Reconfiguring the Radical Other

Abstract

This article explores children’s consumption of ‘nature’ in culturally diverse urban places. Analysis of children’s oral, textual and visual representations of city life and observations of children’s spatial practices that were produced for research into the cultural practices of children in an urban context showed that children render nature in the city as a polluting and polluted presence. However, consumption practices that reconfigured ‘nature’ as part of urban culture dissolved the boundaries between nature and the city. I argue that this binary opposition between nature and urban culture echoes other binary oppositions that rest ultimately on the division between the Self and the Other. The ways that consumption practices reconfigure nature’s relationship to the city therefore offer insights into the negotiation of difference in urban everyday life.