Kirsi Pauliina Kallio

At least nine ways to play: approaching gamer mentalities

Do digital games and play mean the same things for different people? This article presents the results of a 3-year study in which we sought for new ways to approach digital games cultures and playing practices. First, the authors present the research process in brief and emphasize the importance of merging different kinds of methods and materials in the study of games cultures. Second, the authors introduce a gaming mentality heuristics that is not dedicated to a certain domain or genre of games, addressing light casual and light social gaming motivations as well as more dedicated ones in a joint framework. The analysis reveals that, in contrast to common belief, the majority of digital gaming takes place between ‘‘casual relaxing’’ and ‘‘committed entertaining,’’ where the multiplicity of experiences, feelings, and understandings that people have about their playing and digital games is wide ranging. Digital gaming is thus found to be a multifaceted social and cultural phenomenon that can be understood, practiced, and used in various ways.

Are There Politics in Childhood

This paper sets out to explore childrens worlds as potential fields of political action. Children are approached as competent political agents whose mundane lives are permeated by politics in which they have their own positions and roles. The paper discusses how children can be found to act politically in their everyday lives and, to some extent, also practice their own political geographies. The main objective is to propose a theoretical basis for recognising the political aspects of childrens agency and studying political geographies embedded in childrens lived worlds.

The body as a battlefield: approaching children's politics

Abstract This article discusses the active role of children in everyday politics. Distinct from empowerment, it is suggested that children can be political on their own terms. The article focuses on revealing the social production of childhood, which takes place in the confrontation between child policy and childrens own politics. Childrens bodies are found to be both the main focus of policy practices and a central avenue of childrens own agency. Hence, children are understood to be not only objects of policy, but also embodied political subjects. Using the example of Finnish child evacuees’ experiences during the Second World War, it is shown that, despite their positions in policy fields, children do act as political selves. Using the ideas of Michel de Certeau and Carl Schmitt, it is argued that there is an autonomous politics to children which can be recognized as a significant means of coping in their everyday lives. On these grounds, the article sets out to use Pierre Bourdieus concept of political struggle in considering childhood spatialities in more detail. Overall, childrens politics are understood as a wider geographical concept which requires further examination.

EDITORIAL: CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE'S POLITICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Author(s): Kallio Kirsi Pauliina, Hakli Jouni Title: Editorial: Children and Young Peoples Politics in Everyday Life Year: 2013 Journal Title: Space and Polity Vol and number: 17 : 1 Pages: 1-16 Discipline: Social and economic geography School /Other Unit: School of Management Item Type: Journal Article Language: en DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2013.780710 URN: URN:NBN:fi:uta-201305031092

Performative Bodies, Tactical Agents and Political Selves: Rethinking the Political Geographies of Childhood

Abstract Theoretical elaboration and conceptualisation of childrens political geographies is presently in a state of modification. Since the concepts of childhood and politics are not commonly brought together, there is plenty of work to be done. This article concentrates on revealing some political aspects of childhood and bringing up other focal questions concerning childrens political geographies. Special attention is paid to childrens agency and tactics to reach a better understanding of their ways of participating in politics. The theoretical foundations for this paper are in critical social theory. Following the thoughts of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau and Nigel Thrift on the potentials of non-representational theory, it explores performativity and body politics in general.

Subject, action and polis Theorizing political agency

In this paper, we develop tools for understanding political agency and political events as they unfold contextually in everyday life. We discuss alternative understandings of the subject so as to grasp the scope of the subject’s autonomy as the ground for political subjectivity. We conceive of political agency in terms of subjectivity related to subject positions offered in the flux of everyday life. To bring together political subject and action, we conceptualize the topological settings of political agency in terms of polis. To illustrate the analytical potential of our approach, we analyse a sequence in a movie by Ingmar Bergman.

Lived citizenship as the locus of political agency in participatory policy

Participatory policies seeking to foster active citizenship continue to be dominated by a territorial imagination. Yet, the world where people identify and perform as citizens is spatially multifarious. This article engages with the tension between territorially grounded perceptions and relational modes of practicing political agency. Studying empirically the Finnish child and youth policies, we address jointly the participatory obligations that municipalities strive to fulfill, and the spatial attachments that children and young people establish in their lived worlds. To this end, we introduce the concept of lived citizenship as an interface where the territorially-bound public administration and the plurality of spatial attachments characteristic to transnational living may meet. We conclude by proposing a re-grounding of lived citizenship in both topological and topographical terms as an improvement in theoretical understanding of mundane political agency and as a step towards more proficient participatory policies.

Rethinking Spatial Socialisation as a Dynamic and Relational Process of Political Becoming

The article sets out to bring early political development back to the research agenda in childhood studies and the social scientific inquiry more generally. Proposing a geographical approach, it seeks to develop the concept of spatial socialisation as a dynamic and relational process through which political becoming takes place. Contrary to the conventional conceptions, children are understood as participants rather than recipients of socialisation – active agents in their everyday environments alongside with their adult authorities, institutions, the media and their lived communities as a whole. Moreover, drawing from phenomenological theorisations of subjectivity, politics and space, the employed approach problematises the worlds in which political socialisation takes place. The article argues that the dynamic processes of socialisation constitute the spatial realities where children and youth lead their lives as much as they constitute the youthful subjects they involve.

The Global as a Field: Children's Rights Advocacy as a Transnational Practice

Research on transnationalism has called into question the much criticized but persistent dichotomy between the nation-state space as an ‘inside’, and the global realm as its constitutive ‘outside’. This paper contributes to the emerging scholarship on transnational elites working at the intersection of the national and the global by assessing practices related to childrens rights advocacy. Particular attention is paid to the drafting and the enforcement of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child since the 1980s. On the basis of a Bourdieuan theorization of social fields we argue that some aspects of childrens rights advocacy can be understood as reflecting the dynamism of the transnational field of childrens rights. In somewhat broader terms the paper proposes that the formative logic of elite-driven globalization is a social and political dynamism related to the rules of competition and collaboration that structure inclusions, exclusions, and awards in transnational fields.

Shaping subjects in everyday encounters: Intergenerational recognition in intersubjective socialisation

This article considers the role of intergenerational recognition in processes of subject formation and political development. It leans on a broad conception of politics, following a phenomenologically oriented approach and drawing from theories of contextual recognition. Intergenerational recognition is introduced as a key dynamism and practice in intersubjective socialisation, unfolding in everyday environments among ‘significant others’. In these encounters, people take shape and are shaped as political subjects. Empirically, the article is based on research with 129 eleven- to fifteen-year-old girls and boys, including an analysis of their place-based biographies. By introducing different forms of intergenerational (mis)recognition, it shows how the formation of political subjects takes place in the most mundane environments where children and young people lead their lives. In conclusion, the article suggests that ‘political becoming’ deserves increasing attention in critical research and intergenerational recognition ought to be better identified as a social practice. Whether intentional or intuitive, the ways in which adults regard children and young people has both harmful and beneficial effects on the formation of their political subjectivities.