Making (Some) Sense of Feminist Poststructuralism in Environmental Education Research and Practice

Abstract

Given that feminist poststructuralism disrupts countless notions many of us have been "raised" with, conceptualizing what feminist poststructuralism might mean for understanding and enacting environmental education research and practice can be difficult. This paper articulates understandings and assumptions of poststructuralism and explores how it has enabled me to come to know in a way that I would not otherwise. I am not claiming that feminist poststructural research necessarily produces better knowledge, but that it produces different knowledge than that undertaken by positivist, interpretivist or critical approaches. Linking theoretical discussion to on-the-ground examples, I examine notions of subjectivity, agency and the constitutive nature of discourse. I then discuss what is particularly feminist about this work and finally, close with a brief discussion of how these notions have prompted a shift in the kinds of questions I am asking in my doctoral research.