More-Than-Human Literacies in Early Childhood

Description

More-Than-Human Literacies in Early Childhood draws on a three-year ethnographic study into the role of place, materiality and the body in the literacies of young children aged 12–36 months. It builds a picture of how children participate in, or become caught up in, literacies and language in the contexts of their everyday lives. Throughout the book, recognised understandings of young children are decentred in favour of experiential knowing of parents and communities, body-place knowing and ordinary affects. Abigail Hackett argues that young children’s literacies are always more-than-human, involving sounds, gestures and movements between humans and nonhuman places and things. By paying close attention to the more-than-human nature of these literacies, which rely on bodies, places, animals, humans, objects and atmospheres for their ongoingness, a case is made for the decentring of young children. The book will be of particular interest to researchers looking at feminist-new materialism, posthumanism, affect theory, and critical literacy in early childhood settings. Cover Contents List of Illustration Acknowledgements Series Editors’ Introduction Part I Starting with Community and Place 1 More-Than-Human Literacies in Community Spaces of Early Childhood 2 Acting Like an Ethnographer, Thinking with Posthumanism: Notes on Methodology and Method 3 The Politics of Describing the World 4 Literacies in Early Childhood as Mundane Politics Part II Re-conceptualizing Early Childhood Literacies as More-Than-Human 5 Wild Literacies: Re-conceptualizing Early Childhood Literacy through the More-Than-Human 6 Moving Bodies 7 Thing-ness and Literacies 8 Vocalizations as More-Than-Human Part III Where Did We Get to? 9 Beyond Progress? What Is Lost and What Is Gained 10 Literacies Yet-to-Come Notes References Index