A feminist posthumanist political ecology of education for theorizing human-animal relations/relationships

This paper contributes to a nascent conversation in environmental education (EE) research by using ethnographic data and extant theory to develop a feminist posthumanist political ecology of education for theorizing human–animal relations/relationships. Specifically, I (1) engage feminist methodologies and theories; (2) give epistemological and theoretical attention to nonhuman animals; and (3) address the field of EE’s minimal engagement with the interdisciplinary research agenda of political ecology. The paper begins with a literature review examining how feminist and/or posthumanist scholars have theorized human–animal (or human–nature) relations/relationships. Next, I outline the conceptual frameworks guiding the analyses of ethnographic data I collected at Long Beach, California’s Aquarium of the Pacific and follow with a brief overview of the study. I conclude by outlining the major tenets of this article’s conceptual framework, which contributes to a growing conversation in EE regarding human–animal relations/relationships and lays the groundwork for other political ecologies of education.