Becoming-with the bog born: emotional collectives in ecological fieldwork

Abstract

Fieldwork in ecology education does things. By employing Donna Haraway’s concept becoming-with companion species and Cathrine Hasse’s emotional collectives to explore fieldwork practice on a bog in Sweden, a piece of the doings will be told. The aim of this study is to explore how ecology fieldwork affords emotional engagement and facilitates growth of ecological literacy in the emotional collectives of students, teachers and nonhumans to become-with each other. The study is based on an overnight field trip with upper-secondary students experiencing black grouse lekking and the ecology of a bog. The empirical material consists of video and audio recordings. In the study, becoming-with is operationalised through the notion of emotional collectives. The result shows three orientations of becoming-with: mimetic, anthropomorphic and fact oriented. Overall, this is a story of fieldwork as a practice of producing companion species; how becoming-with companion species works in practice, how companion species come to matter as emergent ecological literacy.

I am the moor

with the wind sings

Fala Flow, Listen, Listen

I am earth and I am water

I am sedge and I am sky

I am old dead things, I am alive

You skipped barefoot through my heather

and lean down among the mosses with your fingers

and your lusting and your soft pale bellies

You made love and made life, inside your dark damp bodies,

like I have in mine.

You were all bog born.

Do not hold your breath in your fist, open your hand

Do not hold your breath in your fist, open your hand

Sphagnum palustre is lime green and copper stars,

sphagnum auriculatum like clumps of rhubarb and custard,

the vibrant cherry red of sphagnum magellanicum

and hylocomium splendens, glittering wood moss

You were all bog born.

Excerpt from the song “The Moor Speaks” by Karine Polwart

This excerpt is from the song “The Moor Speaks” by Karine Polwart who lives and works close to the peat bog, Fala Moor. The song is about the layers of dead, but not decomposed, sphagnums forming the peat bog as well as the living bog-born “lime green and copper stars” and “vibrant cherry red” species of sphagnum. The “soft pale bellies” of the bog-born birds—plover, curlew, lapwing, common snipe—which have “made love and made life” are described as almost inseparable from her own body. So, the song is also about the belonging and a connection to the land, the earth. The poetic language contains deep knowledge and experience of the bog. Polwart writes with a distinctness about ecological concepts and knowledge of the behaviours of the bog-born birds that originates from closeness and encounters. The poem is an example of how ecology can be experienced, and ecological literacy may be expressed in many ways, such as through poetry—not only in the forms of ecological reasoning within scientific genres but also aesthetically and emotionally.

In this article, we explore growth of ecological literacy and emotional processes unfolding in ecological fieldwork in upper-secondary school. Ecological literacy appears for the first time in the 1980s (the related term environmental literacy in the late 1960s) and revolves around ecological concepts, system thinking, inquiry skills, the human impact and skills for informed decision making (McBride et al. 2013). Brooke McBride et al. (2013) use the notion of ecoliteracy to advocate the importance of interconnectedness, kinship with the natural world and spiritual and holistic elements. However, this latter, more relational perspective does not need to be separated from ecological concept, methods and scientific inquiry. In this study, we add a layer of relationality to the notion of ecological literacy (including all aspects of ecological literacy). When humans and nonhumans encounter each other in fieldwork, there is an intertwined process of reciprocity. The awareness and capacity to adjust oneself to others, to nonhumans, are part of ecological literacy; fieldwork is a shared practice where growth of ecological literacy is intertwined with growth of collective agency, where agency is seen as distributed and the collective is not restricted to humans (Persson et al. 2022). Echoing Polwart’s poem, this research is situated on a bog, where it can be said, students and teachers are becoming-with the bog born, all the living and non-living organisms entangling with one another and contributing to the formation of relations between humans and nonhumans in ecological fieldwork. The poem resonates with a core idea in environmental education that closeness to nature will support the growth of nature connectedness and bring about more caring and compassionate attitudes (Sandell and Öhman 2021). However, the term “nature connectedness” may be seen as problematic in that it risks reinforcing a dichotomy of nature and culture. In this article, we therefore conceptualise nature connectedness as a matter of becoming-with others by drawing on Donna Haraway’s notion of becoming-with which represents the aim of embracing the nonhuman impact and extending the benefit, not only for the humans but equally for the nonhumans (2008). The interest lies in the possibilities for a collective growth of ecological literacy in ecological fieldwork as becoming-with and the implications for an ecology education that facilitates a transformation of humankind’s relationship with the world. A transformation towards an embodied understanding of dependence and belonging to Earth encompasses practical and emotional work entangled with ecological factual knowledge.

Emotions in becoming-with companion species in education

Amidst the severe ongoing ecological crisis, where Earth itself is acting back, questions arise about how to manage ecology education under these conditions. Teaching ecology as concepts, scientific methods and human impact risks presenting ecological contents as neat facts in a hope to foster students to make informed decisions while neglecting frightening or dystopian scenarios. For example, teaching about planetary boundaries is more or less likely to bring the apocalypse into the classroom, dressed up like a scientific model. We find such an approach to teaching unsettling. Planetary boundaries, or the carbon cycle, are neat facts, but they need to be addressed in a context that does not evoke cognitive dissonance, despair or denial. This article puts forward a modest suggestion, based on empirical explorations, on how to transform education and human–nonhuman relations.

