Children's Relations to the More-Than-Human World

Abstract

In this neoliberal era of productivity agendas and hyper-individualism, we think it timely to be offering a themed issue that spotlights children's relations to the more-than-human world.Not only are we delighted by the fact that children's relations with the more-than-human world deliver no measurable economic outcomes, we hold out additional hope that by paying these relations more attention, we can do our bit to defuse the human-centric conceits of rampant individualism.As a collection, these articles take on the decidedly modern western axiom of individual autonomy that has rapidly intensified under neoliberalism.So what has rampant individualism got to do with a field like early childhood, which stakes its reputation on promoting kindness, caring and sharing?Everything.The ubiquitous dictums of 'catering to the individual needs of the child' and 'child-centred learning' are testimony to the fact that child development theory -and its focus on fostering the individual child's staged but unfolding autonomy, free will and independent agency -is still the single most powerful determinant of early childhood policy, curriculum and pedagogy.For us, the notion of the autonomous individual child perpetuated by child development theory is not only an illusion, it is also a grossly inadequate conceptual framework for responding to the challenges of growing up in an increasingly complex, mixed-up, boundary blurring, heterogeneous, interdependent and ethically confronting world.Through assembling this themed issue, and pushing thinking way beyond the autonomous individual child, we hope to provoke further conversations about the efficacy and the relevance of perpetuating entrenched individualism and human-centrism within the field of early childhood.We also think it timely for early childhood scholars to make a greater contribution to broader 'more-than-human' or post-humanist conversations that have been gathering momentum in the social sciences over the last couple of decades.These conversations have been most fertile and active within post-humanist and ecofeminist philosophies (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987;Plumwood, 1993 Plumwood, , 2003)), within those feminisms and human geographies associated with the 'material turn' (Whatmore, 2002;Massey, 2005;Barad,