Includes bibliographical references and index

Introduction: Toward a material study of childhood / Maarit Alasuutari, Nina Rutanen and Marleena Mustola -- PART 1: Body, embodiment and materiality : 1. Becoming unruly?: Bodies and materials in a primary classroom / Paulina Semenec -- 2. Embodying discipline: Remembering bodies and cultural values in Chinese kindergartens / Ida Marie Lyså -- 3. From 'drilling' to 'thrilling': French toilet training literature and the child's body / Victoria Chantseva -- PART 2: Materiality in/as relations : 4. Connected play as intra-action: Doing CupSong with YouTube / Herdis Toft -- 5. The web service Wilma as an actant in school life-student perspective / Anu Alanko and Maarit Alasuutari -- 6. Schoolbags and schoolchildren between school and family / Karen Ida Dannesboe -- 7. Thrown into and out of togetherness: Children's experiences of living apart from, with and in multi-local families / Ida Wentzel Winther -- PART 3: Space, environment and materiality : 8. Affordances for children's playfulness as they walk through urban spaces / Maja Brzozowska-Brywczyńska -- 9. Journeys through space: The interplay of mobility, materiality and social life in early childhood centres / Ann Pairman -- 10. Young children's participation as a living practice: The role of material and emotional relations during the transition to primary school / Caralyn Blaisdell and Teresa Bolger -- 11. '(Do not) touch'. '(Do not) run'.-On bodies' plasticities: Curation and exhibition design with/for children in art museums / Antoneli Matos Belli Sinder -- Epilogue / Maarit Alasuutari and Nina Rutanen

Exploring Materiality in Childhood: Body, Relations and Space explores the multiple ways that childhood and materiality are intertwined and assembled. Bringing together a diverse range of authors, this topical book makes a scholarly contribution to our understanding of the entanglements of materiality and childhoods in international contexts. Chapters explore how various environments and material resources, including technologies and consumer goods, affect children's lives. The book caters to a diverse range of theories, in sociomaterialist, posthumanist, post-anthropocentric and more-than-human research, critically exploring the boundaries of these theoretical approaches with diverse empirical cases. These wide ranges of perspectives develop alternatives to human-centred approaches in understanding children and childhoods. With its diverse theoretical and methodological choices, the book also serves as a versatile example for how to conduct research with children and on childhood. This book will be of great interest for academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in childhood studies, early childhood education, social sciences, cultural sciences and sociology