Ecomasculinities, boyhoods and critical animal pedagogy

This chapter engages with the relatively new field of ecomasculinities research and maps out some future directions it could take, including attention to two areas that so far have arguably been mostly excluded: human/animal relations and childhood. Ecomasculinities writers have been clear to situate their work in the context of ecofeminism and so would be consistent in acknowledging the work that ecofeminists have devoted to theorising human/animal relations. The chapter also calls attention to the exclusion of childhood, and boyhood specifically, in recent key works on ecomasculinities. Instead, ecomasculinities research should close the gap with childhood studies, which have already begun to focus on, for example, the politicisation of children in the face of the climate crisis. The two issues identified by the chapter converge since it is not possible to adequately empower children on the climate crisis without a focus on human/animal relations, and indeed the ways that such relations are gendered. A rich vein of focus for ecomasculinities research could then be the contemporary contestation of children’s food practices and boy/animal relations more generally. What ecological masculinities can boys and others perform that would be more consistent with an empowered position on the climate and biodiversity crises? What might boys themselves tell us about their emotional investments in the more-than human? The chapter ends by considering work on critical animal pedagogy as a further appropriate partner for exploring such questions and creating practices that respond to the toxic historical relationship between hegemonic masculinity and the disavowal of care toward other species.