Research and Writing Projects
The Awkward Spaces of Fathering
Social science research often defines a father’s relationship and involvement with his children as a form of co-parenting that is interdependent with, in opposition to, and at times less than mothering. It is a position that tends to avoid issues of power, dominance and positioning, and often soft-pedals the emotional bonds between fathers and their children. This project seeks to advance knowledge of the mythic ideals that help structure the gender and spatial relations of fathering, and to understand more fully how these get in the way of the day-to-day work of fathering. There are two sub-components to this project.
I. The Emotional Work of Fathering: A Study of the Spatial Construction of Fathering
An ongoing ten-year longitudinal study using ethnographic interviews and participant observation explores how much of the institution of fatherhood hinges on an “idea” that does not embrace the “fact” of fathering as a daily emotional practice that is negotiated, contested and resisted differently in different spaces. Of central importance is the assumption that these spaces are highlighted and questioned or put in jeopardy.
II. Recovering Fatherhood: A Study of the Social and Spatial Politics of Exclusion
This part of the study explores normative views of “being a father” amongst a sample of fathers whose place in a family is contested by past behaviors and practices. The specific focus of change for this project is exclusion from, or tension within, families due to a father’s past substance abuse and other dependencies. The project seeks to understand how fathers in recovery from addictive diseases create new and complex spaces of interaction with their families. For more information about this project, please contact Dr. Stuart Aitken.
Global Childhoods: Globalization, Development and Young People
This volume is edited by Stuart Aitken and includes a contribution by Fernando Bosco. This collection highlights one important frame for understanding the importance of children’s geographies: the social construction of children and the spatial dynamics of local childhoods are related to global and political economic trends and conceptualizations of development.
Global Childhoods: Why Children? Why Now?
Edited by Aitken Stuart, Anne Trine Kjørholt and Ragnhild Lund
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction: Why Children? Why Now?
The Globalized North & Exporting Childhoods
Genealogies of Development: Child Development and National Development in Contemporary Discourse
Reflections of Primitivism: Development, Progress and Civilization in Imperial America, 1898-1914
Childhood as a Symbolic Space. Searching for Authentic Voices in the Era of Globalisation
Childhood in the Age of Global Media
The Globalized South & Importing Livelihoods
Global Aid Networks and Hungry Children in Argentina: Thinking about Geographies of Responsibility and Care
Changing livelihoods – Changing Childhood: Patterns of Children’s Work in Rural Southern Ethiopia
Negotiating Migrant Identities: Young People in Bolivia and Argentina
Desarrollo Integral y La Frontera/Integral Development & Borderspaces
Child Participation in Development: A Globalized Discourse
At the Interface of Development Studies and Child Research: Rethinking the Participating Child
Disciplining the Global Womb: Anti-child Labour Campaigning and the End of Development
Children, Young People, UNICEF and Participation
Afterword
Young People as Agents of Change: The Experiences of New Immigrant Families in a Border Community
This project examines how children and young people act as agents of change with regard to the community involvement and civic participation of new immigrant families in a suburb of San Diego, California. The goals of the project are to uncover different pathways and strategies that immigrant adults develop and follow as a result of their interaction with children and young people in their communities. By analyzing how young people exert a continual and subtle influence on the knowledge and perspectives of immigrant adult family members, this project will advance knowledge of the way immigrant families overcome barriers to assimilation and become involved in their communities. This project contributes to current scholarly and policy debates regarding the civic and community incorporation of immigrants in the contemporary United States. For more information about this new research project, please contact Dr. Stuart Aitken and/or Dr. Fernando Bosco.
Using Indicators to Measure Quality-of-Life and Engage Citizens at the Neighborhood Scale
This is an exploratory project that is pursuing the possibility of creating and mapping a comprehensive set of indicators relating to quality-of-life and environmental conditions at a local scale. The project is aimed at providing a useful analytic and decision-support structure that makes it easier to relate population outcomes and interests to measurable community conditions. The project would aid the public and private sectors’ capacity to target resources and initiatives and pursue an overall aim of ensuring equity across geographic regions and population sub-groups. The project could also form part of a strategy to empower and engage activists and citizen groups, increasing the purposefulness and clarity of their interactions with local government and institutions. For more information on this project, please contact Dr. Thomas Herman.