Weaving the pluriverse

Childhood encounters with the underground worlds of Birrarung Marr

Bibliographic Data

ID12711348
AuthorsD Rousell (0000-0002-4509-6128, RMIT University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume24
Issue2
Pages1-17
Publication date2023-04-05
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueChildren s Geographies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1473-3277 • E-ISSN: 1473-3285
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14733285.2023.2181687
OpenAlexW4362609754
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited46

This article weaves together a series of encounters between young children, trees, and mycelium within the multispecies worlds of Birrarung Marr, an ancient Aboriginal meeting place in the city of Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Using creative ethnographic methods, it focuses on children’s involvement in an immersive theatre-making project exploring the intricate subterranean networks of communication and care between She-Oak trees and rhizo-mycelial networks in the local area. Weaving ethnographic description and careful engagements with Indigenous philosophies, the concept of pluriversality is evoked to consider how multispecies worlds are variously assembled, stolen, sustained, exhausted, regenerated, and interwoven along Birrarung Marr. Disrupting Western developmental models of childhood, the article argues that children’s animistic understandings of multispecies relations can inform responses to climate change which are sensitive to the intricate dependency relations that sustain life

Aesthetics · Art · Biology · Dependency (UML · Ethnography · Indigenous · Sociology · Weaving · Zoology · Anthropology · Computer Science · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Urban Green Space and Health · Ecology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access