Child studies multiple – collaborative play for thinking through theories and methods

This text is an exploration of collaborative thinking and writing through theories, methods, and experiences on the topic of the child, children, and childhood. It is a collaborative written text (with 32 authors) that sprang out of the experimental workshop Child Studies Multiple. The workshop and this text are about daring to stay with mess, “un-closure” , and uncertainty in order to investigate the (e)motions and complexities of being either a child or a researcher. The theoretical and methodological processes presented here offer an opportunity to shake the ground on which individual researchers stand by raising questions about scientific inspiration, theoretical and methodological productivity, and thinking through focusing on process, play, and collaboration. The effect of this is a questioning of the singular academic ‘I’ by exploring and showing what a plural ‘I’ can look like. It is about what the multiplicity of voice can offer research in a highly individualistic time. The article allows the reader to follow and watch the unconventional trial-and-error path of the ongoing-ness of exploring theories and methods together as a research community via methods of drama, palimpsest, and fictionary

The Child Tourist : Agency and Cultural Competence in VFR Travel

In this article, we meet a seven-year-old boy, Matti, who was adopted from his birth country in Africa by a family in Sweden. We meet him together with his family as they are planning a family adoption return trip to his birth country and again after their return. We argue that an adoption return trip is a form of family travel and/or visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel. By methodologically using a so-called children’s perspective we are primarily focusing on Matti and how he talks about the return trip. We explore some key concepts from child studies through Matti’s relational encounters in the world. By presenting agency and cultural competence as something that is enacted in practice, we show how they are enacted through the dependencies between Matti, his mother and his sister. The analysis shows that cultural competence and agency are fluid in the sense that they can be changed by how topics of discussion are woven through one another. Staying with Matti’s lived practices makes it possible to elaborate on and demonstrate different forms of competence and agency that are important for understanding children as tourists and children’s roles in family travel

Listening by 'staying with' the absent child

This article explores what it means to listen to children by moving beyond the notion of voice and staying with the absences of children. In this way, we include the possibly lost, forgotten or unapproachable children in child and childhood research. Our methodological starting point is to listen by ‘staying with’ the absences of children’s verbal voices and physical bodies in two photographs. These photographs depict material artefacts connected to children in vulnerable situations: shrouds for wrapping stillborn babies’ bodies, and children’s shoes as an emblem of children living in hiding from domestic violence. The idea is to explore how we can listen to children whose verbal or embodied encounters we cannot or do not wish to display. Our aim is to listen to these absences and discuss how they influence and possibly reshape the practices of listening, as well as notions of the child and childhood

Toddlers’ engagements with preschool playgrounds: ethnographic insights from Sweden

This article explores toddler – place relationships outdoors during early childhood education in Sweden. Informed by Tim Ingold’s theorization of movement, we explore toddlers’ embodied engagements with the preschool playground and how the human–non-human environments become entangled. The results show that, just as in the wider world, the processes enabling and limiting toddlers’ engagements in the playground are continuously in motion. Toddler–place relationships are continuously created through a mutual dependence between human and non-human entities. In this sense, toddlers’ engagements with playgrounds are not separate from the place through which they engage, but change place.Funding Agencies|Svenska Forskningsradet Formas</p