Child Space: An Anthropological Exploration of Young People’s Use of Space

Child Space: An Anthropological Exploration of Young People’s Use of Space M. Karen ( ed .). New Delhi : Concept Publishing Company , 2007 . 272 pp., bibliographic references, index, IRS 750 (Hc.) ; ISBN: 81-8069-433-X . Child Space is an interesting collection of ten essays edited by Karen Malone, Head of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong and the Asia-Pacific director of UNESCO’s Growing Up in Cities Project. This book is a valuable resource that provides interesting examples of children’s use of space and of how they construct their social identities in relation to their environments. By exploring a wide range of situations and settings–from urban Brazil, to rural India and even cyberspace—the authors depict children as agents who take the best possible advantage of the spaces in their lives. The first chapter by Trawick is a moving account of a young Sri Lankan understanding of the spatial dynamics of his surroundings in the context of a civil war. Trawick cleverly uses alternative ethnographic techniques to appreciate the child’s conceptualisation of living in a contested space. In the second chapter, Rabello de Castro offers a remarkable analysis of how the movements of young people in the city of Rio de Janeiro provide a means for expressing their subjectivities. Chapter 3 by Morrow is an exploration of children’s accounts of urban space in an English setting. The author uses the concept of social capital (or lack thereof) to analyse children’s inability to participate in decision-making processes regarding their surroundings. In the chapter that follows, Atencio reports on a study of the relevance of basketball for youth in a disadvantaged urban area in America. Atencio shows how basketball skills and the use of public spaces for practicing the game provide a means for African American youth to create their identities, differentiate themselves from white youth and also to reinforce existing hierarchies. In Chapter 5, Kruger examines how children use space in a squatter settlement in Johannesburg where due to the high population density and social confinement of the site they contest for public space themselves. Following is a chapter by Kumar, who explores the way children structure and imagine space in India. The author discusses how children’s socialisation is governed by their understanding of social and physical space. By exploring three different spatial levels where children participate—the nation, the neighbourhood and the home—Kumar acknowledges that although it is adults who create most of the spaces where children socialise, children reappropriate and recreate them. Kumar’s anthropological account is enhanced by her cultural background and familiarity with Indian culture. In Chapter 7, Behera examines the process of educational institutionalisation of a group of tribal children in Orissa, India and makes a strong critique of the schooling system in this context, for it leaves children disoriented and ‘in between two cultures’. The author details how the schooling system may place some students in a peripheral environment that contributes to their marginalisation from the rest of society. Following similar lines, in Chapter 8, Gold and Gujar explore the lives of herding children in rural North India and their images of school. The authors use a number of attractive extracts of conversations with herding children to illustrate their contentment when relating their lives as herders, and their lack of enthusiasm when referring to school. The authors make the point that the schooling system presents to them as an unknown and fearful space that makes them feel incompetent. In Chapter 9, Malone focuses on the lives of children in the Pacific Islands. The author presents a series of stories told by children in Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands and uses this data to show the imprint of both colonialism and globalisation in these children’s understanding of space. Finally, in Chapter 10, Pawson, Adams and Tanner examine how cyberspace has enabled children to enhance peer interaction. The authors argue that children have been increasingly deprived of the freedom to explore spaces for social interaction and believe that cyberspace has provided an alternative for them to canalise their gregarious needs. The chapters in this volume are proof of the upsurge that the anthropology of childhood has had in recent years. Most importantly, the essays account for the importance of children as transformative agents of their environments. As Malone says, ‘through these stories and experiences we can see that young people engage in acts of resistance, participation and negotiation within spaces and these acts of spatial interaction are contained within compelling exchanges of spatial compromise between adults and children’ (p. 12).