Drawing Analogies in Environmental Education

Abstract

Reconsidering the origin, process, and outcomes of analogy-making suggests practices for environmental educators who strive to disengage humans from the isolating illusions of dichotomizing frameworks. We can view analogies as outcomes of developmental processes within which human subjectivity is but an element, threading our sense of self back into its constitutive contexts, and into possible affinity with kinship practices of the world's diverse cultures. The article suggests that analogies create and perpetuate not only ideas and identities but relationships, and that what we surround ourselves with becomes the basis for engaging in and forming further relationships. I invite educators to consider practices (here I explore just one) that repopulate our analogical repertoire, that we may have more organic and vitalizing interactions with all our relations.