This presentation focuses on what can be learnt about babies’ engagements with everyday materialities when centering the babies themselves and their practices in ethnographic research. 

The presentation departs from the question of what else, and what more, we can learn when directing our focus towards the momentariness of these practices rather than what they might mean for the babies’ future. 

By drawing together a few examples involving socks, research technology, and things spread out on floors, the aim is to discuss how these things could come to matter for babies themselves in the moment and how a focus on the momentariness can open up new avenues for thinking about babies' everyday materialities beyond a developmental framework.

The presentation will also address some of the methodological questions and challenges that can arise when observing and analyzing babies’ practices with a baby-centered research approach.

Alex Orrmalm, Fil. dr., works at the Department of Thematic studies – Child Studies at Linköping University, Sweden. 

Orrmalm has conducted ethnographic, baby-centered research in the homes of families with babies (0-18 months old) with a focus on babies’ engagements with everyday materialities and questions concerning babies’ embodiment. 

Her research also focuses on how children’s participation and children’s perspectives can be understood in research with babies, ethnographic method and analysis of non-verbal practices and the everyday geographies and mobilities of babies.

Moreover, her research interests include the life conditions and experiences of babies and very young children, their position in society and methodologies for conducting research with children that do not speak yet.       

Reading

Reading Orrmalm, A. (2020) 'Culture by babies: Imagining everyday material culture through babies’ engagements with socks', Childhood, Vol. 27(1) 93–105.

References

Gottlieb, A. (2004) The afterlife is where we come from: the culture of infancy in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Holt, L. (2017) Food, feeding and the material everyday geographies of infants: possibilities and potentials. Social & Cultural Geography, 18(4).

Ingold, T. (2007) Lines: a brief history. New. ed. Routledge.

Ingold, T. (2011a) Being alive: essays on movement, knowledge and description. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Ingold, T. (2011b) Introduction. In Redrawing anthropology: materials, movements, lines edited by Ingold, T. Farnham: Ashgate.

Ingold, T. (2015) The life of lines. Routledge.

Massey, D. B. (2005) For space. SAGE.

Murray, L. & Cortés-Morales, S. (2019) Children’s mobilities: interdependent, imagined, relational. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

Orrmalm, A. (2021). Babies' engagements with everyday things: an ethnographic study of materiality, movement and participation. Diss. (sammanfattning) Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2021.

Orrmalm, A. (2020) The flows of things – exploring babies’ everyday space-making. Children’s Geographies.

Orrmalm, A. (2020) Doing ethnographic method with babies – Participation and perspective approached from the floor, Children & Society, 34(6).

Orrmalm, A. (2020) Culture by babies: Imagining everyday material culture through babies’ engagements with socks, Childhood, 27(1).

Pink, S. (2001). Doing visual ethnography: images, media and representation in research. London: Sage

Pink, S. (2007) Walking with video. Visual Studies, 22(3).

Pink, S. (2015) Doing sensory ethnography. 2. ed. London: Sage.

Rautio, P. (2014) Mingling and imitating in producing spaces for knowing and being: Insights from a Finnish study of child–matter intra-action. Childhood, 21(4).

Useful links

Mary Meyer, https://marymeyer.com/product-category/taggies/ https://www.womenhomebusiness.com/blog/julie-dix-and-danielle-ayotte-turning-a-childs-blanket-into-a-successful-business.htm

Google search on Taggies 21-05-2021: https://www.google.com/search?q=taggies&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwj8haKJmdrwAhXLyioKHfN2AjUQ2-cCegQIABAA&o...