Stuart C. Aitken

Global crises of childhood: rights, justice and the unchildlike child

This paper traces how the notion of childhood changes as part of other social transformations. Globalization and the disillusion of public and private spheres are related to contemporary crises of childhood. Visible working children and child violence are highlighted as examples of unchildlike behaviour that suggests indeterminacy in the constitution of the global child. Issues of childrens rights and new forms of justice are raised as potentially liberatory ways of viewing the crisis.

Reproducing Life And Labor Global processes and working children in Tijuana, Mexico

The issue of child labor continues to challenge thinking on the nature of work, play, schooling and apprenticeship. New wisdom from some contemporary academic writing places children closer to the center of our understanding of consumption, production and reproduction, and at the heart of inequities generated by globalization. Child labor comes in many forms and intersects with local life and global processes in a myriad of ways. The child laborers in this study work as ‘volunteer’ checkout packers in Tijuana supermarkets. By highlighting aspects of their complex daily lives, this article develops new ways of thinking about childrens work socially and spatially, while acknowledging the global contexts of this work.

I'd rather watch the movie than read the book

Abstract Geographers have been using film as a pedagogic device for some time, but it is not until recently that the full power of this medium has been recognised within the discipline as a forceful determinant of cultural norms. When using film in the classroom, I argue that there is not only a need to consider carefully the narrative of conventions followed by film‐makers but also a need for awareness of the possibility subtexts within the film which mark significant cultural and political biases. This is equally as true of ‘objective’ documentary cinema as it is of narrative or fictional cinema. Examples of movies that I have used in the classroom are discussed in order to suggest that narrative cinema can make an important contribution to the geography curriculum in higher education.

Desarrollo Integral y Fronteras/Integral Development and Borderspaces

Abstract This paper is about the work of young people and the boundaries of capitalism. I theorize consciousness and identities from the Deluezian perspective of ‘I-do’ and ‘I-am’, focusing on the doing/the working (the I-dos) of young people as part of the ghoulishly indirect discourses of globalization on la frontera (the I-ams). Put simply, I am concerned that the work of young people and its relations to their identity is lost in larger global discourses that seek other ends. In critique of those ends, I task proclamations of the International Labor Organization and the United Nations on young peoples work as a series of empty effects that are inappropriately structured around developmental outcomes. I then suggest a different way of looking at young peoples work and identity as a series of ‘I-dos’ that cohere to their notions of identity. Borderspaces—exemplified in this paper by the work of children in Tijuana but also relating to broader notions of borders—are important here. In merging with these borders young peoples identities are not randomly conceived and yet they are not predictable either.

Overturning assumptions about young people, border spaces and revolutions

With this essay, we set the stage for a discussion about young people and borders that is local in its context and global in its implications. Young peoples bounded, bordered and embodied contexts are framed by issues of exclusion and inclusion where identity and development are negotiated, acquiesced, moved and migrated. We offer insight into the literal and metaphorically bordered lives of young people and the revolutionary imaginations that transcend those borders.

Placing Children at the Heart of Globalization

In the 1970s, Bill Bunge used the metaphor of a “canary in a coal-mine” to highlight a particularly important aspect of a child ’s place in society (Bunge and Bordessa 1975). Bunge was one of the first scholars to indicate a need to study children ’s geographies not just for their own sake, but also as a harbinger of larger social ills. Early work in the discipline focused on children ’s mapping and wayfinding abilities, and how they developed into spatially cognizant beings, but Bunge introduced the import of children ’s local geographies. The local geographies of children — their political and economic contexts — speak to larger societal problems, and I argue that those contexts are often hidden in adult moral panics over teenage pregnancies, schoolyard shootings, and the like. Thirty years after Bunge ’s prophetic words, the plight of young people is of increasing concern and geographers are at the forefront of elaborating that concern and suggesting some of its root causes. Contemporary geographic work places children closer to the center of our understanding of consumption, production, and reproduction, and at the heart of the inequities generated by globalization.

Women and children in a neighborhood advocacy group: engaging community and refashioning citizenship at the United States–Mexico border

This article looks at the community participation of recent Latina immigrant mothers and their children in a neighborhood advocacy group near the US–Mexico border. It documents the work that women and children do as they struggle to become involved in their new community and improve their quality of life – despite legal, social, economic and cultural obstacles. Local context, family and ethnic networks, gendered patterns of womens experiences as immigrants and children participation in ‘adult’ decision-making are hugely important in understanding their community engagement. The article reflects on the advocacy work that women and children perform through a neighborhood group to argue for a difference-centered perspective on citizenship that is inspired by feminist thinking. Such a perspective makes sense in light of the ironic tensions within neo-liberal policies that, on the one hand, burden people with more responsibilities while, on the other hand, legislating against their freedom to pursue those responsibilities.

Leading Men to Violence and Creating Spaces for their Emotions

With this paper, I advocate an approach to violence in film that elaborates what Gilles Deleuze calls ‘preverbal intelligible content’. I focus on leading men and cinematic contrivances between emotions and violence with intent, ultimately, on saying something about how masculinities are differentiated spatially. I argue that masculinity is far from unassailable and I use filmic manifestations of leading mens emotions and violence to explore the contestable boundaries of that manliness. To demonstrate differentiated affective spaces, I use three movies that cast leading men in violent roles—Braveheart (1995), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Mystic River (2003)—as a foil against which larger theoretical issues find form. This offers insight into how spatiality and difference are inherent parts of film viewing, and how repetition invites multiple angles for engaging masculinities. Guiando los hombres a violencia y creando espacios para sus emociones Con éste artículo, propongo un enfoque en la violencia en el cine que elabora lo que llama Gilles Deleuze el ‘contenido preverbal inteligible’. Enfoco en los protagonistas masculinos y las artimañas cinematográficas entre emociones y violencia con intento, los cuales, últimamente, dicen algo sobre cómo las masculinidades son espacialmente diferenciados. Argumento que la masculinidad no es invulnerable, y utilizo manifestaciones cinematográficas de la violencia y las emociones de los protagonistas masculinos para explorar las fronteras impugnables de aquel virilidad. Para demostrar que los espacios son diferenciados y afectivos, utilizo tres películas que tiene protagonistas masculinos en papeles violentos—Braveheart (1995), Pulp Fiction (1994), y Mystic River (2003)—como un escenario en dónde se forman los asuntos teoréticos más grandes. Éste ofrece una comprensión de cómo la especialidad y la diferencia son partes elementales de viendo las películas, y de cómo las repeticiones invitan perspectivas múltiples para entender las masculinidades.

Children's Characterization of Place

This study investigated childrens place preferences and evaluations. A sample of grade-school children in El Cajon, near San Diego, answered questions about places in the neighborhood around their school. The answers were analyzed using multidimensional scaling and a modified repertory grid methodology. Groups of like-minded children were identified, as were the different ways in which they evaluated the same environments. The childrens characterization of a place was closely related to how they perceived its utility. Places useful to the children contributed to child-environment transactions that promoted independence, creativity, sociability, and affect.

Not bad for a little migrant working kid

Contemporary wisdom on young masculinities suggests discursive flexibility through which maleness is constituted and contested in the diverse tensions that make up the practices of everyday life. This essay follows the story of Quixote, a child migrant laborer, and the evolving truth of his journey into diaspora and how that influences his ideas of manhood. It comprises a voyage that involves a continuous re-situation of boundaries and the complex ways that young people are hugely responsible for the ways meaning-making circulates across space and through time.