Papers
Editorial: Surveillance, Children and Childhood
Full reference,
Steeves, Val and Jones, Owain (2010) Editorial: Surveillance and Children. Surveillance & Society 7(3/4): 187-191.
(opening paragraphs)
In a sense, to be a child is to be under surveillance. Parents watch their children to keep them safe and to correct their behaviour. Teachers keep an eye on students to enforce classroom rules and to maintain discipline. Managers of shopping malls and many other semi-public places use a variety of methods to keep young people under control in order to maintain those spaces for adult usage, sensibilities and consumption. Depending on age, which is critical in this context, it can be argued that surveillance as care is a necessary condition of nurturing and educating children and young people.
However there are a series of pressing questions about the surveillance of young people. To what extent is surveillance justified? How far should it go and what form should it take? Is it more about imposing (adult) order of some kind on young people rather than a form of care? Is it a means of reproducing adult society in perpetuity at the expense of the alterity that might flourish in young life and which might challenge dominant ideologies and orders of society? How does it square with children’s rights? Such questions have long been at the heart of relations between young people and adults, and arepressing in
new ways particularly in relationship to technology, capitalism, urbanism and consumption.
link to the special issue
http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/ojs/index.php/journal/issue/view/Childhood
Download (.pdf) Stepping from the wreckage: Geography, pragmatism and anti-representational theory
full reference.
Jones O., (2008) ‘Stepping from the Wreckage: Non-representational theory and the promise of pragmatism’ in special issue on Pragmatism and Geography, Geoforum, edited by N. Wood and S. Smith, Geoforum, 39, 1600-1612.
This paper draws out linkages between non-representational theory (NRT) and pragmatism. In doing so it sets NRT in a much wider, historical anti-representational movement. This should add momentum to its progress, and open up the considerable pragmatist and neo-pragmatist heritage as a resource for dealing with questions about methods, politics and ethics that NRT raises. Firstly I outline pragmatism and NRT to ground the discussion. Secondly the convergences between pragmatism, poststructuralism and the later work of Wittgenstein are considered. After that I go through a series of working principles which can underpin what is being termed anti-representational theory. These include; the primacy of life and action, pluralism, materiality/spatiality/temporality/relationality, anti-essentialism, creativity, collectivity, fallibilism, and disorder in method. I conclude by considering anti-representational knowledge production through radical incrementalism underpinned by witness and narrative.
‘An Emotional Ecology of Memory, Self and Landscape’
Full Reference.
Jones O., (2005) ‘An Emotional Ecology of Memory, Self and Landscape’, in J. Davidson, L. Bondi and M. Smith (eds.) Emotional Geographies, Oxford, Ashgate, pp 205-218.
This is a chapter in an edited book.
A pdf is available to download. See the book on Google Books. Link below.
‘“Endlessly Revisited and Forever Gone”: on memory and emotional imaginations in doing children’s geographies. An ‘Addendum’ to ‘“To Go Back up the Side Hill”: Memories, Imaginations and Reveries of Childhood
Full reference.
Jones O., (2003) ‘“Endlessly Revisited and Forever Gone”: on memory and emotional imaginations in doing children’s geographies. An ‘Addendum’ to ‘“To Go Back up the Side Hill”: Memories, Imaginations and Reveries of Childhood’ by Chris Philo, Children’s Geographies, 1, 1, pp 25-36.
ABSTRACT The intention of this article is to expand some of the contexts and some of the conceptual and methodological trajectories presented Philo’s (2003) paper. In particular I explore the relationship of adulthood and childhood as articulated through memory and how this may impinge upon the practices of adults researching into, and writing about, childhood. The key and complex question of the otherness of childhood is raised through the questioning of the extent to which adults can imaginatively re-enter childhood. Differing forms of memory, and how these may interconnect with emotion and imagination in writings about childhood are explored as a means of trying to make connection with the conditions of childhood.
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Naturally Not! Childhood, the Urban and Romanticism
full reference.
Jones O., (2002) ‘Naturally Not! Childhood, the Urban and Romanticism’, Human Ecology Review, 9, 2, pp 17-30.
