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Spatial perspectives on babies’ ways of belonging in infant early childhood education and care Cover

Spatial perspectives on babies’ ways of belonging in infant early childhood education and care

Open Access
|Jul 2018

Abstract

In this article, we endeavour to think spatially about the texture of infants’ everyday lives and their ways of ‘doing’ belonging in the babies’ room in an Australian early childhood education and care centre. Drawing on data from a large, multiple case-study project, and on theorisations of space that reject Euclidean notions of space as empty, transparent, relatively inert containers into which people, objects practices and artefacts are inserted, and instead emphasise space as complex, dynamic and relational, we map the navigating movements (Massumi, 2002) of baby Nadia. Through the telling of ‘stories-so-far’ (Massey, 2005), we convey how Nadia, as part of a constellation or assemblage of human and non-human beings, found ways to intensify space and to mobilise new vantage points, thus expanding the spatial possibilities of what we initially took to be a particularly confined and confining space.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jped-2018-0006 | Journal eISSN: 1338-2144 | Journal ISSN: 1338-1563
Language: English
Page range: 109 - 131
Published on: Jul 31, 2018
Published by: University of Trnava, Faculty of Education
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2018 Jennifer Sumsion, Linda J. Harrison, Matthew Stapleton, published by University of Trnava, Faculty of Education
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.