Familial and Friendship Relations and Spatial Socialities

This volume addresses children and young people’s relationships both within and beyond the context of the family.  It begins with familial relationships and the home by examining the social and cultural complexities of families, intimacies and interdependencies, including the dynamics of families as spatial units (nuclear, multi-generational, alternative) and the roles that children play (as carers etc.). In addition to considering child/parent relations, sibling relationships and birth order, the initial section includes particular dimensions of children's familial relationships in diverse contexts, such as family food practices, aspirations and work practices. 

The second section explores geographical dimensions of adult/child relationships beyond the dynamics of the family and across the lifecourse. It considers the roles that intergenerationality plays in children's and young people's lives as well as their links with wider communities. The section addresses broader conceptual issues and themes (child-adult relationships outside the home; intergenerational geographies and spaces; and the intergenerational city) while also providing more focused discussions of current issues related to the geographies of intergenerationality including adoption, looked after children and fertility.

The final section addresses children and young people's relationships with one another: friendship, peer group relations, and sexualities.  It explores the geographies and spatialities of affective relations and emotional practices among children and young people. Geographies of bodies and embodiment and their connection to identities is an important part of this section. The chapters range from cross-cultural comparisons of age mixing among children to specific kinds of relationship formations between children and young people (e.g. friendship; sexual relations; gangs; bullying) and the spaces and places (including cyberspace) that facilitate, impede and organise these relationships. The diverse relationships that children and young people form with both one another and with adults have significant geographical dimensions. 

Samantha Punch is Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland. Her research interests are within the sociology of childhood/youth and the sociology of development, including food practices in residential care; children’s work and education in Bolivia; the sustainable rural livelihoods in China, Vietnam and India; youth transitions and migration in Latin America; sibling relationships; young people’s problems in Scotland.

Her current interest in Childhood Studies is about how to move forward the theoretical and methodological debates via cross-world dialogue between the Majority and Minority Worlds (literatures which are often kept separate). In particular she is interested in processes of generationing and the relational aspects of power and agency within generational orderings. She is also currently working on a new research area regarding the card game of bridge; exploring the sociologyof bridge including the social interactions of the game; gendered inequalities; learning across the lifecourse; and the potential links between bridge and delayed onset of dementia.

She is author of Get Set for Sociology (2005, Edinburgh University Press) and editor of Sociology: Making Sense of Society (2013, Pearson), Global Perspectives on Rural Childhood and Youth (2007, Routledge), Children's Food Practices in Families and Institutions (2011, Routledge) and Children and Young People’s Relationships: Learning Across Majority and Minority Worlds (2013, Routledge). 

Robert M. Vanderbeck is Professor of Human Geography and Head of the School of Geography at the University of Leeds.  His research focuses on social difference, identities, relationships, and contemporary processes of social and legal exclusion. He has particular (often intersecting) interests in a) childhood, youth, and intergenerational relationships;b) sexualities; c) religion; d) race and ethnicity; and e) changing urban environments. He has an enduring interest in the processes that marginalize children and young people in contemporary society, and how these processes  are related to constructions of social difference related not only to age (such as perceived differentials in competence and capability between 'children' and 'adults'), but also race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other issues.  His interest in this area has been reflected in previous research studies on issues including young people's contested uses of urban public space in the US; the social exclusion of Gypsy-Traveller young people in the United Kingdom; young people's social and environmental identities; and the narrative construction of the figure of the 'inner-city' child in the United States.  He also has extensive practical experience working with children and young people in diverse research and applied contexts, including young people from inner-city neighbourhoods in the United States; young Gypsy-Travellers in England; and lesbian, gay, bisexua,l and transgender young people in diverse contexts. He is the joint author of Law, Religion and Homosexuality (2014, Routledge) with Paul Johnson and joint editor of Intergenerational Space (2015, Routeldge) with Nancy Worth.  He is currently an investigator on the major Arts and Humanities Research Council research programme INTERSECTION (Intergenerational Justice, Consumption and Sustainability in Comparative Perspective), involving fieldwork in the United Kindgom, China, and Uganda.  

Tracey Skelton is Associate Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. She was previously Professor of Critical Geographies at the University of Loughborough in the UK. The essential elements of her research career focus on people who are socially, politically, and intellectually excluded. Her early work focusedon the Caribbean and issues of gender and racial inequality, feminist geographies, and methodological analysis. She has contributed to culture and development debates, particularly through her longitudinal research on the island of Montserrat. Recently, A/P Skelton returned to this field of scholarship through research with volunteers and host organizations in Cambodia as part of a major comparative and collaborative project on development partnerships. She was the principal investigator of a major comparative urbanism research project on the livability, sustainability, and diversity of four Asian cities: Busan in South Korea, Hyderabad in India, Kunming in China, and Singapore.

A/P Skelton is a recognized international leader in the subdiscipline of children’s and young people’s geographies. In particular, her work has served to challenge the invisibility and marginalization of young people from geographic academic research at the same time as it has demonstrated the rich andvaried ways in which young people live their lives both spatially and temporally alongside, but differently from, adults. Her research work has been funded by key research institutions such as the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK; the Faculty of Arts and Social Science Academic Research Fund and the Global Asia Institute, both of the National University of Singapore; the Australian Research Council; and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

A/P Skelton was a founding editorial board member of the international journal Children’s Geographies and has been the Viewpoints Editor since 2005 and became the Commissioning Editor for Asia in 2010. She is on the editorial boards of the following journals: Geoforum, the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Geography Compass, and ACME: International Journal of Critical Geographies (open access). She has coauthored 2 books, edited 3 collections, guest-edited 2 special journal issues, and published more than 70 journal articles and chapters. She is a passionate teacher and graduate supervisor. She is committed to the politics of research dissemination in accessible formats, in particular to enable the participants in her research projects to understand and recognize their coproduction of knowledge whether through specialized small-scale workshops, translation of reports into local languages, or production of audiovisual materials.