Early parenting and the urban experience: risk,community, play and embodiment in an East London neighbourhood

This article will critically examine theories of risk – referred to in this article as ‘pro-risk’ – as applied to parenting cultures in the UK through a case study of early years parenting, based in Walhamstow, East London. Common to all of these theories is an assertion that children are over-parented – a product of economic, social and cultural changes such as the decline of community as well as theories of child-centred parenting. Through the close examination of two examples where risk and community were contested, the article will argue that missing from these theories is an understanding of the embodiments of early years parenting, which underpin the way that parents handle the tensions between risk and development. Further, that parents sought to militate against isolation and the decline of community through local parenting networks.     

Middle-class childhood and parenting culture in high-rise Hong Kong: on scheduled lives,the school trap and a new urban idyll

This exploratory study seeks to understand childhood in Hong Kong in relation to the high-rise living environment and dominant parenting culture among middle-class professionals. The empirical results suggest that it is parenting culture rather than the built environment that creates children's busy, scheduled lives, high levels of adult supervision and limited outdoor play. Building on a strong portfolio is considered to be both necessary to enter the popular British educational system and to counterbalance a curriculum that is supposed to offer less structured learning compared to the local Cantonese schools. It is argued that this paradoxical situation must be understood in the context of parents' personal childhood histories and the highly competitive global labour market in Hong Kong. The paper ends with a reflection on new discourses of childhood that creates cities and its many consumption spaces as urban idylls for raising children.     

Playing,parenting and family leisure in parks: exploring emotional geographies of families in Guangzhou Children’s Park,China

ABSTRACT

Children’s leisure activities in parks have attracted increasing scholarly interest in recent decades. However, relatively little attention has been given to the emotional needs and responses of children to their activities within a park’s play spaces. Moreover, what parents perceive, and how they themselves engage within children’s playing spaces, is under-studied. Drawing on fieldwork carried out in the Guangzhou Children’s Park, China, this paper aims to explore the experiences of both children and parents within this particular playing space. Supplementing participant observations with interviews and analysis of reviews on the Internet, the paper finds that children obtain a sense of family and company from their parents’ presence, and parents recall memories of their own childhood and obtain emotional recovery by visiting parks with their children. The findings suggest that play spaces are not only places where children play, but also where family life and childhood are ‘built’. The paper contributes to the existing literature by highlighting and examining the ‘child–parent’ relationship within playing spaces. By conducting a case study of a non-Western society, the paper encourages researchers to examine ‘child–parent’ relationships in a family leisure context, and to explore the everyday and emotional geographies of family life in contemporary China.     

The failure of parenting and the success of love in Robert McLiam Wilson's Ripley Bogle and Eureka Street

Robert McLiam Wilson has become one of the most influential literary voices to emerge from Northern Ireland since the Troubles began, and he has challenged the understanding of contemporary Irishness. His novels are gritty, acerbic and he constructs images of Belfast that are as startling as they are affectionate. Both Ripley Bogle (1989) and Eureka Street (1996) involve characters from broken families who, in spite of sectarian violence around them, find emotional support from unlikely individuals. Failure of parenting is a persistent motif in McLiam Wilson, but so too is the triumph of love because the protagonists of Ripley Bogle and Eureka Street both turn to unlikely individuals for guidance. Although traditional parenting fails, pseudo-adoptive parents mollify both Ripley Bogle and Jake Jackson by granting them support and love.     

A Duty to Forget? The 'Hitler Youth Generation' and the Transition from Nazism to Communism in Postwar East Germany, c. 1945-49

In Soviet-occupied East Germany during the mid- to late 1940s,a remarkable but scarcely remarked-upon transition took place.Hundreds of thousands of young Germans who had previously beenmembers of the Nazi youth organizations, the Hitler Youth (HJ)and the League of German Girls (BDM) flocked to join the Communist-ledFree German Youth (FDJ), a unisex ‘united youth organization’founded under Soviet auspices in March 1946. This paper examinesthe experiences of this ‘twice betrayed’ generation,whose members rapidly—though with varying degrees of enthusiasm—switchedallegiance from Nazism to Communism after the Second World Warand ultimately exchanged life in one authoritarian youth organizationfor life in another. Drawing on archival and interview material,it first seeks to outline Communist attitudes towards denazificationamong the young in the postwar period, before going on to examinefrom a grass-roots perspective the experiences, motivations,and attitudes of those who exchanged their HJ or BDM membershipbooks for those of the FDJ. Despite, or perhaps because of,East Germany's strongly-espoused and rigidly dogmatic ‘anti-fascism’,open discussion of the Nazi past was—for a variety ofreasons—taboo during the immediate postwar period, particularlyamong the young. This paper concludes by discussing the reasonsbehind this ‘pact of silence’ between the Communistsand the ‘Hitler Youth generation’—and howit impacted upon subsequent generations of young people ‘borninto socialism’.     

