Multiple environments: South Indian children’s environmental subjectivities in formation

Abstract

This article explores the formation of South Indian children’s (11–15 years old) environmental subjectivities based on five months of qualitative fieldwork with children in their school and non-school lives. By doing so, this paper aims to widen the scope of the existing literature on children’s environmental subjectivities, which so far focused on separate aspects of children’s lives such as environmental education, social relations or children’s life courses. To do so, I use [Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press] concepts of field, habitus and cultural capital along with a non-teleological notion of environmental subjectivity and insights from wider geographical literature on the formation of subjectivities. The paper shows how children’s environmental subjectivities are constituted by and partially constitute the material environments and fields in which children live, their cultural capital and habitus, their movements through their life course and their environments and a wide range of practices through which children experience their environments.