RECONCEITUALIZANDO A LEITURA COMO UMA PRÁTICA SOCIAL: UMA DISCUSSÃO SOBRE DIMENSÕES DE TEMPORALIDADE

Reconceitualizando a Leitura como uma Prática Social: Uma Discussão Sobre Dimensões de Temporalidade, Relacionalidade, e Política Prefigurativa na Biblioteca Comunitária Chocolatão Ansley Medlicott – University College London Mestrado em Sociologia da Infância e Direitos Infantis Maio 2019 Agradeço do fundo do meu coração aos participantes desta pesquisa. Cada um de vocês me recebeu de braços abertos, me ensinou tanto, compartilhou momentos e detalhes de suas vidas comigo sem me conhecer muito bem. Não há palavras para descrever a coragem que vocês demonstraram. Vocês foram a fonte da minha inspiração e perseverança durante este processo. Agradeço também ao Cirandar e às pessoas completamente maravilhosas que conheci por meio desta pesquisa. Cada conversa (seja por telefone ou em pessoa), cada conselho, cada pergunta que me responderam foram todos sempre marcados por gentileza, bondade, e sabedoria pelos quais sou eternamente grata.

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Índice Resumo...................................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Capítulo 1: Introdução .......................................................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Questões de Pesquisa .................................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.

1.2 Visão Geral do Estudo ................................................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined.

Capítulo 2: Revisão da Literatura........................................................................................................................ 7 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 7 2.1 From “Literacy” to Reading as a Social Practice.......................................................................................... 7 2.2 Making the Case for a Relational Approach ............................................................................................... 10 2.3 Temporality of Childhood and Utopian Imaginings ................................................................................... 12 2.4 Children and the Political............................................................................................................................ 15 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 18 Capítulo 3: Metodologia: O “Porquê” da minha Pesquisa .............................................................................. 19 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 19 3.1 Theoretical Approach.................................................................................................................................. 20 3.1.1 Why Study Children?........................................................................................................................... 20 3.1.2 (Dialectical) Critical Realism ............................................................................................................. 21 3.2 Methodological Approach .......................................................................................................................... 22 3.3 Research Design and Methods .................................................................................................................... 23 3.4 Problematising my Positioning ................................................................................................................... 25 3.5 Data Analysis .............................................................................................................................................. 25 3.6 Ethics........................................................................................................................................................... 26 3.7 Project Limitations ...................................................................................................................................... 27 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 28 Capítulo 4: Descobertas e Discussão .................................................................................................................. 29 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 29 4.1 Vila Chocolatão: The Setting ...................................................................................................................... 29 4.1.1 Exploring the Neighbourhood ............................................................................................................. 29 4.1.2 Exploring “Choco”, the Community Library ..................................................................................... 32 4.1.3 Getting to Know the Participants........................................................................................................ 35 4.2 Relationality: Reading as an Intrinsically Relational Activity ................................................................... 37 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 37 4.2.1 Decentring the Child: Relational Encounters within the Library Space ............................................ 37 4.2.2 “We really are all together here”: Solidarity at Choco ..................................................................... 38 4.2.3. Re-Conceptualising Reading through a Relational Lens ................................................................... 41 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................... 42 4.3 Temporality: Reading as an Activity with Past, Present and Future Dimensions ...................................... 43 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 43 4.3.1 Extending Beyond Being and Becoming: How Children were Overcoming Binaries and Negotiating Timescapes ................................................................................................................................................... 43 4.3.2 The Dynamic Temporality of Children’s Utopic Imaginings .............................................................. 45 4.3.3 Reconceptualising Reading through a Temporal Lens ....................................................................... 49 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................... 51

2 4.4 (Prefigurative) Politics: Reading as a Political Activity ............................................................................. 51 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 51 4.4.1 The Politics of Feelings and the “Ready-Made Political Mask” ....................................................... 51 4.4.2 Prefigurative (and “Actual”) Politics at Choco ................................................................................. 52 4.4.3 Reconceptualising Reading through a Political Lens ......................................................................... 55 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................... 56 4.5 “We have to make it secret!”: Final Remarks ............................................................................................. 57 Capítulo 5: Conclusão e um Olhar ao Futuro ................................................................................................... 58 Referências ........................................................................................................................................................... 61 Apêndices .............................................................................................................................................................. 72 Appendix 1: Gatekeeper Consent Form ............................................................................................................ 72 Appendix 2: Participant Consent Form............................................................................................................. 73 Appendix 3: Flyer #1 for Choco Library .......................................................................................................... 74 Appendix 4: Flyer #2 for Choco Library .......................................................................................................... 75 Appendix 5: Gabriel’s Poem ............................................................................................................................. 76

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Resumo Este estudo explora as interligações entre as experiências de leitura das crianças e suas imaginações utópicas e atividades políticas prefigurativas, e foi realizado com nove participantes de cinco a doze anos de uma biblioteca comunitária em Porto Alegre, Brasil.

Os dados emergentes de entrevistas em pequenos grupos, observações e métodos criativos destacam como as crianças foram capazes de imaginar ambientes utópicos caracterizados por marcadores de temporalidade e frequentemente entrelaçados com memórias passadas, ambientes e emoções presentes, e esperanças futuras. Além disso, esta pesquisa mostra como os participantes, através de uma base de solidariedade relacional no espaço da biblioteca, estavam realizando atos prefigurativos e aplicando o conhecimento adquirido através de suas experiências de leitura para compartilhar conversas, pensamentos e respeito mútuo. No que constitui seu tema subjacente, este artigo defende uma reconceitualização da leitura como uma prática social - e não estritamente baseada na alfabetização - que inclui dimensões de temporalidade, relacionalidade e política: a leitura não é simplesmente um processo de dar sentido às letras em uma página, mas é uma atividade relacional, afetiva, composta de interações entre leitores e seus arredores, interligações de experiências passadas, presentes e futuras e exploração política de pensamentos e ideias, cujas repercussões continuaram muito tempo depois que as crianças deixaram a presença de um livro.

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Capítulo 1: Introdução O campo da sociologia da infância concentrou tremendo tempo e esforço em compreender o passado das crianças, avaliando narrativas históricas sobre as maneiras pelas quais as crianças foram percebidas ao longo do tempo e também produziu pesquisas substanciais que visam entender o presente das crianças, representando um contínuo interesse na diversidade, dificuldades e representações das crianças no mundo de hoje. Em contraste, o assunto do futuro das crianças gerou hesitação entre os pesquisadores e permanece um pouco sem solução, pois está associado negativamente às ideias agora ostracizadas de que as crianças são valorizadas apenas por seu potencial como "seres" ou por sua subsequente instrumentalidade. O tempo para incluir as crianças nas conversas sobre o seu futuro, no entanto, parece ter chegado, pois a mudança de foco do ‘agora’ da vida das crianças '(Rosen, 2016, p. 374) acendeu a curiosidade acadêmica em torno da temporalidade (Uprichard, 2008; Conrad, 2012; Pells, 2018a), relacionalidade (Kraftl, 2013; Eßer, 2016; Spyrou, Rosen e Cook, 2018) e expressões prefigurativas (Cornish et al., 2016; Jeffrey e Dyson, 2016; Nolas, Varvantakis e Aruldoss, 2016) de crianças. Este projeto de pesquisa visa contribuir para esses empolgantes desenvolvimentos no campo e abordar a lacuna mencionada na literatura acadêmica, discutindo as visões das crianças de ambientes utópicos ideais, bem como sua atividade política prefigurativa.

Embora os estudos sobre utopias sejam difundidos na literatura acadêmica em vários campos de pensamento, essa pesquisa é um tanto singular, pois adota uma abordagem sociológica para estudar a imaginação utópica das crianças através da leitura. A curiosidade que impulsiona essa exploração das visões das crianças de um futuro melhor através do seu envolvimento com a leitura decorre de uma experiência pessoal: quando era muito jovem, me mudei de um país a outro e estava imersa em um ambiente sociocultural e linguístico novo do qual eu não me sentia parte. Ler sozinho ou com amigos e familiares me proporcionou uma maneira de explorar novos mundos, discernir por mim mesmo o que eu gostava dos mundos fictícios que encontrei e depois decidir adotar certas características de personagens e cenários fictícios em meu próprio mundo para fazer o meu entorno "melhor". Minhas lembranças dessa época estão intimamente ligadas às minhas experiências com a leitura, e fui inspirada a ter conversas com crianças de hoje para

5 entender como elas consideravam a leitura e a participação em um ambiente de biblioteca conducentes ao conhecimento do mundo e às imaginações do futuro. Essa abordagem sociológica única da leitura e das dimensões da temporalidade é incomum, pois a maioria das pesquisas atuais relacionadas à leitura discute conexões quantitativas entre alfabetização (capacidade de ler e escrever) e o desempenho das crianças na escola e o subsequente desenvolvimento e crescimento econômico de uma comunidade (Herzog Jr., 1973; UNESCO, 2006; Roser e Ortiz-Espinosa, 2018).

A necessidade de reconhecer e apreciar as expressões do futuro das crianças por meio da leitura é especialmente significativa no Brasil, o cenário desta pesquisa. A economia instável do Brasil, assim como seu presidente de extrema-direita, atraíram considerável atenção mundial e, em meio à crise econômica, o discurso entre os cidadãos brasileiros costuma ser divisivo e combativo. Enquanto aqueles posicionados como adultos comunicam suas opiniões sobre o futuro político, econômico e social do país por meio de vários meios de comunicação ou pelo seu direito de voto, aqueles posicionados como crianças são frequentemente negligenciados pelos adultos em suas vidas como indivíduos vulneráveis e desconhecidos que ainda não possuem ideias ou opiniões valiosas sobre o mundo ou sobre o que pode ser mudado para gerar um futuro melhor. Essa rejeição de crianças como incapazes de produzir ou ter opiniões importantes representa considerável violência simbólica para crianças que, como seres humanos iguais e co-membros da sociedade, merecem o direito de serem “ouvidas” ou de se expressar sobre questões que são importantes agora e que serão igualmente importantes no futuro. Além disso, o Brasil está passando por uma autoproclamada “crise da literatura” (Lopes, 2018), onde a porcentagem da população que lê ativamente e a quantidade de bibliotecas disponibilizadas para uso público - muitas das quais são subfinanciadas e mal equipadas para atender às necessidades da população - está diminuindo a cada ano. Atualmente, existe uma biblioteca pública para 33.000 pessoas no Brasil (SNBP, 2015), o brasileiro médio lê menos de dois livros e meio por ano (Pro-Book Institute e IBOPE, 2016), e os editores de livros estão ficando sem negócios e aumentando seus anúncios nos jornais e canais de televisão locais na tentativa de evitar fechamentos (Flood, 2018).

6 1.1 Questões de pesquisa Em resposta a essa curiosidade sobre o cenário político/econômico atual do Brasil e a "crise da literatura", bem como minhas experiências pessoais com a leitura, fiz uma parceria com uma biblioteca comunitária em Porto Alegre, Brasil, para realizar esta pesquisa. Essa biblioteca fornece maior acesso a recursos aos moradores do Chocolatão, uma comunidade marcada por alta desigualdade. A dimensionalidade coletiva e os fortes níveis de engajamento por parte das crianças da comunidade tinham o potencial de produzir terreno fértil para explorar dimensões de temporalidade, relacionalidade e política prefigurativa.

Portanto, eu criei as três perguntas a seguir para servir como pensamentos norteadores em toda a minha pesquisa: 1. Como a leitura e a participação na biblioteca comunitária influenciam a maneira como as crianças pensam e/ou imaginam o futuro, tanto o seu quanto o do mundo ao seu redor?

2. As crianças constroem utopias e, em caso afirmativo, como seus pensamentos provocados pela leitura estão envolvidos no processo de imaginação utópica?

3. E, finalmente, em que medida e de que maneira as crianças agem de acordo com sua imaginação utópica, engajando-se em políticas prefigurativas?

1.2 Visão Geral do Estudo Este estudo examinará como a leitura e as interações em um ambiente de biblioteca comunitária estão inter-relacionadas com a imaginação utópica e a atividade política prefigurativa de crianças de uma vila no sul do Brasil. Por meio de entrevistas, métodos criativos e uma exploração das experiências de leitura dos participantes, este artigo destaca as características das utopias e atividades políticas das crianças e, em última análise, exige uma compreensão da leitura como uma prática social - e não estritamente relacionada à alfabetização. Argumentarei que a pesquisa até agora não levou em consideração as dimensões temporais, relacionais e políticas da leitura, e que, sob essa ótica, a leitura como prática social deve ser totalmente reconceitualizada. O artigo está organizado da seguinte forma: O capítulo dois fornece uma visão geral da literatura disponível agrupada em torno dos três principais domínios de pensamento que surgiram ao longo de minha pesquisa -

7 relacionalidade, temporalidade e política prefigurativa - e examina como cada um desses temas até agora foi teorizado em conjunto com estudos sobre leitura como prática social. O capítulo três estabelece a base metodológica do estudo, baseada no realismo crítico dialético e na imaturidade metodológica, fornece um exame aprofundado da coleta e análise de dados e discute considerações éticas relacionadas ao meu posicionamento como pesquisador, e explica as limitações do projeto. O capítulo quatro apresenta as descobertas e a discussão deste estudo, fornecendo uma visão aprofundada do cenário da pesquisa e dos participantes, respondendo às minhas três perguntas de pesquisa e aprofundando minha proposta de reconceitualizar a leitura como uma prática tridimensional.

Chapter 2: Literature Review Introduction Although the aim of this project to explore children’s utopian imaginings and prefigurative acts – and ultimately to redefine reading through a sociological perspective – is exciting, it was initially somewhat of a daunting task as it represents a relatively unexplored area of study. The majority of research related to reading is generated within the fields of developmental psychology or pedagogy and is typically concerned with the quick fix “benefits” of literacy as an aid to healthy development and growth. On the other hand, while substantial current research within the sociology of childhood is dedicated to relationality, politics, and temporality, very few studies have thus far explored any of those concepts alongside reading or within a library setting. Taking that into consideration, this literature review will be divided into four sections which situate my research focus within the field of sociology of childhood, highlight previous studies relating to each topic, and fully illustrate the aforementioned gap in literature. I will begin by performing an overview of existing literature surrounding reading as a social practice, highlighting the key terms and debates that will frame this project’s findings and ensuing analysis. Next, I will offer a discussion surrounding the three main topics which emerged during my data analysis – relationality, temporality, and politics – in order to establish a theoretical framework for this research as a whole.

