Slow violence, depoliticisation and hope: Cultural landscapes of schooling in Wentworth, South Africa

Abstract

This ethnographic study of environmental learning in a South African township school unravels how formal education can depoliticise young people’s understandings of environmental decay. Conceptualising environmental learning through Rob Nixon’s notion of ‘slow violence’ and Hannah Arendt’s understanding of ‘action’, the article argues that despite the depoliticization enacted through schooling, individual learners and educators articulate subterranean understandings of the environmental multicrisis rooted in informal learning. This helps us understand the potential of environmental learning outside schools.