Common Worlds of Children and Animals

Affrica Taylor is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Canberra, Australia. Her background in cultural geography and Indigenous Australian education have shaped her abiding interest in the relations between people, place, and other species in settler colonial societies, and in the need to decolonise these relations. She explores these themes in her books, Reconfiguring the Natures of Childhood and Unsettling the Colonial Places and Spaces of Early Childhood Education.Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw is a professor of early childhood education at Western University in Canada. She is committed to tracing the common world relations of children with places, materials, and other species. Her books Encounters with Materials in Early Childhood Education, Unsettling the Colonial Places and Spaces of Early Childhood Education, Journeys: Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Practices, and Flows, Rhythms, and Intensities of Early Childhood Education Curriculum explore these relations.

• Introduction 1. The Common Worlds of Children and Animals 2. Children, Kangaroos, and Deer: An Ethics of Multispecies Conviviality 3. Children, Ants, and Worms: An Environmental Ethics of Mutual Vulnerability 4. Children, Bilbies, and Spirit Bears: A Decolonising Ethics of Ecological Reconciliation 5. Children, Raccoons, and Possums: An Ethics of Staying with the Trouble 6. Indigenous Child–Dogs: A Recuperative Ethics of Kinship Obligation Conclusion: Relational Ethics for Entangled Lives