2.1 From “Literacy” to Reading as a Social Practice

8 The majority of studies surrounding reading in childhood are conglomerated around one of two areas of thought: Either there is a heavy focus on literacy and quick-fix “literacy skills” (Hannon, 1995), or consideration is given primarily to a textual analysis of books, typically amongst the burgeoning field of children’s literature. Within the first strand of research, literacy is portrayed as a ‘neutral, technical, and de-contextualised’ (Roy and Schafer, 2015, p. 528) tool to ensure success both of individual children and of the economic growth of communities as a whole (Roser and Ortiz-Espinosa, 2018). In this line of thought, developmental psychology has made extensive connections between literacy and progressions in a child’s predetermined cognitive development (Stanovich, 1993; Kümmerling-Meibauer et al., 2015), and the field of education has examined literacy as a set of skills each child should acquire – by way of instruction from teachers and parents – in order to guarantee satisfactory performance in school (Byrne, 1998; Mifsud et al., 2004).

While many sociological studies have also engaged with literacy – examining how literacy practices can maintain oppressive colonial structures (Luke, 2003), re-constructing the power relations used to measure literacy in general (Payne, 2006), and exploring the social realm of “new literacies” emerging within an increasingly technological era (Walsh, 2015; Potter and McDougall, 2017) – the view of literacy in these cases nonetheless is still centred around an idea of “skills” or “abilities”. The second recurring focus, concerned with interpretations of books written for children, includes text-based analyses of the content, discourse, illustrations, and representations of diversity within children’s literature (see Keene, 2013; Jaques, 2015; Todres and Higginbotham, 2016; and Aggleton, 2018 for a few of my favourites). While I do not undermine the value of these studies and appreciate their contributions towards explorations of literature for children and the promotion of the ability to read and write as an invaluable skill, for the purposes of this research I will examine the literature surrounding reading as a social practice.

An investigative focus on the social aspects of reading began first with inquiries into the social nature of literacy as a whole. Gee (1990) was the first to coin the “New Literacy Studies”, signifying an interdisciplinary approach to understanding literacy ‘in its full range of contexts: cognitive, social, cultural, historical, and institutional’ (p. 2). This new conception of literacy inspired several books and articles within the 1990’s and early 2000’s, representing a short-lived surge in research that did not carry over heavily into the 21st

9 century. However, this shift in perspective was significant in that it paved the way for the handful of studies which focus solely on reading in particular as a social practice, such as those that illustrate how the social characteristics of reading foster English learning in adult migrants (Roach, 2018), explorations into how students interact with one another to make meaning of online reading sources (Kiili, 2012), and suggestions of teaching practices to help redefine reading through a sociocultural lens in educational spaces (Landis, 2003). Within this realm, two pieces of research deserve singular mention for their applicability to my own work: Fuller and Sedo (2013b) argue that reading can establish a greater sense of community, can have ‘profound emotional and social consequences’ (p. 36), and is ‘variously inscribed with the dreams, anxieties, hopes, and political goals of those who promote it’ (p. 3), while Scherer (2016) generates a study in this area alongside children, consulting them directly, and finds that they ‘invest reading with significance’ (p. 15) and engage with books in subversive and creative ways. Scherer advocates that what she calls the ‘sociology of reading’ (2016, p. 9), the broad scope of sociological factors that come into play before, during, and after one is reading, is an under-theorised area deserving of greater academic attention, and the studies of Scherer (2016) and Fuller and Sedo (2013b) alike illustrate that reading is linked with power, subversive activity, and emotions.

The idea that reading is connected to power and emotions has been explored from various fields of thought. Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (1948) offers the notion that reading is powerfully transformative, a reciprocal process of give and take wherein the writer is appealing to the reader’s freedom to engage with the book and ‘[carry] out what he has begun’ (p. 32). Beauvais (2013, 2018; 2016) expands by claiming that reading introduces children to new, imaginative worlds and encourages them to exercise their potential and act upon such imaginings so as to transform the status quo. Reading can be understood as subversive and empowering as it can challenge society’s perceived immutability, highlight power imbalances, and offer information about evading inequalities in applicable ways (Vonnegut, 2008; Arizpe and Smith, 2015; Singer, 2017). In addition to power, many studies propose that reading is closely linked with emotions and the social practices that emotions can encourage. Research has explored how, during reading, our brains experience imaginative worlds in books ‘as if they were real’ (Nikolajeva, 2013, p. 96), and thus evoke actual emotional responses. Reading can introduce children to a variety of emotions with

10 which they may be unfamiliar, allowing them to build deep emotional literacy and selfawareness in real-life situations (Vermeule, 2010; Hogan, 2011; Nikolajeva, 2012a, 2012b, 2014). In this sense, books have famously been compared to mirrors that reflect a deeper understanding of ourselves, but also as windows that uncover new visions of the world and enable further empathy for the lives of others (Bishop, 2012; Chetty, 2014, 2016).

The limited studies concerning reading as a social practice, as well as those relating reading with power, subversive acts, and emotions, are extremely relevant to this study – and yet I am left wanting more. As Scherer (2016) pointed out, the “sociology of reading”, or, reading as a social practice, is under-studied and underexplored in the typically highly theorised field of social science. Research that situates reading (and being in a library setting, which we will explore in later sections) within the realm of sociology is scarce, and I found no single definition of reading available that encompassed everything that emerged through my data.

This gap in current research solidified my commitment to reconceptualise a potentially innovative perspective of reading as an embodied, affective practice with intersections of relationality, temporality, and politics.

2.2 Making the Case for a Relational Approach The first major conceptualisation to emerge from my fieldwork was linked to relationality – both that of reading and of my participants – a topic with which the field of sociology of childhood is currently experiencing an exciting engagement. Scholars have been challenging the field’s strict focus on children and childhood, which over-prioritises agency and ultimately strengthens adult/child, natural/social binary thinking (Ryan, 2012; Oswell, 2013; Wyness, 2015; Eßer, 2016; Spyrou, 2017; Holmberg, 2018; Spyrou et al., 2018). Out of a response to this recurring emphasis on the social constructions of childhood, a small group of scholars began to draw upon the work of Latour (1993) and other European philosophers to propose a view of the child as resulting from a hybrid mixture of cultural, biological, social, and technological assemblages (Lee, 2001, 2005; Jenks, 2005; Prout, 2005), in what has been called the new wave of childhood studies. This notion of hybridity and human/non-human assemblages has been discussed to great length and signified a move away from an over-emphasis on voice and agency in relation to childhood, yet it, too, is problematic: It tends to flatten children’s relationality, concealing the connections between

11 past and present and in fact redeploying the same biosocial linkages that it set out to criticise (Ryan, 2012).

Rather than attend to this new wave, I am grounding the basis of relationality applied to my research within the more recent theoretical work of Spyrou (2017; 2018), Rosen (2018), Cook (2018), and Eßer (2016; 2018). These scholars support the move past dichotomous, strictly agentic and social constructions of childhood, yet challenge the new wave’s sole focus on constructions and ideas and call for an acknowledgment of the power relations that exist within a child’s interactions and relations with their surroundings. This ontologically relational view of childhood and its social relations and subject positions corresponded with the emerging conceptualisations of my research participants, as it enabled me to see a variety of technologies and human and non-human “things” as valuable actors in producing identities and composing my participants’ social worlds (Eßer, 2016; Spyrou, 2017). Instead of instrumentalising relationality to nuance children’s relations with adults (thus reinforcing binaries) or to illustrate children’s interactions with the world at large (thus continuing to make children the central focus), this non-sovereign relationality focuses on the types of practices which enact childhood; it is a move ‘from what childhood is to how childhood is done’ (Spyrou, Rosen and Cook, 2018, p. 7, emphasis mine).

In an attempt to contribute to this productive framework and respond to calls for students to ‘make closer linkages between their work and broader social theories’ (Spyrou et al., 2018, p. 436), my research will also draw upon geographer Peter Kraftl’s (2008, 2013) ‘more-than-social’ emotional relationality. This approach to relationality – in a similar vein to that of Spyrou, Rosen, Eßer, and Cook – recognises the various technologies that compose society in such a way that it is ‘impossible to discern where the “social” starts or ends’ (Anderson, 2011, as cited in Kraftl, 2013, p. 17). Kraftl’s more-than-social take on relationality was chosen as it incorporates a particular dimension which other studies tend to omit: He proposes an attentive turn towards children’s emotional geographies, arguing that emotion and affect – both in their internal and external forms – matter to children and are of value to understanding their relational lives (Horton and Kraftl, 2009). Kraftl’s work proved highly applicable to my research, as he extends relationality to include various forms of human and nonhuman extracorporeal matter (e.g., a book or another library member),

12 emotions and affects (e.g., how children feel and respond emotionally to literature or to relations within the library), and ‘those processes that occur within, through and across them’ (Kraftl, 2013, p. 18).

In addition to building upon the emerging movement to bring discussions surrounding children’s affective relationality to the forefront of research, this dissertation will also offer a unique perspective that examines how reading plays into conceptions of relationality.

With the exception of a few studies (Twomey [2007] argues that reading is composed of relational negotiations between text and reader, and Harris [2017] says it highlights our ‘radically relational condition’ [p. 3]), research which connects reading with discussions of relationality is insufficient. By drawing upon the work of Kraftl (2008, 2013) and Spyrou (2017; 2018), Rosen (2018), Cook (2018), and Eßer (2016; 2018), I will explore reading as an embodied practice and its interlinkages with children’s emotional and social relationalities.

2.3 Temporality of Childhood and Utopian Imaginings The second main theme within this project’s findings is connected to temporality – the view of the research participants and also of their reading experiences and imaginings of utopias as marked by dimensions of temporality. First, it is worth providing an overview of discussions on the temporality of children as a whole: The field of sociology of childhood, it could be argued, emerged out of a response to the depiction of children as “becomings” whose value depends largely upon the adult members of society they will become in the future (Hanson, 2017). Childhood studies theorists began proposing a new paradigm which recognised that, rather than “becomings”, children are “beings” – social actors possessing of agency whose interests, desires, actions, and circumstances matter and should be valued in the present (James and Prout, 1990; Brannen and O’Brien, 1995; Jenks, 1996; Qvortrup, 2005). This now commonplace notion of children as “beings vs. becomings” had significant impact on the field and solidified itself as ‘the legitimate way to study children and childhood’ (Holmberg, 2018, p. 160). However, a recent shift has moved the focus away from the outdated beings/becomings binary, and has instead ignited academic curiosity around the temporality of children and childhood. Along this train of thought, it has been argued that children and adults alike are “becomings” (Prout, 2005), or that children are

13 “beings” and “becomings” whose potential is exercised through relational interdependence (Gallacher and Gallagher, 2008).

While the concept of children as beings and becomings is indeed helpful and will reappear briefly in my discussions, for the purposes of this research I have chosen to address Conrad’s (2012) ‘dynamic temporality’ (p. 204) and Pells’ (2018a) adaptation of a ‘connective approach’ (p. 100) to the study of children and childhood as most important to my discussions on temporality. In one of the few existing studies connecting the notion of temporality with literature and reading (in this case, poetry), Conrad (2012) draws upon the work of Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1968) to argue that subjectivity is fluid rather than fixed in time, and that temporality itself is dynamic and characterised by an ‘overlapping of multiple time frames in consciousness’ (Conrad, 2012, p. 205), resulting in a blend of future and past within the present. The young people from Conrad’s study demonstrated through their writing that moments in time do not merely exist within strict linear paths but can be yoked to one another through the ‘creative manipulation of temporal registers’ (Conrad, 2012, p.

209), and can be experienced subjectively in various ways. Alongside dynamic temporality, Pells (2018a) suggests an approach centred around connectivity between temporality, relationality, and power, the last of which will be exchanged for the word “politics” in this study, as I illustrate in the following section. Expanding upon the work of Hoskins (2016) and Hirsh (2012), Pells’ connective approach pushes back against linear models and demonstrates that memories and notions of time are always interrelated, conflicting, and situated within relational encounters. Both Conrad (2012) and Pells (2018a) offer an understanding of temporality as something that is not stagnant, but relational, dynamic, and experienced and expressed differently by this study’s research participants in multiple ways.

Taking into consideration current academic interest in children’s temporality further solidifies this study’s purpose of exploring utopias: Not only is imagining a “better” future necessary to conceptualise a helpful alternative to Brazil’s economic and political crisis, it also represents a field for fruitful, innovative research that is aligned with a modern trend in the study of childhood. Within contemporary society, “utopia” is often negatively interpreted as a naïve and unrealistic vision which wastes time and effort, or as an aim which, when pursued by authoritarians, can contribute to oppressive regimes (Gray, 2007;

14 Levitas, 2017). However, utopian imaginings have continued to provide basis for engaging academic study. As the first to use the term, Bloch (1954) philosophised utopia as an openness to undetermined possibilities, an ability to envision a different future within the present. In what represents the view of utopias I am assuming as foundational to my own research, Levitas (2017) adds to Bloch’s thinking by claiming that utopias are inherently sociological, as they not only focus on expressing desire for a better future, but also on generating action towards those desires by means of a ‘double vision’ (p. 7) that enables imaginings from present to future and agentic action from hopeful future to present. This type of double vision has also been called a ‘revolutionary imagination’ (Katz, 2011, p. 57) – an ability shared by all human beings to refashion current situations and surroundings into utopian worlds that can be both real and imagined. Hopeful, utopian imaginings are intersected by temporal dimensions from every day present, past memories, and ‘future “what-ifs”’ (Kraftl, 2008, p. 87), and are seen as an ‘ontological need’ (Freire, 1994, p. 2) which is essential to life: ‘Reality without real possibility is not complete, the world without future-laden properties does not deserve a glance’ (Bloch, 1954, p. 223).