中世纪天主教的信仰与危机:1000-1500年

在1000-1500年间,天主教欧洲见证了信仰事务上的多次危机,它们的性质、规模、影响以及重要性各不相同。在此期间,"信仰"伴随着"危机";但信仰没有受到严重的威胁。大多数危机是地方性或区域性的,持续时间也不长,从未达到真正的临界点。它们是可以用这种或那种方法来化解的,并总是能够得到化解,天主教对中世纪整个西欧的掌控因而从未受到严重的威胁,直到宗教改革改变一切。     

The Nature of Decision-making in the Post-war New Towns Policy: The Case of Basildon, c. 1945-70

The nature of post-war economic and urban planning has beencontroversial. This article examines the problem through a ‘grass-roots’study of the establishment and the early social history of Basildon,a representative example of post-war new towns. What views didthe various sections of the central state, local governmentand residents hold towards the new towns policy? The articleconsiders the relation between the new town Development Corporationand governmental departments, local government and tenants.This case study indicates that the plural and complex natureof decision-making based on informal and voluntary negotiationsmade the new towns policy inconsistent, and suggests that residents'voices were excluded from the process of decision-making. ^* suge{at}ier.hit-u.ac.jp     

A Speleothem Record of Early British and Roman Mining at Charterhouse,Mendip, England

The laser ablation ICP–MS transect of a speleothem from GB Cave, close to Charterhouse, Mendip Hills, UK, records Pb variations over the past 5 ka. The speleothem record correlates well with the known historical record of lead mining in the district, the principal features of which include: the Roman lead mining peak; the Dark Ages cessation; gradual, episodic revival up to the late 16th century peak; the 17th century collapse and subsequent recovery; and the final short‐lived burst at the end of the 19th century. This correlation supports the assumption that the pre‐Roman lead record also derives from local mining. Thus, this record is the first example of quantifying ancient human mining activity through trace element signature of a speleothem. This record also provides the first solid evidence of significant pre‐Roman mining activity in the Charterhouse region, and the first solid dating of that activity. This pre‐Roman mining can be divided into three main peaks dated to 1800–1500 bc , 1100–800 bc and 350–0 bc .     

From London to Grenada and Back Again: Youth Exchange Geographies and the Grenadian Revolution, 1979-1983

Through a case study of three educational youth exchanges from London to the Caribbean island of Grenada in the early 1980s, this paper situates decolonisation as a site for youthful agency. Assessing official and ephemeral exchange material held in archives in London and the Caribbean alongside original oral history interviews with key actors, the paper argues that an analysis of youth exchanges as informal education spaces helps bring into focus young people’s agency in decolonisation both as a historical process and conceptual undoing. While the paper asserts that exchanging produced transformative moments of becoming in which young people’s global educational encounters transcended local perceptions of race, it also reveals youth exchanging to a revolutionary nation was no holiday, and that “youth exchange geographies” were governed, predetermined and impeded by the organisational labour of youth workers, fundraising initiatives, and unfolding international politics.     

Growing up,going out and growing out of the countryside: childhood experiences in Rural England

This article contributes to knowledge of children's geographies by considering how the micro-geographies of children change as they grow up in a rural locality. Drawing upon evidence from a Hampshire village, it explores how children of different ages are imagined, positioned and regulated in different public spaces, inside and outside the village, through repetitive acts and regulatory regimes. Attention is given to the ways in which these practices can cause conflict with other children and adults, exacerbating a sense of restriction felt by young people growing up in the countryside.     

