Atmosphere

Atmosphere, or affective atmosphere, is a concept that has been lately utilised especially in the fields of media research, geography, and anthropology. This concept challenges the still image of scientific research and helps to attune to phenomena such as movement, transformation and contagion.

In the research project Children of the Anthropocene, we have employed the concept of atmosphere as an approach that has helped us to talk about the details of events and, on the other hand, foreground the affective dynamics in them. We have asked how atmospheres are constructed, used, and transformed in contexts with other than human animals, such as the zoo and the natural history museum.

Today, there is a lot of talk about the so-called environmental emotions, also concerning children and young people. The notion of atmosphere enriches this conversation that oftentimes is based on individual emotional experiences that can be named. With the concept of atmosphere we can try to achieve collective moods moving in societies that are mixed or more difficult to verbalise.

Atmosphere is a challenging approach because atmospheres are ambiguous and fleeting. They are both situational and far-reaching, circling around the planet in seconds in the digital age. They cross geographical and physical boundaries and are, fundamentally, phenomena of the more-than-human world. On the other hand, they are concrete political forces, which affect politics and economic life. Anderson and Ash (2015) talk about atmospheres as two-way power fields: atmosphere shapes events which also shape the atmosphere.

As educational scholars and childhood and youth researchers, we are especially inspired by the thought by Kathleen Stewart (2011) that the way things are learned and made significant is often connected to their qualities, rhythms, intensities, relations, and movements.

Stewart also talks about atmospheric attunement. During our work in the different fields of our research, we have adopted, above all, the thought of multispecies attunement. For example, at the zoo we have examined seasonal and circadian rhythms and weather patterns and how they bring together or separate animals of different species, including humans.