A study performed within the realm of utopias that became key to my research is Kraftl’s (2009) “Utopia, Childhood and Intention”. As one of the few scholars to jointly examine childhood and utopia, he argues that until now academic work – and public perception in general – has mobilised sentimentality to homogenise children’s experiences and portray childhood as a utopian phase of life characterised by a ‘biological right’ (Kraftl, 2009, p. 82) for hope. He describes how charities, children’s rights advocates, and academics often declare their intentions to preserve an ideal version of childhood as well as support children’s vast, immeasurable dreams for their future, but explains through his case study analysis that children’s personal desires for their futures often directly contradicted such statements and were ‘characterised by modest intentions and a lack of confidence in those intentions’ (Kraftl, 2009, p. 84). Although they demonstrated knowledgeability of current, future-oriented discourses (such as notions of world peace, ending hunger, healthcare reforms, etc.), the children from Kraftl’s focus group consistently ‘scrambled the temporal frame of utopian intentionality’ (p. 85) by communicating pragmatic, realistic goals related to their everyday experiences rather than making such bold statements as adults would expect (i.e., “I want to become president!”).

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When exploring pre-existing literature that might combine concepts of temporality and utopias with reading as a social practice among young children, I once again found myself wanting more. Apart from Conrad’s (2012) innovative research on dynamic temporality within children’s poetry writing, I found only a few other pieces of interest: Zheng’s (2013) case study revealed that children’s understandings of time within picture book readings is closely related with their feelings, and Tymieniecka (2007) and Sartre (1948) both argue that reading is an inherently temporal act, in that it enables readers to participate in a ‘merely probably future which partly collapses and partly comes together’ (Sartre, 1948, p. 28) as they progress in the book. As these studies are few and hard to come by, it is clear that there is a lack of research into the temporality of reading as a social practice. Through my research, I hope to address this gap in the literature and respond to the call to contribute to sociological conceptions of utopias as well as to the ongoing movement towards exploring children’s temporality and personal imaginings of the future.

2.4 Children and the Political The final theme of importance to my study is that of children’s political activity, specifically that of their prefigurative political acts that emerge from their involvement in the library spaces and reading activities. In a similar manner to the recent academic engagement with relationality and temporality, interest in the topic of children’s political participation has experienced significant increase in the past thirty years. Research performed thus far is typically conglomerated around a few main streams: First, there has been substantial exploration of children’s active, primarily discursive, participation in political arenas and policy-making which directly affects their lives (Cooke and Kothari, 2001; Wyness, 2013).

This line of thought is heavily concerned with notions of empowerment and aims to provide opportunities for children to take part in adult political spaces due to their status as rights holders (Thomas, 2009). Another common area of study emphasises the linkages that can be made between children’s daily experiences and conceptions of the political – their ‘mundane agencies’ (Kallio and Häkli, 2011, p. 23) or the notion that their routine decisions and interactions can be understood as “everyday politics” as theorised by numerous feminist scholars (Boyte, 2005; Williams, 2006; Haenfler, Johnson and Jones, 2012; Fuist, Mogford and Das, 2018). Although much of this research has greatly contributed to an

16 opening up of the field of childhood studies to include discussions around the political, a problematic line of thinking has remained unquestioned: Each of the aforementioned conceptualisations of children’s political activity is framed around a pre-conceived adult notion of the meaning, spaces, and characteristics of politics, thus explicitly pre-determining children’s roles so as to “cut-and-paste” them onto an adult model of the political (Kallio and Häkli, 2011; Oswell, 2018). Such conceptions are sustained through generationing practices which can produce unequal power relations and hierarchical categories for adults and children, thus determining how and when children will be able to participate politically (Alanen and Mayall, 2001; Alanen, 2009).

Upon becoming aware of this “adultist” definition of what is or is not to be considered political, scholars have begun pushing for a comprehensive shift in what is understood by the children’s political activity, a shift which has set the tone for my own research. Oswell (2018) is key here in his argument against a politics for children (i.e., adults creating political spaces and ensuring that children become participants in such spaces) or a politics of children (i.e., observing children’s “everyday politics” in a way that constructs them in a similar manner as adults). He instead calls for a ‘reflection on the difference children make to a conceptualisation of the political’ (p. 201) in such a way that re-defines the ‘terms, conditions, and positionalities’ (p. 203) of politics entirely. This re-construction of children’s political activity encompasses a rupture with normative, discursive assumptions and would decentre both child and adult from discussions, widening the scope of study to encompass an entirely new set of articulations, modes of participation, and demonstrations among human and non-human beings to be considered “political” (Kontovourki and Theodorou, 2018; Spyrou et al., 2018). The concept of politics becomes, in this sense, a ‘space of contestation’ (Oswell, 2009, p. 15) over what and how political activity takes place as well as over the meaning of each act. Within this view, it is also proposed that children are relational beings who negotiate their positions within different spaces and communities in society, and who develop and act on the basis of interests, emotions, and desires (Kallio and Häkli, 2011; Sayer, 2011). Nussbaum (2003) and Sayer (2011) have both argued on the basis for “emotional politics”, which, in a similar vein to Kraftl’s (2008, 2013) work with hope and emotions, entails an understanding of children’s political expressions as encompassing not

17 only actions or articulations, but also his/her valid feelings as the root of any political expression in the first place.

Understanding children as relational beings ‘for whom things matter’ (Sayer, 2011, p. 98) and allowing them to re-define adult understandings of politics opens up new possibilities of study, wherein the topic of prefigurative politics is experiencing a resurgence in interest, especially within the field of childhood studies. In keeping with its name (the word “prefigure” means to ‘show or suggest that something will happen in the future’ [Cambridge Online Dictionary, 2019]), prefigurative activity has been described as a way in which individuals embody the types of interactions, relationships, and human experiences they desire to be constitutive of their world, a ‘performance in the present of some future “change”’ (Jeffrey and Dyson, 2016, p. 78). Such actions take root in what Appadurai (2013) calls ‘the capacity to aspire’ (p. 189), the ability to exercise one’s imaginative capacities to envision different, perhaps better, futures. For the purposes of this research, the prefigurative political acts of the participants will be seen as dual-minded: They are concerned with mental capacities of understanding the world and imagining different utopian futures, but also with the tangible, empirical embodiment of those futures so as to enable actual change (Cornish et al., 2016). Additionally, and in alignment with the aforementioned work of Kraftl (2008, 2009) and Sayer (2011), Nolas, Varvantakis, and Aruldoss (2016) helpfully propose that, in order to better understand prefiguration ‘as it emerges (or not) in children’s everyday lives’ (p. 261), we must be willing to engage with children’s emotional desires, values, and concerns.

An additional important consideration to make when exploring prefigurative politics is that of the spatiality and solidarity of a particular setting. The theories taken up as most valuable to my research, in these realms of thought, are those of Nancy Fraser (1997) and Iris Marion Young (1990, 2000) for solidarity, and Hannah Arendt (1958) for spatiality. First, communities must be demarcated by solidarity in order for prefigurative political activity to take place, as constructing alternative environments based on desired ideals of solidarity can ‘lay the groundwork’ (Eder, Staggenborg and Sudderth, 1995, p. 486) for the dissemination of those same values throughout wider society. Fraser (1997) and Young (1990, 2000) describe how solidarity is produced and reproduced by all individuals involved

18 in a community (in this research, this would encompass the participants, educators, and potentially members of the surrounding neighbourhood), and that the prefigurative political goal of achieving freedom and a changed society is only attainable through collective, wider social struggles shared by many. This shared sense of solidarity must include egalitarian processes of distribution of responsibilities as well as representations of all members within the solidaric space. Once a collective sense of solidarity is attained, the spatiality of politically prefigurative settings also becomes of great importance, and here Arendt’s (1958) definition of a space of appearance contributes productively: She describes a space of action which is continuously re-created wherever beings join together with intent and ‘in the manner of speech and action’ (Arendt, 2958, p. 189), a fragile space which can be brought to fruition at any time and space when people are gathered and destroyed the moment they disperse (D’Entreves, 2019). This definition proved applicable to this study, as the community library took on a noticeably different identity conducive towards prefigurative politics whenever the children were gathered together.

Although great progress has been made, the topic of prefigurative politics among children and childhood could stand to be explored in much greater length, especially within developing contexts and among Majority World communities. Additionally, the proposal to allow children to promote a re-evaluation of what adults consider to be “political”, to engage with prefigurative politics as it relates to reading experiences, and to examine aspects of solidarity and spatiality as necessary components for political activity represent exciting, relatively unexplored areas of theoretical ground that this research aims to cover.

Conclusion This chapter provided a background of pre-existing academic work related to this study’s main topics of concern: (1) reading as a social practice; (2) relational, affective understandings of children and of their reading experiences; (3) the dimensions of temporality which demarcate children’s lives and interactions with reading; and (4) children’s political activity and prefigurative politics. Such an extensive overview can seem overwhelming, as each of the topics is comprehensive and far-reaching; however, an indepth exploration of each of the topics was necessary to illustrate the fundamental gap this research aims to address: Although each of the aforementioned topics have been highly

19 theorised as individual categories of thought, no study has aimed to address all four in conjunction with one another. Thus, through this chapter I established a working knowledge of each topic and presented my case for re-imagining reading through a temporal, relational, and political lens, and, in the following section, I explain the methodological underpinnings of this research, both on an empirical and theoretical level.

Chapter 3: Methodology: The “Why” of my Research Introduction The purpose of this research is to investigate an embodied social practice – reading, as relational, temporal, and political – which generates significant impact on the social world, and focuses in particular on its connections to the lives and utopian imaginings of children, whose experiences and ideas are significant due to their shared status as members within the social world. In order to understand the complex linkages between and among children and their reading experiences, dialectical critical realism (Bhaskar, 1986, 2008b, 2008a; Alderson, 2013a) underpins the methodological approach of my research. Dialectical critical realism (DCR) enables an examination of the interconnectedness of various aspects of my participants’ experiences while also providing a basis of ontological, epistemological, and axiological reasonings that allow one to make sense of those connections (Alderson, 2013a), particularly in relation to the children’s utopian imaginings and prefigurative political activity which are key points of this research.

This chapter represents the methodological awareness (Seale, 1999) of my project, illustrating as much as possible the methodological underpinnings and reasonings behind each step in the research process, and is divided into seven sections: an explanation of my theoretical approach to the study of children through a dialectical critical realist lens, a description of the abductive methodological reasonings of the project, detailed accounts of the research design, process of data analysis, an explanation of my positioning as a researcher, ethical considerations, and the perceived limitations of the project as a whole.

20 3.1 Theoretical Approach 3.1.1 Why Study Children? “ […] The social world is composed of, and composed by, all kinds of people.

Therefore, if we are ever going to know and understand the social world, then we also need to turn to all kinds of people in our quest to do so, and this quest needs to include children as well.” (Uprichard, 2010, p. 11) While some propose that children do not merit attention as an object of study in their own right due to a future-oriented evaluation of their worth, and while historically children have been excluded from taking part in research in any shape or form (Prout and James, 2015), I argue that social research performed with and around children is absolutely necessary to gaining a well-rounded and inclusive understanding of all aspects of the social world. As a researcher within the field of sociology of childhood, therefore, I am interested in studying the complex systems, negotiations, and interlinkages that are significant both to children as individuals, as well as beyond children in terms of larger societal structures. However, my argument in defense of research with children is not merely instrumental (e.g., to promote greater adult understanding of the social world), but is also concerned with children’s inherent value as co-members of society and the aftereffects that such research can generate in their lives: Studies produced among the sociology of childhood have the innate capacity to mold knowledge and insight related to children, which can in turn shape the status attributed to children and determine societal conceptions of childhood as a whole (Pells, 2018b). With this in mind, great care must be taken to ensure that research being produced is worthwhile (James, 2007). My conception of a worthwhile research project, and the underlying thread I attempted to weave throughout my research design, is one that contributes in meaningful and innovative ways to the participants’ lived experiences, to my own field of sociology of childhood, and to other areas of thought that have thus far remained somewhat separated from the study of childhood.

Just as it is imperative to generate meaningful research that can shape societal conceptions of children, it is equally important to recognise the reverse effect as well; in other words, that my view of “the child” will ultimately determine and shape my own research. While acknowledging that my understanding can never be perfect, I view children as relational actors who contribute to the composition of social life as a whole – not just to that of their

21 own spaces (Uprichard, 2010; Mayall, 2015) – and as both beings and becomings who, just like adults, are ‘always-unfinished subjects-in-the-making’ (Gallacher and Gallagher, 2008, p.

511). My research participants held a dual position as members of a minority social group (childhood), and also as individuals who will be positioned as part of a different social group (adulthood) in the future (Alanen, 2011) through generational orderings made up of ‘social relations and interdependency’ (Punch, 2019, p. 5). Thus, children are able to speak as both current and future actors within society, to share insights from the world of childhood and the world at large (Uprichard, 2010), and to reproduce and transform their surroundings in a variety of ways (Rosen, 2018).

3.1.2 (Dialectical) Critical Realism This research assumes an ontological, epistemological, and axiological positioning grounded in critical realism. Critical realism has been deemed a ‘philosophy of social science’ (Alderson, 2016, p. 199), somewhat of an “underlabourer” (Locke, 1894) that places emphasis on the notion of an intransitive ontology: A critical realist ontology sees the world as existing independently and regardless of our awareness or acknowledgement of it (Sayer, 2000; Zachariadis, Scott and Barrett, 2013). Additionally, critical realism assumes that the world is composed of differentiated structures and layers of reality stratified across the empirical, the actual, and the real that are characterised by an inherent complexity, which is also intransitive and non-constructed (Bhaskar, 1986; Gerrits and Verweij, 2015). This complexity guides critical realist epistemologies, which understand the generation of knowledge as a human, transitive activity dependent upon its production processes (Archer et al., 1998). Critical realists go a step beyond the notion that the world is socially constructed to argue that it is in fact construed and understood in a variety of ways which are inevitably fallible (Sayer, 2000; Easton, 2010). This fallibility opens exciting doors for social researchers, who assume the responsibility of continuing their search for different causal mechanisms and knowledges in a diverse range of contexts (Benton and Craib, 2001), continuously cross-checking and reproducing epistemological understandings.

