---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date:         Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:49:34 +0000
From:         Phoebe Foy-Phillips <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: CFP- RGS-IBG New spaces of parenting, early childhood and welfare
To:           [log in to unmask]

Apologies for character errors in earlier version.

RGS-IBG annual conference, London, September 1 - 3 2010

Call for Papers

Citizens-in-becoming? New spaces of parenting, early childhood and welfare


Sponsored by the Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research
Group and proposed for sponsorship by the Social and Cultural Geography
Research Group

Convenors: Ellie Jupp (Oxford Brookes University) and Phoebe Foy-Phillips
(University of Reading)

It has been recognised that babies, young children and parenting now
occupy new positions within social policy regimes and media discourses
(Lister 2006). This session proposes to explore empirically some of the
spaces which these shifts frame, in which areas of everyday and domestic
life overlap with policy imperatives and media representations.  For
example, the UK government is currently developing a Sure Start
Children's Centre in every neighbourhood, providing a range of services
to the under-fives and their families.  Described as the 'new frontier of
the welfare state' (Whalley 2006), they operate in modes associated with
informal community organising yet also seek to achieve particular policy
goals, as part of current policy imperatives around the 'co-production of
public services' (Pemberton and Mason 2008) .  Elsewhere, Early Years
education and childcare provision, including that provided by
childminders, must now operate within the structured framework of the
Early Years Foundation Stage (DCSF 2009).  At the same time, in
television, print media and online media, parenting practices are
increasingly staged as both entertainment and education, intersecting
uneasily with such government interventions (Gill and Jensen 2008).

 The everyday geographies of babies, childcare and parenting might
therefore be seen as coming under increasing pressure from the 'imediated
intimacies' (Gill 2009) of these representations.  Indeed critical social
policy accounts have seen current policy regimes as attempts to shape
'citizen-workers-in-becoming' (Lister 2005, Clarke 2006) rather than
responding to the needs of young children in the here-and-now.  However
other recent research has attended to the possibilities for empowerment
and collective care which such spaces might nonetheless provide, from
Sure Start Children's Centres (Horton and Kratfl 2009) to the 'liminal'
spaces of online forums around parenting (Madge and O'Connor 2005, Orgad
2006).  This session proposes to bring together research which engages
with the everyday practices and emotional, embodied encounters which make
up these new spaces of parenting and young children.  It hopes to develop
nuanced accounts of their everyday geographies and potentialities as well
as ask critical questions about the power of policy and media discourses
and the particular inclusions/exclusions shaped. Papers might tackle one
or more of the following themes:

-        New geographies of childcare and parenting, relating to locality or
other kind of community (eg online spaces)

- Critical accounts of policy regimes around early years and parenting

-        Engagements with the everyday geographies of particular spaces (eg
Sure
Start Centres, childcare providers)

-         Critical accounts of media discourses and representations around
paren=
ting

-        The politics and spaces of particular parenting practices and how
these
have changed over time (eg practices around feeding and sleeping).

Please send all enquires and completed abstracts to Ellie Jupp
([log in to unmask]) and Phoebe Foy-Phillips
([log in to unmask]) by Friday 12th February 2010. When
submitting your abstract please ensure you include the following
information: name; institutional affiliation and contact email; title
of proposed paper; abstract (no more than 250 words) and any technical
requirements.