Weaving Child-Plastic Relations with Early Childhood Educators in the Ecuadorian Andes

Abstract

In a small village in the Ecuadorian Andes called Racar, plastics are intimately woven into social and ecological structures. These entanglements move beyond human control and generate toxic dependencies between humans, plastics, and others. This requires a pedagogical shift in how early childhood educators understand and respond to plastics. Drawing on field research with educators in Racar, this paper attempts to interrupt human-centric discourses of the child as separate from Andean ecologies and resituates childhoods as differentially embedded in complex place relations.