The Complexity of Bodily Events through an Ethnographer's Gaze: Focusing on the Youngest Children in Preschool

Abstract

This article discusses theoretical, methodological and analytical strategies for researching the material subject. The discussion relates to discursive practices in a preschool setting with children of one and two years of age, where the material subject includes both bodily and discursive practices. Using critical ethnography research, the author follows studies of lived life connected to body/place relations. When the body is the main focus in writing, it may be possible to understand how children at this age relate to each other in complex and multiple ways. From observations, the author deconstructs two events. These relate to how actions and movements are situated not only in language, but also in bodily practices amongst children. The body is a site for negotiation with pleasure, pain, other bodies, space and visibility. Working with bodily practices transforms how power is performed, and whose interests are silenced, marginalized or excluded. From a Foucauldian perspective, this is about knowledge/power relations. From a Deleuzean perspective, body/place relations transform how we may see, feel and think otherwise.