Black rain and fireflies: the otherness of childhood as a non-colonising adult ideology

Jones, O (2012) 'Black rain and fireflies: the otherness of childhood as a non-colonising adult ideology.' Geography, 97 (3). pp. 141-146.

Abstract

This article explores aspects of media/visual representation of children's geographies and links that exploration to notions of what I have termed the 'otherness of children'. The term is about how children's everyday experiences are, in some ways, quite distant from adult views and experiences of the world, and that adults cannot expect to easily, or completely, revisit and/or capture children's experiences. This has implications for research and the ways we think about children in society more widely. Adult society always 'constructs' children in some way or another, which has impacts on how they are treated as individuals. The aim of thinking of children as 'other' is to try and loosen the grip of those adult constructions and to make spaces for child-becoming. This is in part about how children make their own (other) worlds within the fabrics of the adult-ordered world. This might involve children contesting adult constructions, scaling and demarcations of space in material and symbolic forms, and (re)appropriating materiality, technology and space to their own ends. Also of interest is how children 'colonise' spaces which are abandoned, derelict and/or dysfunctional in other ways - even the ways children make their own geographies in landscapes of war. To explore these issues I focus upon how children's geographies are portrayed in cinematic film. Although films are almost inevitably adult imaginative discourses of children and their lives, some skilfully-made films do open up spaces of empathy and insight into children's experiences.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	School of Sciences
Date Deposited:	22 May 2015 10:51
Last Modified:	15 Aug 2021 09:40
ISSN:	0016-7487
URI / Page ID:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/6140

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