Young ghosts: ethical and methodological issues of historical research in children's geographies

Geographers researching children and young people have often been at the forefront of disciplinary debates in geography surrounding methodological practice and ethical considerations (Matthews et al. 1998, Valentine 1999, Pain 2004, Hemming 2008, Hopkins and Bell 2008, van Blerk and Barker 2008). In this short paper, I want to focus on a less-popular research method used by children’s geographers – archival methods (cf. Gagen 2000, 2001) – and reflect specifically on some of its methodological and ethical challenges. I argue that thinking about historical research can challenge children’s geographers to consider other types of encounter from that of the (embodied) encounter between a researcher and a child (Horton 2008). These different and multiple encounters include those between the (adult) creator of ‘material’ and a young person, a young person (as creator) and their intended audience, and the further encounter between a young person from the past and a present-day researcher during fieldwork. The spatial and temporal deferral in some of these encounters suggests a re-thinking of how we approach and conceptualise research ‘with’ young people. Furthermore, these (dis)embodied encounters can challenge ethical norms in children’s geographies such as consent, confidentiality and positionality in different but overlapping ways. I contend that children’s geographers are well versed in these ethical issues, some of which transfer well into the practice of historical research. For example, issues surrounding children’s ‘voice’ and responsibility are quite similar (as I later discuss), but there is a difference between contemporary and historical research in terms of the media involved (your own tape recordings or someone else’s recorded tapes; fresh participatory artwork or dust-covered diaries) and a different retrieval process (direct embodied research with young people or deferred connections in another building, time and place)

Scouting for girls? Gender and the Scout Movement in Britain

This article brings a feminist geopolitics to bear upon an analysis of the Boy Scout Movement in Britain in order to illustrate how an emphasis upon seemingly banal, embodied practices such as dressing, writing and crafting can provide a counter-view to prevailing notions of the elite, organisational `scripting' of individualised, geopolitical identities. Here, these practices undertaken by girls are understood not as subversive, or even transgressive, in the face of broader-scale constructions of the self and the collective body, but rather as related moments in the emergence of a complex, tension-ridden `movement' that exceed specific attempts at fixity along the lines of gender. Using archival data, this article examines various embodied practices by `girl scouts' that were made possible by such attempts at fixity but which also, in turn, opened up new spaces of engagement and negotiation. A cumulative shift from a determinedly masculine to a co-educational organisation over the course of the twentieth century thus reflects complex geographies of gender, national identity and citizenship and offers a historical contribution to the feminist geopolitics literature

Youth on Streets and Bob-a-Job Week: Urban Geographies of Masculinity, Risk, and Home in Postwar Britain

After World War Two, youth in Britain was constructed as unruly, troublesome, and deviant, particularly in public urban space and streets. However, not all children and young people were discouraged from entering these environments or engaging with the general public. Drawing from literature published by the Boy Scout Association and a case study of Bob-a-Job Week in Britain launched in 1949, I examine the institutional geographies of responsibility, risk, and reward embedded in this youth activity, orchestrated by the most popular youth organisation in Britain. This fundraising scheme involved Boy Scouts completing domestic tasks for householders and encouraged uniformed youth to be visible, proficient, and useful. Significantly, this also took place in largely urban areas- complicating our understanding of scouting as an idealised 'rural' practice with camping as its central activity. Furthermore, this paper explores how this fundraising spectacle also functioned as a hybrid space that permitted 'feminine' domestic tasks as appropriate for 'British boyhood' until the scheme's eventual demise in the 1990s. Overall, the complex geographies of Bob-a-Job Week reveal how this organisation negotiated the boundaries between domestic and public space, providing an insight into broader constructions of youth and gender in the postwar period

Cultural-historical geographies of the archive: fragments, objects and ghosts

This article reviews the increasingly diverse ways in which geographers are engaging with archives. Although traditionally associated with historical geography, cultural-historical geographers have recently 'animated' the archive and its collections of fragments, objects and ghosts. Through this article, I provide an overview of the central characteristics of work in this field, as well as considering the discipline's wider relationship with archival material. Overall, I reflect on the key challenges for geographers in animating and 'bringing to life' the archive - and by extension - the past

Voice: Sonic geographies of childhood

This paper uses the sonic geographies of childhood as an entry point into long-standing and important debates in the sub-discipline on ‘voice’. The paper uniquely explores children’s voices from the past through considering a different type of research material – archival audio recordings. It argues that literally listening to past children’s voices (and noises, sounds and silences) can offer fresh insights into the concept of voice that tends to be associated with contemporary contexts. Drawing on archival encounters with ‘second hand’ field recordings of children across different schools and playgrounds in London in the 1960s, this paper engages and extends wider theoretical debates about childhood, voice and memory. The paper calls for more attention to the unique characteristics of sound and wider soundscapes of childhood. The paper critically reflects on the possibilities and tensions associated with such work

'An instruction in good citizenship': Scouting and the historical geographies of citizenship education

This paper examines informal citizenship training for youth and the historical geographies of education over time through analysing the Scout Movement in Britain and its activities in the first half of the twentieth century. In doing so, it highlights the complexity of youth citizenship and the significance of non-school spaces in civil society to our understandings of young people's positioning as citizen-subjects. Drawing on archival research, I demonstrate how a specific youth citizenship project was constructed and maintained through the Scout Movement. I argue that various processes, strategies and regulations were involved in envisioning 'citizen-scout' and developing both duty-bound, self-regulated individuals as well as a wider collective body of British youth. This analysis speaks to broader debates on citizenship, nationhood and youth, as well as highlighting how the historical geographies of citizenship education are an important area of study for geographers

Jives, jeans and Jewishness? Moral geographies, atmospheres and the politics of mixing at the Jewish Lads’ Brigade & Club 1954–1969

This paper examines a series of anxieties about mixing at the Jewish Lads’ Brigade and Club (JLB & C) in Manchester, UK during the 1950s and 1960s, primarily focused on inter-faith activities, relationships and marriages. This paper explores how a powerful moral geography of gender and religion came to be shaped, regulated and negotiated at this youth work space. The concerns expressed by some adults over teenage encounters in the post-war city were articulated and understood through the notion of ‘atmospheres’, and this paper suggests how this idea and language captured some of the anxieties and emotions surrounding cultures of leisure at this time. This paper contributes an in-depth and sustained focus on the moral geographies of the post-war city in relation to young people, as well as addressing an important gap in scholarship on Jewish youthful religiosities. Furthermore, it pushes at ideas about meaningful encounters through the consideration of the JLB & C as a meeting space and arena for visitors. Overall, the paper examines how the JLB & C acted as both a mirror to the wider social changes of the post-war era, while also being an active contributor in shaping those same processes of social change

Surprise! Public historical geographies, user engagement and voluntarism

This paper aims to expand understandings of ‘public geographies’, not usually associated with historical geography, through considering voluntarism. It seeks to bring together debates on research practice, positionality and the ‘surprise’ instances of user engagement. To do so, it draws on two experiences and opportunities that emerged during my doctoral research in Wales on the cultural-historical geographies of scouting in Britain: first, curating an exhibition and second, cataloguing and ‘making’ an archive collection. Both of these were voluntary collaborative activities and outside ‘the research project’, and yet they shaped and influenced the research process in unique and unforeseen ways. Overall, the paper uses these examples as a way into exploring geographical debates on research users, non-academic communities and the role of the researcher as a volunteer

Cultural geographies of education

Cultural geographies of educatio

Introduction: geographies, histories and practices of informal education

Introduction: geographies, histories and practices of informal educatio