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geography has shifted to address new arenas of
experience and has recognized the socially
constructed nature of childhood. Recent work
has examined children and the electronic
environment (Holloway and Valentine, 2000);
children as environmentalists (Hart, 1997;
Holloway and Valentine, 2000); aspects of
place experience, such as fear, constriction
andsurveillance, which have peculiar ram-
ifications for young people (Valentine, 1997;
Katz, 2005; Pain, Grundy, Gill et al., 2005);
theemotional geographies of youth and
childhood;identityformation and issues of
difference; landscapes ofconsumption; and
questions of youth participation andrights
(Hart, 1997). A growing number of geograph-
ers are attending to children’s geographies in
the globalsouthand addressing the questions
ofdifferencethat they raise (Holloway and
Valentine, 2000; Katz, 2004).
In geography as in other disciplines associ-
ated with the ‘new social studies of childhood,’
children are recognized assubjectsand social
actors in their own right at the same time as
they are both becoming something else and
subject to structural forces beyond their con-
trol. Children and young people are seen to
shape their own and others’ lives, thesocial
formationsin which they live and the social
construction of childhood itself. While chil-
dren’s experiences are often cast in relation
to adults, geographers and others are clear that
age andlife courseare not the only differ-
ences that structure young people’s experi-
ences. Geographers examine how differences
ofgender,class,nation,race, embodied-
ness andsexualityseparately and in conjunc-
ture affect young people’s experiences and
understandings of the world (Skelton and
Valentine, 1998; Holloway and Valentine,
2000). Childhood is now recognized as a
social constructionthat varies historically
and geographically, and scholars seek to
understand it for itself rather than as a stage
on the road to adulthood. If research only
recently moved away from the latter perspec-
tive and its focus on the practices and pro-
cesses of socialization, it has long been the
case that scholarship on children’s geographies
has treated children methodologically as social
actors rather than as objects of learning or
vessels for knowledge. This perspective can
be readily seen in themethodologiesadopted- and invented – for studying children’s geog-
raphies. Beginning with the early work of
Blaut and Stea and their students and col-
leagues, children have been asked to navigate
actual and representational geographies, make
maps, engage in landscape modelling, enact
‘geodramas’, take photographs and make
films, keep journals, write narratives, lead
walks and – more recently – shape the research
itself. These strategies have long complemen-
ted research methods such assurveys,inter-
views,participant observationand the like
in children’s geographies.
In the past decade, children’s geographies
has been recognized as a vibrant sub-field of
the discipline. This achievement was marked
by the inauguration of an international jour-
nal,Children’s Geographies, the online revival
of theChildren’s Environments Quarterly as
CYE(Children, Youth, and Environments), the
establishment of an IBG/RGS Working Group
on the geographies of children, youth and fam-
ilies;thepublicationof a number of edited
collections (e.g. Skelton and Valentine, 1998;
Holloway and Valentine, 2000) and mono-
graphs (e.g. Matthews, 1992; Ruddick, 1996;
Aitken, 2001; Katz, 2004); and the prolifer-
ation of specialized international workshops,
conferences and special sessions at geography
meetings. Perhaps the significance of this
sub-field to the broader discipline, as much
as its own ‘coming of age’, can best be seen
in how a growing number of geographers
have refracted issues such asglobalization,
gentrification,migrationorhomelessness,
and theoretical constructs such as scale,
social reproductionor theproduction of
spacethrough the lens of childhood and youth
(e.g. Ruddick, 1996, 2003; Katz, 2004). ckSuggested reading
Holloway and Valentine (2000); McKendrick
(2000, 2004); Skelton and Valentine (1998).Chinatown Chinese peoples living in cities
beyond China have formed compact and
comparatively exclusive settlements known
as Chinatowns, in which they have resided,
worked and traded (Benton and Gomez,
2003). Following the classic ideal-type
Chinatown formulated by Lawrence
Crissman (1967) based on studies of Chinese
societies in South East Asia and North
America, scholars of the overseas Chinese
such as William Skinner and Wang Gungwu
have portrayed Chinatown as an extension of
homeland practices, where principles of
social organization based on descent, locality
and occupation that had ordered rural life in
China were transplanted to overseas urban set-
tings. In many countries, Chinatown demog-
raphy was fuelled by an initial phase – taking
place during the nineteenth and the first halfGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 81 31.3.2009 9:45pmCHINATOWN