The aim of this paper is to explore the idea that in the UK ‘the urban’ can be constructed as an intrinsically unsuitable space for childhood. My suggestion is that romantic constructions of ‘nature’, ‘childhood’, the ‘rural’ and the ‘urban’ remain active symbolic legacies within contemporary culture and these can make the presence of the ‘natural child’ in the ‘unnatural urban’ problematic. The rural and the urban are markedly differentiated spaces both materially and symbolically, and account must be taken of that, but these spaces are also constructed as single symbolic spaces in broad but nonetheless powerful ways. This does have implications for childhood in both urban and rural areas, particularly through the ways adults see, judge and direct children. Childhood also has to be seen as a differentiated category, but again there are deeply imbedded assumptions about ‘what a child is’ that will have effects across that differentiation. Dimensions of class, gender and ethnicity are considered because these appear to bring differing trajectories to the central narrative attempted here. I end with some thoughts on reconfiguring childhood-urban symbolic relations into a more positive form.
Dwelling, place, and landscape: an orchard in Somerset
Full reference.
Cloke, P., and Jones, O., (2001) ‘Dwelling, place, and landscape: an orchard in Somerset’, Environment and Planning A, 33, pp 649-66.
Abstract.
In this paper we seek to develop the concept of dwelling as a means of theorising place and landscape.We do this for two interconnected reasons. First, dwelling has come to the fore recently as an approach to nature, place, and landscape, but we argue that further development of this idea is required in order to address issues relating to romantic views of places, authenticity, localness, and the way we `see' landscapes. Second, we turn to the notion of dwelling to develop interconnected views of the world which can still retain a notion of place, a key but problematic concept within geography, landscape studies, and environmental thinking. In particular, we seek to develop ideas of place within the context of actor network theory.We explore the notion of dwelling in Heidegger and as adapted by Ingold, and we trace how dwelling has been deployed subsequently in studies of landscape and place. We then develop a more critical appreciation of dwelling in the context of an orchard in Somerset which we have researched as a place of hybrid constructions of culture and nature.
Masculinity, Gender and Rural Policy
Full reference.
Little J., and Jones O., (2000) ‘Masculinity, Gender and Rural Policy’, Rural Sociology, 65, 4, pp 621-639.
This paper explores the operation of gender relations in the context of rural policy. Framed by debates on new rural governance, it considers how both the content and the culture of recent rural regeneration policy reflect highly masculine values and the maintenance of traditional power relations. New forms of decision making in rural areas promote a style of policy making that values and grants priority to male networks in the construction of elite groups and styles of management, and devalues community participation . We use examples from the United Kingdom to demonstrate the implications of shifts in the mechanisms and practice of policy making and implementation for men's and women's differential involvement and experience with rural regeneration . We go on to show how gender relations are also reflected in the content of contemporary rural regeneration policy. Decisions concerning the most appropriate types of initiative are predicated on a male-oriented view of previous economic activity and local labor markets, and represent a highly masculinist approach to regeneration.
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Inhuman Geographies: (un)Ethical Spaces of Human Non-Human Relations
Full reference.
Jones O., (2000) ‘Inhuman Geographies: (un)Ethical Spaces of Human Non-Human Relations’, in C. Philo and C. Wilbert (eds.) Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations, London: Routledge, pp 268-291.
The aim of this chapter is to draw out considerations on how ethical relations between humans and non-humans(and in this instance, animals) are deeply uneven, an on how this unevenness has distinct spatial dimensions which require a geographical sensibility within any study addressing them. As Casey (1998: ix) assets, ‘nothing we do is unplaced…How could we fail to recognise this primal fact?’. Human-nonhuman relations are inevitably embedded in the complex spatialities of the world. The myriad encounters which make up human-nonhuman relations shape and are shaped by this spatiality in an incredibly rich (in ontological terms) series of ‘spatial formations’. Any consideration of human-nonhuman relations has to confront this geography of the spaces and place of encounter. In particular my focus is on the ethical implications which may follow from looking at the world in this way. The chapter can be downloaded as a pdf (approx 14 mb)
Rural Challenge(s): partnership and new rural governance
Full reference.
