Establishing Geographies of Children and Young People: Introduction

Abstract

This chapter introduces volume 1, which gathers together debates at philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual levels that have influenced the formation and continuation of Geographies of Children and Young People. Emphasis is placed on well-known and less well-known but influential theorists including Bourdieu, Darwin, and Spinoza. Contemporary agenda-setting scholars explore the genealogies of different thematic areas of geography and interrogate their foundational approaches alongside revisiting key concepts such as “development,” “participation,” and “accumulation.” The volume includes essays on the notions and conceptualizations of baby, child, children, childhood, youth, young people, intergenerationality, and critical geographies of age. Disciplinary approaches are considered in chapters that examine children’s and young people’s geographies through a range of themes including: the complexities, paradoxes, and diversities of political geographies; geographies of education in relation to state governance and economic discourses alongside the politics of pedagogy; emotional and affective geographies as genealogy and methodology; geographies of spatialities through play, playgrounds, and architecture with babies, children, and young people; geographies of religiosity and spirituality. The volume lays the ground for understanding the intersections between more “mainstream” disciplinary approaches within geographies of children and young people. This collection of chapters works to showcase, deepen, and develop geographic scholarship that aims to encapsulate aspects of the fascinating and rewarding socio-spatial heterogeneities of youthful lives across the world.