CHILDREN, YOUNG PEOPLE AND FAMILIES IN CHANGING URBAN SPACES 

3^rd and 4^th September 2014

Centre for Children and Youth

University of Northampton, UK

 Organising committee:

John Horton, Faith Tucker, Sophie Hadfield-Hill (University of Birmingham), Michelle Pyer, Rebekah Ryder

Keynote speaker:

Tracey Skelton (National University of Singapore)

Themes:

This conference will bring together new, multidisciplinary research exploring the lives, issues and experiences of children, young people and families in diverse, international urban contexts. In three senses, we propose that it is timely for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners with an interest in this field to share experiences of working in changing urban contexts.

First, so many urban spaces are undergoing profound changes as a result of interconnected political-economic processes, such as economic crisis and austerity politics in the global north, or uneven development and large-scale urbanisation in the global south. This conference will bring together researchers and perspectives at the vanguard of these transformations.

Second, there is evidence that children, young people and families are positioned, and socially constructed, in diverse and sometimes unprecedented ways in changing urban contexts. In wide-ranging research on participation, activisms, political movements, play or independent mobilities, for example, it is evident that changing urban spaces may afford new opportunities or new limits to the agency of children, young people and families. This conference offers an opportunity for diverse research, from diverse locations, to be discussed.

Third, research on urban children, young people and families is itself changing. As a number of publications and collections have made clear, interdisciplinary collaboration and conversations are increasingly commonplace. For example, new insights have resulted from collaborations between: researchers in urban studies, childhood studies and children’s geographies; researchers, young people and youth workers; quantitative, qualitative and GIS/GPS-based research; academic researchers, planners, policy-makers and practitioners; or social scientists and the creative industries. Research on childhood, youth, families and urbanity has also been enlivened and extended through engagements with conceptualisations of the social-material and bodily-emotional-affective nature of identities, relationships and urban built environments and social-cultural geographies. There are surely numerous exciting ways in which researchers from diverse backgrounds might continue to collaborate.

With all this in mind, we invite papers which engage with children and young people in relation to the following topics:

• Economic crisis and austerity politics;
• Designing environments for children, young people and families;
• Movement and mobilities;
• Urbanisation and economic development in the global south;
• Play and popular culture;
• Disabilities, health and wellbeing;
• Identities, subcultures and friendships;
• Exclusions, vulnerability, support and care;
• Innovative concepts and research methods in urban research;
• Work and economic participation;
• Social media and digital technologies in the city;
• Policing, control and surveillance;
• Urban play, identities, subcultures and popular culture;
• Built environments and public spaces;
• Participation, activism and citizenship.

Abstracts (c.200 words) should be emailed to: faith.tucker@northampton.ac.uk by 16^thApril 2014.

Conference information:

Information about registration for the conference will be available in due course.  The standard fee for this two-day conference will be £125; postgraduate fee £65.  (Additional charge for overnight accommodation.)

For further information, please contact Dr Faith Tucker (email:faith.tucker@northampton.ac.uk ).

Thursday 12th ­ Friday 13th June 2014

Closing date for submissions is 14th March 2014

We are inviting abstracts for a two day Conference held at Canterbury Christ
Church University, Canterbury, Kent, UK.

We are seeking papers which challenge the dominant ideologies and notions of
social justice that are driving current changes in social and educational
policy. We are particularly interested in papers which explore social
justice in relation to children and marginalised young people, including
those from education, health and social care, social policy, housing,
sociology and criminology disciplines. We are also interested in papers
exploring innovative research methods with children and young people. Issues
for papers include:

€ Impact of poverty and inequality on children and young people

€ Marginalisation of children and young people

€ Use of innovative research methods

€ Role of education in reproducing inequality

€ Pedagogies of inclusion in schools and universities

€ Diverse identities of children and young people, including:

€ Gender

€ Sexuality

€ Ethnicity

€ Children in care

Proposals of 300 words are invited for consideration for 20 minute papers
(followed by 10 minutes for questions and discussion). Please submit
abstracts to: Charmian Cowie: charmian.cowie@canterbury.ac.uk

For further information, contact Ruth Rogers at ruth.rogers@canterbury.ac.uk
or 01227 782099

Closing date for submissions: Friday 14th March 2014

http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/education/conferences-events/Home.aspx

Call for Papers: Young People’s Migration Within and Throughout Asia
*International Workshop Series: The Emotions of Migration*

*Workshop 2
Young People¹s Migration Within and Throughout Asia: Managing Emotions,
Identities and Relationships *

Date: 19 August 2014 to 20 August 2014

York Centre for Asian Research and the Children¹s Studies Program
(Department of Humanities) York University, Toronto Canada

*Call for papers*: Workshop 2 calls for empirical research papers ­
historical and contemporary- on children and young people¹s emotional
experiences of migration within and throughout Asia. Papers should focus on
mixed feelings of (but not limited to) elation, loneliness, hope,
frustration, confusion, relief, fear, freedom and disappointment in the
migration process.