Both Bruno Latour (2018) and Donna Haraway (2008) are seeking new ways to narrate the world. Latour (2018) writes about terrestrials—all species that have a place on the Earth—as participating and reacting instead of being a still and quiet backdrop to human actions. According to Latour, terrestrials are earthbound, drawn towards the Terrestrial attractor, as opposed to the Out-of-This-World attractor (a political attractor in an imagined world outside planetary boundaries and characterised by climate change denialism). The notions of terrestrials and Terrestrial attractor can be seen as invitations to think about what ecological literacy oriented towards the terrestrial might entail and how belonging to a land can be made part of science education practices. In Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Haraway (2016) invites the earthbound to “trek into the Chthulucene to entangle with the ongoing, snaky, unheroic, tentacular, dreadful ones” (p. 43). Chthulucene is Haraway’s “ongoing multispecies stories and practices of becoming-with in times that remain at stake, in precarious times, in which the world is not finished and the sky has not fallen—yet.” (p. 55). Haraway uses the notion of Chtulucene as a way to talk about the Earth and its inhabitants as something beautiful and lovable but, at the same time, uncanny and frightful. Our time on earth as inhabitants is not neat and tidy. There has never been such a time and there will not be. A challenge for science education, and for ecology education specifically, is to deal with the streaks of uncertainty and messiness and not hide behind illusions of scientific control and rationality. Towards the end of Down to Earth, Latour suggests not using the word “humans” but to instead talk about ourselves as earthbound—terrestrials among terrestrials. This shift in vocabulary implies shifting views of politics and education compared to positioning us as humans in nature. Tristan Gleason (2019) reflects on how the shift “brings humans and non-humans together as agents responsible for our collective survival and well-being” (p. 984). As earthbound, we belong to the Earth we inhabit, and our survival depends on relationships with other earthbounds. In relation to ecology education, the shift towards viewing ourselves as earthbound has the potential to redefine education.

Emotions are entangled in all encounters and interactions with others. Haraway’s (2008) writing is intertwined with the works of Vinciane Despret and her writing on learning to be affected. Despret (2004) writes: “The world disposes us to feel, and our body makes the world available. Our feelings dispose our bodies, our bodies dispose our feelings” (p.127). Despret describes what she calls a “miracle of attunement” (p. 125) between species, and she exemplifies with horses and humans, rats and humans, and geese and humans. She describes a shared practice where both humans and animals learn to be affected. Despret is drawing on William James’ theory of emotions in Principles of Psychology, Vol II (James, 1890). She describes the theory as “a theory of affecting and affected bodies” (p. 125) and a desire from James “not to define a passive affected being, but rather a being that both produces emotions and is produced by them” (p. 127). In the same issue of the journal Body & Society (2004), Latour writes, “to have a body is to learn to be affected, meaning ‘effectuated’, moved, put into motion by other entities, humans or non-humans” (Latour 2004, p. 205, italics in original). Latour (2004) also draws on James’ theory on emotions and explores the learning of being affected with an example from the perfume industry, where students are taught to be affected in specific ways. He writes that the perfume industry trains noses where students learn to be affected by perfumes and to articulate differences in fragrances. The learning takes place in a collective of the students’ noses, the teacher, “odour kits,” the laboratory, chemists and chemistry.

Emotions are entangled with touch. Touching and becoming-with companion species have emotional consequences such as affect and care. Haraway (2008) asks, “(w)hom and what do I touch when I touch my dog?” and “(h)ow is ‘becoming with’ a practice of becoming worldly?” (2008, p. 3). Haraway (2008) also focuses on sharing suffering and pain with companion species and suggests that humans could learn to share sufferings which could in turn lead to the growth of accountability. Mostly, but not exclusively, her examples involve domesticated animals and laboratory animals. However, she makes it clear that the reasoning is not limited to the tame, or even to the living. The word species is not used as the definition of biological species; it is much more inclusive. Haraway writes, “(t)o be one is always to become with many” and “I am who I become with companion species” (pp. 4, 19, italics in original). So, what “we” are is defined by the becoming-with others. Becoming-with is to notice, respond, respect and learn to pay attention with companion species. Haraway argues that touch shapes accountability in that response-ability is cultivated (Haraway 2016). In one of Haraway’s examples (“The Crochet Coral Reef”, an artistic and scientific project to draw attention to coral reefs), she writes, “the makers of the reef practice multispecies becoming-with to cultivate the capacity to respond, response-ability.” (2016, p. 78).

The overall aim of this study is to unfold the embodied emotions that inevitably are entangled with fieldwork practice and explore the role of emotions in the growth of ecological literacy.

Research on emotions in science education and fieldwork

Ecology fieldwork affords possibilities for encountering and grappling, emotionally and sensuously, with companion species, possibilities rarely provided in classrooms (unless, the companion species are dead, depictured, disciplined and out of place). Pieces from the field can, of course, and sometimes preferably, be brought inside the classroom to generate productive encounters and excellent ecology education. Thus inevitably, the classroom offers a “humanised” context from a point of view where humans are in control.

Fieldwork can smear mud on the hands of students and teachers and offer spaces for becoming-with companion species; hence, fieldwork can afford muddy encounters. Fieldwork is contingent and undisciplined, and it can offer what Haraway (2016) describes as a “play in the muddle of messy living and dying” (p. 42). Previous research by Heidi Carlone et al. (2015) and Carlone et al. (2016) explores the role of emotions in fieldwork education in different ways. To describe identity boundary work, Carlone (2015) zoom into muddy encounters (my word choice) with youth, amphibians and reptiles in an outdoor summer fieldwork programme. Through experiences of holding animals, taking care of captured animals and using specialised equipment (e.g. waders and headlamps), a new kind of “unthinkable” identity connected to environmental science and animals emerged among the youth. Carlone and her colleagues show how emotions are important in identity boundary work, including emotions such as uncertainty, discomfort and fear. In this identity boundary work, boundary objects such as waders, headlamps and cameras facilitate the boundary work which was also emotional work. Carlone et al. (2016) interviewed the participants of this field ecology summer programme, who were asked to place statements regarding their experiences of the fieldwork on a “head-heart-hand board” (p. 202). The participants were to place the statements either in a head circle, a heart circle or a hand circle, or in between the circles. The participants mostly placed the statements near the centre of the board which Carlone and her colleagues interpreted to indicate that the young participants experienced fieldwork as unified and that it was not possible for them to separate emotions from cognition or practical doings.

