Growing dens. On re-grounding the child–nature relationship through a new materialist approach to children’s dens

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to the dawning disruption of the prevailing notion of the child–nature relationship through a new materialist reading of children’s dens, and proffers a re-grounded and worldly gaze on the relationship with implications for the promotion of children’s outdoor lives. The study is an ethnographical field study among 10–12-year-old boys in a Danish school. Data were generated through participant observation, and include video recordings and photographs of children’s dens. Drawing on a flat ontology and plugging in key Ingoldian concepts of meshwork and growing (Ingold 2011a, 2013), the analysis suggests that children’s relations to dens cut across taken-for-granted subject–object binaries and go beyond common notions of nature as inert materials. I find that dens are growing in an ever-becoming meshwork comprised by human and non-human intra-actions, and that agency or vitality can be ascribed broadly to the material world. Possible implications for planning are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s dens
• new materialism
• child–nature relationship
• meshwork
• flat ontology
• morphogenesis

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the children who engaged in project by inviting me into their everyday lives during the course of the study. Also, I would like to thank a number of colleagues, including my supervisors Søren Andkjær, Helle Johannesen and Simon Beames for critical and supportive comments. Moreover, I would like to thank Mette Lezuik Hansen for persistent support with proofreading the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Jan Arvidsen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5352-3567

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Nordea-fonden under Grant number 02-2014-0387, and The Danish Outdoor Counsil under Grant number 102288.