There is a preference for participant-centred research in South and
Southeast Asia prioritizing the following themes:

1. Migration for work and marriage in a historical context (especially
in plantations and estates)
2. Contemporary experiences of moving for work, marriage and school ­
managing mixed feelings
3. Left Behind ­ adjusting to absence and creating and maintaining
relationships

*Submission and Funding: *Please submit contact details and paper abstract
(maximum of 300 words) by*April 4th 2014 to *Dr. Kabita
Chakrabortrykabitac@yorku.ca <mailto:kabitac@yorku.ca>.

Successful applicants will be notified by late-April and are required to
send in a complete draft paper (6000 ­ 8000 words) by July 8, 2014. Partial
or full funding will be granted to successful applicants. Participants are
encouraged to seek alternate funds for travel from their home institutions

*Webpage*:
http://ycar.apps01.yorku.ca/research/programmes-projects/emotions-migration-
asia/

Dear ACYIG colleagues,

We are organizing a panel for this year’s AAA meeting in December in Washington, DC. A tentative title is “Unsettling the Trope of Change: Negotiations with ‘Tradition’ among Contemporary Youth.” Papers on this panel will draw on research with youth (broadly defined) to  unsettle the common dichotomy between change and tradition.

In our research (Bonnie’s in India, Mindy’s in Mexico and the US), we both work with youth and teens who are generally the first generation in their families to attend school and to plan for (or are currently in) higher education. They have grown up with the goal of producing very different adult identities within society than those of their parents. However, we continue to see unexpected continuitieswith “traditional culture”that do not fit with a Euro-American model of individualization in Late Modernity. We see them often prioritize their family roles and maintain a strong sense of familism, despite simultaneously aiming for such modern economic identities that in the West link to the loss of familism.
While we tend to situate our own research within a context of social change, we realize that we need to unsettle this anthropological trope to enable a more nuanced understanding of growing up, in order to theorize how young people embrace these seemingly conflicting local and global ideals for personhood.

Please let us know as soon as possible if you are interested in joining our panel (email: brichard@ucla.edu). We will need abstracts by the end of March, but need to hear from you soon if you are thinking about submitting with us so that we can plan accordingly.

Bonnie Richard (UCLA) & Mindy Steinberg (UCLA

113th  AAA Annual Meeting Call for Papers and ACYIG Sponsorship Instructions

This year’s AAA meeting will be held in Washington DC (December 3-7). The theme is Producing Anthropology (see below).

April 15 is the proposal deadline for all sessions, individual paper and poster presentations, media submissions and special events via www.aaanet.org.

As ACYIG members, there are two special things to keep in mind:

1.      When submitting, be sure to select ACYIG as your second review section. All ACYIG members should do this.

2.      In addition, if you are organizing a session and would like ACYIG sponsorship for your session (which means that your session becomes one of two sessions chosen to receive the “Organized by ACYIG” tagline and an endorsement from the executive board program committee), please alert ACYIG by Tuesday April 1 (please email your materials as one document or pdf file to esobo@mail.sdsu.edu). You should send:

a.       Session organizer names, affiliations, and contact information

b.      Session title

c.       Session abstract (250 words or less)

d.      Names/affiliations of confirmed participants & their paper titles

To prepare to submit your sessions to ACYIG for sponsorship, we encourage you to use the listserv to publicize ideas and solicit collaborators. Send out a draft abstract and invite interested colleagues to contact you; submit ideas on hot topics around which you’d like to see others organize sessions (or installations); and/or offer up your own proposal to see if anyone would like to include it in a panel they already have organized. Some ideas we’ve heard being floated for sessions or installations include: princess pornography; ethno-theories of education; child iconography; developmental science; digitizing childhood; production of child health; and learning gender.

Remember, as per the AAA Meetings Website, “In  addition to the familiar, productive formats of individual papers, organized  panels [etc. the AAA now welcomes] Installations—performances, recitals, conversations, author-meets-critic  roundtables, salon reading workshops, oral history recording sessions and other  alternative, creative forms of intellectual expression.” As you plan, then, feel free to be creative! Be aware, also, that double sessions are no longer allowed.