Auli Arvola Orlander and Per-Olof Wickman (2011) explore bodily encounters and experiences of meaning making when students emotionally react to a calf-eye dissection. They stress that bodily experiences and emotions need to be addressed in science education as a part of learning processes and students’ meaning making. In The body bites back! Steve Alsop (2011) uses Arvola Orlander and Wickman (2011) as a starting point for reflections on “embodied emotions in science education” (p. 611). He reflects on possibilities for emotional work in science education in relation to Latour’s (2004) and Despret’s (2004) writing on learning to be affected. Alsop (2016) posts the question, “(w)hat might science education learn from the affective turn?” (p. 563), outlining possibilities and some constraints. Alsop writes, “(s) cience education within all its diverse linguistic, sensory and material forms is a type of happening of affecting and being affected by something or someone” (2016, p. 552). He reflects on possible promises for rethinking ontologies in science education to escape the assumed Cartesian dichotomies where the world is split between mind and body. Alsop argues for the importance of overcoming dichotomies not only between mind and body but also between reason and emotion, and affect and cognition, to find “new ways of thinking, of feeling, of sensing, of relating and, perhaps most importantly of all, of acting” (2017, p. 273). Alsop (2016) emphasises that science education can gain from an analysis of relations of bodies and an interest in what emotions do or can do in these relations, and that science education needs to include affect. Often, research on science education concerning constructs related to emotions has tended to focus on constructs of motivation, attitudes or interest rather than emotions in situ (Wickman 2017).

Research on emotion is sometimes framed in terms of affect and affect theory which is a broad field with various theoretical approaches and a diversity of ways of conceptualising affect (Seigworth and Gregg 2010). Michalinos Zembylas (2016) emphasises that “(a)ffects are always embedded in acts and practices” and “can be seen as a category that encompasses affect, emotion, and feeling” (p. 541). Zembylas describes affects as forces and flows “producing and shaping emotional experiences” (2021, p. 771) and points out, among other things, that the politics of emotions could contribute to science education; the notion of affect is broadly entangled with terms such as emotion and feeling and its use commonly signals an interest in moving away from a focus on personal feelings to social constructs of feelings where attention is directed at the capacity for social and political change.

This brief presentation of studies on fieldwork, and on science education, where emotion and affect are more generally seen as entangled with the actual situated educational practice, provides a backdrop to this study.

Emotional collectives

In this study, the focus is on how bodies affect bodies and on emotions that emerge in field situations. Humans and nonhumans form what Cathrine Hasse (2020) calls emotional collectives and she highlights how learning unfolds within these collectives.

Hasse (2020) elaborates on how affect and emotions are entangled in the process of learning physics with undergraduate students, and she writes, “(w)e learn hopes, visions, dreams and feelings as we gradually become part of the phenomenon we perceive and co-create” (p. 67). Emotional collectives are formed, shared emotions and meaningfulness are intertwined/entangled with nonhuman and human agency in preceding collective learning (ibid.).

Drawing on, and merging, the notion of becoming-with (Haraway 2008) with the notion of emotional collectives (Hasse 2020) to think about ecology fieldwork practices, we do not see learning as an individualistic endeavour, nor as exclusively human. Instead, we see humans as entangled with nonhumans, and humans and nonhumans as actively forming collectives in the world where nature and culture, as well as emotions and reason, are impossible to disentangle. We foreground affect as “sensorial relationality” and “emotional experiences” and highlight the politics of emotions (Zembylas 2021, p.771). This study focuses particularly on how becoming-with companion species in ecological fieldwork can contribute to supporting an ecological literacy based on a recognition of emotional learning, or learning to be affected, in emotional collectives of entangled humans and nonhumans.

Aim and questions

The aim of this study is to explore how ecology fieldwork affords emotional engagement and facilitates growth of ecological literacy in emotional collectives of students, teachers and nonhumans to become with each other.

• How does becoming-with companion species emerge in ecology fieldwork?

• How is becoming-with manifested in the emergence of emotional collectives of humans and nonhumans in ecological fieldwork?

Methodology

The study is based on empirical material from ethnographic participation in ecological fieldwork in an elective nature guide course at a Swedish upper-secondary school in which the first author (Persson) participated. The fieldwork took place at the end of upper-secondary school year two (students were approximately 17–18 years old). The overall goals of the course were to develop students’ capability to organise, plan and conduct a guided tour in a nature area, to develop knowledge about nature, ecosystems and biodiversity, and to observe phenomena in nature.

The course group consisted of 10 students and two teachers. The students came from different upper-secondary school programmes with specialisations in science, technology or social sciences. The teachers had extensive experience in conducting ecological fieldwork. Both were deeply knowledgeable about biodiversity, had expertise in identifying a variety of species and were familiar with the bog, which they had visited many times.

The fieldtrip

This study is based on an analysis of encounters during one overnight fieldtrip to a nature reserve to experience black grouse lekking (the mating behaviour where black grouses engage in competitive displays and courtship rituals) and the ecology of a bog in May. This fieldtrip was one of several during the course. Before the fieldtrip, the class had had indoor lessons on the ecology of bogs.

The students and teachers gathered in the schoolyard during the afternoon. They all packed themselves into two minivans and drove off to the bog. The afternoon and the evening were spent on education and experiencing the ecology of the bog and its inhabitants, and socialising around the campfire. From the beginning of the trip at the schoolyard, the atmosphere was exhilarated and anticipative of adventure. This positive mood lasted during the afternoon, the campfire event and into the very early morning hours when the group rose at sunrise, to observe the grouse lekking.

The empirical material

The empirical material consists of video and audio recordings. The recordings were made between arriving at and leaving the nature reserve. There are several advantages to using moving images for analysing human–nonhuman interactions. Jamie Lorimer (2013) discerns three: it allows bodily practices to be witnessed, it illustrates how human-nonhuman learning to be affected takes place, and it helps to deepen the analysis of power relations. In this study, the students were actively engaged in the selection and production of data. Ten audio recorders were distributed among the students. The students recorded events somewhat differently. Some students recorded everything; others recorded only intermittently. The first author video-recorded events. The surrounding nonhumans were also active participants in the production of data. The nonhumans are part of the emerging emotional collectives, they are affecting and affected bodies, just alike the participating humans, and therefore, they are a part of the data production.

