, any approach to thinking about carbon is necessarily a posthuman inquiry. We are entangled with carbon and carbon imaginaries. We are attached, entangled with systems run on carbon, with places geared to produce coal, with carbon heavy and carbon neutral objects and the more-than-human world. The concept of entanglement helps to show the relational nature of the what, who, how and where we are attached. As such, entanglement is considered a 'posthuman' concept. The word posthuman expresses criticism of the age of enlightenment and associated beliefs that predominantly white, male, European men and knowledges are the centre of our world. If the white, male, European man can be seen as the model of the…