Children's Geographies (Critical Geographies)

Children's Geographies (Critical Geographies) by Valentine, Gill. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780415207300.

Childrens Geographies is an overview of a rapidly expanding area of cutting edge research. Drawing on original research and extensive case studies in Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia, the book analyses childrens experiences of playing, living and learning. The diverse case studies range from an historical analysis of gender relationss in nineteenth century North American playgrounds through to childrens experiences of after school care in contemporary Britain, to street cultures amongst homeless children in Indonesia at the end of the twentieth century. Threaded through this empirical diversity, is a common engagement with current debates about the nature of childhood. The individual chapters draw on contemporary sociological understandings of childrens competence as social actors. In so doing they not only illustrate the importance of such an approach to our understandings of childrens geographies, they also contribute to current debates about spatiality in the social studies of childhood.