2013 Children, Youth and Environments Children, Youth and Environments 23(3), 2013 Children, Citizenship and Environment: Nurturing a Democratic Imagination in a Changing World Bronwyn Hayward (2012). New York: Routledge, 208 pages. $44.95 USD (paperback). ISBN-10: 1849714371; ISBN-13: 978-1849714372. Research and action with respect to children’s civic participation have become widespread over the past 25 years. Bronwyn Hayward’s Children, Citizenship and Environment: Nurturing a Democratic Imagination in a Changing World embodies several distinguishing characteristics, which together build a thoughtful, powerful and timely call for adult investment in meaningful children’s engagement. The author draws attention to ethnicity, class, migration, place and time as factors in the substance of children’s ideas and the civic opportunity structures they experience, with a particular focus on English-speaking, industrialized countries. She considers the ramifications of the dominant neoliberal political culture’s framing of democratic citizenship, and the implications of our children’s need to confront four intersecting challenges: dangerous environmental change, weakening democracies, growing social inequality, and a global economy marked by unprecedented youth unemployment and unsustainable resource extraction. Within this context the author carefully frames terms such as “environment,” “citizenship,” “children’s civic engagement,” and “environmental education.” She does so employing scholarship in the areas of political science, philosophy, child development, children’s participation and environmental education, as well as her own empirical analyses. Her data are drawn from focus groups conducted with an ethnically and socio-economically diverse group of 160 8- to 12-year-old residents in and around Christchurch, New Zealand. Discussion of children’s engagement in the environment is premised on the recognition of children as future and current citizens—people who shape and are shaped by social ecological contexts that include multiple settings (e.g. home, schools, malls, neighborhoods, regions, indigenous lands, nations of residence, countries of origin, etc.) (Bronfenbrenner 1974). Focus group data highlight the socio-cultural, political, economic and physical dimensions of children’s environments, illustrating them as intersecting and increasingly shaped by dynamics playing out not only locally but globally. Like Jacqueline Kennelly (2011), Hayward demonstrates how dominant neoliberal forces have increasingly framed notions of democratic youth citizenship in terms of localized individual practices and responsibilities (e.g., voting, buying “green” products, decreasing their families’ carbon footprints, charitable volunteering). She characterizes this conceptual and action framework as woefully inadequate given Book Review: Children, Citizenship and Environment: Nurturing a Democratic… 195 the scope and scale of human and environmental challenges faced by this generation. Instead, she underscores the need for collective action on systemic issues at multiple scales that places social justice at the center. Hayward’s analysis raises the question of how to foster this orientation toward youth citizenship, particularly in dominant political cultures and educational contexts that are unsupportive at best. In response, she draws upon child development scholarship and her own qualitative data to note that children’s natural inclinations to “make a difference” and grapple with issues of justice and injustice in their environment offer multiple opportunities to do so. However, she cautions that intentional adult support is required to help young people build on these inclinations and overcome barriers such as: The psychological challenge of engaging complex, long term issues; Challenges to youth agency (e.g. disciplining responses to collective youth action); Limited adult interest in youth perspectives (especially those of low-income youth of color); Limited youth access to adult-driven institutions; and Limited adult support to cultivate capacities and commitments associated with collective action (67-9). Hayward argues that assisting young people demands alternatives to de-politicized environmental and civic education. She argues for building ecological citizenship through approaches rooted in an alternative conceptual framework: SEEDS (Social agency, Environmental education, Embedded justice, Decentered deliberation and Self-transcendence). Such processes would encourage young people to think critically, politically and creatively about their situations, collectively imagine new possibilities, explore how power is exercised in decision-making, and practice strategies to effect community change. Also identified, although explored in a much more limited way, is the importance of cultivating children’s ability to acknowledge and engage the deep splits in values and understandings that exist in communities. More broadly, Hayward challenges us to address the...