*Apologies for cross-posting*
REMINDER: Call for papers - “Re-theorising Children’s Geographies: at the juncture of geographies of education, childhood and youth” – *deadline 16th July*
4th International Children’s Geographies Conference: Young People, Borders & Well-Being, San Diego, California, 12-15th January 2015
Session Co-organisers: Professor Sarah L. Holloway, Dr Louise Holt and Dr Sarah Mills, Loughborough University, UK
Geographies of children, youth and families have developed in dialogue with the new social studies of childhood. Allison James, a key figure in that movement, has reflected on this interdisciplinary conversation, arguing: “there was agreement, first, that children could – and should – be regarded as social actors, second, that childhood, as a biological moment in the life course, should nonetheless be understood as a social construction; and finally, there was methodological agreement about the need to access children’s views first hand” (James 2010: 216). Whilst these ideas have shaped much geographical work over the past 15 years, there remain some fundamental unanswered questions. In particular, conceptions of what we mean by children’s agency have remained largely unexplored; agency has too often acted as a black box, with the idea of children’s agency deployed yet rarely fully conceptualised.
Engagement between children’s geographies and geographies of education brings to light and questions the nature of children’s agency. In this field, the notion of children as competent social actors comes up against conceptions of the child as a developing being, who can be shaped in different ways through diverse formal and informal educational spaces. These spaces can be ones of social control, but equally education can play a transformative role in individual lives as well as in broader scale social change. Young people themselves often also articulate positive accounts of education through narratives of development. The importance of education in shaping subjects, both for the individual and for wider society, points to the need to explore conceptualisations of the developing self in children’s geographies. This understanding of childhood has been largely avoided, occasionally implicitly assumed, but rarely openly articulated or embraced since our engagement with the new social studies of childhood.
This session will evaluate the impact of engagement with other ideas of childhood and youth emerging within geographies of education on social studies and geographies of childhood and youth, explore how understandings of children’s agency are currently being reconfigured, and seek to map new conceptual and theoretical terrain for geographies of children, youth and families.
We invite papers that explore these themes through diverse fields of thinking and empirical contexts.
Title and abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to Sarah Mills ([log in to unmask]) by 16th July. For more details on the 4th International Children’s Geographies Conference, visit http://icgcsandiego.wix.com/ypbw
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Dr Sarah Mills
Lecturer in Human Geography
NN136 Department of Geography, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU
Tel: +44 (0)1509 223725 | Follow the department on twitter: @lborogeog
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