• DOI:10.1080/00045608.2014.962969
• Corpus ID: 55340474

Alter-Childhoods: Biopolitics and Childhoods in Alternative Education Spaces

@article{Kraftl2015AlterChildhoodsBA,
  title={Alter-Childhoods: Biopolitics and Childhoods in Alternative Education Spaces},
  author={Peter Kraftl},
  journal={Annals of the Association of American Geographers},
  year={2015},
  volume={105},
  pages={219 - 237}
}

• Peter Kraftl
• Published 2 January 2015
• Psychology
• Annals of the Association of American Geographers

In this article, I consider “alter-childhoods”: explicit attempts to imagine, construct, talk about, and put into practice childhoods that differ from perceived mainstreams. I critically examine alter-childhoods at fifty-nine alternative education spaces in the United Kingdom. I analyze alternative education spaces through the lens of biopolitics, developing nascent work in children's geographies and childhood studies around hybridity and biopower. I focus on two key themes: materialities and (non)human bodies; intimacy, love, and the human scale. Throughout the analysis, I offer a limited endorsement of the concept of alter-childhoods. Although there exist many attempts to construct childhoods differently, the “alternative” nature of those childhoods is always muddied, complicated, and dynamic. Thus, the concept of alter-childhoods is useful for examining the biopolitics of childhood and for children's geographers more generally—but only when considered as a critical tool and questioning device.