Finding a Place for Babies and their Spatialities

Abstract

This chapter has the goal of contributing to the establishment of a field we can call Baby Studies, a field that can find a place for babies in social science as well as Childhood Studies and Youth Studies did with Children and Youth. (Tebet’s 2013 publication, “Isto não é uma criança! Teorias e métodos para o estudo de bebês nas distintas abordagens da sociologia da infância de língua inglesa” (“That’s not a child! Theories and methods for the study of babies in different approaches of childhood sociology works in English language”) laid out the objectives to constitute this new field. From 2014 onwards, authors have been participating in events around world that communicate the results developed by Gabriela Tebet. Authors have been discussing “Babies and Sociology of Childhood” (Tebet and Abramowicz 2013, 2014), the “Geography of Babies” (Tebet and Abramowicz 2015), and “Studies of Babies” (Tebet 2015 – Symposium A29 at 25th EECERA). However, in this chapter we have adopted the term “Baby Studies,” considering it analytically a better name for this field, due to its similarity with the conceptual frameworks behind “Childhood Studies” and “Youth Studies.” We co-developed this term through communication with Tracey Skelton.) Our proposed discussions derive from a theoretical study conducted by Tebet and Abramowicz (2014) and provide new evidence for the ensuing arguments, noting how geography can contribute to constituting and fortifying this emerging field. To this end, the authors confirm the absence of babies in childhood studies and highlight research from such fields as history, anthropology, geography, and philosophy that could be considered as a basis to establish a place for babies in social science focusing on themes that link babies to space and geography. Authors such as Deleuze, Simondon, and Deligny support the main ideas of the chapter. Scenes from research conducted in Brazil in the context of early childhood education and care are cited herein and reveal paths and experiences of infants in a variety of spaces. Finally, the subsection “Following babies” discusses methodological perspectives and elements that argue for including cartography as a promising approach in Baby Studies as it could enable researchers to follow more effectively the miniscule, even minimal, gestures and events that comprise the lives of babies, contributing to a better understanding of babies from their perspective and agency.