‘No, You’ve Done It Once!’: Children’s Expression of Emotion and Their School-Based Place-Making Practices

Abstract

In recent years the field of childhood studies has seen scholars drawing upon a spatial lens to understand children’s lifeworlds (Christensen and O‘Brien, 2003; Fog Olwin and Gulløv, 2003). This anthropological work draws on the concept of place as both ‘social position and physical location’ (Fog Olwin and Gulløv, 2003, p. 1) in order to examine the social and cultural construction of childhood. These studies pay particular attention to the way that children are placed within society. This chapter contributes to this work by considering how children create places in spaces not of their making. It is widely recognised that children’s spaces are set aside, reflected for example within playgrounds or skateparks (see Chapter 9). This demarcation of children and childhood within specific spaces of society reflects, as Fog Olwin and Gulløv (2003) argue, ‘the increased social marginalisation of children’(p. 2). These spaces of childhood can be understood as ‘socially produced’ (Lefebvre, 1991), shaped by discourses of childhood that circulate within particular times and cultures. Attending to the social production of spaces for children recognises the interconnections between the physical, social and cultural in the structuring of children’s lives. Institutional spaces of childhood are often conceived in terms of children as future citizens, where childhood is viewed as a ‘preparatory stage in the life course’ and children as a ‘future resource’ (James et al., 1998, p. 133).