More from the AAA Meetings Website: “Producing Anthropology, the 2014 annual meeting theme, offers a provocation to examine the truths we encounter, produce and communicate through anthropological theories and methods. What are our epistemological commitments to the ways we make scientific knowledge today? What impact does our epistemic convictions and predilections have, intended or not? What goals do we want to set for ourselves? What partnerships should we build? What audiences should we seek?  And how will the truths we generate change as we contend with radical shifts in scholarly publishing, employment opportunities, and labor conditions for  anthropologists, as well as the politics of circulating the anthropological  records we produce?”

Call for papers

Children’s everyday life and technology: technological practices and methodological discussions

Technologies are part of children’s everyday life. They have altered how children engage with their physical and social surroundings. This development has been both praised and cursed. While being ‘plugged in’ is often discussed as a major health and wellbeing threat due to the increase of cyber bullying, sexual abuse and more time engaged in sedentary activities, other studies bemoan children’s loss of creativity, face-to-face contact and environmental literacy. In contrast, technologies can also enrich children’s lives by overcoming physical, socio-economic or cultural barriers. Children can maintain relationships with friends and family members located in different cities or overseas, explore virtual landscapes with children from different backgrounds around the world or positively change disabled children’s learning and communication experience. Some of these discussions have been lately connected to a critical engagement with ‘digital citizenship’ and inequalities in access.

Technologies are also used as research tools for gaining new insights in children’s mundane everyday life. Studies followed children with a GPS tracker, videoed children’s way to school, used facebook as a discussion forum and phones to respond to daily surveys. All in all, opportunities to make use of quickly changing technologies in research projects as well as for researching children’s technological practices are diverse.

This session aims to bring researchers together who are interested in children’s daily engagement with technologies and/or the use of technologies in research projects for unpacking children’s mundane everyday life in different contexts and places.

Papers can focus on, but are not limited to the following themes:

• Children’s place and meaning making through, with and against technologies
• Children’s (changing) everyday engagement with technologies or their fluid movement between virtual or real worlds
• Theoretical lenses available for thinking about children’s everyday life and technology
• Reduction or increase of social and physical disadvantages due to (in)accessibility of technology (sedentary lives, easier participation on society, …)
• Critical and ethical reflections on the use of technologies in research projects

Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words by 7th March to Christina.ergler@otago.ac.nz.
Acceptance of the papers will be confirmed by email and they will be included in the conference programme (http://www.cscy.group.shef.ac.uk/activities/conferences/index.htm). Please feel free to contact me with any queries you might have.

CFP: Sites of Memory in Children’s Literature, MLA 2015 (Vancouver, BC)

Call for Papers

“Fun with Dick and Jane: Gender and Childhood”

A Gender Studies Conference at the University of Notre Dame

South Bend, Indiana

December 4-6, 2014

In recent years, there has been great interest in questions of gender and childhood, ranging from issues around boys wearing princess costumes to school; to Disney princess culture; to parents refusing to announce a baby’s biological sex; to pre-teen children coming out as gay, lesbian, and queer; to toy companies marketing toys by gender; to gender-related bullying, and more.

How are children gendered?  How do we account for transgender children? How have ideas about girls and boys changed historically?  How are children hailed as gendered consumers? How do schools inculcate ideas about gender? How do children’s books promote ideas about gender?  How do changing ideas about parenting relate to children’s gendering?

This conference seeks to explore issues of gender and childhood through multiple lenses and from a wide range of disciplines.  We welcome papers on gender and childhood in media, literature, history, anthropology, biology, architecture, philosophy, art history, sociology, education, and more.  We are especially open to interdisciplinary approaches.

Topics might include:

• Representations of children in film, children’s books, adult books, TV shows, paintings, photography. etc.;
• Childhood spectatorship and fandoms;
• Gendered childhood spaces;
• Gendered toys and games;
• Ideologies of childhood sexuality;
• Parenting books and gender;
• Children and gay parents;
• Sports and gender;
• Children’s fashion;
• Reality TV and children’s gender;
• Children’s fiction and gender;
• Transgender children;
• Children’s own media and internet practices;
• Journalism and childhood;
• Gender and bullying;
• Transnational gender identities;
• Schooling practices.

Proposals should consist of a 200 word abstract of the paper, a list of three keywords, and a brief biographical statement listing your title, the name of your college or university, and your areas of research and writing . Proposals for creative work – poetry, short stories, short films, will be considered.

Please indicate technology needs, such as powerpoint or DVD.

Proposals are due by May 1, 2014

Send proposals to:

https://notredame-web.ungerboeck.com/spa/spa_p1_authors.aspx?oc=10&cc=114020403651

Questions can be addressed to: Pamela Wojcik, Director of Gender Studies, The University of Notre Dame, by email, with the subject line “Gender and Childhood”: Pamela.Wojcik.5@nd.edu