Social, Material and Political Constructs of Arctic Childhoods

This book addresses the geopolitical notion of the 'Arctic' through the everyday experiences of children. It explores the Arctic as various materializations that matter to, condition and define childhoods in Nordic countries. Presenting nine thematically very different but theoretically and methodologically coherent studies, it enables readers to gain an in-depth understanding of a selection of recent sociomaterialist, posthumanist and post-anthropocentric research on childhood in the Nordic context. The book offers new ideas and insights as to what matters in children's lives - in Arctic contexts.

Autorentext

Adj Prof Pauliina Rautio is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oulu's Faculty of Education. Her work on human-environment relations is situated within the critical strands of animal studies and early childhood studies. She employs posthumanist theoretical and methodological approaches in studying education and childhoods beyond humanism and notions of development. With her work she asks: Who and what take part in education in addition to humans, in what ways, and why should we care? She is the Principal Investigator of an ongoing funded project on child-animal relations (AniMate, Emil Aaltonen foundation, 2017-2019), and a member of the Finnish Society for Human Animal Studies and the Common Worlds Research Collective.

Researcher Elina Stenvall has completed her PhD at the School of Management in the University of Tampere and is due to defend her thesis in September 2018. Her work on children's participation is situated within critical political geography and childhood studies. She takes a critical standpoint on understanding children's role as part of society. In her doctoral thesis she explores how children's agency becomes visible not only in institutional settings (such as youth parliament) but also in everyday life. With her work she asks: What is participation and agency from children's points of view? Her current work is part of the Space and Political Agency Research Group (SPARG). She is also involved in planning and developing child and family politics as the new specialist in the SOS Children Village Finland.

Inhalt

1 Trees.- A tale of two trees: How children make space in the city.- 2 Mold.- Breathing well at the wastelands? Indoor climate change in schools and the daily lives of arctic children.- 3 Ice/Water.- Giant's kettles and arctic childhood.- 4 Skates and skiis.- 'Arctic childhoods' and mobilized differences: The mattering of skis and skates in 'nation-ed environments'.- 5 Clothes.- Clothes and clothing practices in Finnish early childhood education and care.- 6 Smartphones.- Leaping and dancing with digitality: Exploring human-smartphone-entanglements in classrooms.- 7 The Mall.- More-than-human politics in the new article landscape: Shifts in atmospheres at the shopping mall.- 8 Crows.- Young Nordic children's aesthetic explorations of crows.- 9 Child-Adult.- Arctic child-adult/past-present entanglements in a painful past-present lecture at university.