As critical realism has been the subject of fruitful engagement on behalf of scholars from various fields of thought, a wide range of branches and “waves” have emerged within its domain, and I found Bhaskar’s (2008b) dialectical critical realism as expanded upon by

22 Alderson (2013) and Roberts (2014) to be most insightful to my research. I have decided to focus on the specific branch of dialectical critical realism (DCR) for two reasons: First, because DCR proved an extremely useful tool for applying qualitative methods in an analysis of the large and small-scale dimensions within my research participants’ intricate lives, and helped me make greater sense of the contradictions present within their experiences (Alderson, 2017). While critical realism provides an excellent initial framework for qualitative research, focusing on causal mechanisms in effect throughout the research context, DCR goes a step further to include a process of reflexive examination of the history of and contradictions within the context, locating the participants’ current thoughts, decisions, and activities in larger ongoing processes which span across temporal dimensions (Roberts, 2014). In this sense, DCR enabled a view of my research participants as both shaped by and constitutive of their surrounding political and socioeconomical world, and allowed me to see how the agency, structures, and temporal/historical processes intertwined in their lives were dialectically interrelated and inseparable from one another (Alderson, 2013). Second, because DCR strengthens explorations of utopias (Alderson, 2013) and, I would argue, of prefigurative politics. Throughout my research, the ontological realism of DCR allowed me to understand that the aspects participants wished to see changed in their world (such as violence and pollution) were real and intransitive; the epistemological relativism of DCR showed me that my understanding of those social problems, and of my participants’ utopian imaginings, was inevitably going to be fallible and limited; and the emancipatory axiology and judgment rationalism of DCR granted my participants the ability to decide upon their utopian visions by making judgments between their actual surroundings, how they perceive and understand those surroundings, and their ‘partly innate […] partly transitive’ (Alderson, 2013, p. 136) morality. DCR also enabled me to understand how my participants were grounding their utopian visions in real ontological processes, by ‘being and doing utopias’ (Alderson, 2013, p. 138) and embodying their utopian reality through decisions and choices in the present.

3.2 Methodological Approach Framed by a critical realist perspective, my research took the form of a qualitative case study guided by an abductive, methodologically immature approach. Abductive reasoning and methodological immaturity share many characteristics that also draw heavily upon

23 critical realism: Both approaches acknowledge the incompleteness of understandings, and enable researchers to assume a humble positioning in the hopes of describing their participants’ “insider” perspective – rather than intruding with their “outsider” point of view – to the best of their abilities (Blaikie, 2000; Gallacher and Gallagher, 2008). An abductive approach allowed me to gather emergent ‘surprising facts’ (Dudovskiy, 2019) and uncover intellectual puzzles, and then granted me creative freedom to analyse my data in search of cause and effect relationships and put forward my “best” interpretation (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996; Josephson and Josephson, 1996; J. Mason, 2002). Gallacher and Gallagher’s (2008) methodological immaturity added to my project’s abductive framework by removing any pressure to conduct the research in a “correct” or “perfect” manner, as it enables both researcher (adult) and participants (children) to be understood in terms of vulnerability, interdependence, and incompleteness. This humble approach, similarly to that of critical realism and abductive reasoning, acknowledges the complexities of the research process and attributes greater importance to the researcher’s journey over his/her finished product (Gallacher and Gallagher, 2008).

The decision to apply qualitative methods through a case study format was purposeful as well. My project’s concern with its participants’ relational experiences through reading and future-oriented imaginings and political activity is directly associated with one of the main aims of qualitative research: to ask questions and seek understanding about societal structures, institutions, and about the world (Tracy, 2012). Additionally, qualitative methodologies refuse to ‘bury the “voice” of research subjects beneath piles of anonymous standardised data’ (Ragin, 1994, p. 81), and instead focus on gaining in-depth understanding of the meanings that research participants attribute to their “messy” and complex lives and experiences (Oakley, 1981; Guba and Lincoln, 1994; Roberts, 2014). The smaller scale of the research setting and my limited time-frame made a case study a natural selection, as case studies enable researchers to focus on a particular phenomenon or social entity with greater comprehensiveness and depth than would be allowed in larger projects, thus disentangling the various linkages and factors at play within the specific research context (Easton, 2010).

3.3 Research Design and Methods

24 The data from this project emerged through small group interviews, observations, and two creative methods (a drawing, a book creation activity, and what I named “Book Interviews”) carried out over the span of two weeks at a library created by non-profit organisation Brincriar.

A total of nine participants were interviewed in pairs or trios, through

conversations that lasted between 30 – 45 minutes each. These interviews were semistructured, thus enabling a somewhat guided discussion that was still open and flexible to adapting to participant responses. In this sense, they were what Berg (1989) calls ‘a conversation with a purpose’ (p. 13), enabling a more in depth examination of emerging topics and allowing for discussions around participants’ feelings and insights, which were at times emotionally weighted (Roberts, 2014). After each interview, with the participants still in pairs or in a trio, we performed what I called an “interview with a book”, where each participant would grab a favourite book from the library, read it with/to me, and then tell me which part(s) of that book they wished they could bring with them to real life, which parts reminded them of their real lives, or how this book made them think differently about their world. Once each participant had been interviewed and shared a favourite book with me, on the final day of fieldwork, six of the nine participants joined together once more in the library to take part in the book creation creative method. During this activity children drew their visions of a utopian future, and we all then brainstormed together to think of actions that we could do or already were doing in the present to make their utopian imaginings become a reality. Finally, I spent around two hours each day in observations, during which I adopted a relational ethic that involved actively listening to the children and being open to unexpected questions, replies, and ‘fallible acts of interpretation’ (Albon and Rosen, 2014, p.41). As I crafted my methodological approach, I was careful not to use the term “participatory methods” given its recent problematising throughout the field of childhood research (e.g., that these may reinforce dichotomies of power and generational order by dictating what it means for a child to “participate” – see Gallacher and Gallagher [2008]). Therefore, I designed my methods to be “creative” (i.e., we used artistic manipulatives such as pens, markers, and paper to create drawings from our imaginations), and acknowledged any of my participants’ reactions to or interactions with the methods as active: Anything my participants did was considered an active response to a method, be it colouring, talking, interacting, or choosing not to follow a direction, disrupting, and/or at times leaving the activity.

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3.4 Problematising my Positioning Throughout my fieldwork, I developed two surprising realisations related to my own positioning as a researcher. First, I became aware of my unique insider-outsider perspective as someone who had grown up in the research context and was fluent in Portuguese (thus not considered a true outsider), but also who had not lived in Brazil for some time, was unfamiliar with Brincriar as a particular setting, and was of a different ethnicity than the research participants (thus also not considered a true insider). Following Dwyer and Buckle (2009), I decided to assume a third positioning found in the complex, rich space between both perspectives rather than try to strictly assimilate with one side of the dichotomy.

Second, and particularly towards the beginning of my fieldwork, I noticed that my subjective experiences and knowledge as an early childhood educator were emerging and attempting to make themselves known throughout my methods. I found that my mind kept returning to regimented, disciplinarian systems of interaction if a participant did not respond in the way that I expected, and was constantly fighting against wanting to modify an activity if I felt that it hadn’t “engaged” the participants enough (an extremely pedagogical term). While the task to remain with a feet in both insider and outsider worlds, and to assume an identity of researcher rather than teacher proved difficult, I found that keeping a research journal and being open throughout the process helped me creatively work through my third positioning in a vulnerable, flawed, and honest manner.

3.5 Data Analysis I examined my data via three dimensions: transcriptions of all interview recordings, photos of each participant’s utopian drawing (along with each child’s accompanying verbal description of their photo in a voice recording), and comprehensive daily fieldnotes taken throughout the entirety of the research process. The fieldnotes proved invaluable, as they contained daily quotes and questions or changes that had risen and eventually granted a more personal, unique interpretation of data which was not present in the audio files or drawings (Tracy, 2012). I mapped all of my data onto visual webs and searched for repetitive codes or correlations that would enable a more concise analysis (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996, cited in Mason, 2002), and began noticing three emerging themes: The participants’ discussions, future imaginings, and drawings all seemed to revolve around politics,

26 relationality, and temporality. Once I established the guiding framework of my research, I was able to conglomerate quotes and observations into one of the three categories above and began analysing my findings.

3.6 Ethics Great care was taken to ensure that ethical considerations, such as informed consent and privacy, formed the underlying basis of the fieldwork and data analysis (Jennifer Mason, 2002; Miller et al., 2012). Before commencing this research, a comprehensive ethics plan was designed, approved by University College London’s ethics committee, and then shared with Brincriar. All participants and their families were informed of the research several weeks in advance before my arrival via fliers and home visits, and were shown a short video wherein I introduced myself, supplied important information about the project, and offered a few means of contact through which they could reach out to me with any questions. The children and their parents were asked for consent separately before I arrived and were made aware of the steps taken to protect their identity as well as their ability to withdraw from the project without penalty at any time. Once I arrived, and after playing several icebreaker games to establish a basis of trust, I asked the children for their consent on their own, explaining each step of the research and asking for them to agree in any way that suited them (verbally, using the traffic light signal cards I had created, with a thumbs up or thumbs down, or any other “method” of agreement or disagreement that they decided upon themselves). The children were made aware – by myself and by the educators on a separate occasion – of their ability to stop any session or not answer a question at any time, a consideration which was especially necessary in this research as I was aware that the subject of utopias could produce sensitive topics of conversation (e.g., discussing what participants wish they could change about their current situation might generate discomfort). I also tried to express from the beginning that I was not the “boss” and that they were not supposed to just follow my orders, but that we were exploring the research topic together. The children became heavily interested in research procedures and actively involved themselves in the research process: they often wielded power over the research instruments, picking up the recording device to speak into it or suggesting I write something specific in my research journal; they each chose pseudonyms with great excitement

27 combined with a grave understanding of the need to protect their identities; and they took part in shaping the data collection alongside me.

It is important to discuss here the ethical implications of performing research with children, which presents unique considerations and is inherently different from performing research with adults. Following Punch (2002), I took three main issues into consideration: First, that adult researchers often end up imposing their own perceptions upon their child participants; second, that unequal power imbalances are likely – and somewhat inevitably – going to be present within adult/child researcher/participant relationships; and third, that children’s forms of expression might be different than those I am accustomed to as an adult.

Although none of these aims were achieved perfectly, I attempted to address the aforementioned concerns by abandoning the thought that my experiences and/or understandings were greater than those of my participants (Alderson and Goodey, 1996), not wanting to impose my childhood memories onto theirs, by establishing a relationship of trust so that the children did not feel they needed to please me (Boyden and Ennew, 1997), and by including as participatory a wide range of reactions and verbal/non-verbal expressions (Punch, 2002).

A final ethical component concerns the health and safety of two participants, Agatha and Laura. As I explore in section 4.1.3, these two sisters consistently discussed significant violence in their lives, claiming they were being hit at school, discussing their parents’ violent fights, and describing the bullying they encountered in all areas of life. After each session with the sisters, I would inform the educators of my concerns and was always told that they were aware of the situation, had discussed their concerns with the mother, and had already referred the children’s cases to two other non-profit organisations in the city.

Although the participants’ repeated claims of violence were alarming, it was hopeful to know that Choco employees were aware of the situation and actively working towards supporting them to the fullest of their capacities.

3.7 Project Limitations A limitation of this project which is common to many short-term research proposals is centred around issues of time. Two weeks did not provide an adequate amount of time to

28 establish deep bonds of trust and fully engage with participants’ lives and understandings, and parents at times would call the participants to return home before the conclusion of an activity, thus limiting my time with participants even further. In addition to the limitation of time, I identified two other challenges throughout the duration of the fieldwork. During each interview and/or whole group activity session, educator Pedro was present and at times joined our conversations and activities. While I was attempting to maintain a humble, methodologically immature positioning in the hopes of allowing participants to lead conversations in the directions of their choosing, Pedro occasionally re-directed conversations, pressuring the participants to answer “correctly” or sit “nicely” while we talked. Although these types of comments were minimal and mostly happened during the first two days of fieldwork, they represented an authoritative voice which I did not wish to be present and could have potentially limited my participants’ responses. Additionally, participants were placed into groups or pairs to be interviewed prior to my arrival, and often contained pairs of siblings. During the activities and conversations with groups containing siblings, the older sibling would often attempt to instruct the younger sibling on what to say, scold him/her for not responding “adequately”, or attempt to re-phrase what had been said in a more “adult” manner, once again potentially inhibiting younger participants from wanting to express themselves in their own way.

Conclusion This chapter highlighted the methodological foundations of this research project, providing an argument for performing research with children, defining my view of children as both beings and becomings, and illustrating the value of a dialectical critical realist approach for making sense of the participants’ real, intransitive surroundings, of their epistemological constructions of present circumstances and future wishes, and of their emancipatory axiology which allowed them to make moral and value-laden judgments to create their utopias. Through this chapter I also discussed my methodologically immature and abductive approach to the research, justified my use of qualitative, creative methods and process of data analysis, and explained my positioning as researcher, the projects’ limitations, and the ethical considerations underpinning the project as a whole. This section, alongside the literature review from chapter two, established a clear theoretical and methodological

29 framework which guided my research and enabled a productive analysis of my findings in the following section.

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion Introduction While at the starting point of this research journey I set out to explore children’s utopian imaginings and prefigurative political activity as my main theme, throughout my fieldwork and subsequent data analysis I found that the focal point of my research required adjusting: Although I discuss utopias and prefiguration in great detail and will still answer each of my three initial research questions, the guiding theme and underlying thread of this fourth chapter will be to reconceptualise reading through a threefold lens, which includes dimensions of relationality, temporality, and politics. It will be argued that reading is no longer to be considered as an activity strictly concerned with literacy and progression which can only take place when one is reading words on the page of a book; rather, I propose through this chapter that reading occurs within a complex web of relational processes, that it is characterised by strong markers of past, present, and future (in this case, utopian) temporal dimensions, and that it can occur in an environment conducive towards political acts among adults and children alike.

