Doing their share to save the planet: Children and the environmental crisis.
Item
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Title
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Doing their share to save the planet: Children and the environmental crisis.
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Identifier
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AAI9417482
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identifier
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9417482
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Creator
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King, Donna Lee.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Barbara Katz Rothman
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Date
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1994
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, General | Education, Sociology of
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Abstract
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The environmentalization of children is a social and political discourse with conflicting notions of new world order. At the same time, it is a lived experience for children negotiating its meaning and recognizing themselves as political actors.;This work uses a wide range of qualitative methods to analyze: (1) the ways children are depicted in media about environmental crisis; (2) the ideological underpinnings of liberal environmental messages directed at kids; and, (3) children's experience of "saving the planet." Methods include textual analysis of print and electronic media, interviews with adult producers of a children's environmental cartoon, qualitative content analysis of 350 children's drawings of environmental crisis, and ethnographic interviews with 100 children between the ages of five and thirteen in classrooms and summer camps in upstate New York and South Carolina.;Findings reveal deep contradictions in the ways children are represented in environmental media, and in the environmental messages targeted to them. Typically children are depicted either as symbolic victims of adult environmental wrongdoing, or when acting as political actors are caricatured as environmental vigilantes or "eco-fascists". Messages to children about environmental crisis reveal ideologies of liberalism and capitalism that fundamentally contradict basic tenets of environmentalism. This liberal environmental paradox includes: a simultaneous call for children (and others) to both conserve and consume; a diffusion of responsibility that supports the notion of environmental crisis as everyone's fault; and simplistic, individualistic solutions to complex, social-structural problems.;Children's awareness of environmental crisis is widespread and their experience of "saving the planet" is surprisingly upbeat. Children's drawings reveal that across categories of race, class, school grade, and gender, many feel personally empowered to help save the planet. However, for those children who do not feel personally empowered, race/class and gender differences were apparent, with more girls and poor Black children drawing environmental problems with no apparent solutions. Interviews with children indicate that while for many environmentalism is a simple matter of picking up litter, turning off water faucets, or recycling plastic, for others environmental concern becomes a springboard for political activism with potentially radical social consequences.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
