Children’s participation and posthumanist ontology

Authors

• Tuure Tammi Oulun yliopisto
• Riikka Hohti

Abstract

Children’s right to participate in matters concerning them is now broadly recognized. As a consequence, many projects attempting to promote children’s participation have been launched across the “Western world.” However, participation may refer to various things, ranging from an individual ability to participate to developing cultural practices. It can be considered as an emancipatory process as well as a strategy for governmentality. In this article, we engage with the recent posthumanist philosophy in order to rethink “children’s participation” as an entanglement of humans and non-humans. In particular, we analyze two cases that are situated to a Finnish elementary school context. In these analyses, we ask, “As part of what kind of assemblages does participation emerge?” Finally, we propose a non-dichotomic conceptualization of participation, analytically separating two of its tendencies: those of striating and those of emergent participation.