Before delving into the task of re-conceptualising reading, I will provide details regarding the research setting and participants. Following this initial section, three sub-chapters discuss in greater length the key ideas concerned with the dimensions of relationality, temporality, and politics which compose my understanding of reading as a whole.

4.1 Vila ChocolatĂŁo: The Setting 4.1.1 Exploring the Neighbourhood

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Figure 1: Vila Chocolatão (Benites, 2016).

This research took place within a favela known as “Vila Chocolatão”, located on Santana Hill in the eastern area of Porto Alegre, Brazil. The name Chocolatão (pronounced “sho-ko-latɐ̃w̃”), which translated from Portuguese means “Big Chocolate”, has unique origins: The favela community first emerged many years ago in the city centre, directly beside a wealthy business district which housed Porto Alegre’s Federal Justice building – a large, brown highrise. Given that 90% of the favela’s inhabitants were employed as rubbish collectors throughout the city, as the community expanded so did the amount of rubbish being brought in for sorting and recycling. Employees within the adjacent business district began to file formal complaints against the community, naming them “Chocolatão” due to their proximity to the chocolate-coloured Federal Justice building. In 2011, after several complaints about the smell, lack of visual appeal, and frequent fires that occurred due to the favela’s poor electrical installations, the Chocolatão community came to be seen as ‘inappropriate to the territory’ (Toigo, 2019, p. 77) and received a government-led mandate to resettle to a more distant, less populated area of Porto Alegre. When this relocation took place, the community members continued to use the name “Chocolatão” when referring to themselves and to one another, this time as a term of affection due to the colour of their skin (which is predominately dark brown), but also as a symbol of their shared identity and resistance to the perceived prejudices from their former business district neighbours.

31 Although this relocation happened eight years ago, it has generated problematic lasting repercussions in the lives of Chocolatão residents. First, the recycling hangar created in the new neighbourhood was insufficiently sized to employ all of the residents who worked as rubbish collectors, which generated discord among community members who felt they would now have to choose who would lose their jobs and have to seek work elsewhere.

Additionally, the community was extremely close-knit, as they had been living together in the same space for over 20 years, and the relocation process separated many families and friends who felt unwilling to move to such a distant space. Throughout this process, the “Residents’ Association” – a politically active branch of advocacy directed by and on behalf of Vila Chocolatão members – lost its leadership and dissolved, giving way to a rise in drug trafficking within the community. Now, rather than the once active local Residents’ Association, drug trafficking has become the reference point for safety and problem-solving within the community, and is an activity that is resorted to whenever necessary to make extra money and/or protect one’s family (EFP, personal communication, 24 June 2019).

Upon entering the favela, one characteristic becomes immediately noticeable: The entire community is surrounded by rubbish. The community’s entrance is marked by a large recycling till (see Figure 2) which employs a significant number of its members. Plastic bags of various colours, empty 2 litre PET bottles and aluminium cans, and food packaging labels are pervasive throughout the streets and both inside and outside each home. Where there are food remains mixed in with the rubbish, the numerous dogs living on the streets of Vila Chocolatão are gathered and within seconds the remains are gone. As one of the library coordinators communicated to me on my first visit to the neighbourhood, “this is a community that truly lives with trash” (RT, personal communication, 13 May 2019).

Residents have expressed concern and pleas for governmental intervention to raise their standard of living, to make their recycling hangar larger so as to accommodate all of the rubbish, and to improve their access to safe water, healthcare, and sanitation (Paula, 2016).

32

Figure 2: Recycling hangar at the entrance of Vila Chocolatão, which employs many Chocolatão inhabitants.

Vila Chocolatão is home to 181 families whose average monthly per capita income is R$ 899.92 (the equivalent of 195.51 GBP), and 2.91% of all inhabitants – as well as 2,06% of all children – are considered extremely impoverished, receiving less than R$ 140 (30 GBP) per month (IBGE, 2010; Gomes, 2016). The majority of individuals engaged in work are employed at the local recycling hangar, and other common professions include house cleaning, autonomous selling, and bricklaying – although the predominant proportion of the community is unemployed. Roughly 32% of children living in the area between the ages of 15-17 are not attending school, and 56% of individuals between the ages of 18-20 do not complete their secondary school education. Additionally, out of the population over the age of 25, 36% have not completed primary schooling, 56% have not completed secondary schooling, and only 8,89% have ever completed any form of higher education (IBGE, 2010).

4.1.2 Exploring “Choco”, the Community Library The library located within Vila Chocolatão, which is affectionately called “Choco” by its members, began out of a community-led initiative while the neighbourhood had yet to relocate from its original home in the city centre. The favela members felt they lacked a space wherein they might receive opportunities for cultural and educational learning and acted through their Residents Association to request assistance from their local council. In response to this request, they were partnered with Brincriar, the non-governmental organisation with which I collaborated to perform my research. Brincriar began in 2008 with

33 the intention of building and supporting a system of self-sustaining, community-directed libraries around Porto Alegre and, after plenty of communication and planning, the Choco library opened its doors in 2009. Upon its opening, the library received such significant support and engagement from residents that it, too, relocated to the new neighbourhood during the 2011 resettlement. It is now located in the middle of the Vila Chocolatão community, in a small house donated by Porto Alegre’s Municipal Department of Housing.

Figure 3: “Choco” – The community library in Vila Chocolatão (Cirandar, 2016).

Each of the spaces within Choco – both outside and inside – is decorated with vibrant colours and organised with attention to detail. The exterior of the library was painted by a local artist, representing a lively dash of colour amidst the neutral tones of its surrounding houses, and the walls from the interior are each painted a different shade of blue, red, orange, and green. There are distinct areas for literature for children, adolescents, and adults, yet the space does not feel constricting and members of all ages engage with and peruse books from all areas. Each section is organised by a color-coded classification system dividing the books into categories such as poetry, fairy tales, terror and suspense, or African literature, and new book arrivals are displayed proudly upon a three-tiered flowered bookcase. A large red carpet takes up a significant portion of the floor space in front of the children’s literature section and is frequently used for large-group discussions and projects, as are the two round tables with chairs. Several donated pillows and foam cubes throughout the library provide readers with comfortable seating options, and globes and various

34 artefacts from local Indigenous communities are dispersed among the shelves. Finally, the library also contains a toilet, an easel, a computer for planning and membership registration, and a kitchen frequently used for drinks and snacks.

Figures 4 and 5: Inside “Choco” – The community library in Vila Chocolatão.

A total of 98 people compose what Choco employees call their “spontaneous public”, individuals from the community who participate in library activities and engage with reading of their own will. Of those 98, 54 are between the ages of 0-14 (the age range of my research participants), and there is a stark contrast between genders: 65 members identified as female, while 33 identified as male. Additionally, 14% of members identified as white, 35% as black, 12% as mulatto, and the remaining 34% did not self-identify as belonging to any specific racial category.

Figure 6: The children’s literature area.

Figure 7: Library classification system.

Choco provides many opportunities for children to engage with reading and literature that are primarily led by the two on-staff “educators”, two paid employees tasked with maintaining the space, leading group discussions, and building relationships with library members who during this research will be referred to as Pedro and Mariano. First and

35 foremost, Choco supplies the community with over 2,500 high-quality books which are either donated on behalf of local bookstores or purchased via grants and loans. Each book can either be read in the library or borrowed to take home, and members are taught to take great care to ensure that books are treated with respect. Each day one of the library educators leads a reading circle and discussion time, and arts and crafts activities related to topics around popular culture and current issues take place on a weekly basis. Other activities include literary picnics, “Poetic Tea” (community mothers come to drink tea and read poetry), and cultural courtship, a bi-monthly event in which library members perform a type of parade around the favela playing instruments, reading aloud, and ‘spreading culture’ (RT, personal communication, 13 May 2019). The library also has two “godparents”, famous local authors who frequently visit the library and know the regular members by name, and every two months an additional well-known author visits the library and spends time with the readers.

4.1.3 Getting to Know the Participants Although a brief overview of the participants has already been made in the methodology portion of this research, this section will be dedicated to revealing a deeper, more detailed look into each of the participants’ lives and will further nuance the ensuing findings. All participants were purposefully selected by Brincriar educators so as to provide a diverse sampling that included a variety of ages and backgrounds and a mixture of new and old members.

The participants from the first three days of interviews had somewhat similar upbringings.

Gabriel and his sister, Yasmin, who came on the first day, were long-time library members whose parents were heavily involved in the community. Twelve-year-old Gabriel moved along with his family during the Chocolatão resettlement period and had been an active library member since 2011, and six-year-old Yasmin had been attending the library since she was born. The mother of these two siblings was a cleaning maid and their father was a plasterer, and they lived together as a family unit within the favela. On the second day, I spent time with six-year-old Giovanna and eight-year-old Nicolle, two sisters who had been at the library for a year and a half, as well as another library member, ten-year-old Karollyn who had been active at Choco since birth. Giovanna and Nicolle’s parents were both civil

36 servants and, although they lived with their mother, their father made visits every weekend.

Karollyn’s parents were both employed at the local rubbish recycling hangar, and they also all lived together as a family unit within Vila Chocolatão. Finally, the third day of small group activities introduced me to Larissa and Raquel, both relatively new Choco members yet thoroughly engaged in all library opportunities. Larissa was twelve years old, had been an active member for about a year, and was a confident reader who clearly felt comfortable reading to me and with others. She lived with her mother who sold snack foods within the favela. Raquel, on the other hand, was the youngest participant at five years old who had been a library member for five months, and who lived with her mother who was unemployed.

Whereas the first three days of interviews occurred in a similar manner, the final day of research was extremely different, as the participants being interviewed had home lives that drastically contrasted those of their peers. During the last small group session, I spent time with Agatha and Laura, two sisters of the ages of eight and six, respectively. They had frequented the library for a little under one year but since moving to the area had visited the library almost every day. They lived with their mother, who was unemployed, and their father, a street-sweeper, made occasional visits to their home. Agatha and Laura used vocabulary and discussed topics quite different from those of their peers and repeatedly brought up drugs, sex, and violence. The girls shared that they went where they chose even into late hours of the night, watched mature videos on YouTube, and discussed their sexuality with an openness that was uncharacteristic of the other children in this study.

Additionally, their family had a tumultuous relationship with other community members.

According to educator Pedro, when the girls’ father came home for visits, he often entered into violent discussions with their mother, which regularly led to shouts, household objects being broken, and – in a few extreme cases – knife and gun wielding on behalf of their father. When these loud fights would occur, neighbours would become irritated and would summon the police to enter Vila Chocolatão and respond to the complaints. The police presence would anger the drug lords, who would then come to Agatha and Laura’s house and threaten their mother, which in turn led their mother to respond violently to them whenever they caused disruptions of any kind. Thus, Agatha and Laura experienced dimensions of violence in various areas of life: At home due to their parents’ relationship, at

37 school, and within their community due to the drug lords, police, and neighbours. The girls repeatedly told me that “everyone hated them” in their neighbourhood, and that their peers would often wait outside of their home or school so as to taunt them. Although this form of bullying and violence did not occur within the library space – and I would argue the library represented possibly one of the only spaces of solidarity and care within the girls’ lives – the library educators and administration were frequently involving other NGO’s and care services to offer support to Agatha, Laura, and their mother; however, the girls’ situation and surroundings remained as such throughout my visit, and an understanding of their reality might provide a more in-depth lens through which to understand certain sections of my discussion.

4.2 Relationality: Reading as an Intrinsically Relational Activity Introduction As previously mentioned, I began my fieldwork with the notion that children and their imaginings of utopias would be my primary object of study and, upon commencing my data analysis, felt the need to slightly re-shift my focus so as to make a reconceptualisation of reading my underlying theme. This section represents the first step in constructing that reconceptualisation and highlights the full scope of relationality with which participants engaged and which characterised the reading experiences I observed and took part in on a daily basis throughout my research. In the following sub-sections, I discuss the inherent relationality of my participants which aligns itself with recent theoretical work from Spyrou, Rosen and Cook (2018) and Eßer (2016), I paint a picture of the basis of solidarity present at the Choco library (which serves as the starting point for ensuing temporal and political activities, as will be discussed in sections 4.3 and 4.4), and, finally, I describe my conceptualisation of reading as a relational, affective activity.

4.2.1 Decentring the Child: Relational Encounters within the Library Space The children in the study were actively constructing and negotiating connections with a wide variety of technologies, objects, and beings throughout the sessions in such a manner that I, in following along the footsteps of Spyrou (2017), Rosen (2018), Cook (2018), and Eßer (2016), decided to decentre “the child” from its position as my sole focus and instead

38 widen my analysis to view the participants in relation to their diverse linkages and relational activity. I began to understand the children in my study in terms of their relationality with books, with the various library spaces they occupied or didn’t, with other human beings (one another, their parents, the educators, me), and with my foreign research instruments (e.g., recording device, notebook and pencils, etc.). This relationality was perhaps most visible in each child’s negotiations of identities, structures, and power relations. No child was seen – by him/herself or by others – as just a member of the library, or just a resident of Chocolatão, and instead was understood through a diverse set of relations constructed within and outside of the library. Children proudly discussed their relationships to books and objects in the library: “I am the guardian of water; did you know that? I protect the water fountain!” (Nicolle), or, “Last month I became a library guardian, so that means now I always know where all of the books go” (Karollyn). Children’s relations with one another were often negotiated in terms of who had been a library member for the longest amount of time or who was able to help the educator set up the room, and milestones such as learning to read new words or becoming reader of the month were important status markers. Being able to hold my recording device or pencil or answering one of my questions first were all relational activities often disputed through a variety of methods that children would invent on their own: rock paper scissors matches, ordering themselves by age to define who would go first, or using the library clock to time one another and ensure all received equal access to manipulating the materials. While these constant re-negotiations and affirmations of one another’s status occurred freely and frequently, the overarching relational component that they all shared – and which went unquestioned – was that they were all readers (whether it be of words, of pictures, or listeners of stories) who proudly took part in the Choco library community.

