(Un)Learning to Live Together in the Climate-Changed World: Young People's Lived Planetary Citizenship

Abstract

The paper frames lived planetary citizenship as a social position and agency that can be developed through (un)learning in formal and informal educational spaces. As part of the special issue on planetary youth research and young people's eco-emotions, we join in the global ethic approach with emphasis on political agency and a decolonising approach of unlearning. We adopt a pluralist approach to citizenship, starting from a relative critique of anthropocentrism that points to non-state-based belonging and agency, linked to justice-oriented theorisation of post-cosmopolitan ecological citizenship and the mediated immediacy of human existence. We conceptualise lived planetary citizenship from a four-fold perspective, including spatiality and intersubjectivity as key dimensions, and stressing the performed and affective nature of citizenship as experienced and enacted in everyday life. The approach underlines the need for recognition and encouragement of citizenship that does not follow conventional forms of politics, including institutional participation and organised activism.