An Ecology of Practices – The Hydrosocial Cycle as a Matter of Concern In Preschool Children’s Explorations

Sammendrag

The aim of this article is to investigate the local ecology of practices in joint engagements with the hydrosocial cycle by preschool children, water specialists and a researcher in a Swedish urbanised coastal area. In particular, the article considers the potential of Isabelle Stengers’ plea for creative meetings, knowledge exchanges and collaborations to produce novel relational practices between different parts of society, practices and disciplines. This local ecology of practices was investigated in a posthumanist onto-epistemological intervention research project, theoretically and methodologically informed by Isabelle Stengers, Donna Haraway and Anna L. Tsing. In three stories constructed by the preschool children’s and the researcher’s collectively produced data – digital films and photographs, notes and drawings – attention is drawn to the hydrosocial cycle through the concepts of tracing, hierarchies and values in the locally situated ecology of practices. The stories emphasise the significant contemporary topic of water and wastewater in everyday preschool practices and activities and the processes through which water and society make and remake each other. In conclusion, the article suggests that creating relational practices and collaborations between different parts of society could make other questions possible and alternative methods conceivable, for example changed approaches to collaborations between young children, researchers and other professions.