Developmental psychology and more-than-humans: a socio-cultural approach

Against the current backdrop of an environmental crisis characterised by the accelerated disappearance of biodiversity, the more-than-humans movement is gaining prominence in both the social sciences and educational sciences. How can psychology, with its historically anthropocentric focus, contribute to this movement?

To offer a unique response to this complex question, I explore the relationships that humans develop throughout their lives with non-human entities, primarily with other animals and plants.

Moving beyond the dominant discourse on the need to ‘reconnect with nature’—which reveals its limitations in the premise of a disconnection from nature that is merely illusory, given how much we depend on the proper functioning of ecosystems for our survival—I work to identify and develop socio-cultural mediations of our relationships with and dependencies on nature, adapted to our urban lifestyles.

I focus in particular on education in botanical gardens, highlighting the professional practices employed by educators to connect children with nature in school workshops. Forging links with living things here involves complex work, within an urban natural space fraught with tensions and paradoxes, to create the conditions for a possible encounter between children and plants.

I also analyse how the ecosophy of visitors, volunteers and professionals at the Bioparc, an animal sanctuary in Geneva, manifests itself materially in interspecies relationships that involve both care and DIY, and which challenge the traditional boundaries between humans and other animals at the zoo.

This research programme also seeks to highlight the power of language in reproducing the dualisms that underpin our modernity, as well as to experiment, through various artistic or educational approaches, with transformations of language that enable us to rethink our relations with other living beings. Crafting a language suited to the challenges of the environmental crisis is also a request for contemporary environmental psychology. In parallel, I continue with developing more inclusive, dialogical and polyphonic research methodologies. I have been working for over 15 years to develop participatory and citizen-centred research methods, which help to democratise the process of knowledge production and integrate multiple perspectives into the analysis of situations and their transformations. These methodological explorations build on the pioneering work of the Activity Clinics team, where I was trained, in co-analysing the work activity to develop professionals’ capacity to think and act. They also focus on the potential of citizen science for learning and development. More recently, I have incorporated artistic methods to broaden the ways in which knowledge is developed in research, and focussed on involving children as researchers in the process of constructing scientific knowledge. Citizen science, and children’s participation in science, seem to me to be essential today, given that safeguarding the environment and forms of local democracy go hand in hand!