ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore our concept of ‘carbon cultures’ through ethnographic and creative empirical work that illuminates the relational, vital, and complex nature of young people’s everyday attachments to carbon. We explore a range of carbon economies in relation to young lives, drawing on examples ranging from custom car and motorbike cultures through to power stations, Pokemon games, documentary films, and carbon ‘dreamings’. Throughout our analysis of these examples, we take carbon as a material pedagogy of gendered performance which is intricately interwoven with perceptions and experiences of environmental, social, and subjective value. We are interested in how carbon cultures are understood and shaped by young people and how carbon operates as a pedagogical surface of desire within the cultural-material matrix of late capitalism under conditions of climate change.
