“Os nossos ossos mergulham no mar”: Azorean existential experiences as a case for ecopedagogy

As remarked by Monteiro (2020), nature could be seen either as a thing-in-itself or as a social construction. In the former case, it cannot be treated separately from culture since anthropogenic expressions are no more and no less natural than the behaviours of other species. In the latter case, though, “naturalisation” becomes a way to posit a divide between what is human and what is not: thus, “naturalization” acts as a demarcation practice in which a socially-construed idea of “nature” contributes to a reductionist definition of humanity, which privileges some forms of emancipations over other ones. Such an attempt to overcome arbitrary forms of anthropocentrism is not limited to ethnography but shapes education as well. Namely, ecopedagogy attempts to reconcile education science—whose contemporary version was born out of anthropocentric concerns—and contextual elements of the environment (Dozza, 2018). This theoretical ethnological paper will review ethnographic data concerning the island communities of the Azores to sift them through the filters of ecopedagogy. The emerging picture will highlight how the environmental features contribute to the development of informal education processes that shape the identities in ways that are impossible to reproduce by means of formal schooling (Neilson et al., 2015).