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Beyond Urbanization: (Un)Sustainable Geographies and Young People's Literature- [electronic resource]

서명/저자: Beyond Urbanization: (Un)Sustainable Geographies and Young Peoples Literature - [electronic resource]

주기사항: Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-01, Section: B.

초록/해제: 요약The Anthropocene is an epoch of ecocide. It is also a conceptual apparatus denoting the various systems of exploitation that produce this destruction. Of these systems, urbanization remains popularly celebrated as the ultimate and inevitable expression of global human society. Drawing on Raymond Williams' methodology for cultural analysis, this dissertation explores the values, assumptions, and ideas that constitute a structure of feeling within this urban moment as it is expressed in literature for young people. This study suggests that distance-social, cultural, geographic, and cognitive-is a principle element of this structure of feeling. In particular, this study attends to the ways that idealized representations of rurality inadvertently mask the ecological realities playing out in the geographies they purport to depict, thus socializing young readers into the same collective, unarticulated value system that uncritically celebrates urbanization as the future. However, more recent works of literature for young people have offered glimpses at an emergent structure of feeling predicated not on distance but on rural youth action for sustainability. Ultimately, this dissertation suggests that reflecting on deeply held assumptions about the geographical valences of human "progress" may be conducive to revealing possibilities for more plural, inclusive, and ecologically-attuned societies.