Constructing Argentina: The Scaffolding System in Children’s Narratives About Nature

The schooling of children means, among other things, a formal introduction to the conceptual systems of society and to the beliefs involved (Raiter, Lenguaje y sentido común. Biblios, Buenos Aires, 2003). However, children’s first contact with common sense meanings in society is through parents and family—surrounding adults—by means of the scaffolding system (Bruner, Acción, pensamiento y lenguaje. Alianza, Madrid, 1984, p 123). Adults provide these first meanings that later will be polished and developed at school. In the case of Argentina, these meanings are part of a type of capitalist discourse shaped by carnism (Joy, Why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows. An introduction to Carnism. Conari Press, 2011) and industrial fatalism (Anshelm and Hultman, Discourses of global climate change: apocalyptic framing and political antagonisms. Routledge, New York, 2016). The aim of this chapter is to describe the process by which adults cooperate in the development of children’s narratives about non-human animals and nature. We adopt a qualitative perspective to analyze three recorded interviews made by parents with their three-and-a-half-year-old children. For this purpose, a global questionnaire was used. Additionally, the children were asked to make a drawing related to the questions. The analysis of the narratives was carried out based on the methodological theoretical framework proposed by Lakoff (Moral politics: How liberals and conservatives think. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002) for the construction of frames, while the drawings were analyzed following the proposals of Kress and van Leeuwen (Reading images. A grammar of visual design. Routledge, London, 2021) regarding image analysis. We argue that, during the interviews, the parents build frames towards carnism and industrial fatalism that the children fill with the meanings they know as they also construct the logical relations that support those stories.