Tara Woodyer

The body as research tool: embodied practice and children's geographies

Recently, attempts have been made to advance our ways of thinking and doing Childrens Geographies. This paper contributes to that endeavour in two respects. Firstly it considers how the concept of heterogeneous (or hybrid) geographies may offer a new framework for the study of childhood. Secondly, and more substantively, it explores how ‘non-representational’ ideas and approaches – concerned with the non-cognitive and the profoundly practical – may be employed to inform our empirical engagements within this new theoretical framework.

(Re)enchanting geography? The nature of being critical and the character of critique in human geography

Enchantment is a term frequently used by human geographers to express delight, wonder or that which cannot be simply explained. However, it is a concept that has yet to be subject to sustained critique, specifically how it can be used to progress geographic thought and praxis. This paper makes sense of, and space for, the unintelligibility of enchantment in order to encourage a less repressed, more cheerful way of engaging with the geographies of the world. We track back through our disciplinary heritage to explore how geographers have employed enchantment as a force through which the world inspires affective attachment. We review the terrain of the debate surrounding recent geographical engagements with enchantment, focusing on the nature of being critical and the character of critique in human geography, offering a new ‘enchanted’ stance to our geographical endeavours. We argue that the moment of enchantment has not passed with the current challenging climate; if anything, it is more pressing.

Cultural geography and enchantment: the affirmative constitution of geographical research

Thrift [2008. Non-representational theory: space, politics, affect, 65. Abingdon: Routledge] has identified disenchantment as “[o]ne of the most damaging ideas” within social scientific and humanities research. As we have argued elsewhere, “[m]etanarratives of disenchantment and their concomitant preoccupation with destructive power go some way toward accounting for the overwhelmingly ‘critical’ character of geographical theory over the last 40 years” [Woodyer, T. and Geoghegan, H., 2013. (Re)enchanting geography? The nature of being critical and the character of critique in human geography. Progress in Human Geography, 37 (2), 195–214]. Through its experimentation with different ways of working and writing, cultural geography plays an important role in challenging extant habits of critical thinking. In this paper, we use the concept of “enchantment” to make sense of the deep and powerful affinities exposed in our research experiences and how these might be used to pursue a critical, yet more cheerful way of engaging with the geographies of the world.

Book Review: Designing for play.

Designing for Play provides an insightful examination of the status of children’s play in contemporary Western society, with specific regard to playground design. Barbara Hendricks, 2nd edn 2011, Farnham: Ashgate 250 pp. £35 paperback ISBN 1409409368 paperback

The wonderful thing about tiggers

The wonderful thing about tiggers Is tiggers are wonderful things! … 1I was given my first Winnie-the-Pooh plush toy for my seventeenth birthday. He spoke and wriggled his nose when you squeezed hi...