According to Law (2004), a methodological sensitivity to the production of relations is necessary. Bodén et al. (2020) emphasise the question, “what kinds of methodological sensibilities are in fact activated” (p. 8). An inspirational role model of sensitive methodology is a curious practice, formulated by Haraway drawing on the work of Despret. A curious practice is about the polite and curious visit (Haraway 2016). The emergent emotional becoming-with is at the centre of data production. We were inspired by Haraway’s thinking about curiosity and openness in relation to the beings visited, acknowledging the possibility that the beings on the bog were “not who/what we expected to visit, and we are not who/what we anticipated either” (Haraway 2016, p. 127). During the field trip, data production was characterised by an openness where the first author sought to record events experienced as being potentially significant in relation to an interest in the human-nonhuman relations forming. Striving for openness allows researchers to capture moments when something interesting is about to happen “but only if one cultivates the virtue of letting those one visits intra-actively shape what occurs” (Haraway 2016, p. 127).

In accordance with Good Research Practice (Swedish Research Council 2017), the students and teachers were informed orally and in writing about the research project and their rights as participants in the research. Then all signed written consent forms. Ethical considerations are ongoing responsibilities, both in education and in research and are intertwined with all parts of the project: from the beginning, in presenting a reasonably accurate purpose to the participants, in acting and engaging respectfully during fieldwork, in analysis and in writing the story for the world. Our response-ability as researchers is cultivated, and our sensibility towards what ethical considerations can encompass is constantly growing. Researching fieldwork has also brought related ethical questions to the fore (questions that relate not only to the human research subjects), such as: Who has the right to a place? Who belongs to a place? When do humans belong and not? When should humans keep a distance and what could be lost in distancing? These questions target ethical dimensions of ecological fieldwork and the possibilities for ethically embracing terrestrials in ways other than as properties or recourses. The nonhuman–human relations of becoming-with companion species can open up new (e.g. ethical) perspectives on ecology education, about accountability and response-ability, about animal rights and possibilities, which question the human position.

Analysis

To answer the question about how becoming-with is manifested in the emergence of emotional collectives of humans and nonhumans in ecological fieldwork, we worked with verbatim transcriptions, including notes on physical interactions from the video and audio recordings.

The process of analysis starts at the bog when the first author intuitively engages in curious practice and records human–nonhuman relations and then continues through the work with the transcripts. Maggie MacLure (2013a) uses glow as an analytical concept. Things start to glow. The transcripts are thus agential, we—the data and the researchers—interact and form relations (MacLure 2013b). MacLure has likewise used the notion of wonder. She writes that we as researchers “may feel the wonder of the data in the gut, or the quickening heartbeat” and concludes, “(w)hen I feel wonder, I have chosen something that has chosen me” (Mac Lure 2013b, p. 229). Throughout the analytical process, the data at times seemed to glow, especially when the students and teachers engaged emotionally with materiality, the nonhumans of the bog, and the engagement became meaningful and supported the growth of ecological literacy.

In this study, becoming-with is operationalised through the notion of emotional collectives. Becoming-with (Haraway 2008) is merged with emotional collectives (Hasse 2020). Emotional collectives are produced when companion species are becoming-with each other. Emerging events glow, are analysed as emotional collectives and sorted as ways of becoming-with.

Results: Flows of becoming-with

Fieldwork encompasses a flow of human–nonhuman encounters, a flow of becoming-with companion species. The emotional collectives emerging include bodily sensations and feelings such as joy, interest, awe, beauty, care, curiosity and failure. Also, through the emotional collectives, different relations of becoming-with companion species are emerging: mimetic, anthropomorphic and fact oriented. Although the emotional collectives with different orientations emerge as intertwined, our ambition is to untangle and exemplify how they become at play. Overall, this is a story of fieldwork as a practice of producing companion species; how becoming-with companion species works in practice, how companion species come to matter as emergent ecological literacy.

Mimetic becoming-with

During the fieldwork, various situations of mimicking occur. Verbal and gestural expressions are used when humans are mimicking the behaviours or vocalisations of birds. For example, a teacher mimics the posturing of a black grouse both with his own body and with his hands and a student mimics the vocalisation of a common snipe. When mimicking organisms, the teacher follows a path of biologists before him. Charles Darwin was known for mimicking organisms. In his studies of orchids and pollinating insects, he assumed the roles of both plant and insect (Hustak and Myers 2012). Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers (2012) write about Darwin’s comparison of an orchid with a man, suggesting that this be read as an experiment with the body,

(t)he man behind this analogy is not just any man; it is Darwin moving his body in order to model it on the distinct anatomy of each orchid. Rather than imposing human form on the plant, he has entrained his body to the peculiar shapes of these flowers. (p. 93).

Hustak and Myers describe Darwin’s mimetic experiments as “sometimes violent, sometimes tender” and “it attuned him to the sensibilities of both orchids and insects” (p. 93). Despret (2013) further elaborates on Hustak and Myers’ interpretation of Darwin’s actions, adding that Darwin got “involved in the lives of other beings the very same way they get involved in the lives of one another” in “reciprocal induction” (p. 36). Despret concludes that Darwin was becoming-with the orchids and insects and that it is impossible to say who activated whom. During the fieldtrip to the bog, the students and teachers engaged in mimetic ways of becoming-with nonhumans, much like Darwin. Mimetic emotional collectives formed with students and common snipe and with students and grouse.

Mimetic emotional collective: common snipe-students-teachers-the winnowing

In the following excerpt, two students are mimicking the common snipe in varying ways. Winnowing is the distinct sound made by the common snipe’s tail feathers as it dives in a display flight to attract a mate and to deter potential predators. This haunting sound is also referred to as drumming. The winnowing flight can be seen, and especially heard, throughout the breeding season.

Excerpt 1: There it is!

• 1. Simon: There.

• 2. Herman: There it is (Herman is pointing at the flying common snipe).

• 3. Anders: Do you see when it dives, when it dives the next time, you will hear that sound.

• 4. Fredrik: Hear that rubububububu (imitating the common snipe).

