Other Books of Note

Abstract

Book Reviews 171 life, which is exposed through public hunger strikes, connecting the struggles of the Izbrisani to other global struggles relating to place and rights. Aitken draws on Rancier’s understanding of aesthetics as “disrupting the sensible,” and Katz’s description of play as mimetic, remaking meanings, identities, and worlds. Aitken sees young people’s aesthetics as holding the power to disrupt entire systems—a vision which offers considerable hope. Bearing witness to trials by space involving young people across the globe, Aitken builds a case for the possibility of shifts in entire systems through activism and aesthetics. While this builds hope, it also offers readers a rare glimpse into the author’s process for working through theoretical constructs in order to land at a complex understanding of the potential of young people’s engagement. As his process is iterative, and ideas build through the text, it is possible to travel with Aitken on his theoretical raft without drowning. On the other hand, I was drawn in by the promise of ethnopoetics as a method that brings affect into the center of analysis, but felt disappointed in the extent to which young people’s experiences were actually centered throughout this text. Relative to the space given to post-structuralist and feminist theorists, young people’s voices were barely audible. I found myself longing to know more about individual participants in the Chilean student movements and the Slovenian protests in particular. Overall, I was grateful for the focus on the importance of context— including histories of institutions, spatial affordances, and emotion as drivers for change—and value that this text is ultimately hopeful without romanticizing young people. Review by Alexis Halkovic Alexis Halkovic is a Doctoral Candidate in the Critical Social/Personality Psychology program at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has a strong interest in understanding structural injustice and the ways that people resist and has conducted research on student activism and higher education post incarceration. Her dissertation topic uses narrative analysis to understand women’s perceptions of their vulnerability and the strategies they use to make themselves feel safer, focusing on self-defense training and gun ownership. Other Books of Note Steps to Engaging Young Children in Research Volume 1: The Guide, 116 pages. Vicky Johnson, Roger Hart, and Jennifer Colwell, editors Volume 2: The Researcher Toolkit, 152 pages. Vicky Johnson, Roger Hart, Jennifer Colwell, and Andy West, editors Book Reviews 172 Brighton, U.K.: Education Research Centre, University of Brighton (2014). Published online at http://www.bernardvanleer.org/steps-to-engaging-youngchildren -in-research In 2013, the Bernard van Leer Foundation brought academics and practitioners from around the world together in The Hague to share participatory research methods that they had used with young children—particularly children 5 to 8 years old—and identify benefits and challenges. People represented a range of academic and professional fields, including streetwork, playwork, social work, childhood studies, education, psychology, counseling, sociology, anthropology and geography. Following this meeting, the editors of these volumes gathered further examples from other experts who worked on a wide range of research questions, in a broad range of international contexts. The first volume, The Guide, advises how to design research that is “ethical, sensitive to the needs of the children, the community in which they live, whilst also being engaging for young children” (8). It provides steps for reviewing children’s capabilities, developing ethical protocols and processes, building trust, selecting appropriate methods, identifying appropriate forms of communication, and considering the context. Each section is followed by references for further information. It presents an overview of different types of methods, covering their strengths and weaknesses and potential issues that could arise during their use. The volume closes with case studies that show how each type of research can be carried out in a variety of global contexts. The second volume, The Researcher Toolkit, maintains the emphasis on ethical processes that are sensitive to children and their context, while presenting more detailed descriptions of a variety of methods. The methods are presented in six clusters: gaining consent and developing trust, interviews and discussion, child-led tours (through actual environments and model environments), visual free expression, structured...