Rethinking Children's Spaces and Places

Description

How do we understand children and young people's lives in ways that do not rely on nostalgic romantic ideals or demonising prejudices? Can the geographical concepts of space, place and spatiality enhance our understanding of childhood and how children experience their lives as social actors? This book draws on a rich and growing academic literature concerned with the spatiality of childhood and the spaces and places in which children live, learn, work, and play. It examines changing ways of seeing space, place and environment and how these can promote rethinking about children's lives across local and global scales. In common with other texts in the "New Childhoods" series, it asks for a reappraisal of modernity's assumptions about childhood and for a move towards full participation of children and young people in matters that concern us all. Combining critical discussion of theory with examples drawn from research, Rethinking Children's Spaces and Places offers readers a language to facilitate rethinking and catalyse active responses to the challenges of 21st-century childhoods.

David Blundell is Principal Lecturer and Programme Director for Education Studies at London Metropolitan University, UK. He is the author of Education and Constructions of Childhood (Bloomsbury, 2012).

[Blundell] writes in a highly engaging style, with a lightness and clarity that makes some very difficult theoretical material highly accessible to a wide audience. For this reason, the book will be an invaluable resource to support undergraduate teaching. * Education 3-13 * Rethinking Children's Spaces and Places deals with our complicated thinking about children and our sophisticated spatial theorizing in palatable and accessible ways. It opens up sometimes impenetrable empirical research in delightful ways, and as the book progresses the arguments build on and fold into each other in an engaging and understandable way. It will make converts to this research field of many students who get the opportunity to use it. * Stuart C. Aitken, Professor and Distinguished Faculty Member, San Diego State University, USA * This book provides an accessible and comprehensive overview of academic work exploring the geographies of childhood and generates significant insights to how we can conceptualise space and place in children's lives. Blundell pulls together a fascinating range of key studies and guides the reader though them, identifying what is most significant and establishing clear links between them. The result is an assured handling of a diverse range of material which enables the reader to move between the big picture and the detail, to get a clear sense of the underlying debates and theoretical traditions and how they relate to practical attempts to describe and explain childhood. This book will be a valuable resource for anyone studying childhood, education or preparing for teaching. It will also be of interest to anyone studying social sciences as a valuable insight into the contribution of a broadly geographical perspective to understanding the social world. * Lee Jerome, Associate Professor of Education, Middlesex University, UK * This book presents thought provoking reflective engagement with contemporary issues related to children's spaces and places. It is underpinned by some complex theory which is related to a range of research to provide a rich understanding and critique of key themes throughout. Much awaited, this debate challenges thinking about the spaces children inhabit in an engaging manner. * Anne Kellock, Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies, Sheffield Hallam University, UK * This book certainly challenges the representation of modern childhood. The author focuses on the vital contribution of children's spaces and places in the construction of children's social realities. The content is thought-provoking as it endorses the agency and diversity of children's lives. This is an excellent resource for readers who wish to challenge ways of living and working with children. * Zeta Brown, Lecturer in Childhood, Families and Communities Studies, University of Wolverhampton, UK *