• 5. Johan: In the old days, it was called “horsgöken” [Swedish word, alluding to the sound of a horse] due to its disctinctive sound.

• 6. Fredrik: What the fuck? What a strange sound (laughs) rububububu (imitates and laughs).

• 7. Herman: Wiii (makes a diving gesture with his hand towards Fredrik).

The students mimic the common snipe’s actions. Fredrik mimics the sound of the snipe by rhythmically hitting his own throat while making the sound (4, 6, Fig. 1). Herman mimics the bird’s dive with his hand and adds a sound effect (7, Fig. 2). One of the teachers is scaffolding the situation by drawing attention to the actions of the common snipe as something to notice and care about (3). The other teacher adds information about the bird (5). Emotions are expressed as Fredrik shows interest and wonders about the bird’s strange diving sound (6), and the boys laugh together.

Fig. 1

Fredrik mimics the vocalisation of the common snipe

Fig. 2

Herman mimics the bird’s dive with his hand

Mimetic emotional collective: grouse-students-teachers-the murmur

In the next episode, the teacher, Anders, mimics the black grouse with his hands.

Excerpt 2: Do you hear the murmur?

• 1. Johanna: Yes…there they are…

• 2. Anders: They have…like, a big circle (shows with his hand) …and with…turned towards each other, then, now, and then they fly up towards each other (shows with his hand) to mark…

• 3. Anders: Do you hear the murmur [in Swedish, porlandet]? (Demonstrates a light, fast wave with his hand. Johanna nods) Like, the current background sound, that’s their lekking sound.

• 4. Johanna: Mm.

Anders uses his hands to illustrate the position of the grouse forming a circle and flying towards each other (2). He uses his hand to illustrate the special lekking sound, the grouses’ murmur, by creating a light, wave-like motion (3). The mimicking actions are caused by the interaction with the grouse and the aim is to scaffold the student, Johanna, in becoming-with the grouses.

The scenes are affective and sensorial events in many ways. The winnowing flights are emotional expressions by the snipe, hard to know whether they are directed towards the group of humans or part of mating behaviour. The black grouse lekking involves the special lekking sound and the posturing and displaying. The events are visual and sonic. The teacher, Anders, mimics the grouses’ positions and the lekking sound with wave-like movements of his hands to involve and scaffold Johanna in becoming-with the grouse. Fredrik and Herman mimic the flight and the winnowing of the snipe.

Mimetic becoming-with companion species is produced in fieldwork. The mimetic emotional collectives show the significance of mimetically orientated becoming-with in ecology education. Research has focused on mimesis as being important for processes in education. Wulf (2008) writes, “(m)imetic learning does not, however, just denote mere imitation or copying: Rather, it is a process by which the act of relating to other persons and worlds in a mimetic way leads to an enhancement of one ́s own world view, action and behavior.” (p. 56, italics in original). In line with Wulf (2008), we argue that mimicking is an “act of relating” (p. 56, italics in original). Thus, the mimetic becoming-with can be seen as cultivating specific forms of ecological literacy. Hustak and Myers (2012) describe Darwin’s mimetic actions as a sensible attunement towards those being mimicked and, according to Despret (2013), Darwin was becoming-with the mimicked orchids and insects as he got involved in their lives. The same can be said when Fredrik and Herman mimic the common snipe. The boys are becoming-with the snipe in an embodied, mimetic way in an emotional collective with engagement and laughter. The common snipe is becoming-with the boys; the boys are part of the bird’s life, for a while. Through the mimicking, Fredrik and Herman learn to be affected. The teacher, Anders, uses embodied mimicking actions to involve Johanna so she can learn to be affected. Emotional collectives with companion species are formed as the students become with the snipe and the grouse and different kinds of emotions, such as engagement and joyfulness, are expressed and part of the learning situation within the collective. Returning to Latour (2018), the fieldwork contributes with situations where the students are provided opportunities to explore belonging to a land with nonhumans, to live as terrestrials among terrestrials.

Anthropomorphic becoming-with

During the field trip, varying examples of collectives of companion species oriented towards anthropomorphism, or episodes kindred with anthropomorphism, emerged. Students and teachers are seen talking directly to nonhumans as if they were humans. Students and teachers are also talking about nonhumans as if they were humans. The students make up “human” stories where the nonhumans are positioned as humans. In Excerpt 3, the student, Ellinor, is talking directly to the grouse. In Excerpt 4, the students, Joel and Fredrik, are talking about the grouse as if they were human. In science, anthropomorphism is commonly policed, as an improper way of doing science (Despret 2013). Nevertheless, anthropomorphism is part of science practice. For example, Myers (2015) reveals in an ethnographic study how anthropomorphism is used among experts and scientists without hesitation. However, when it comes to publications and pedagogical contexts, scientists tend to be more restrictive and careful regarding how they communicate, being “wary of the effects of anthropomorphism on student understanding of molecular processes” (p. 54). During the field trip, anthropomorphic emotional collectives formed with students, grouse, teachers and methane.

Anthropomorphic emotional collective: grouse-students

Karin and Ellinor are watching the black grouse (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Students watch the black grouse

Excerpt 3: Fight then!

• 1. Karin: I just want them to …start fighting (using the large binoculars).

• 2. Ellinor: Come on, fight then! (directed to the grouse)

• 3. Ellinor: Hey, why are you starting a fight!

Ellinor starts talking directly to the grouse. First, she talks as if the grouse can hear her (2) and then, as if she is one of them (3). Ellinor metamorphises herself into a provocative fighter and the grouse as a fighting peer. An emotional collective of fight emerges, contributing to the growth of ecological literacy. Ellinor is paying attention to the grouses’ way of life, and becoming affected, she is learning to be affected, and becoming-with the grouse.

Anthropomorphic emotional collective: grouse-students-teacher

Another example starts with a comment from the teacher about one grouse sitting in a treetop. From that starting point the students make up stories.

Excerpt 4: One that is a little lost

• 1. Anders: Do you see the one sitting in a treetop?

• 2. Sara: Yes.

• 3. Anders: …scouting.

• 4. Sara: Yes, it is.

• 5. Joel: Hey brother, he’s scouting.

• 6. Fredrik: He is watching.

• 7. Joel: Sure.

• 8. Fredrik: The suburb.

• 9. Johanna: He, in the tree…

• 10. Fredrik: Yes, he doesn’t want to be there, he doesn’t want to watch.

• 11. Joel: He is tired of scouting.

• 12. Fredrik: Yes, it is his turn to… play.

• 13. Ellinor: But there is one that is a little lost, it is starting to move away from the group.

• 14. Joel: It’s clearly a you, Fredde [nickname for Fredrik] (with warmth in his voice).

• 15. Fredrik: Yes.

• 16. Stina: It is not easy to be a grouse.

The teacher, Anders, comments on one of the grouse sitting alone in a treetop (1). Joel continues with the comment, “(h)ey brother” (5) directed at the grouse in the treetop, and starts a “human story” with the black grouse as an actor. In this case, the black grouse gets the role of watching the suburb (6, 8). Later, Fredrik and Joel imagine the grouse getting tired of scouting (10, 11). On one occasion, a grouse leaves the lekking scene (13) and Joel compares this behaviour to Fredrik (14).

There are several instances during the field trip when the students narrate “human stories” based on encounters with the grouse. The students are talking directly to the grouse and making jokes about the grouse as if they were humans; they tell stories and compare themselves with the grouse, although the stories have nuances of seriousness in terms of making plans for the future, mating behaviour and loneliness. In a way, the students bring themselves emotionally closer to the grouse. They also use grouse features and behaviours to discuss and try out human behaviours. It is a serious role play that involves understanding themselves, generated by the emotional collective with the grouse.

In another scene, from the afternoon the day before the lekking, the students are on the boardwalk, crossing the bog, when they hear methane gas bubbles plopping, which evokes jokes and emotional discussions among the students about what caused the bubbling, and they share science facts about methane. Joel giggles and blames one of the girls for farting: “But Ida!” Herman says, “(m) ethane is farts”, and Stina adds: “Methane is a gas” and “(b)ut it is like this—methane, ethane…” referring to the methane series. Herman anthropomorphises methane, giving it intention: “It is methane that wants to surface” (cf. Myers 2015). Herman adds: “But, are you a bit methan-ish?”, fusing Ida the person with methane, and thus features of methane become features of Ida. The students are making up entertaining stories based on fieldwork encounters using non-restrictive “morphic practice(s)” (Myers 2015, p. 60).

In the anthropomorphic becoming-with, ecological literacy is produced in varying emotional collectives with methane and the grouse. While anthropomorphism has commonly been seen as a trap that should be avoided, according to Myer’s (2015) reasoning, the real trap is using humans as the reference point and not valuing the nonhuman way of being in the world. When Haraway (2016) writes about Chthulucene, she does that to acknowledge the nonhuman dependence. She argues that the notion of Anthropocene is not suitable to think with. Our interpretation is that she agrees with Myers (2015) that the real trap is to disregard the nonhuman ways of living and dying. The storying, the worlding of our time deserves “the side-winding, snaky shape of becoming-with” (Haraway 2016, p. 119). Both Despret (2004; 2013) and Myers (2015) write about how encountering nonhumans changes or metamorphises humans when becoming-with other species. Despret (2013) writes, “it is the possibility of becoming not exactly the other through metamorphosis but with the other” (p.17). Despret (2013) also uses the notion zoomorphism, for example, when describing Konrad Lorenz as a young boy interacting with jackdaws. A young jackdaw adopted Lorenz when he managed to zoomorphise himself and in the becoming-with the bird was able to be adopted by the bird (Despret 2004). Myers (2015) pays attention to how plant scientists “learn to pay attention to what it is that plants pay attention to” (p. 42) and formulates the notion phytomorphism as a way to act out plant behaviours and sensing. Myers refers to this as “morphic practice” (p. 60). All these morphic practices are also affective/emotional practices; humans learn to be affected. There is also some previous research in science education pointing to how anthropomorphism can support learning in chemistry education (Manneh et al. 2018), for example, regarding the understanding of chemical bonding (Danckwardt-Lillieström et al. 2020). In this study, the students use morphic practices to emotionally become with the grouse, for example, when Ellinor positions herself as an aggressive grouse fighter, when Joel and Fredrik make up “human stories” based on the actions of the grouse, and also when they compare Fredrik’s withdrawn behaviour with a “lost” grouse. The students’ talk with the grouse are stories of becoming-with where human and nonhuman boundaries are blurred in emerging emotional collectives involving emotions of joy, engagement, loneliness and aggressiveness.

Fact-oriented becoming-with

Facts, and the interest in facts, come to play as important during the field trip at the bog. Hasse (2020) writes about how facts are entangled with the emotional collectives forming in university physics. She describes how, as an anthropologist, she registered with a physics educational programme to study how physics students become scientists and how she learnt that the teachers at Niels Bohr Institute of Physics “(teach) not just subject matter but futures, hopes and dreams” (p. 73). In the wake of her ethnographic work, Hasse began to speculate about physics in her everyday life and engaged herself emotionally and materially with the teachers’ research about exploring Mars. In the following examples, we describe how emotional collectives with facts also formed in the students’ and teachers’ encounters with companion species during field work—with a lizard, golden plover and sphagnum. Here, a humanist interest in facts—which constitutes a significant knowledge interest in scientific enterprises in the form of taxonomic and relational interests (cf. Schwab, 1978)—is a driving force in becoming-with the companion species. Using the words of Hasse, we may describe this factual interest as “a collective emotional bonding of concern for the facts” (2020, p. 88).

Fact-oriented emotional collective: lizard-students-researcher-teacher

The first example is from an episode where the group encounters a small lizard on the boardwalk as they enter the bog. Excerpt 5 provides a short glimpse. The positive emotional engagement with the lizard includes the whole group of students and the lizard is seen as a cute creature that should be protected. The students want to see it and hold it. To the lizard, the situation is likely threatening, and it tries to hide.

There is excitement in the group of students and teachers when encountering the lizard. They express positive attitudes to the lizard, which is “cool”, “fine”, and “really cute”, with the teacher finally affirming their feelings for the lizard. When Anders affirms the students’ emotional expressions, he indicates that this way of relating to the lizard is desirable in ecology education. The teacher and the students create an emotional collective involving particular ways of thinking, feeling and relating with the lizard. The students learn to be affected with the lizard. This emotional collective encompasses an interest in science facts as well. The following excerpt follows a negotiation about which species the lizard belongs to.

Excerpt 5: It had legs.

• 1. Sara: No, it could not have been a slow-worm.

• 2. Kristin: Didn’t it have legs?

• 3. Herman: Yes, it had legs.

• 4. Kristin: Yes, I thought it had legs.

• 5. Herman: A slow-worm is like a snake.

Sara says, “it could not have been a slow-worm” (1). The first author asks if the animal had legs (2) and Herman confirms that it did (3), pointing out that “(a) slow-worm is like a snake” (5). Herman uses the fact that slow-worms look like snakes (even though they are actually lizards) to confirm that this creature was not a slow-worm. It matters to the student whether the animal was a slow-worm or a lizard.

Fact-oriented emotional collective: golden plover-facts-students-teacher-binoculars

The second example is from a conversation about the golden plover as a breeding bird in this area of Sweden. The conversation emerges after identifying the vocalisation of the golden plover and the information from the teacher that the bog is a breeding area for this specific bird.

Excerpt 6: That’s awesome!

• 1. Ellinor: How many did you say?

• 2. Anders: Five pairs nesting.

• 3. Ellinor: Oh, that’s nothing!

• 4. Stina: But, wait, wait…

• 5. Anders: And they are here!

• 6. Stina: That’s awesome!

Both Ellinor and Stina are impressed by the fact that very few pairs of golden plover nest in this area of Sweden (3, 4). The teacher, Anders, strengthens the positive feeling of being impressed: “And they are here!” (5). Stina concludes with “(t)hat’s awesome!” (7). Stina is expressing awe. The vocalisation of the golden plover initiates the identification and presentation of ecological facts about the bird which are intertwined and supported by emotional expressions.

In a short episode, the student, Joel spots a golden plover, and the teacher Anders, and Joel are excited (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4

A golden plover is spotted

Excerpt 7: A golden plover over here!

• 1. Joel: I have caught a golden plover over here!

• 2. Anders: Fancy! [in Swedish Tjusigt!]

• 3. Simon: It is excitement in everyday life…

• 4. Herman: That gilds everyday life.

• 5. Anders: What fun that we also got to see the golden plover!

The teacher, Anders, confirms Joel’s excitement (2). Simon and Herman make slightly ironical, but affirming and supportive jokes about Joel and Anders’ enthusiasm (3, 4). After a short while, Anders adds a comment about the joy of seeing the golden plover as well (5).

The boys continue talking about the golden plover and Herman is disappointed about not being able to see the bird. Herman makes a negative comment about himself: “Sure, I’m really lousy. But I didn’t see a thing”, and he laughs, displeased. Joel comforts Herman by explaining that the teacher, Johan’s, successful bird spotting depended on his having the binoculars: “He’s got binoculars, of course he can see it”. But Herman knows it’s not all about the binoculars, Herman refers to the teacher as having “built-in binoculars”. The negative affective judgment about being “really lousy” and commenting on the teacher as having “built-in binoculars” reveals parts of Herman’s knowledge about the situation. Herman knows that the teacher is capable of things he is not. This could be compared with the national census of the migratory corncrake in Scotland, and the embodied skills required of the surveyors (Lorimer, 2008). The statement about being “really lousy” indicates a desire, or an expectation of being more successful in encountering the bird if only one were capable enough. Joel, the teachers, and the bird share an emotional collective and Herman expresses a desire to join, to learn to be affected.

Fact-oriented emotional collective: sphagnum-students-teacher

The next excerpt starts with a question from the teacher about the bog’s most common plants. As the conversation unfolds, descriptions about the appearance of sphagnum emerge. As the students try to find the name of the common moss, features of sphagnum appear and enrich the conversation.

Excerpt 8: The most common plants?

• 1. Anders: What are the most common plants then?

• 2. Herman: Those little things that stand out.

• 3. Sara: Moss!

• 4. Anders: Yes!

• 5. Sara: Those…

• 6. Herman: What's their name…?

• 7. Sara: What's their name?

• 8. Herman: Those little prickly [in Swedish taggig] things.

• 9. Sara: Yes, the flowery things?

• 10. Stina: Yes, the flowers.

• 11. Sara: …but it is not flowers.

• 12. Herman: Prickly…

• 13. Simon: What’s the name of the flower?

• 14. Anders: Bog rosemary?

• 15. Sara: No, those (pointing at sphagnum).

Herman directs the interest towards a plant that “stand(s) out” (2). Sara knows it is a moss (3). The students start to negotiate the identity of the moss and want to know its name (6, 7). Herman describes it as “those…prickly things” (8) and Sara as “the flowery things” (9). Both descriptions fit the moss, which is a sphagnum. Stina picks up the word flower (10) and the conversation takes a detour when the teacher suggests bog rosemary (14) which grows at the location. But Herman and Sara know it is not a flower, Sara eventually pointing out sphagnum (15); further on in the conversation, the teacher, Johan, gives them the answer. In the conversation, Herman and Sara are becoming-with sphagnum. They are identifying visible features such as “stands out”, “prickly” and “flowery” in the fact-oriented becoming-with the moss and in the satisfaction of knowing the name sphagnum.

Ida sits down on the boardwalk and puts her hand into the water, reaching for sphagnum. Her hand and the sphagnum touch. An optic-haptic collective emerges (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5

Sphagnum and the hand touching

Excerpt 10: Soaked sphagnum

• 1. Ida: What is this then?

• 2. Simon: A lump of poop?

• 3. Ida: Not poop.

• 4. Stina: I think that is just very soaked sphagnum.

Ida asks, “(w)hat is this then?” (1, see Fig. 5) and gets an answer from her peer, Stina: “I think that is just very soaked sphagnum” (4) and she is fact-oriented becoming-with sphagnum, including the sensation of soaked sphagnum and its capacity to absorb water.

In the above examples, all senses are involved in the experience of fieldwork. When Ida puts her hand into the water, there is a blurring of the touch and sight senses. Eva Hayward (2010) has invented the apparatus fingeryeyes to describe the act of “attending to the interplay of vision and touch” (p. 581). “To see, to feel, to sense, and to touch—“fingeryeyes”–slide into each other, making new prepositions of observation: seeing with tact; touching by eye: feeling from vision.” (p. 582). Fingeryeyes is optic-haptic registration and it “is about multispecies and multimedium sensing” (p. 582). Hayward suggests “that an attention to texture as it is generated through the constitutive supplementary of vision and touch can offer novel prehensions of the relationship between species.” (p. 582). Fact-oriented becoming-with companion species is produced during the field trip at the bog. We can see how science facts, as Haraway (2016) puts it, become partners in worlding. And as Latour (2018) puts it, facts do not “stand up all by themselves” (2018, p. 25). Facts are part of emotional collectives. For example, the facts about the golden plover as a breeding bird with five pairs nesting in the area invoke positive feelings in the students and in their understanding of the world. Thus, the ecological literacy produced through the emerging fact-oriented emotional collectives blurs the senses, emotions and the facts.

Discussion

Fieldwork provides places for exploring ways of becoming terrestrial. The common snipe with its winnowing sound affords mimetic becoming-with when the boys mimic the bird. The process is mixed with emotions of joy, with facts about when the bird makes the sound, and information about the bird’s archaic name. The enjoyment of mimicking birds forms part of an emerging emotional collective of students becoming-with the birds. The students are also becoming-with sphagnum in a fact-oriented way, with factual curiosity about the moss they name and the features they discern, while the soaked sphagnum offers a sensuous experience to curious fingeryeyes (cf. Hayward 2010). Through morphic practices, described by Despret (2013) and Myers (2015), the students are becoming-with the grouse and methane, fusing boundaries and making up stories to try out ways of being in the world. Ongoing, mingling companion species becoming-with each other, shaping each other, learning to be affected and forming emotional collectives are manifesting the attentiveness and the possibilities of a life in attunement with the Earth. This is the political act of fieldwork. To play with words, fieldwork affords terrestrialisation.

The separation of ways of becoming-with is an analytical construct, an attempt to say something about the world, to sort out the ongoingness of encounters. When the students become part of emergent emotional collectives of fieldwork, ecological literacy is produced: An ecological literacy that is relational, and emerges in relationships with companion species. Fieldwork is a shared practice of collective agency, where the collective unifies, and ecological literacy is produced through human–nonhuman encounters (Persson et al. 2022). Different ways of becoming-with—mimetic, anthropomorphic, fact oriented—afford engagement and joint meaningfulness in emotional collectives. The emotional collectives themselves produce ecological literacy as the companion species become-with each other, and facts, feelings, emotions, doings, care, acts of noticing and attention emerge and attach things together and shape the ongoing directions. Hasse (2020) writes, “(w)e form a collective when we momentarily connect the same ideas, emotions and meaning with the same material” (p. 93) and “(m)aterials and meanings are spun into entanglements of connections between humans, emotions, devices, visions, bodies and their joint human and non-human agency.” (p. 95). When fieldwork and outdoor ecology education focus narrowly on factual content and instrumental methods, the relational aspect of ecological literacy may be disregarded. We argue based on this research that the relational ecological literacy needs to be acknowledged and brought to the fore.

The role of the teachers in fieldwork is pivotal, and how the teachers act and show concern, affect and establish meaningfulness will affect the emotional collectives emerging. The teachers’ attunement with the surroundings and their embodied skills of noticing and paying attention are part of the emotional collective (cf. Lorimer 2008). The teachers provide space for emotions and encourage curiosity and explorations of becoming-with. Becoming-with and learning to be affected assume bodies. Educational fieldwork can afford less common companion species collectives and an embodied emotional learning. To make emotions visible and desirable in fieldwork practice requires a readiness from teachers to manage emotions.

Throughout the fieldwork, a positive mood and joyfulness permeated the practice and speculatively one could say we were trekking in the lighter parts of Haraway’s (2016) Chthulucene (“ongoing multispecies stories and practices of becoming-with” p. 55), although the fieldwork practice opens up spaces for the shadier parts of Chthulucene. Tentatively, this joyful, curious and emotionally vibrant practice could fertilise an exploration of the uncanniness of the bog, and the world, through the lens of Chthulucene in ecology education. What is a peat bog and what does the peat bog do in education? Is it a resource of peat, a carbon sink in desperate need of re-creation, or the home of the bog born. It depends on the degree of anthropocentrism and the framing. Returning to the quote, “(w)e are earthbound, we are terrestrials amid terrestrials” (Latour 2018, p. 86), we can reflect on it as an ethical request for cultivating response-ability in ecology education (Haraway 2016), teaching one another to share the planet (Bazzul 2023).

The results from this study can be used to further explore how fieldwork education practices can be developed to acknowledge emotions along the whole of the register and incorporate explicit ethical reflections about the positioning of humans in the world. Grief, loss and suffering are entangled with ecology education as well as joy, wonder and indifference. For the teaching of ecology in schools, we would like to encourage teachers to make space for the flows of becoming-with nonhumans—to provide opportunities for the young to experience dependence and belonging to Earth. The teachers, students and the nonhumans at the bog in this study have shown us the importance of introducing students to places, to give room for growing familiarity and experiences of belonging with nonhumans through ecological fieldwork without too much haste. We imagine that emotional explorations of amazement and disturbance, of compassion and vulnerability—at a slow pace—can and need to be cultivated and expanded in educational practices in order to support the growth of a terrestrial ecological literacy.