Children as worlding but not only: holding space for unknowing and undoing, unfolding and ongoing

• Published in: Children's geographies 2023-11, Vol.21 (6), p.1186-1200
• Main Authors: Malone, Karen, Crinall, Sarah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Children; Ethics; materialities; multispecies; post-qualtative research; worlding
• ISSN: 1473-3285; 1473-3277
• DOI: 10.1080/14733285.2023.2219624

Worlding has been positioned as one way of considering how to attend and adapt to new imaginings of humanity in relation to other entities. In an act of living in places with other nonhuman beings, worlding offers a mode for naming these new spaces as central to a child's world-making. In this article, we explore the importance of noticing the ethics for staying with the trouble of worlding with children. This post-qualitative piece ruminates on the emergence of worlding as a theoretical concept and a methodology for considering worlding but not only. The first part of the paper asks: What is worlding? Are their moments of ethical discomfort in worlding? How can worlding unfold a space for undoing and unknowing? The second part of the paper then explores worlding possibilities through stories linked by the sea where fish and whales work with us to disrupt, reconfigure, and uncouple ethics of 'worlding' but not only. A series of ethical possibilities close the paper. The ethics of ongoingness and enchantment become a way to consider worlding but not only, a place for an unfolding of the unknowing and undoing where we can consider the ongoing, extending worlding as shared flourishing.