Cartographies of Materialism: Thinking with Child(hood) Theories

This chapter focuses on the multiplicities of theoretical thinking and the means for pursuing new ways of being and knowing about children and about childhoods. To do so we utilise theories, think with theories and with contemporary scholarship and conceptual thinking. We recognise the development of thought over the past two decades that has been labelled by different scholars and in various publications as posthumanism, new materialism, new empiricism and other scholarly thought as part of the cartographies of materialism. These theories have emerged and shaped our thinking about the way children learn, grow up and play, as we examine in this chapter. As cartographies of materialism, these theories illustrate how the evolution of our scholarly and childhood study traditions provide a solid basis for an approach that addresses the implications and challenges of living with and beyond the Anthropocene.