Technology-nonhuman-child assemblages: reconceptualising rural childhood roaming

ABSTRACT

This paper argues for reconceptualising how children use technology ‘outdoors’ as a technology-nonhuman-child assemblage, or roaming pathway. Founded in contemporary fears about children’s reduced opportunities to access nature and roam in rural environments, in part due to the ubiquitous presence of technology in their lives, we instead illustrate how the agencies of technologies and plants are folded into children’s outdoor roaming. Combining visual methods, video analysis and qualitative geovisualisation, and in collaboration with the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority, this paper exposes how assemblages are contingently brought into being through the actions of what technologies, plants and children do together. We demonstrate how the agentic capacities of non-humans and technologies are assembled through children’s imaginative interaction with them, and how these imaginative interactions make such agencies visible.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• nature
• technology
• rural
• assemblage
• nonhuman

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the children who participated and staff at the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority, particularly Sunita Welch and Suzanna Jones.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.