4.2.2 “We really are all together here”: Solidarity at Choco The children’s openness and engagement with diverse relational aspects throughout the library contributed to the creation of a close-knit space of solidarity. From the first day of fieldwork, and throughout all communications with Brincriar administrative staff, it was clear that the library members and educators had created an environment of deep relationships and mutual respect. The children, their parents, and both educators knew each other well and were involved in one another’s lives outside of the library, coming and

39 going from the home and library environments with the familiarity of kin, and a sense of pride related to being part of such a close community permeated the attitudes and identities of all involved. Children were continuously eager to introduce me to their community and families, to show me their ability to read and/or write, and to communicate their love for Choco. They often expressed enjoyment in reading to one another, unafraid of rejection or debauchery, and shared supportive encouragement with whoever was reading aloud. All members communicated respectfully to one another and with the educator, and conversations were frequently held on the basis of shared goals and emotions. This sentiment of solidarity was often shared in interviews: Larissa: When we come to the library, we really are all together here, you know?

Everyone, we all play games, then there is the Hour of Reading where we read together. I think we have lots of fun together […] and we respect everyone, everyone has their own way of being, right? You need to show respect to be respected.

Participants explained how the environment created at Choco felt different than that of all other areas in their lives, particularly when it came to rules or expectations. They felt that other spaces in which they were allowed to participate were regimented and restrictive, whereas the rules a Choco were seemingly so minimal that they were difficult to remember: Yasmin (age 6), when asked about which rules were in place at her day-care, quickly named several (“my brother can’t pick me up, you can’t run in the hallway, you can’t play”), but when asked about which rules she had to comply with at Choco, simply said “I don’t remember. None?” Only one participant, Karollyn, was able to give me a list of rules at Choco by directing me to a flipchart page (see Figure 8) the educator and readers had constructed together at some point (no one remembered when) which stated: “Agreements! Do not fight, no balls in the library, if you make a mess you clean it up, respect everyone, have helpers for each activity, and only guardians can retrieve items from the cupboard”. The only other rule displayed inside the library was a simple laminated page (see Figure 9) which reminds readers of how to take good care of books:

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Figure 8: Library agreements created by readers.

Figure 9: Instructions on how to care for books.

The library’s environment of solidarity was sustained by a constant cycle of production and reproduction on behalf of the children and educators. Similarly to conceptions of solidarity

by Young (1990, 2000) and Fraser (1997), the participants shared a collective vision for what it meant to be part of the library (to show and receive mutual respect between one another) and distributed the responsibilities for establishing that sense of solidarity amongst one another. It was clear that each person felt responsible for maintaining the group’s shared way of being through his/her own actions, and this was especially clear during the final activity of my fieldwork: As we were all gathered together to draw our visions of utopias, Agatha began speaking angrily towards another participant, Karollyn, who was holding a crayon she wanted to use. Rather than retaliate with anger, the entire group shifted their focus back to me and to the task at hand, while Karollyn calmly told Agatha that here in the library they tried not to talk in a disrespectful way towards one another and offered to help her find a crayon of another colour. Educator Pedro later shared with me that those instances were common, that the children took their role as respectful, kind library members so seriously that they often guided those who were less familiar with the rules to become accustomed to the library’s solidarity as well. Also in accordance with Young’s (2000) discussions around solidarity, each library member felt represented in the space, as everyone shared equal access to books, everyone was able to become reader of the month throughout the year, and responsibilities for guardian/clean-up helper/greeter were shared among all. This collective, egalitarian distribution of responsibility allowed participants to share ownership over the library space, thus contributing to even greater degrees of relational solidarity.

41 4.2.3. Re-Conceptualising Reading through a Relational Lens As I realised that participants were engaging in relational interactions with the various components of the library, and saw that those relations contributed to a strong sense of solidarity among all library members, I felt the need to conceptualise reading itself in a similar manner: Reading was not restricted to the act of a child picking up a book and reading its words; rather, it was an embodied, affective social activity that took part in the relational space of the library setting. First, reading was deeply embedded with relationality with other people. While some participants enjoyed reading alone, for others reading was not complete unless performed as a communal activity alongside a friend or family member, and for others still who could not yet read words, reading had to be an event shared with another. I also found that even simply talking about books constituted reading for some children, especially in the case of Agatha and Laura who, during what was meant to be “reading time”, sat together and talked about a few books and about other life circumstances for a sustained amount of time. When I approached them at the end of the session and asked what they were just doing – neither one of them having even opened a single book – Agatha replied, “we were reading”.

In many observations I noticed that reading was also linked with relationality to objects or spaces within the library as well as to the materiality of books themselves. One participant, Raquel, preferred always to snack on something while she was reading, be it a cracker, a piece of bread, or the leftover fruit gummies she found in her pocket from school. In a similar case, Giovanna – who otherwise typically was moving about energetically – held tightly to a pillow every time we read together, and would utilise the pillow to express her emotional reactions to the book (e.g., punching it when she felt angry, covering her eyes with it when she became afraid). Still other participants wanted to touch and feel each page of the book, making physical contact with the characters and colourful designs and always turning the pages. In addition to objects and book features, certain library spaces were also key factors of a child’s reading experience, as each library member seemed to have chosen a specific area as a designated reading spot to which they returned repeatedly and claimed as their own.

42 A final component of reading was the children’s relationality and engagement with their feelings and emotions, echoing Kraftl’s (2013) theory of emotional geographies. Reading was not only linked to the participants’ relations with one another or with objects in the library space, but also with emotions – their own, those of their peers, and those of book characters. Thus, reading was an affective practice wherein children deeply connected with characters, engaging mimetically with storylines and mirroring the characters’ emotional responses or offering suggestions as to what decisions should be made next, and shared their feelings about books with one another. Participants often discussed feeling a wide range of emotions while reading a book, and after reading with me would describe ‘profound emotional […] consequences’ (Fuller and Sedo, 2013b, p. 36) that the book brought about in their lives, such as when Laura asked for a few minutes of alone time to process her sadness after reading about a character who had an unhappy ending. The affective, relational dimension of reading was evident through children’s book choices.

Participants tended to read more books with characters with whom they could relate on the basis of physical appearance, such as skin colour or hair style, because of how those characters made them feel: Five out of the eight participants, when asked what types of books they preferred, mentioned that they typically chose books within the “African Literature” section, because, “They are black… and I feel less prejudice when I read it” (Karollyn), and “it makes me feel happy because that is my colour” (Agatha). Thus, reading often received significant value on the basis of a child’s emotional connections to a book, character, or storyline.

Conclusion This section provided an overview of relationality as the first of three dimensions to take into account when re-conceptualising reading. The participants in this study were shown to have been decentred from the main focus of research and were rather understood in terms of their diverse relations with books, objects, human beings, and multiple other entities in the library setting. It was discussed how, although all participants negotiated their identities and structures within the library space in unique ways, the underlying relational component that remained the same throughout all areas of the library was one of solidarity, wherein

43 children and educators alike shared mutual respect for one another and established a sense of collective responsibility for taking care of and maintaining a harmonious library space.

Finally, it was argued that, when taking into account children’s inherent relationality as well as the foundation of solidarity of the Choco library setting, reading itself becomes a relational, affective activity which can only be understood in terms of how a reader engages with and relates to other readers, to physical books and other objects in the library, and to the emotions evoked by reading and by certain characters and storylines. Taking into consideration this foundational understanding of both the participants and their reading experiences as deeply relational, I now move to explore children’s utopian imaginings and the temporality of their reading activities through section 4.2.

4.3 Temporality: Reading as an Activity with Past, Present and Future Dimensions Introduction This section expands upon my reconceptualisation of reading to include a second important dimension: temporality. Building upon the foundation of relationality established in section 4.2, I now explore how children themselves, their utopian visions, and their reading activities were understood through strong markers of temporality. I will demonstrate how children refused to conform to adult binary projections of either beings or becomings (Gallacher and Gallagher, 2008), and rather negotiated their identities through and around the binary as beings and becomings with regularity. Additionally, I provide details from the participants’ visions of utopias based on their drawings and verbal explanations of the same, and illustrate how their imaginings were marked by dynamic temporality (Conrad, 2012), a “triple vision” (to re-configure Levitas’ [2017] “double vison”) of past, present, and future dimensions, and pragmatic, realistic goals for their future (following Kraftl [2009]). In the final sub-section, I present my case for an incorporation of temporality into conceptualisations of reading and showcase how reading was intermingled with the readers’ past memories, present feelings, and future imaginings.

4.3.1 Extending Beyond Being and Becoming: How Children were Overcoming Binaries and Negotiating Timescapes In addition to markers of relationality, each of the research participants was shaped and further understood through a temporal lens. One of the first observations I made was how

44 quickly the children were able to surpass “adultist” binary projections, challenging any conceptions the adults in their lives (at times, myself included) might have made on their behalf. Rather than being unknowing “becomings” placed within a strict stage of early development, all children – from the youngest participant at age five to the oldest at age twelve – demonstrated an acute awareness of their present surroundings and discussed themes that are regularly considered “adult topics” within contemporary society. These topics ranged from work, to family life, to romantic activity, with some participants explaining how their parents wanted better salaries in their current jobs (Karollyn), others describing drug addictions in the family (Agatha), and still others discussing favourite YouTube videos that involved kissing and romantic activity (Raquel).

While the children demonstrated their knowledge of and capacity for conversation around a wide range of topics – thus challenging adult projections of vulnerable, helpless “becomings” – they also continuously experienced or thought of time subjectively in multiple ways – thus problematising academic over-emphasis on the present value of their lives as “beings”. Through our conversations and all activities, the participants were able to acknowledge themselves as emerging from and being shaped by their past as well as having/imagining a future. They had specific memories from earlier years of their childhood and had formulated an understanding of what those memories meant to them, such as when Gabriel remembered coming to Choco for the first time and felt a close connection to the space as he had seen it change and evolve over the years. Similarly, Karollyn had strong emotional memories related to not knowing how to read words when she was younger and remembered her feelings of frustration and embarrassment which she now understands as something “everyone goes through”. Almost all of the participants discussed what they imagined they would be doing in the future without being directly asked, such as when Yasmin declared that her main goal in the future was to make money and be rich, or when Nicolle shared she planned to juggle three jobs in her adult life and would simultaneously be a hairdresser, a waitress, and a seller at her local market.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, apart from challenging dichotomous notions of “being vs. becoming”, the children also negotiated their temporal existence between and

45 around those two binaries with ease. All participants demonstrated that they understood adult conceptualisations of a “becoming” child, such as in the cases below: Raquel: I don’t like fake music or fake TV. Or even fake books.

Researcher: What do you mean?

R: Like a clown. Or just for kids.

Researcher: Like really “childish”?

R: Yeah, like that. It’s fake.

Agatha: At home, sometimes it is crazy, that I, as a kid, am answering the phone, while my grandma who already is a little old adult doesn’t.

While most children expressed in some form or another their awareness of pre-existing societal conceptualisations of children, they were consistently weaving their subjectivities and negotiating temporalities throughout those projections. At times, the children would acknowledge their adult-like capacities and dreams for the future while also sustaining their present status as children, sometimes in the same conversation or sentence: Larissa: Someday I will go to Buenos Aires, for sure. I am studying Spanish and so someday I will buy a ticket all by myself and go. I just need to make sure my mom lets me.

Gabriel: I don’t really like those books because they are just for kids, but this one by Dilan Camargo is more for adults, for me, for the educators. Well, I need to go home, if I am late my mom won’t let me come back on Saturday.

Larissa and Gabriel illustrate their capacities to present themselves both as beings capable of independent thoughts and desires (i.e., “I will go to Buenos Aires…”, and “Those books are for kids, but this one is more for adults, for me…”), yet also as becomings whose subjectivities are still strongly impacted by their status as children in society (i.e., “I just need to make sure my mom lets me”, and “If I am late my mom won’t let me come back”).

4.3.2 The Dynamic Temporality of Children’s Utopic Imaginings The children’s negotiations of temporality extended to their utopian imaginings; however, before delving into those dynamic intertwinings, it is worth first describing the basic characteristics and emotional value of their utopias. The participants’ hopes for the future revolved around a few central themes: time spent with family and friends, less violence and pollution/rubbish in the world, more time for fun and play, and significant references to being outside in nature, such as at the beach or surrounded by trees or flowers. When asked

46 to imagine a utopian environment, a “better” world and/or future, each child demonstrated high levels of emotional engagement with the task, smiling widely, conversing excitedly with one another, or – in the case of Giovanna – lying on the ground with her arms behind her head and sighing as she said “If I could be there right now it would feel so good!”. Several participants also verbally communicated how it felt to imagine their utopia, stating they felt calm, happy, excited, and safe.

In addition to strong markers of emotional engagement, the participants’ utopian imaginings were characterised by a dynamic temporality (Conrad, 2012) in which their past experiences and memories, present surroundings, and future dreams were at times inseparable from one another. In order to illustrate these intertwining temporal frames, I have chosen a few examples to discuss in greater detail. First, during the final group activity in which everyone created a visual representation of their utopias, Yasmin drew an image of herself and her mother playing on a beach (Figure 10):

Figure 10: Yasmin’s (age 6) utopian imagining.

When asked to speak about her drawing, Yasmin’s response was to describe a funny memory she had from years ago when she and her mother had gone to a swimming pool and they had both been badly sunburnt. Additionally, she stated that she had never seen a beach before in her life but had a desire to visit one and thus envisioned herself doing so in the future. As Yasmin’s explanation ensued, it became clear that her future hope (visiting a beach one day) existed simultaneously alongside her affective past memory (getting sunburnt with her mother) and was connected to and given meaning through a person deeply significant to her present-day life. In a similar manner, Yasmin’s brother Gabriel could not represent his dreams for a better world without drawing comparisons with his

47 present circumstances, such as hoping that human beings recycle rather than pollute, cultivate friendships and peace over death and killings, and enjoy rather than destroy nature. Although I was purposeful in my wording of the task (I used strictly future-oriented language when asking participants to “create a visual representation of [their] imaginations of a different, better future”), Gabriel’s drawing (Figure 11) included notions of present infused within his future, complete with lines down the middle and the word “vs.” to clearly divide and compare each section:

Figure 11: Gabriel’s (age 12) utopian imagining.

