Elwood Sarah, Mitchell Katharyne
Department of Geography, University of Washington, Box 353550, Seattle, WA 98195, USA,
Katharyne Mitchell, Department of Geography, University of Washington, Box 353550, Seattle, WA 98195, USA,
Geogr Ann Ser B. 2012 Mar;94(1):1-15. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0467.2012.00392.x.
This article confronts a persistent challenge in research on children's geographies and politics: the difficulty of recognizing forms of political agency and practice that by definition fall outside of existing political theory. Children are effectively "always already" positioned outside most of the structures and ideals of modernist democratic theory, such as the public sphere and abstracted notions of communicative action or "rational" speech. Recent emphases on embodied tactics of everyday life have offered important ways to recognize children's political agency and practice. However, we argue here that a focus on spatial practices and critical knowledge alone cannot capture the full range of children's politics, and show how representational and dialogic practices remain a critical element of their politics in everyday life. Drawing on de Certeau's notion of spatial stories, and Bakhtin's concept of dialogic relations, we argue that children's representations and dialogues comprise a significant space of their political agency and formation, in which they can make and negotiate social meanings, subjectivities, and relationships. We develop these arguments with evidence from an after-school activity programme we conducted with 10-13 year olds in Seattle, Washington, in which participants explored, mapped, wrote and spoke about the spaces and experiences of their everyday lives. Within these practices, children negotiate autonomy and self-determination, and forward ideas, representations, and expressions of agreement or disagreement that are critical to their formation as political actors.
难以识别那些从定义上来说就超出现有政治理论范畴的政治能动性与实践形式。儿童实际上“总是已然”处于现代主义民主理论的大多数结构和理想之外，比如公共领域以及交往行为或“理性”言语的抽象概念。近期对日常生活具体策略的强调为认识儿童的政治能动性与实践提供了重要途径。然而，我们在此认为，仅关注空间实践和批判性知识无法涵盖儿童政治的全部范畴，并展示了表征性实践和对话性实践如何仍然是他们日常生活政治中的关键要素。借鉴德·塞尔托的空间故事概念以及巴赫金的对话关系概念，我们认为儿童的表征和对话构成了他们政治能动性与形成过程的重要空间，在这个空间里，他们能够创造并协商社会意义、主体性和关系。我们用在华盛顿州西雅图与10至13岁儿童开展的一个课外活动项目中的证据来阐述这些观点，在该项目中，参与者探索、绘制地图、书写并谈论他们日常生活的空间和经历。在这些实践中，儿童协商自主性和自决权，并提出对他们成为政治行为者至关重要的观点、表征以及同意或不同意的表达。
