Geographies of children

Book section : Chapter

Geographies of children, or children’s geographies, is a rich and diverse subdiscipline of geography (Aitken, 2017; Kraftl, 2019; Skelton, 2019; Krishnan, 2020). The social construction of childhood as a period of becoming (Aitken, 2001; Kraftl, 2008), and the child as being less-than-adult (Holloway & Valentine, 2000), resulted in children and young people being largely absent from research and debate in geography until the 1970s. A political and philosophical imperative to engage the experiences, spatialities, mobilities, issues, and perspectives of young people has been foundational to the evolution of children’s geographies (Horton et al., 2008). However, as the subdiscipline has developed, it has had “to find flaws and rips in the hegemonic textile of the academic discipline of ‘adult’ geography” (Skelton, 2009: p. 1430), thereby weaving spaces of opportunity with, and for, children and...

Authors: Hammond, L; Krishnamurthy, S

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer
• Host title: Encyclopedia of Human Geography
• Place of publication: Cham, Switzerland
• Publication date: 2024-08-19
• Acceptance date: 2024-03-19
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-25900-5_155-1
• EISBN: 9783031259005
• ISBN: 9783031259005
• Language: English
• Keywords: geographies of children; children's geographies; youth geographies
• Subtype: Chapter