Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood
Publisher
SAGE
School
School of Education
RAS ID
32534
Abstract
© The Author(s) 2020. Jean Piaget, whose work continues to be very influential in early childhood education, associated young children’s animism with their ‘primitive thought’ claiming children remain animists until they reach a more advanced and rational stage of development. This article proposes a rethinking of the Piagetian view of animism, suggesting instead that children’s animism be conceived as a ‘matter of care’ which may then offer possibilities for living more responsively and attentively with non human others. Drawing on two recent research projects involving two-to-eight-year-old children, the article contends that children’s playful and speculative ‘enchanted animism’ can create a spaces for curiosity, wonder and immersion in and of the world. The author argues that enchanted animism has the potential to open children to their worldly embeddedness and can ignite possibilities for more responsive and attentive ways of living with an increasingly damaged Earth.
DOI
10.1177/1463949120971380
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Comments
Merewether, J. (2020). Enchanted animism: A matter of care. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 24(1), 20–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463949120971380