Beyond ‘voice’, beyond ‘agency’, beyond ‘politics’? Hybrid childhoods and some critical reflections on children's emotional geographies (original) (raw)

journal contribution

posted on 2013-09-02, 13:55 authored by Peter Kraftl

In this paper I argue that a significant proportion of research on children’s emotional geographies has been deployed to reinforce the importance of children’s ‘voices’, their (independent) ‘agency’, and the various ways in which voice/agency maybe deemed ‘political’. Without wishing to dismiss or dispense with such approaches, I explore potential ways to go ‘beyond’ concerns with voice/agency/politics. Initially, I review studies of children’s participation (and participatory methods), activism and everyday lives that mobilise emotion and affect in productive ways. I contrast such studies with important questions raised by a reinvigoration of interest in the need for children to be able to represent themselves. I then explore the possibilities raised by so-called ‘hybrid’ conceptions of childhood e which go beyond biosocial dualisms e to enable further strides beyond voice/agency. Drawing on examples from alternative education and contemporary attachment theories, I explore some potential implications for children’s emotional geographies and relational geographies of age of what I term ‘more-than-social’ emotional relations. Yet I do not offer an unequivocal endorsement of these hybrid emotions. Thus, I end the paper by issuing some words of caution e both in terms of the critical questions raised by more-than-social emotional relations, specifically, and in terms of engendering broader debate about how and why scholars do (children’s) emotional geographies.

History

Citation

Emotion, Space and Society, 2013, in press

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING/Department of Geography/Human Geography

Version

Publisher version

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755458613000054

Notes

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Emotion, Space and Society. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Emotion, Space and Society, 2013, in press, DOI# 10.1016/j.emospa.2013.01.004.