Babies’ engagements with everyday things : An ethnographic study of materiality, movement and participation

This thesis explores how babies (1-18 months old) engage with material things in their everyday lives. The aim is to contribute with theoretical and empirical insights into babies own practices around material things and how attending to these practices can lead to reflections on participation, material culture and everyday space. The empirical material is collected through video ethnographic fieldwork in the homes of seven babies and their families. The empirical material has been analysed through combining cultural analysis with the analytical approach ‘thinking with theory’. The thesis shows that sensoriality and movement is important for understanding babies own engagements with things and that these engagements are not limited to things given to, or intended for, them. Babies also shape the everyday spaces of the families through their movements of things in their homes. The analyses also show that focusing on sensoriality and movement in the meeting between babies and the researcher is a promising contribution to discussions concerning participatory research and ethnographic method. The thesis is theoretically situated within the field of child- and childhood studies. Avhandlingens syfte är att undersöka hur bebisar (1-18 månader) använder sig av materiella saker i deras vardagsliv. Syftet är att bidra med empirisk och teoretisk kunskap om bebisars egna praktiker samt hur ett fokus på bebisars egna intressen kan leda till reflektioner kring barns deltagande, materiell kultur och platsskapande i bebisars hem. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in genom videoetnografiskt fältarbete hemma hos sju bebisar och deras familjer. Materialet har analyserats med hjälp av en kombination av kulturanalys och genom att ’tänka med’ teori om rörelse. Avhandlingen visar att fokus på sensorialitet och rörelse är viktigt för att förstå vad bebisar gör med saker och att bebisars användande av saker inte är begränsat till leksaker eller andra saker avsedda för dom. Bebisar påverkar även hur hemmet är organiserat, till exempel, genom att flytta runt och sprida ut saker i hemmet. Analyserna pekar även på att ett fokus på sensorialitet och rörelse i mötet mellan bebisar och forskare är lovande för att undersöka frågor rörande etnografisk metod och deltagande. Avhandlingen är teoretiskt förankrad i barn – och barndomstudier

Culture by babies : Imagining everyday material culture through babies’ engagements with socks

This article takes its point of departure in babies’ engagements with socks and seeks to explore (1) how material culture matters in babies’ everyday lives and (2) how we can understand material culture through attending to babies’ own practices, that is, babies’ culture. The ongoingness, sensoriality and movement of material culture are highlighted, and the article concludes that re-thinking material culture through babies’ engagements with socks means shifting the focus away from objects’ established meaning and towards the materials of those objects

The flows of things – exploring babies’ everyday space-making

This article draws on a larger ethnographic study conducted in the homes of babies aged between one and 18 months and their families in Sweden. The article explores how everyday space is made in the homes of families through babies? engagements with material things by methodologically working with maps, images, lists, and stories. Three themes ? the practices of spreading things out, the height at which activities take place, and the multiplicity of things ? are highlighted as important for understanding babies? space-making practices. These practices are discussed in terms of the flows of things, which highlights how the practices of moving a multiplicity of things come to matter in the making of space in the homes of babies and their families

Kroppsfett, genus och queer sexualitet : en undersökning av meningsskapande kring kroppar och fett i queera sammanhang

This essay examine the meaning produced around bodies and body fat in the queer community, but also in the surrounding straight community. The author has interviewed fat activists, and are using queertehory, to examine and analyze the relationship between body fat and the understanding and construction of sexuality and gender. The author concludes that even if norms around body shape and body fat are overlapping between the two contexts to some degree, they also differ. In the straight community, people with larger body shapes and sizes are punished, and encouraged to stay, or become, slim. However, in the queer community, „fat‟ or bigger body sizes are not frowned upon in the same degree. Even if the slim bodily ideal still is present in the queer community in some degree this bodily ideal seems to be changing and be replaced by more diverse ideals. The author describes how bodily ideals and ideals surrounding body fat factors into the construction of categories such as gender and sexuality, and concludes on how body fat is a factor in the construction of heteronormativity

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

Infantmethodologies

Infantmethodologies is a concept that was playfully invented to gauge philosophical interest in the intersection between infants (or a chid; or infancy; or childhood) and methodologies (and philosophies, theories and concepts). This provocation aims to debate this intersection and weaves thinkers from around the world in order to generate discussion on the question, ‘How do we study a child’? Asking this question generates further questions: What processes, methodologies, and methods are in place, and when does such an interface occur? What theories, concepts and philosophies come to mind when such a question is asked