Covid-19, the Anthropocene and Young People’s Well-Being: a Posthuman Rethinking of Young People as ‘Biocultural Creatures’

Abstract

Abstract In two recent edited collections – Young People and Thinking Technologies in/for the Anthropocene and Young People and Stories for the Anthropocene (Kraftl et al., 2022; Kelly et al., 2022) we and our colleagues have argued for the need to develop new ways of ‘troubling’ orthodoxies in youth studies when the Anthropocene is producing multiple crises in earth systems. In this paper we do some of that troubling by drawing on a recent project in which we conducted interviews with young people in the context of the crises generated by the covid-19 pandemic, and tell a version of the story of Shakira and her struggles to ‘live well’ in the Anthropocene. In thinking about what we can make of her story, we will use Frost’s (2016) understanding of humans as ‘biocultural creatures’ who emerge in and from ‘biocultural habitats’, to develop an account of young people’s well-being that foregrounds the materiality and vitality of young people’s embodiment.