Jones O., and Little J,. (2000)
Rural Challenge(s): partnership and new rural governance, Journal of Rural Studies 16, 171-183.
In this paper we consider issues surrounding the formation of partnerships for the delivery of rural regeneration. Partnership processes are of vital importance because of the central role they play in the emergent culture of governance which is now receiving a great deal of theoretical attention. We argue that the characteristic forms of governance emerged in the urban sphere and have now spread to rural area, bringing with them the requirement for rural organisations and actors to form partnerships in order to secure funding and to deliver services. We believe that this relatively uncritical transference of partnership requirements into rural areas fails to take account of the very di!ering socio-economic conditions which may exist in such areas. In a consideration of the Rural Development Commission's Rural Challenge scheme we draw attention to the considerable internal tensions hindering the formation of partnerships in rural areas and the con#icting pressures and constraints surrounding their implementation. We question the culture of partnership and its suitability as a means of securing e!ective regeneration, arguing for greater scrutiny to be paid to its increased political currency and practical application.
Tomboy Tales: the rural, nature and the gender of childhood
Full reference.
Jones O., (1999) ‘Tomboy Tales: The Rural, Gender and Childhood’, Gender, Place and Culture, 6, 2, pp 117-136.
By following and connecting certain well-trodden routes through constructions of childhood, it is possible to arrive at a point at which the ‘natural’ gender of childhood is apparently male. This is indicated by the fact that girls are often termed ‘tomboys’ in both popular and lay discourses, even when they are partaking in what are seen to be the purest, most ideal childhoods which are present in notions of country childhood idylls. Children, nature, and the countryside as surrogate nature, are all seen as innocent, and thus notions of idyllic ‘natural’ country childhoods become a powerful force. Heavily inuenced by romantic constructions of, and connections between, childhood, nature and the countryside, such views, it will be shown, leave little space for girl children to adopt female identities. The author suggests that this ideal association of male children and nature, and the accompanying notion that it is the development of female sexuality which in particular marks a departure from the natural state of childhood, and thus ends childhood, merits consideration. This is particularly so in the contexts of various discourses, such as romanticism, feminism and ecofeminism, which have explored links between the female and the natural. The aim is not to challenge these constructions and theorisations of gender and nature directly, but rather to show how the introduction of the notion of childhood might cross-cut, problematise and even illuminate them to some degree.
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Lay Discourses of the Rural: Developments and Implications for Rural Studies
Full reference
Jones O.,(1995) ‘Lay Discourses of the Rural: Developments and Implications for Rural Studies’, Journal of Rural Studies, 11, 1, pp 35-49.
This paper was reissued as part of Journal of Rural Studies 25th anniversary special issue in 2009
Abstract -- Considerations of lay discourses of the rural -- people's everyday interpretations of rural places and ideas of the rural -- have become increasingly evident in some key articles addressing the theory and practice of academic rural studies. A major element of the retheorization of rural studies, which itself is set within the broader contexts of recent developments in social theory, considerations of lay discourses have concerned themselves with the nature and implications of everyday interpretations and constructions of the rural, and, in some cases, how academic discourses are complexly bound up with such processes. This paper sets out to review some of the key examples of how and why lay discourses are being used in academic approaches to the rural, and how some of these are also addressing the key question of the problematic relationship between lay and academic discourses. It then aims to develop these initiatives, firstly, by suggesting some clarification of what lay discourse is; how other discourses, particularly popular and professional, should be identified; and why close attention should be paid to how they link up. Secondly, drawing on qualitative case study material gathered from an academic incursion into lay discourses of a small village in south west England, it is suggested that the very different nature of lay discourses has not been fully appreciated, and this has led to only partial success in some academic attempts to assimilate them into new approaches to rural studies, particularly in the
ongoing debate about definitions of the rural. It is shown that lay discourses of the rural, such as they are, can be expected to be both spatially and conceptually complex and incoherent to an extent that will make it difficult for them to be incorporated into established (modern) academic rural approaches and thus leads
to conclusions that in part support Murdoch and Pratt's (1993) concept of the 'postrural'.
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