Apart from including past memories, each of the participants’ ideas for the future was also directly linked to their understandings of or experiences within the present. Sisters Agatha and Laura, whose current surroundings presented significant markers of violence, continuously tied their utopian drawings and explanations with their present experiences.

Both of their illustrations of hopes for the future (Figures 12 and 13) included demonstrations of physical violence and made reference to various aspects of their current lives:

Figure 12: Laura’s (age 6) utopian imagining.

Figure 13: Agatha’s (age 8) utopian imagining.

48 Laura drew herself swimming in a body of water and being chased by a shark, which she told me ate her and killed her. Surprised, I asked her if she really wanted a shark to kill her in her vision of a perfect world, to which she replied: Laura: “I drew that because the shark is evil, like everyone. There are lots of bad people that hit my sister at school, or the twins who always pull my hair at school.”

Agatha, on the other hand, explained that she was in the left corner of her picture flying on a cloud and reading a book, while a snake lurks to her right and is waiting to kill her. Above the snake, she drew a man trying to use a key to get inside her house, and to his right she illustrated a “mean girl” she knew shooting another unidentified girl, whose blood is visible on her neck. Agatha’s descriptions of her drawing were infused with experiences she was having in the present, as she described how girls at school hit her and her sister or how her mother frequently prayed to God asking for help in finding a new home to move into so as to escape the violence in their community. Making similar references to the present, many children discussed the changes they would like to see in Brazil’s current political scenario, and all eight participants described utopian vision wherein there was no rubbish, everyone recycled and respected nature, and there were plenty of clean, open spaces – most likely representing a close connection to their own rubbish-laden surroundings.

My findings both confirm and supplement Levitas’ (2017) “double vision” as well as Kraftl’s (2009) study regarding children’s utopian visions: First, it is clear that the children’s utopian imaginings of the future were linked to and heavily dependent upon issues in the here and now (thus affirming Levitas’ double vision), but also that they included dimensions of the past, thus representing a “triple vision”. The participants formed their ideas of a utopia through a threefold basis of past memories, present feelings and surroundings, and future hopes and visions. Second, the majority of children’s utopias were highly pragmatic and achievable, with only one participant drawing a strawberry ice cream world in what would be considered “fantastical” (Figure 14).

49

Figure 15: Karollyn’s utopian vision: “Before/bad/terrible” (trash everywhere and overgrown trees), and “After/beautiful/wonderful/ice cream land” (world with no trash and full of ice cream).

4.3.3 Reconceptualising Reading through a Temporal Lens An understanding of how the participants intermingled their present, past, and future within their utopian visions enabled fruitful exploration of similar temporal linkages throughout their reading experiences. Reading came to represent a fluid activity with dimensions from various moments in time, be them in the past, present or future (notions of temporality which also varied subjectively according to each participant). When engaged in reading, the participants often discussed how storylines and characters would remind them of past memories, and at times these memories were just as much a part of the story as the written words or images themselves. On one such occasion, Yasmin read aloud from the fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty and infused the story with her own recollections of receiving money from the tooth fairy under her pillow, so that the lines between the well-known Sleeping Beauty storyline and Yasmin’s memory were practically non-existent. The children also subjectively experienced the present in differing ways while reading, with some participants describing how they feel as if they are transported to another place, at times imagining themselves within the story, and becoming emotionally affected in the here and now. Giovanna described reading a picture book about animals and closing her eyes, envisioning herself as a bird, and feeling “filled with calm” as she flew in the air. In this sense, reading at times represented what one participant deemed an “escape from reality”, an experiencing of emotions that may be quite different from those one is engaged with on a daily basis. Many participants at times were able to identify how reading helped them understand past experiences and better prepare for future scenarios, as through reading

50 they were introduced to spheres of empathy and understanding of the viewpoints of others.

My conversation with Larissa proves this point: Larissa: While I am reading, I imagine what is happening in the story, and then everything is clearer. Like not only are things clearer in the book, but for me when I stop reading then it’s like things in my life are clearer too. Like I read and then I’m like “Oh, I get it…” I don’t know, my head works that way.

Researcher: Can you give me an example?

L: Like in the book “Are You Serious, Mom?” […] When I read that book, I really understood why my mom was so mad at me one day, why she was scolding me, because… Yeah, wow, I just remember everything becoming clear.

Finally, reading – especially when reading is taken to mean the social, relational practice as defined in the previous section – appeared to heavily influence children’s thoughts and imaginings about the future, be those imaginings utopic or not. When reading a favourite book to me, all children were able to identify aspects of the book which they would like to bring into “real life” with them and reading served as an excellent starting point for conversations about their future visions for their own lives and for the world. Some books lent themselves to obvious connections between the present and ideas for the future, such as when Nicolle read to me from a book titled The Art of Capoeira (Luz, 2007), which discussed Brazil’s colonial history of slavery. As soon as we read the page that showcased the slaves, Nicolle, Giovanna, and Karollyn delved into a discussion about how they were thankful we no longer have slavery but wished for less racism overall in their future. Other books did not provide such an obvious connection to utopic desirings, but were equally productive, as was the case when Raquel read the story of the three little pigs and shared how she did not want to have an enemy similar to that of the pigs – the big, bad wolf – within her future. Apart from serving as a starting point from which children could imagine a different future, books also were part of those imaginings, in the sense that participants saw reading as a constant presence in their future, as somewhat of a tool which would enable them to continue learning and growing throughout their lives. Although speaking about his favourite genre (poetry) rather than all books as a whole, Gabriel encapsulated this thought when he said: “The thing is, poetry does not have an end. It never has an end. Any poem that you read is not going to say, ‘The End’. It continues for the rest of your life and when you read it, you change. It can carry on.”

51 Conclusion This section explained how children negotiated timescapes across binaries of being and becoming, discussed how children’s utopian imaginings and reading experiences were characterised by a dynamic temporality and “triple vision”, and addressed the second question of this research project: It was shown that the participants were indeed able to construct utopias which contained predominately realistic, pragmatic goals, and that their engagement with reading provoked thoughts which shaped their utopian visions so as to contain dimensions of past, present, and future emotions, hopes, and experiences. Through this section I argued for an incorporation of a second important notion into my definition of reading, in such a way that reading is now seen as a relational and temporal practice. In the ensuing section, the third dimension of politics will be unpacked so as to conclude this study’s reconceptualisation of reading.

4.4 (Prefigurative) Politics: Reading as a Political Activity Introduction Once it can be understood that children are relational beings who are capable of thinking of and envisioning an ideal future for themselves and for their world, natural curiosity is ignited into whether or not they are also acting upon their imaginings in political ways, so as to enable their dreams to become realities. Out of a response to this curiosity, this final section is dedicated to answering the first and third research questions of this study, and to offering a definition of reading as an activity embedded with notions of the political. It will be shown how children’s political activity was first established through their feelings, emotions, and through a wide range of activities not normally considered “political”, that the children were acting politically in ways which they were both able and unable to identify, and that ultimately their reading experiences were deeply political as they enabled access to information and new ideas and were embodied processes that carried on beyond a child’s completion of a book through the dissemination of ideas, knowledge, and conversations regarding issues that mattered to the participants.

4.4.1 The Politics of Feelings and the “Ready-Made Political Mask” The participants’ political engagement can be primarily described through two separate lenses: First, in keeping in line with Kraftl (2008, 2013), Sayer (2011), and Nussbaum (2003),

52 the participants’ emotions and feelings formed the basis for any and all of their engagements with political dimensions, as they seemed to act upon issues which mattered to them, issues closely related to their feelings and emotions. These affective dimensions often surfaced in relation to how the participants felt while they were at the library, immersed in the relational and temporal solidarity of the environment. Many children described feeling free and alive when at Choco: Gabriel stated that as soon as he steps through the library doors he feels like he can “do many things and use many words”, and Karollyn discussed how, as opposed to feeling oppressed and looked down upon while at school or at home, at the library she felt listened to, more willing and comfortable to offer her ideas. In addition to a strong affective dimension, the children’s political activity presented characteristics that challenged adult conceptions of the political as a whole.

Rather than strictly conform to a pre-determined formula for political activity (e.g., marching in the streets, voting, or taking part in adult-led programmes – although they participated in these as well!), participants were expressing themselves politically through a multiplicity of ways: Some children made extensive use of their voice and vocal tones (i.e., yells, intonation, sarcasm, whispers) to make their points and others used silence and seclusion to demonstrate their decision to not participate in an activity. These and other actions (or inactions) pushed me, as researcher, to open up my understanding of political activity to incorporate a wider range of expressions and, rather than seek out children’s actions that fit within my conception of politics, understand the children’s various decisions and interactions to be inherently political.

4.4.2 Prefigurative (and “Actual”) Politics at Choco The participants’ feelings of empowerment, freedom, and pride related to their library involvement represented a set of foundational emotions for each child’s engagement with the political – both prefigurative politics and “big P Politics” (which one participant referred to as “actual” politics). First, out of a response to direct interview questions and as part of the final book creation activity, the children were able to identify many things that individuals could do in the here and now to effect change in the future. After imagining and describing their utopian worlds, participants were asked what changes they could perform to bring about their visions of a utopia. Many of the responses revolved around promoting reading and literature: Participants were quick to propose that, whether an activity engaged

53 with alone or with others, reading was a way of expressing themselves, of understanding other points of view, and of sharing knowledge and empowerment which could lead to a more harmonious society. They argued that societies should build more libraries like Choco which are open to anyone and everyone, and that books teach readers to respect one another and to learn to live together in peace. Another common topic when discussing how we could bring about a better world within our present was heavily tied with relationships.

Children shared their belief that being understanding and helpful in the various relationships in their lives could lead to a better world, arguing we should abide by a form of “golden rule” (“If we treat everyone with kindness and goodness, even when they do bad things to us, the world could be much better” [Larissa]), and proposing we should be trying to create more fun, meaningful memories with family and friends so as to promote happiness. Representing a few final topics, the majority of participants vehemently argued that we should recycle more and care for our planet (see Figure 15), and still others displayed spiritual connections to their prefigurative political ideas, stating that a way to change the world was to pray for oneself and others.

Figure 15: Larissa’s utopian vision, a street lined with trees and rubbish bins for recycling

When creating our book during the last research session, Laura (Figure 16), Gabriel (Figure 17), Agatha (Figure 18), and Larissa (Figure 19) - the only four participants still present who had not yet been summoned home by their parents or others – shared the following ideas of choices they were going to make right at that moment in order to generate the change they wanted to see in society:

Figure 16: Laura decided not to scold people who call her by an ugly name.

Figure 17: Gabriel decided to help people.

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Figure 18: Agatha decided to be less racist or prejudiced.

Figure 19: Larissa decided to take care of animals.

Apart from being able to identify ways in which they could act politically to bring about a better world, I also noticed prefigurative politics already occurring in various ways which the participants did not explicitly identify, thus addressing this project’s third research question (To what extent and in what ways do the children act upon their utopian imaginings by engaging in prefigurative politics?). The children were recommending books to their friends and family members, sharing the wealth of knowledge they were gaining as Choco members, practicing kindness and generosity in their relationships with one another, and frequently making reference to the need to respect each person’s own “jeito de ser” (Portuguese for “way of being”) – characteristics which often appeared throughout their utopian visions. Additionally, participants engaged in deep conversations which furthered their understanding and thoughts about the future of world around them, delving into topics extremely important to living in and making sense of the world within the contemporary such as presidential elections, global warming and climate change, and social issues of gender equality, bullying, and racism. These conversations nuanced this study’s first question (How does reading and participating in the community library setting influence how children think about and/or imagine the future, both their own and that of the world around them?), and were often referred to by the participants as “assemblies” and were times wherein the children came together to discuss and participate in decisions related to current issues that were meaningful to their lives in a way that allowed them to feel valued and listened to. I had the privilege of taking part in one of these “assemblies” on my final day at Choco, and could not help but draw strong comparisons with Arendt’s (1958) spaces of appearance: The children were convening and making a specific area of Choco (the square of the carpet) highly significant through their presence and willingness to debate matters of importance, and as soon as their conversations ended and everyone parted ways, the space lost its political value.

Alongside prefigurative political activity – be it conscious and identified by participants, or unconscious, unknowing prefigurative acts – participants were heavily engaged in larger

55 Political realms. Without being asked, every single participant made reference to Brazil’s current president, always in a negative light, sharing that they felt he was “racist and homophobic”, and that he was “a big part of what is wrong with Brazil in the present”. Once again, participants’ engagement with the political in this case was intermingled with their feelings, as children expressed anger, annoyance, and embarrassment that Bolsonaro was their president, often raising their voice (such as when Giovanna yelled: “I did not vote for Bolsonaro because he is a PIECE OF TRASH!!”) and speaking vigorously about his flaws.

Additionally, participants were extremely aware of current problems in Brazil and easily identified the lack of safety, pollution, insufficient number of libraries, and growing amounts of theft and killings throughout the nation. The children acted upon these Political thoughts and desires in a multitude of ways: They performed the aforementioned “cultural courtships”, parading around their neighbourhood reading their own poems (see Figure 20) or singing songs about the current political state in Brazil, they modelled excellent recycling habits within Choco, and a few members had even visited the Senate when the government was attempting to shut down one of their sister libraries, taking posters and campaigning for an increase in public funds towards libraries and reading programs.

Não gostamos de falsos herois principalmente do capitão faço parte do povo que luta não queremos o bozo na televisão Figure 20: Excerpt from Gabriel’s poem: “We don’t like fake heroes, especially the captain. I am a part of the people that fight, we don’t want a clown on television” (For full poem see Appendix XX).

