Inquiry as Divination

The article proposes divination as a speculative method for inquiry, drawing primarily on the work of Deleuze. Divinatory practices would be diagrammatic, ambulant, cryptic, affirmative, and experimental. They would look for strange relations between the one and the many, in the shifting totality of the cosmos, and entertain relations that are always to some extent inhuman. The article offers an example from an ethnographic study of classroom interaction. It suggests that divination has the power to import “catastrophe” into the frameworks and methods of research, in the hope of clearing a space for creativity and unforeseen outcomes

Insect-Thinking as Resistance to Education's Human Exceptionalism : Relationality and Cuts in More-Than-Human Childhoods

This article discusses the "more-than-human" turn in qualitative inquiry and education, engaging with the critiques presented by philosophers, animal studies scholars, and educational scholars toward the "too easy" adoption of an inclusive relational ontology. Based on Barad's concept of re-turning, the article develops a methodology of insect-thinking, which folds memories as well as scientific and "low theoretical" sources in and out the analysis to re-narrate child-animal encounters as entangled with place, time, class, poverty, displacement, imagination, and planetary futures. Insect-thinking produces irritations and interruptions to the human exceptionalism that underpins educational research and childhood studies. Based on conflicts, avoidance, and violence in child-insect relations, the authors discuss "cuts in relationality" and propose insect-thinking as means to approach more-than-human worlds as both shared and incommensurable.Peer reviewe

The ‘new materialisms’: a thorn in the flesh of critical qualitative inquiry?

This comprehensive volume of contemporary, original articles places this trend in its historical context, describes the current landscape of critical work, and considers the future of this turn

Ambulant methods and rebel becomings: reanimating language in post-qualitative inquiry

Language has been at the core of humanism, as a pre-eminently human capacity—the primary resource through which the world is mediated. What has/will become of language in the post-human turn? And what are the implications for post-qualitative method

Eu(rope): (re)assembling, (re)casting and (re)aligning lines of de- and re-territorialisation of early childhood

The aim of this paper is to (re)(e)value(ate) current micro-and macropolicies and politics that shape – and are shaped by – conceptualisations of and, in consequence, practices towards young children in a range of institutions/figurations. The 'geopolitical' location for our investigation is Europe, understood as conceptual space(s) as well as (geographical) territory. Whilst we begin by focusing attention on events within an English context, we nevertheless move beyond geographical boundaries. We argue that movements that are currently being undertaken in England are not individual activities. Rather, England is infected and affected by European and global histories, practices, policies, philosophies and epistemologies. We argue that it is the oscillations between different components within a broad European assemblage (human and nonhuman) that makes something happen. Subsequently, we detail and question whether 'happenings' that are occurring in England can be considered as possible creative openings where early childhood education/care could be reassembled 'differently'. Once one steps outside what's been thought before . . . once one ventures outside what's familiar and reassuring, once one has to invent new concepts for unknown lands, then methods and moral systems break down and thinking becomes, as Foucault puts it, a ''perilous act'', a violence, whose first victim is oneself

Reconceptualising early language development: matter, sensation and the more-than-human

This article critically interrogates the model of language that underpins early years policy and pedagogy. Our arguments emerge from an ethnographic study involving 2-year-olds attending a day care centre that had begun to hold a substantial proportion of its sessions outdoors. The resultant shift in pedagogy coincided with changes in the children’s speaking and listening practices. We take these changes as a starting point for a reconceptualisation of early language and the conditions under which it develops. Drawing on posthuman and Deleuzian theory, we propose a relational- material model of early language, which situates language within a wider, multi-sensory and more-than-human milieu, in which children are immersed from their earliest days. We end by asking whether early language development might be better supported by paying less attention to words, grammar and meaning, in favour of fostering participation in dynamic, multisensory, collective events

Eu(rope): (re)assembling, (re)casting and (re)aligning lines of de-and re-territorialisation of early childhood

Our research strategy is an exercise of ‘mapping’ the (early childhood) assemblage which brings about the possibility – and necessity – of constant positioning and re-positioning, in relation to each other as researchers, and in relation to the ‘desiring machine’ that is early childhood education in times of neo-liberalism. In undertaking this exercise, we set out to critique the discourse as much as the practices of neo-liberalism which, while not necessarily coherent, and quite often contradictory, nevertheless work to universalise the marketisation and commodification of all aspects of life including the education and care of young children. A pivotal aim of this assemblage is to (re)(e)value(ate) current micro- and macro-policies and –politics (Dahlberg & Moss) that shape – and are shaped by – conceptualisations of and, in consequence, practices towards young children in a range of locations, institutions and figurations (Elias, 1978; 1982). The ‘geopolitical’ location for our investigation is Europe, understood as conceptual space(s) as well as (geographical) territory. Our genealogical (re)turn within this ‘knowledge space’ or ‘knowledge assemblage’ (Turnbull) can be understood as ‘a dialectical [process] in which forms of social space are co-produced’. So, whilst we begin by focusing attention on events within an English context we nevertheless make forays beyond geographical boundaries. We argue that movements that are currently being undertaken in England are not individual, peculiar activities carried out in splendid isolation. Rather, England is infected and affected by European and global histories, practices, policies, philosophies and epistemologies. These, we argue, shoot across borders and boundaries in what could be understood as a succession or chain of rhizomatic movements. It is the oscillations between different components within a broad European assemblage (human and non-human) that makes something happen. Subsequently we detail a number of ‘happenings’ that are occurring in England. We do so with a view to asking whether these events are possible creative openings where early childhood education and care could be reassembled ‘differently

The Refrain of the A-grammatical Child: Finding Another Language in/for Qualitative Research

The article critically interrogates the figure of the child in Deleuze and its relation to language as an entry point to the question of what a materialist theory of language might involve and how it might be put to work in qualitative methodology. The Deleuzian child is a figure of destratification and resistance to dominant narratives—a resistance that is inextricably bound up with the materiality of the child’s body and its relation to language. Not yet fully striated by the rules of grammar that order and subjugate the world, children challenge “the hegemony of the signifier” by remaining open to multiple semiotic connections. What would it mean for qualitative methodology to engage its own “becoming-child”

Video game discourses and implications for game-based education

Increasingly prevalent educational discourses promote the use of video games in schools and universities. At the same time, populist discourses persist, particularly in print media, which condemn video games because of putative negative effects on behaviour and socialisation. These contested discourses, we suggest, influence the acceptability of games and limit critical analysis of their effectiveness as pedagogic tools. This article focuses on the representation of video games in media discourse. We present insights from a small-scale study of the construction of video game discourses in the UK print media in 2013, and discuss three areas that emerged. First, the assumptions inherent in the representation of the ‘video game’; second, the implied lack of agency in the behaviour of ‘the gamer’; and third, the way in which blame is manipulated. Finally, we consider the implications for game-based education