Physics

Temporality

Sociology

Personality

Pure mathematics

Theology

Mathematics

Social science

Embodied cognition

Agency (philosophy)

Epistemology

Philosophy

Psychology

Power (physics)

Subjectivity

Biosocial theory

Orthodoxy

Quantum mechanics

Flourishing

Field (mathematics)

Social psychology

Structure and agency

Environmental ethics

Progress in Human Geography

Geographies of Children, Youth and Families is flourishing, but its founding conceptions require critical reflection. This paper considers one key conceptual orthodoxy: the notion that children are competent social actors. In a field founded upon liberal notions of agency, we identify a conceptual elision between the benefits of studying agency and the beneficial nature of agency. Embracing post-structuralist feminist challenges, we propose a politically-progressive conceptual framework centred on embodied human agency which emerges within power. We contend this can be achieved though intensive/extensive analyses of space, and a focus on ‘biosocial beings and becomings' within dynamic notions of individual/intergenerational time.

Questions of agency: Capacity, subjectivity, spatiality and temporality