4.4.3 Reconceptualising Reading through a Political Lens Given that I have demonstrated how the participants were politically active in various realms throughout the library space, I now move to showcase how reading itself was a practice deeply embedded with aspects of the political. First, I found that books granted the participants access to a wealth of knowledge which then provided somewhat of a basis for their political engagement. During interviews, the children often commented on how they felt they could read about topics of their choosing and explore real-life situations of which they might otherwise have been unaware, and voiced that reading helped them learn greater respect for oneself and others. All participants had clearly developed preferences for genres, authors, and topics of interest, and expressed an ability to choose those

56 favourites for themselves and actively build upon those preferences in ways that expanded upon their curious engagement with knowledge. Their access to knowledge and ability to develop their interests was empowering: They used their knowledge and identities as readers with distinct tastes to constantly re-negotiate their positionings in the library and in various other spaces throughout their lives.

Through my analysis, I also came to the conclusion that reading was never a standalone act which took place in one instance (with an individual looking at words or pictures inside a material book) and ceased to exist the next (when the individual put the book down); rather, it was an embodied process which carried on through conversations, interactions and participation in the library space, and political decisions made during everyday practices. The participants regularly carried on conversations about book topics or questions they had about a character’s decision-making with other library members as they coinhabited the space together, and frequently discussed their ideas with educator Pedro.

These discussions and interactions, apart from being characterised by previously discussed notions of solidarity, were also made possible via the unique spatial dimensions of the library. In alignment with Nolas’ (2016) work, I found that the library space – though typically an institution representative of adult authority and regimented access – had been co-created by the participants and educators so as to ensure that it would be a space conducive towards unregulated discussions, a division of responsibilities that reduced power imbalances, and an inclusion of all members in decision-making and access to books.

Since the children had created the space alongside the educators and felt strong ownership over it, they were able to act upon their knowledge and empowerment gained through reading to boldly suggest topics of conversation and discussion that were both political and Political, such as presidential debates, violence in their neighbourhood, negotiating their identities as black children in a world catered towards white adults, and their own desires and fears for the future.

Conclusion The children in this study were engaging in political activity in exciting ways: departing from an emotional basis and acting on issues of importance to them, they were having discussions about their ideas for the future as well as about their understandings of Brazil’s

57 current political and social scenarios, using knowledge gained through reading to engage in deep thinking and conversations regarding their surroundings, and creating their own definition of what it means to be “political” rather than conforming to an adult definition of the same. The participants recognised that reading was extremely useful for gaining information about new contexts as well as for understanding their own, and in this sense the act of reading itself was inherently political as it enabled an exploration of thoughts and ideas that were far-reaching in scope and were carried on long after the children left the presence of a book.

4.5 “We have to make it secret!”: Final Remarks Chapter four set out to accomplish the challenging task of arguing towards a reconceptualisation of reading as an embodied, affective, social practice intertwined with dimensions of relationality, temporality, and politics. It was discussed how reading can no longer simply be understood as a process in which an individual makes meaning of the words on a page, but rather that it is inherently relational, temporal, and political, and therefore cannot be understood without considerations of each of those dimensions.

Reading is a process wherein individuals interact with characters, stories, other readers, and non-human technologies and objects within the surrounding setting; it is an experience that engages past memories and experiences, present circumstances and feelings, and future imaginings and hopes; and it is a practice that enables greater access to knowledge and deeper understanding of one’s surroundings, both of which accompany the reader into discussions and political engagement occurring long after the act of reading the words on a page has taken place.

In order to nuance this comprehensive view of the relational, temporal, and political aspects of reading, I would like to provide one final example of an occurrence during my interview with Agatha and Laura: Although each of the other participants seemed to be able to open up quickly to me about their dreams for the future and opinions regarding their current surroundings, Agatha and Laura remained quite guarded throughout the initial moments of the session. This lack of trust could have been attributed to numerous factors – my presence as a white researcher, unequal power dynamics, their more violent home life and experiences, among others – and I was discouraged to see that they did not feel

58 comfortable talking about the future with me. After unsuccessfully asking questions on the topic of utopias or prefigurative politics, Laura quietly said: “If you want to talk about this…we have to make it secret.” As I was unsure of what she meant, I asked for further clarification, and her response was to stand up and start using the various pillows, foam blocks, and chairs to form somewhat of a barrier in a corner area of the room, so as to block that corner from the view of outsiders. Agatha seemed to notice what she was doing and stood up to help, and soon all three of us were constructing this fortified, hidden space wherein we soon entered and began talking more freely. Once we were inside the corner, with the girls yelling proudly “Pedro, you can’t come in!” or grabbing my audio recording device to whisper into it “this is a SECRET!”, we read a book together and then our conversation seemed to flow more naturally. It was as if that short bonding activity combined with a feeling of safety and solidarity within the seclusion allowed them to speak with much less hesitancy about their opinions of the present and hopes for the future.

While this process took around fifteen minutes, only five of which were spent actually reading the words in a book, I consider that entire process to constitute what I mean by reading: We interacted relationally with a book, with one another, and with the various objects used to create a space marked by solidarity, and then built off of those feelings of relationality to discuss and act on our past memories, present concerns, and future hopes.

Capítulo 5: Conclusão e um Olhar para o Futuro Esta pesquisa surgiu da curiosidade em entender as ideias das crianças de um futuro utópico por meio de seu envolvimento com a leitura como prática social, especificamente dentro de um contexto brasileiro caracterizado por extremismo político e instabilidade econômica. Embora esse objetivo inicial tenha sido abordado nas seções anteriores, o foco principal do artigo acabou se tornando uma proposta para reconceitualizar a leitura como um todo. Essa reconceitualização incluiu três dimensões importantes da relacionalidade, temporalidade, e política: A leitura é uma prática social com base nas relações com outros indivíduos, com objetos e tecnologias não-humanos no ambiente da biblioteca, e com emoções que emergem das interações com os outros, com personagens, e com histórias; a leitura não está estritamente localizada no presente, mas ganha significado através de ligações sobrepostas entre as memórias passadas, as emoções presentes, e o ambiente e as

59 imaginações futuras de cada leitor; e, finalmente, a leitura - quando entendida como um ato social e holístico, que ocorre mesmo após a leitura do livro - evoca respostas emocionais dos leitores que, por sua vez, agem sobre questões importantes para eles, provocando diferentes pensamentos, decisões, e interações políticas no cotidiano dos leitores.

Durante a discussão, três respostas surgiram em relação às perguntas iniciais de pesquisa deste projeto. Primeiro, foi mostrado que (em resposta à primeira pergunta) o envolvimento dos participantes com a leitura e com o cenário da biblioteca afetou profundamente a forma como eles pensavam e imaginavam o futuro. As interações com outros em um espaço caracterizado por solidariedade e pelo compartilhamento de ideias dos livros lidos permitiu que os participantes ampliassem seu conhecimento do mundo e construíssem visões utópicas baseadas em suas emoções e identidade como membros da Choco. Essas visões utópicas (em resposta à segunda questão de pesquisa), embora não sejam necessariamente originárias de qualquer livro em particular, foram certamente moldadas pelas experiências de leitura dos participantes, pois muitas vezes as ideias de personagens ou histórias do livro surgiam ao lado das descrições utópicas das crianças. E, finalmente, os participantes agiam prefigurativamente em várias maneiras, seja através do compartilhamento de conhecimentos através de espaços de aparência, através do senso coletivo de cuidado e respeito mútuo entre si, ou através da escrita de poesia e “difusão da cultura” por toda a vizinhança.

Como consideração final, é necessário retornar a um ponto-chave destacado no capítulo de metodologia deste artigo, e discutir se essa pesquisa valeu a pena: Por que esse estudo foi necessário e como minha reconceitualização da leitura pode contribuir para as discussões dentro do sociologia da infância ou em debates sobre alfabetização? Este estudo contribui produtivamente para as discussões teóricas de duas maneiras principais: Primeiro, o estudo introduz uma nova perspectiva da leitura aos debates atuais sobre alfabetização que desarma a visão instrumental dos livros como uma ferramenta para obter benefícios e, em vez disso, amplia as concepções de leitura para que ela seja vista como um ato temporal, relacional e político. Além disso, esta pesquisa contribui para o campo da sociologia da infância, destacando as subjetividades temporais e políticas das crianças e afirmando movimentos contemporâneos que buscam entender as crianças como seres relacionais,

60 cujas relações com e ao redor da leitura como uma prática social fornecem informações interessantes que, caso contrário, teriam permanecido obscurecidos.

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Appendices Appendix 1: Gatekeeper Consent Form

I, _____________________________________________________ (name), am the parent/legal guardian of _____________________________________________ (child’s name), and:

I have read the information form, understand the aims, methods, and requirements for the research, and have been given the opportunity to ask questions.

YES

NO

I agree that my child can come at least twice to _______ during the week of May 13-22.

YES

NO

I understand that my child’s thoughts will be shared anonymously in the research.

YES

NO

I give my permission for my child’s conversations with the researcher to be audio recorded.

YES

NO

I understand that my child’s data will be stored securely, so that no one other than the researcher will have access to the files. I also understand that my child’s information will be destroyed immediately following the culmination of the project.

I understand that I can remove my child from the study at any time and must let the researcher know that I do not want my child’s thoughts or ideas to be included in the report before August 1st, 2019.

YES

NO

YES

NO

I give my permission for my child to participate in this study.

YES

NO

Parent/Guardian Signature: _______________________________________________ Child’s Name: __________________________________________________ Date: ________________________

73 Appendix 2: Participant Consent Form I have been explained about the research and have had any and all of my questions answered.

I understand that no one is forcing me to participate in this research, I am choosing to do so by myself, and I understand that if I choose not to participate no one will be angry or upset.

I understand that I can change my mind at any time about this research, and can stop answering questions, participating, or sharing information with the researcher whenever I wish, even if it is after the research is finished. You can stop participating by telling the researcher, telling your parents, or telling a Brincriar worker (who will then let the researcher know). I also understand that I need to tell someone that I don’t wish to participate anymore before the start of August, to give the researcher enough time to remove my thoughts from the research.

I understand that all of this research is anonymous. This means that I understand that the researcher will write about what I say, about my drawings, or about what I do but she will not include my name, so no one will be able to know which things I said or did.

I understand that the researcher will share this research with her professor and may share it with other professors or academics, and that if she does any of this my name will not be included in any reports and no one will be able to know who I am or what I said.

I understand that the researcher will not share anything I am saying with anyone else here or elsewhere, unless I share something that concerns my safety and wellbeing. In this case, I agree that the researcher will share this information with [employee of Brincriar].

I agree that what I say during our conversations can be recorded with the Dictaphone, and that my drawings and writings can be photographed and returned to me, or kept by the researcher.

I understand that all the information from this research will be kept in a safe place, so that no one but the researcher can see or read it.

I have had time to think about this by myself, and I have decided that I would like to participate in the research!

Signature: ______________________________________ Name: __________________________________________ Date: ________________________________

NÃO

SIM

NÃO

SIM

NÃO

SIM

NÃO

SIM

NÃO

SIM

NÃO

SIM

NÃO

SIM

NÃO

SIM

NÃO

SIM

74 Appendix 3: Flyer #1 for Choco Library The Research: What, Why, Who, When, Where!

What? You are invited to participate in a research study conducted by (researcher)!

Why? The purpose of this research is to understand how reading and coming to Brincriar makes children think about their futures and about the world around them.

Who? This research is looking for at least 8 children between the ages of 5 and 12. If your child is between those ages, we would love for you to participate!

When and Where? If your child takes part in the research, this will involve coming to Brincriar at least two times during May 13th – May 24th of 2019. During those visits your child will participate in some fun, creative activities with the researcher (such as writing, drawing, and reading books) that will bring about conversations regarding reading, Brincriar, and the way in which they relate to how your child thinks and imagines his/her surroundings and future. These activities will take around 45 minutes, and after they are finished the researcher will still be at the library available to play, read, or talk with the children and any families who wish to stop by!

Potential Benefits This research may help Brincriar to understand how to keep providing your child with the activities that he/she will enjoy, and may contribute to a deeper understanding of children’s voices and ideas about reading and libraries!

Confidentiality Protection We will do everything we can to protect your child’s privacy! Throughout the study, the researcher will be the only person who has access to any notes, files, or voice recordings. The only situation in which the researcher might share something a participant said with someone else would be if the participant shared something that suggested he/she might be at risk. In that case, that information would need to be shared with an adult that knows the child and could try to help him/her. Once the research is finished, your child’s identity will not be revealed in any shape or form, and children will actually get to choose a “fake name” that can be used to share any of their comments or ideas in the final report! Additionally, all of your child’s voice recordings and information will be destroyed. Once the study is finished, the researcher will share a summary of the final document with Brincriar and with you.

Risks or Discomforts There are no known risks associated with this research, but if your child at any point feels uncomfortable participating do not worry – he/she can decide to stop the research at any time.

Your Participation is Voluntary Your child’s participation in this research project is completely voluntary. You are not forced to agree, and if you do agree today you may still withdraw your child from the study at any time. Similarly, your child can choose to withdraw him/herself at any time from the study as well. Deciding to remove yourself from the study does not penalize you or your child in any way.

Contact Information Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns. Here are the following contacts you may be interested in: Researcher E-mail: xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxxx [Brincriar Worker]: Telephone: [xx-xxxx-xxxx], Email: [xxxxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx.xx]

75 Appendix 4: Flyer #2 for Choco Library

76 Appendix 5: Gabriel’s Poem

Brincriar Eu sou rueiro não quero dinheiro I am a person of the street I don’t want money

só quero respeito e mais nada I just want respect and nothing else

Moro a casa é comum My house where I live is common/shared

com meu primo e meus amigos With my cousin and my friends

Eu amo comida porque sou assim I love food because that is how I am

E corro atras é de cultura What I run after is culture

Nao gostamos de falsos heróis We don’t like fake heroes

principalmente do capitão Especially the captain

faço parte do povo que luta I’m a part of a people that fights

não queremos o bozo na televisão We don’t want a clown on television

moro numa vila comum I live in a common (village/favela)

agradesso a deus por esse lugar I thank god for this place

pesso ao meus ancestrais I ask my ancestors

Ha... felicidade e paz.

Há... happiness and Peace.