Utopia, Childhood and Intention

Kraftl, Peter

doi:10.1080/14797580802674860

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Within these more diverse spatial contexts, there is also scope to consider how a wider range of intersections of identity come together to shape, and be reshaped by, understandings of education and aspiration. Cross-cutting this need for research into a broader range of people, in different places around the globe, is the need to pay continuing attention to the ways in which parents' and young people's aspirations exceed the neo-liberal policy agenda by investing hope in other mundane and extraordinary futures (Brown, this issue; Kraftl, 2009). Our hope is, that as geographers expand their studies of education and aspiration, they will not only extend emerging critiques of how young people's aspirations have become the object of neoliberal policy interventions, but will also delink the strong association of aspirations with material wealth, educational qualifications and professional employment to explore the range of potential futures that children aspire to realise.…”

Section: Editorial Introduction: Geographies Of Education and Aspirationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Editorial introduction: Geographies of education and aspiration

Holloway¹,

Brown²,

Pimlott‐Wilson³

2011

Children's Geographies

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Section: Editorial Introduction: Geographies Of Education and Aspirationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Editorial introduction: Geographies of education and aspiration

Holloway¹,

Brown²,

Pimlott‐Wilson³

2011

Children's Geographies

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“…In both studies, it is this negotiation at the scale of the everyday rather than a utopian conceptualization of liberation that bears the possibility of change; an everyday, unintentional utopianism (Gardiner 2004;Kraftl 2007Kraftl , 2009. Perhaps the most striking finding of this study, therefore, is that the playground, a 'child's rightful space' with a prescriptive nature, encouraged an extended freedom for children's action outside its limits.…”

Section: Conclusion: Playground Paradox; Deviance and Transgressionmentioning

confidence: 68%

The public playground paradox: ‘child’s joy’ or heterotopia of fear?

Pitsikali

Parnell

2019

Children's Geographies

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Literature depicts children of the Global North withdrawing from public space to 'acceptable islands'. Driven by fears both of and for children, the public playgroundone such islandprovides clear-cut distinctions between childhood and adulthood. Extending this argument, this paper takes the original approach of theoretically framing the playground as a heterotopia of deviance, examiningfor the first timethree Greek public playground sites in relation to adjacent public space. Drawing on an ethnographic study in Athens, findings show fear to underpin surveillance, control and playground boundary porosity. Normative classification as 'children's space' discourages adult engagement. However, in a novel and significant finding, a paradoxical phenomenon sees the playground's presence simultaneously legitimizing playful behaviour in adjacent public space for children and adults. Extended playground play creates alternate orderings and negotiates norms and hierarchies, suggesting significant wider potential to reconceptualise playground-urban design for an intergenerational public realm.

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“…Peter Kraftl (2009) suggests that children are often figured in relation to futurity as the future of an imagined and frequently simplified utopian society. He refers to the broader assumption that children somehow represent "the future," and that therefore our hopeful intentions for them should be geared in terms of a vague, medium-to-long-term, large-scale temporality and spatiality.…”

Section: Settler Futuritymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(p. 76) This figuration leads to two questions: whose next stage of development do we hope for, and what do we mean by better? Hope is central to adult narratives about childhood, something that can be given to children by the (adult) world, and vice versa, often without explanation or justification (Kraftl, 2009). Additionally, children are the site of anxiety about the future of society, with the failure to produce the idealized future entangled with the failure to produce the idealized adult.…”

Section: Settler Futuritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Childhood, Futurity, and Settler Time

Stirling

2022

J Child. Stud.

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Settler childhood’s futurity is grounded in settler time: the colonial temporal structures of settlers that view time as strictly delineated, in opposition to Indigenous temporal heterogeneity—the coexistence of a multiplicity of temporalities. Mark Rifkin describes this temporal heterogeneity as having the power to unsettle settler frames of reference. In response to Adam Gaudry’s call for settlers to engage in insurgent research by engaging with Indigenous research and worldviews while focusing on settler problems, turning to the tension of settler time with Indigenous temporal sovereignty alongside Barbara Adam’s conception of temporal care relations offers a way to unsettle settler childhoods. Bringing together two ways of rethinking temporality through Dwayne Donald’s conception of ethical relationality enables a critique of colonialism without seeking to take up Indigenous childhoods to fill the broken spaces in settlers’ own. This effort reflects Alexis Shotwell’s warning to attendees of the Common Worlds colloquium Responding to Ecological Challenges with/in Contemporary Childhoods: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Climate Pedagogies to be attentive to epistemic extractivism and the problem of settlers seeking to resolve the damage of colonialism through seeking to behave as if they are Indigenous. Instead, I propose a way forward in which children are reentangled in both common worlds and common fates.

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Utopia, Childhood and Intention

Cited by 9 publications

References 48 publications

Editorial introduction: Geographies of education and aspiration

Editorial introduction: Geographies of education and aspiration

The public playground paradox: ‘child’s joy’ or heterotopia of fear?

Childhood, Futurity, and Settler Time

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