Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Sticky: Childhoodnature Touch Encounters

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Research Handbook on Childhoodnature

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

  • 869 Accesses

Abstract

Children’s attention to sensuous and affective qualities of nature-matter affordances and constraints is the focus of this chapter, along with related possibilities for movement, learning, and thought. An eco-aesthetic account of childhoodnature touch is developed in relation to Barad’s quantum physics-informed theory of agential realism. By this account, all particles are entangled in the void so that every degree of touch is touched by all possible others. Encounters of childhoodnature touch are drawn from the author’s lived experiences of child-led walks in Chiang Mai, Thailand. These are performative walks from “The Walking Neighbourhood Hosted by Children” project, in which arts workers supported primary school-aged children to locate places of connection in urban landscapes for curating and leading walks as public performance. Sensory ethnographic attention to the encounters were privileged due to limited mutual language sharing. The eco-aesthetics of childhoodnature touch encounters in three child-led walks of Chiang Mai are storied from the author’s lived encounters to invite “possibilities of engaging the force of imagination in its materiality” (Barad, Differ J Fem Cult Stud 23(3):206–223, 2012). Poetics and storying are purposefully offered to entice readers to imagine sensing the insensible – the indeterminacy of the entanglement of matter. By doing this, experiences of childhood connections with nature can be (re)imagined, foregrounding the affect of eco-aesthetics in provoking appreciation and care for the entangled other.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abbs, P. (1987). Towards a coherent arts aesthetic. In P. Abbs (Ed.), Living powers: The arts in education. East Sussex, UK: The Falmer Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Abbs, P. (1989). A is for aesthetic: Essays on creative and aesthetic education. Sussex, UK: The Falmer Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Barad, K. (2010). Quantum entanglements and hauntological relations of inheritance: Dis/continuities, spacetime enfoldings, and justice-to-come. Derrida Today, 3(2), 240–268.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barad, K. (2012). On touching – The inhuman that therefore I am. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 23(3), 206–223.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barad, K. (2014). On touching – The unhuman that therefore I am (v1. 1). In S. Witzgall & K. Stakemeier (Eds.), Power of material/politics of materiality (pp. 153–164). Berlin, Germany: Diaphanes.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barilli, R. (1993). A course on aesthetics (K. Pinkus, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bellacasa, M. (2009). Touching technologies, touching visions. Subjectivity, 28(1), 297–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial hells: Participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. London, England: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourriaud, N. (2002). Relational aesthetics (S. Pleasance & F. Woods, Trans.). Dijon, France: Les presses du réel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourton, J. (2010, 28 May). English ivy’s climbing secrets revealed by scientists. BBC Earth News. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8701000/8701358.stm

  • Cameron, E. (2012). New geographies of story and storytelling. Progress in Human Geography, 36(5), 573–592.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coady, M. (2008). Beings and becomings: Historical and philosophical considerations of the child as citizen. In G. MacNaughton, P. Hughes, & K. Smith (Eds.), Young children as active citizens (pp. 2–14). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cronon, W. (1992). A place for stories: Nature, history, and narrative. Journal of American History, 78, 1347–1376.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Denzin, N. (1997). Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the twenty-first century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Creswell, T. (2004). Place: A short introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York, NY: Capricorn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diaz, G. (2004). Experiencing the moment. In G. Diaz & M. B. McKenna (Eds.), Teaching for aesthetic experience: The art of learning (pp. 85–99). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Finley, S. (2011). Ecoaesthetics: Green arts at the intersection of education and social transformation. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 11(3), 306–313.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006). A postcapitalist politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gill, T. (2007). No fear: Growing up in a risk adverse society. London, England: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ginn, F. (2014). Sticky lives: Slugs, detachment and more-than-human ethics in the garden. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 39(4), 532–544. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12043.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene, M. (2004). Carpe diem: The arts and school structuring. In G. Diaz & M. B. McKenna (Eds.), Teaching for aesthetic experience: The art of learning (pp. 17–31). New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. (1997). Modest_witness@second_Milennial_FemaleMan©_meets_Onco Mouse™: Feminism and technoscience. New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC/London, England: Duke Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hultman, K., & Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: A relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), 525–542.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Abingdon, OX: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kleinman, A. (2012). Intra-actions. Mousse: Magazine gratuito d’arte contemporanea, 34, 76–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, B. (2004). Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malone, K., & Rudner, J. (2011). Global perspectives on children’s independent mobility: A socio-cultural comparison and theoretical discussion of children’s lives in four countries in Asia and Africa. Global Studies of Childhood, 1(3), 243–259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marcuse, H. (1978). The aesthetic dimension: Toward a critique of Marxist aesthetics (E. Sherover, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miles, M. (2014). Eco-aesthetics: Art, literature and architecture in a period of climate change. London, England: Bloomsbury Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nxumalo, F. (2015). Forest stories: Restorying encounters with ‘natural’ places in early childhood education. In V. Pacini-Ketchabaw & A. Taylor (Eds.), Unsettling the colonial places and spaces of early childhood education (pp. 21–42). New York, NY: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nxumalo, F. (2016). Touching place in childhood studies: Situated encounters with a community garden. In H. Skott-Myhre, V. Pacini-Ketchabaw, & K. Skott-Myhre (Eds.), Youth work, early education, and psychology: Liminal encounters (pp. 131–158). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oliver, N. (2001). Mermaids most amazing. New York: G.P.Putnam’s Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phillips, L. G. (2016). Walking in indeterminate spaces: Possibilities for political coexistence. Qualitative Research Journal, 16(4), 331–344. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-09-2015-0084.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phillips, L. G., & Tossa, W. (2017). Intergenerational and intercultural civic learning through storied child-led walks of Chiang Mai. Geographical Research, 55(1), 18–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.12182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Piirto, J. (2011). Creativity for 21st century skills: How to embed creativity into the classroom. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pink, S. (2009). Doing sensory ethnography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ranciere, J. (2010). Dissensus (S. Corcoran Ed.). London, England: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tobin, J. (2004). The disappearance of the body in early childhood education. In L. Bresler (Ed.), Knowing bodies, moving minds: Towards embodied teaching and learning (pp. 111–125). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Valentine, G. (2004). Public space and the culture of childhood. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Louise Gwenneth Phillips

Authors
  1. Louise Gwenneth Phillips
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Louise Gwenneth Phillips .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, Southern Cross University School of Education, Coolangatta, Queensland, Australia

    Amy Cutter-Mackenzie

  2. Centre for Educational Research, Western Sydney University Centre for Educational Research, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia

    Karen Malone

  3. Department of Education, University of Bath Department of Education, Bath, United Kingdom

    Elisabeth Barratt Hacking

Section Editor information

  1. Manchester Metropolian University, Manchester, UK

    David Rousell

  2. Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA

    Dilafruz Williams

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Phillips, L.G. (2018). Sticky: Childhoodnature Touch Encounters. In: Cutter-Mackenzie, A., Malone, K., Barratt Hacking, E. (eds) Research Handbook on Childhoodnature . Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_90-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51949-4_90-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51949-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51949-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation