Children’s Embodied Entanglement and Production of Space in a Museum

Abstract

In this chapter, I draw on a range of interdisciplinary theories of space and place to show how they enabled me to make sense of my research with young children and their families. In particular, during an ethnographic study of young children’s meaning-making in museums, I turned to a range of theories of space and place in order to make sense of what I observed in the field. These theories enabled me to recognise and appreciate children’s perspectives of the museum and ways of making meaning during the visits. Soja (2004) has identified a cross-disciplinary ‘spatial turn’ (p. ix) in the last decade, and suggests that, as a result of a ‘critical spatial perspective’, ‘taken for granted ideas are opened up to new forms of critical rethinking’ (p. ix):

we are becoming increasingly aware that we are and always have been spatial beings, active participants in the social construction of our embracing spatialities. (Soja, 1996, p. 1)