The Eco-Certified Child

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxxi

   PDF

2. Making the Other Through Good Intentions

   • Malin Ideland

   Pages 1-29

3. Free-Range Children

   • Malin Ideland

   Pages 31-58

4. Eco-Certified Energy

   • Malin Ideland

   Pages 59-84

5. Locally Grown

   • Malin Ideland

   Pages 85-106

6. Natural—With No Artificial Additives

   • Malin Ideland

   Pages 107-127

7. Eco-Certified Children and Irresponsible Adults

   • Malin Ideland

   Pages 129-137

8. Back Matter

   Pages 139-162

   PDF

While few could dispute the need for Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) for children and young people, this book explores the problems inherent in this educational practice. Despite good intentions, the author highlights how ESE can in fact contribute to a (re)production of harmful norms and possible subjectivities by categorizing various groups as ‘threats’ to the environment. The author analyzes how these categorizations are entangled in historical discourses on social class, nationality and race, thus resulting in double gestures of inclusion and exclusion. Even as sustainability and environmental engagement becomes a treasured identity for the affluent, the author highlights that despite the best of intentions, the discourse of ESE can reinforce positions of suborder and superiority, which could even impede real change in the long run. This illuminating book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of sustainability education.

Foreword by Thomas S. Popkewitz

• Environment and the child
• Childhood and nature
• Ecological citizenship
• Stewardship of the land
• ESE
• Environmental and Sustainability Education
• childhood studies

“I found myself engaged with the arguments of the book and the freshness of the data analyzed. … I see myself already planning to make it a mandatory reading in my graduate course on environmental education.” (Giuliano Reis, Science & Education, Vol. 31, 2022)

“My assessment, biased by my training as a cultural anthropologist, is that The Eco-Certified Child is a signature text and a must-read for those teachers teaching the teachers.” (Paul H. Mason, Australian Journal of Environmental Education, Vol. 37, 2021)

• Faculty of Education and Society, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

  Malin Ideland

Malin Ideland is Professor of Educational Sciences at the Faculty of Education and Society, Malmö University, Sweden. Specializing in ethnology, her research interests centre around the discourse of environmental and sustainability education.

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