Children and Young People's Emotional Geographies

Blazek, M

doi:10.1007/978-981-4585-88-0_9-1

Children and Young People's Emotional Geographies

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Matej Blazek ORCiD

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Abstract

This chapter explores intersections between the debates in children’s and emotional geographies, organized into three areas of discussion. First, the chapter considers how geographical approaches to emotions can help us (re-)conceptualize the categories of childhood and adulthood as well as the relations between them. It argues that childhood has been regarded at the same time as a modality of emotion different from adulthood and as a powerful affective condition. These conceptions underpin much of the policy and professional practice with children as well as the wider politics of childhood. Second, the chapter investigates the significance of emotions across specific spatialities of children’s lives. It argues that attentiveness to emotions helps us reconsider the arrangements of children’s lives in spaces more traditionally associated with childhood such as school and family but also identify and theorize the more recent and emerging spatialities of the online world. Third, the chapter scrutinizes the methodological approaches in children’s emotional geographies. It suggests that these are rooted in the sub-disciplinary traditions of children’s and emotional geographies but they at the same time push their agendas much further. The chapter identifies the challenges over the epistemological distance between adults and children and over the nature of engaging with emotional contents, and shows how these stimulate novel methodological approaches and conceptual advancements. As a way of conclusion, the chapter proposes three directions in which children’s emotional geographies could extendtheir scope in the future.