Taking young people as political actors seriously: opening the borders of political geography

Skelton, Tracey

doi:10.1111/j.1475-4762.2009.00891.x

Cited by 190 publications

(114 citation statements)

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“…Firstly, whereas children's politics has gained little attention in the academia, young people's politics and political agencies are fairly extensively discussed in social sciences and political geography (e.g. Matthews & Limb, 1998;Buckingham, 2003;Hörschelmann & Shäfer, 2005;Cahill, 2007;Hörschelmann, 2008;Skelton, 2010;Kallio & Häkli, 2011a). Secondly, it is clear that 'Politics' and 'politics' cannot be strictly demarcated from each other, as Skelton (2010) aptly points out.…”

Section: Relating Children and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, there exists an extensive literature discussing children's roles and agencies in local, national and supra-national policy making (e.g. Lee, 1999;Matthews & Limb, 1999;Such & Walker, 2005;White & Choudhury, 2007;Percy-Smith & Thomas, 2009;Skelton, 2010). Following the paradigm of the 'new' socio-cultural childhood studies (cf.…”

Section: Relating Children and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are There Politics in Childhood?

2011

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Abstract:This paper sets out to explore children's worlds as potential fields of political action. Children are approached as competent political agents whose mundane lives are permeated by politics in which they have their own positions and roles. The paper discusses how children can be found to act politically in their everyday lives and, to some extent, also practice their own political geographies. The main objective is to propose a theoretical basis for recognizing the political aspects of children's agency and studying political geographies embedded in children's lived worlds.Keywords: children, politics, politicization, the political, political geography, childhood studies Are there politics in childhood?In the past twenty years interest towards children and young people's geographies has grown steadily in cultural studies and social sciences. Spaces and sites such as the home, the school, urban neighborhoods and virtual communities have been explored as significant contexts of children's everyday agency with and alongside other people. As part of this scholarship also power relations embedded in children's lived worlds have been acknowledged. Dynamics and power struggles maintained and produced by the children themselves, the imbalances and hierarchies concerning child-adult relations, and the society's pressures bearing upon childhood have been explored in various contexts (e.g. Morris-Roberts, 2004;Gallacher, 2005;Forsberg & Strandell, 2007;Gallagher, 2008;Thomas, 2009).However, the political geographies consequential in children's everyday lives are rarely positioned at the centre of these explorations. Children's worlds are typically approached as social and cultural environments, but not as political arenas -i.e. spaces where the presence of human relations is organized by power (Brown 2002:.569). Even studies that explicitly focus on power or empowerment tend to overlook the political dynamisms that direct and transform the power relations embedded in children's lived worlds. The scholarship foregrounding children's involvement or participation in political processes usually deals with issues readily known as belonging to the sphere of 'the political', be that civic activism, urban planning or policy making in schools. Hence, what politics means in each case is not derived from children's experiences and lived worlds but determined on the basis of policies and politics pertinent to adult communities and societies. This sustains the perception of children's mundane lives as not determined by webs of power relations forming around matters of importance to children themselves. Yet, if we accept that children are active members of their communities and societies (beings), and not merely objects of top-down socialization processes (becomings), we should reverse our thinking concerning children's political lives (see Arneil, 2002;Skelton, 2007;Kallio & Häkli, 2010).In this paper we propose that power relations acknowledged and constituted by children themselves form the basis of their political lives. T...

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Section: Relating Children and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Relating Children and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are There Politics in Childhood?

2011

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“…In response, Skelton (2009) With the lives and bodies of children as well as images of childhood itself (Burwell 2004) so deeply implicated in Palestinian politics, research and political analysis on the everyday lives of Palestinian children is surprisingly lacking. While there is a body of scholarship on the psychological effects of violence on children in Palestine (Punamaki, Qouta et al 2001;Thabet, Abed et al 2002;Khamis 2008;Barber 2009), and on the cultural, socio-economic, and biological reproduction of families within a Palestinian nationalist context (Kanaaneh 2002;Rosenfeld 2002;Rosenfeld 2004), such research portrays children as passive victims or receptors of societal norms, as opposed to social agents in their own right (see as an exception Habashi 2008;Habashi 2009;Habashi 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘All the Beautiful Things’: Trauma, Aesthetics and the Politics of Palestinian Childhood

Marshall

2013

Space and Polity

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. (2013) Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. All the beautiful things: trauma, aesthetics and the politics of Palestinian childhoodAbstract: This paper examines the ways in which Palestinian children variously perform and transform the discourse of trauma and the aesthetic of suffering that have come to dominate representations of Palestinian childhood and the Palestinian struggle in general. I argue that everyday beauty in the lives of Palestinian refugee children, as found in mundane spaces and enacted through interpersonal relationships, constitutes an aesthetic disruption to the dominant representation of trauma as put forward by international humanitarian aid organizations and development agencies. Far from being restricted to the immediacy of everyday spaces and interactions, however, everyday beauty is located within wider national and religious geographic imaginaries, and likewise forms the basis of critiques of social and political injustice, and demands for a more just and equitable future. I argue that children enact an everyday Islamic ethic of beauty as part of a wider political demand for life itself.

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“…In my primary scholarly environment -the nexus of human geography and childhood studies -there is a growing tendency to portray children and youth as political actors whose interests and ideas are embedded in and result from their everyday lives (e.g. O'Toole, 2003;Habashi, 2008;Thomas, 2009;Bosco, 2010;Skelton, 2010;Kallio & Häkli, 2011a;Leonard, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Spatial Socialisation as a Dynamic and Relational Process of Political Becoming

Kallio

2014

Global Studies of Childhood

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In this paper, I set out to bring early political development back to the research agenda in childhood studies as well as to the social scientific inquiry more generally. Proposing a geographical approach, I seek to develop the concept of spatial socialization as a dynamic and relational process through which political becoming takes place. Contrary to conventional conceptions, I present children as participants rather than as recipients of socialization--active agents in their everyday environments alongside their adult authorities, institutions, the media, and their communities as a whole. Moreover, drawing from phenomenological theorizations of subjectivity, politics and space, the employed approach problematizes the worlds in which political socialization takes place. I argue that the dynamic processes of socialization constitute the spatial realities where children and youth lead their as much as they constitute the youthful subjects they involve.

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Taking young people as political actors seriously: opening the borders of political geography

Cited by 190 publications

References 28 publications

Are There Politics in Childhood?

Are There Politics in Childhood?

‘All the Beautiful Things’: Trauma, Aesthetics and the Politics of Palestinian Childhood

Rethinking Spatial Socialisation as a Dynamic and Relational Process of Political Becoming

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