True geography [ ] quickly forgotten, giving away to an adult-imagined universe. Approaching the otherness of childhood. Childrens Geographies, 6 (2). pp. 195-212. ISSN 1473-3285 Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/12396We recommend you cite the published version. The publisher's URL is: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14733280801963193Refereed: Yes (no note) Disclaimer UWE has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material deposited and as to their right to deposit such material. UWE makes no representation or warranties of commercial utility, title, or fitness for a particular purpose or any other warranty, express or implied in respect of any material deposited.UWE makes no representation that the use of the materials will not infringe any patent, copyright, trademark or other property or proprietary rights. UWE accepts no liability for any infringement of intellectual property rights in any material deposited but will remove such material from public view pending investigation in the event of an allegation of any such infringement.
AbstractIn this paper I seek to explore the idea of the otherness of childhood. I suggest that there are considerable differences between the becomings of children and the becomings of adults. In the face of these a number of questions need to be asked about adult -childhood relations in society and about academic approaches to children and childhood, particularly in terms of representing childhood and the implications of such representing. The paper sets out the idea of otherness, locates this within current debate about the crisis of childhood, and then argues that non-representational approaches might be particularly relevant to progressing children"s geographies. These approaches stress modesty, practice, experimentation, messiness, creativity and openness.As we age, childhood becomes another country, a disputed territory of memory and meaning. Its true geography is quickly forgotten, giving away to an adultimagined universe.The contemporary adult vision of childhood has become so distorted as to render it opaque, and this opacity is seriously affecting how children grow up today.
(Brooks 2006: 4 -5).Introduction 2 This paper explores the idea of the otherness of children and its implications for the academic study of children"s worlds, and wider political questions about child -adult relations. The idea of the otherness of children is about the way children differ from adults in quite profound ways, and importantly, the extent to which the becomings of children are not fully knowable by adults. This is a large, uncertain terrain which stretches far beyond easily knowable horizons.Thus I do not offer any kind of comprehensive thesis, but rather a foray into it. The terms "other" and "otherness" are used in a number of ways within philosophy, ethics and the social sciences. Its use here has shadings from two such usages. Firstly I mean other in terms of alterity as in the work of Levinas and Derrida, which is about the unbridgebility between self an...