Public Space and the Culture of Childhood [Paperback]

Children are at the heart of popular and public debates in North America and Europe about the culture of public space. On the one hand there is increased anxiety about children's vulnerability to stranger danger, on the other there is a rising tide of fear about out of control and dangerous youth. This book addresses both these debates about children's role in public space, setting them within an academic framework and drawing on a range of interdisciplinary work on childhood, young people and parenting. It is therefore relevant to practitioners and policy makers concerned with the nature and future of public space, and to academics researching or teaching about childhood, family or public space in the disciplines of sociology, social policy and geography.Contents: Childhood in crisis?; Terror talk: geographies of fear; Gender and parenting cultures; 'I can handle it': children and competence; The retreat from the street; Contested terrain: teenagers in public space; Children and the future of public space; References; Index.Children are at the heart of popular and public debates in North America and Europe about the culture of public space. This book addresses the debates about children's role in public space, setting them within an academic framework and drawing on a range of interdisciplinary work on childhood, young people and parenting.Gill Valentine is Professor of Geography, and Director of the Leeds Social Sciences Institute at the University of Leeds, UK. She is the (co) author/editor of 10 books, and over 75 articles (in print/in press) in major international journals and in key edited volumes. She is currently co-editor of two journals: Gender, Place and Culture and Social and Cultural Geography and is a member of five other editorial boards.Gill Valentines work on childrens and young peoples geographies is exemplary. Her insights, drawn from human geography but ranging over a wide interdisciplinary field, throw light both on adult preoccupations aboulsK