Beyond imagining: enacting intergenerational response-ability as world-building – commentary to Bowman

Abstract

This Reflection considers Bowman’s call to researchers to respond to young peoples’ concerns about the climate crisis as a "world-building project" suggesting that researchers can support young people by helping them imagine the future. Drawing on the work of Barad and Haraway, I want to widen the call by suggesting that researchers need to respond to the climate crisis through enactments of mutual response-ability. The challenge is how adults concerned with the climate crisis can work alongside young people to promote and create effective change. But more than that it is about researchers, universities, and others making change. Young people are protesting because they want adults to secure their future: the important question is how we best do this.