A Prefigurative Politics of Play in Public Places: Children Claim Their Democratic Right to the City Through Play

Abstract

Children have as much “right” to the city as adult citizens, yet they lose out in the urban spatial justice stakes. Built environments prioritizing motor vehicles, a default urban planning position that sees children as belonging in child-designated areas, and safety discourses, combine to restrict children’s presence and opportunities for play, rendering them out of place in public space. In this context, children’s everyday appropriations of public spaces for their “playful imaginings” can be seen as a reclamation of their democratic right to the city: a prefigurative politics of play enacted by citizen kids. In this article, we draw on data collected with 265 children in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, to consider how children’s playful practices challenge adult hegemony of the public domain and prefigure the possibilities of a more equal, child-friendly, and playful city.

The Fuzzy Side of Publicness: Visualizing Street Politics of Everyday life through the Lens of Distance

“…Moreover, distance provides a relational perspective on how symbolic ownership manifests for the observer and how it is perceived by those who experience the publicness of space. Beyond the case study's example of outdoor praying routine, the framework can be utilized to assess lived publicness in urban routines in different contexts that spur individuals to coalesce into persistent (micro)publics, such as spaces taken up by children for play (Carroll et al, 2019), or guerilla-like appropriations by artists who perform music concerts in public squares.…”

“…In contrast, the metrics for goodness for public space according to urban justice literature include, amongst other indicators, the capacity to serve the democratic needs of citizens (i.e. freedom of access and assembly), especially for the socially marginalized or institutionally disempowered (Bayat, 2013;Carroll et al, 2019). Conflicting mental images for the desired city root these differences, which contrast the hope for orderliness and neoliberalism against the hope for egalitarianism and empowerment.…”

Peningkatan karakter demokratis melalui Traditional Enggo Group Play Therapy pada anak usia TK

“…Bahkan, pada penelitian dari database Sagepub yang memuat penelitian Internasional dari seluruh dunia, tidak ada menyebutkan penelitian untuk peningkatan karakter demokratis anak melalui permainan. Hanya saja, Carroll et al (2019) meneliti anak-anak di Auckland, New Zealand, anak-anak mengklaim hak demokratis mereka atas kota melalui permainan. Artinya, belum ada studi tentang permainan enggo untuk peningkatan karakter demokratis, khususnya di Pulau Papua.…”

Towards an adventurous institutional politics: The prefigurative ‘as if’ and the reposing of what’s real

“…Van der Sande, 2013), and anti-austerity, pro-migrant activism (e.g. see Mensink, 2019); to writing on anarchist social centres, alternative environmental, gardening and food initiatives, peace politics, children’s play, intentional communities and everyday utopias (Carroll et al, 2019; Cooper, 2014; Fois, 2019; Moore et al, 2014; Silver, 2018; Thaler, 2019; Thorpe, 2018). But prefiguration is not only about grass-roots practice.…”