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Notes
1. This sense of the more-than-useful, and indeed this article as a whole, refracts the authors' inclination towards broad ‘post-structural’, ‘post-feminist’ and ‘non-representational’ ideas in and of contemporary Social Scientific research (cf. Shurmer-Smith and Hannam, Citation1994; Game and Metcalfe, Citation1996; Katz, Citation1996; St. Pierre, Citation1997; Gregson and Rose, Citation2000; Seigworth, Citation2000; Thrift, Citation2000; Thrift and Dewsbury, Citation2000; Cavallaro, Citation2001; Dewsbury et al., Citation2002; Highmore, Citation2002; Lorimer, Citation2005). We are not suggesting that you have to subscribe to this, however.
2. By juxtaposing the words ‘pointless’ and ‘geographies’ we do not argue that geography is pointless. We certainly do not wish to ‘denigrate the whole being of geography as a discipline’, as one reviewer put it. To repeat, we merely want to extend the definition and practice of being ‘useful’. Moreover, things that are pointless can be good; things that have a point may not be. In other words, we should not lose academic rigour or forego a sense of the quality of any work: quality—as well as usefulness—may not be defined in advance, and is thus in the eye of the beholder.
3. Inspired by Bruno Latour's (1999, p. 15) discussion of the ‘four nails in the coffin’ of Actor-Network Theory.
4. We realise that this position is not unique to Children's Geographies, but ask Children's Geographers to consider whether this constant cross-referencing is a good idea. What else could Children's Geographers read?
5. Inspired by Jacques Derrida's (1976, p. 69) method of placing words and phrases ‘sous râture’ (under erasure), letting both an idea and the contestation of that idea stand, simultaneously. For Derrida, this was a means to open up a wide-ranging point about all signification: in its diluted form, as here, this device can draw attention to specific phrases which are ‘inaccurate yet necessary to say’ (Spivak, Citation1976, p. xiii). Hence, ‘Children's Geographies’: a phrase that is thoroughly contestable, but which we wouldn't quite want to do away with just yet.