Dr. Bradley's buzz:
This is a bit more of a theoretical paper. In it Duhn argues for a post-humanist perspective on early childhood studies. What this means is the development of a perspective on place that includes the non-human world of animals, insects and inanimate objects.
Duhn begins with the idea that space is a socially constructed concept before moving on to say that 'place' is often taken to mean 'human space' as opposed to 'wilderness' which is the space we share with the non-human. Duhn advances the idea of 'assemblage' as a way of talking about early childhood spaces as an intersection between human and non-human worlds.
She gives the example of an interaction between children where a table, the child and the water trough feature as key participants in the learning experience. She makes two key points in relation to these assemblages - place enables the formation of identity. This is important as children grow to be custodians of no only the human but also non-human worlds. There is therefore an ethical advantage of viewing space from the post-humanist perspecive.
The other point that Duhn encourages is viewing children not simply as individuals, or as individuals within the complex web of social settings, but to view them as entangled in relationships with the human and the non-human world.
This article is a good example of theory-making in the hope that people might begin to critically reflect on how they think of place and the social and historical reasons for that perspective, whilst opening the door to ideas of place that supercede the mere social.
For teachers this article is a challenge that asks 'just what does it mean to belong to a place? What does contribution to that place look like, and who is able to contribute? And, how is the non-human world percieved and how does that perception favour a social, rather than an integrated human/non-human perspective on place?
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