Children’s ways of representing the world: three ideal-types.
The sociogenesis of political and moral views of world space in childhood
Children’s lives are affected on a daily basis by global processes. Yet children’s own views on globalisation and global issues are rarely explored. Drawing on a field survey conducted with 248 Parisian children aged 6–11 years, this paper, written by Anne-Cécile Ott, Ph. D. Graduate Associate to Géographie-cités, examines the content of children’s global imaginaries and investigates the sociogenesis of their construction. It stands at the intersection of two routes less travelled by children’s geographies: the study of world space as a relevant space for children and the analysis of their political and moral perceptions on a global scale.
The pluri-methodological framework that has been put in place shows that children’s global narratives are shaped by (anxious) imaginaries reflecting an internalisation of vulnerability, blurring the classical Western hierarchies between nature and culture, humans and non-humans. They develop discourses that show the possible emergence of global citizenship. However, children’s ways of worldmaking are socially differentiated.
Excerpt
The article argues that children’s building of a political and moral sense on a global scale reveals inequalities and logics of social distinction. Its contribution is to offer a set of considerations for thinking about tomorrow’s world from children’s perspectives, and to tackle the mechanisms of social reproduction revealed by children’s unequal worldviews.
The results also showed that children’s relationships with the global world seem to be inseparable from a thinking of temporalities, whether it be a reflexivity on the past or a projection into a future time. During the classroom brainstorming activity (in which children had to say what the concept of the world made them think of), several children mentioned, for example ‘the evolution of nature’, ‘the passing of time’, ‘the Earth that wasn’t the same before’. More generally, children’s narratives about the state of the Earth and its evolution are associated with ecological concerns and with a sense of uncertainty.
