4 research outputs found
Photography, Politics and Childhood: Exploring childrenās multimodal relations with the public sphere
In qualitative research with children visually oriented and multimodal approaches are identified in the literature as more appropriate for approaching childrenās meanings and feelings often deemed to lie beyond the realm of language. In our own research, a comparative ethnography which enquired into the relationships between childhood and public life, with six-to-eight year olds in three cities (Athens, Hyderabad and London), we have reflexively experimented with the employment and remixing of methodologies which would allow us to explore such relationships. In the process of our research, incorporating different visual and ethnographic methods, we have developed a data collection and production process, an adaptation of the photo-story, which allows for a multimodal, processual and reflective enquiry into childrenās relationships of concern and politics of care. We review the central visual methods in research with children, we then proceed to provide a documentation of the method, its development and its rationale. Consequently, we provide some examples of the photostory methodās implementation in the Connectors Study together with a discussion of the production processes of the photo-stories themselves and our readings of them. We conclude with a section with reflections on the method, which, we argue provides a departure point from which we may rethink the political in childhood, as well as the ways in which photography is employed as a research method in the social sciences
Childhood publics in search of an audience: reflections on the childrenās environmental movement
The essay reflects on the children's environmental movement from the perspective of cultural theory, as well as the authors' own and othersā research on childrenās encounters, experiences and engagement in public life. The concepts of political knowingness, childhood publics, and listening publics are evoked to think through the surprise that the children's environmental movement generated in the public sphere. The idiom is positioned as an audience āhearing aidā for turning babbling into political messages. In so doing we find that the messages from the childrenās environmental movement are not out of place in the current humanities and social sciences literatures on the Anthropocene
Grounding Childhood (Trans)National Identities in the Everyday
This paper engages with the lived and experiential aspects of (trans)national identities in childhood, through the exploration of an ethnographic biography of a Greek-Albanian boy in Athens. Through a grounded ethnographic approach, we examine the ways in which he experiences and negotiates his (trans)national identity. Our analysis demonstrates the everyday subtle and sophisticated understanding of the complexities and contradictions of national identities, and the child's own positioning within that. In conclusion, we suggest that interdisciplinary approaches should be assumed in the study of (trans)national identities in childhood, and ones that are grounded in children's own meaning making of their experiences of such identities. Ā© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and National Children's Burea
Marshmallow claps and frozen children: sitting on the carpet in the modern āon-taskā primary classroom
This paper examines how young children experience the moral and bodily discipline of the modern English āon-taskā primary classroom, in which they are expected to sit quietly and still for long periods on the classroom carpet, listening to what teachers know. It details the conditions of the classrooms, a performance-focused environment centred on delivering a knowledge-based curriculum, rooted in educational legacies emphasising social order and conformity. Staff employ different strategies to ensure compliance, including controlling the physical and sonic environment, and childrenās bodies themselves. The paper details how this leaves children feeling physically uncomfortable and vulnerable to difficult emotional experiences, as well as how they find ways to move and speak their critique of this education model. The study draws on a multimodal ethnography of a Year One classroom, within an ordinary English primary school, and a week-long ārapidā ethnography in a Year One class in an āoutstandingā teaching school