Читать книгу The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development - Группа авторов - Страница 96

Children’s socialization is a temporal but also a spatial process because it happens within specific localities, helping children to develop a sense of place and rootedness and feelings of belonging. Children’s socialization is inextricably linked to physical spaces not only as biophysical entities but also as sociocultural constructions that can function both as a driver for and an expression of changes in children’s sense of place and the social and emotional experiences that define it. Raymond et al. (2017) coined the phrase “embodied ecosystems” to highlight the dynamic interactions between mind, body, culture, and physical places. Children’s sense of place as a web of interconnected social, cultural, and affective experiences is the cornerstone of socialization. A sense of place is often defined by the childhood memories of interacting with family and the wider community in a specific location. Play and peer interactions are fundamental in the development of these experiences.

Children’s play, as a socialization process, supports their social and emotional development and wellbeing (Pellegrini, 2009; and Chapter 29, this volume). Free play (unsupervised by adults) appears to be particularly beneficial for the development of sociocognitive skills and self‐regulation in that children feel supported to use language to negotiate and express emotions, follow social rules, and apply social skills to solve conflict, all thought to support resilience. It also promotes physical activity, mental wellbeing, and capacity for risk management and organizational skills (Whitebread, 2017). Children’s play can be indoor or outdoor. Outdoor play relates to a healthy lifestyle and has been recently capitalized upon by public health campaigns to address concerns about child obesity. It offers restorative experiences and authentic opportunities for exploration of rural or urban landscapes, a sense of adventure, taking and managing risk; developing social bonds and rites of passage; imagination and aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, as well as the development of a sense of place and belonging (e.g., Lester & Maudsley, 2007; Moss, 2012).

Increasingly, public spaces become corporate and privatized, contributing to the shrinking of the world as experienced by both parents and children who find it difficult to locate meaning in places whose boundaries are in a constant flux. As Badiou argued, individuals and social groups increasingly experience social places as “wordless” in that they are deprived of meaning normally generated through public assembly, interactions, and dialogue. As such, diminishment of social places means reduction in the flourishing of political spaces “which transcend the particularity of the individual or group, a place of persuasion and action” (Conroy, 2010, p. 327).

In an era of mass migration, the dramatic changes in children’s physical geographies and also families’ public and political spaces impact on socialization significantly in terms of peer interactions, a sense of place and community, a place of refuge. Technology, globalization, and mass migration have redrawn these experiences bringing to the surface feelings of rootlessness, a sense of alienation in how children relate to their neighborhoods and communities but also in the interactions with each other and in finding solutions to common problems. If one of the goals of socialization is to support children to grow up as citizens capable of coming together with a shared vision of society then diminished social and political spaces are likely to present challenges in achieving this goal.