Legislation and Liberalization: The Debate About Corporal Punishment in Schools in Postwar West Germany, 1945--1975

Between 1945 and 1975 West Germany became modernized and liberalized.School education was one of the key fields in which this processwas played out. Methods of school discipline, corporal punishmentin particular, were the subject of heated public debates, reflectingthe broader political and moral issues of West German postwarreconstruction. The article examines the debate and its conclusionin the 1970s by focusing on Hesse, the only Land that bannedcorporal punishment in schools completely in 1946, and Bavariaand North Rhine-Westphalia, which both allowed it under restrictions.Proponents of corporal punishment pointed to the problems withdeviant youth in the postwar years and declared the use of thistype of sanction to be a right given to teachers by customarylaw. Opponents, however, put forward pedagogical, psychological,political, and moral arguments and called for a clear breakwith authoritarian methods of the past as necessary for rebuildingdemocracy. The pace and character of change, however, was determinedin the field of law. While a Supreme Court ruling in 1954 supportedthe opponents' position, a 1957 ruling by another Chamber ofthe same court reaffirmed the traditional customary-law viewof a teacher's right to wield the cane. Customary law couldonly be superseded by written law, but when most Land governmentsfinally abolished corporal punishment in schools in the early1970s, they did so, following Hesse's example, by administrativedecree only. While teachers who violated the ban therefore werenot automatically subject to criminal proceedings, courts remainedreluctant to uphold the ban. The abolition of corporal punishmentin schools, which also came at the price of an increase in bureaucraticregulations about school discipline and school life, can thusbe seen as reflecting the ambivalence of modernization and liberalizationafter 1945.     

Childhoods past and present: anxiety and idyll in reminiscences of childhood outdoor play and contemporary parenting practices

ABSTRACT

Outdoor play is considered an essential aspect of a ‘proper childhood’. However, unsupervised outside play is declining, a decline attributed to parental anxieties about children’s safety. However what drives these anxieties and how this impacts on contemporary outdoor play is less clear. Our paper seeks to explore this through an analysis of adult narratives generated through digital map-making and forum discussion about where they played as children and where they would allow a child to play unsupervised now. Our analysis explores the nature of these narratives and pivotal moments in which adults articulated the disconnect between their own recollections of idyllic spatial freedom and the spatial restrictions they place on contemporary children. This offers a rich understanding of how parents navigate conflicting cultural imperatives on risk-avoidance and children’s rights to a ‘good’ childhood.     

'A Suitable Person for Suitable Cases': The Gendering of Juvenile Courts in England, c. 1910-39

This article examines the relationship between the introductionof women Justices of the Peace (JPs) in 1919 and the gendereddevelopment of juvenile courts in England, c. 1910–39.It argues that the campaigns for the appointment of women asJPs and for new methods of dealing with delinquent childrenwere closely connected from 1910 onwards, when the proposalwas first made that ‘suitable’ persons should beappointed to hear ‘suitable’ cases in magistratescourts. Using evidence drawn from government records and othersources, the article examines the interaction of the two campaignsand of feminist and penal reform groups in securing the remodellingof London's juvenile justice system in the Juvenile Courts (Metropolis)Act of 1920. It argues that these arrangements, and similarones adopted elsewhere in England, consciously reflected presumedfamilial and gender roles. It concludes that the replicationof the ‘traditional’ family in the composition ofthe court may have limited the ability of the youth justicesystem to be innovative in its approach to juvenile delinquencyin the period up to 1939. ^* a.f.logan{at}kent.ac.uk     

Critical Geographies of Education Beyond “Value”: Moral Sentiments,Caring, and a Politics for Acting Differently

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Singapore between 2013 and 2014, this article discusses the ways in which students mobilise different moral and ethical values to perform informal care at a private educational institute. The task is to advance a critical analysis of how students can “act differently” from the dominant strategic and calculative image of a neoliberal actor as portrayed in broader literature. Specifically, I suggest more attention needs to be given to love and care as the basis for radical practices in everyday life. I discuss the themes of deconstructive empathy, friendship solidarities, and intergenerational love to demonstrate how caring practices can produce more‐than‐capitalist subjectivities in the neoliberalising spaces of higher education. The article adds theoretical and empirical flesh to ongoing efforts in exploring “alternative” experiences of neoliberalising education through care, love, and intimacy.