The power of place in play: A Bourdieusian analysis of seasonal outdoor play practices in Auckland children's geographies

Abstract

The physical activity associated with independent outdoor play has gained attention as a way to improve children’s health. Despite it fostering healthy physical, mental and social development, in many high-income countries children’s autonomous play opportunities have diminished due to urban intensification and declining parental license. Regardless of these general trends, children’s play varies across countries, cities, cultures and seasons. Within the context of New Zealand – which projects a ‘green and clean’ image with citizens regarding themselves as outdoor people – this thesis explores why ‘play’ might resonate differently across localities and seasons. In particular, the thesis explores the structure-agency interplay of seasonal outdoor play by examining families’ perspectives and practices of seasonal outdoor play alongside those of environmental and societal structures. I contrast the seasonal play affordances provided by the apartment dominated landscape of Auckland’s central city with those of the suburban housing area of Beach Haven. The conceptual and theoretical framework underpinning this research is a development of Bourdieu’s triad of field, capital and habitus coupled with Gibson’s affordance theory. I draw on data derived from 73 semi-structured interviews with parents and children (8-10 years) and 38 child GPS tracks (obtained over 8 days in summer and winter 2010). Data collection included further elicited drawings, travel diaries and parental surveys. During a follow-up study child-participants became de facto researchers, analysed their data collaboratively and took non-local children on a child-led neighbourhood walk. I advance two arguments in this thesis. First, I highlight the importance of a placed analysis of the structures and practices that shape children’s seasonal outdoor play. I suggest that the rarity of children playing outdoors unsupervised normalises supervised indoor play and reduces children’s opportunities to see outdoor play as an alternative to interior or supervised pastimes. Second, I follow Bourdieu’s theory of practice to argue that the empathy parents and children have towards outdoor play reflects locally constituted beliefs about what is seasonally ‘appropriate’ children’s activity. These beliefs are related to the type of habitus families embody (e.g. ‘outdoor habitus’, ‘curtailed outdoor habitus’ and ‘hibernating outdoor habitus’), which is formed through historical, placed and seasonal specific structures and practices. I find that the determinants of seasonal outdoor play transcend modifiable barriers such as traffic and unsuitable play spaces as well as the inevitable issue of inclement weather. The thesis concludes that a focus on place and season, which is embedded in the historical structure-agency interplay of children’s outdoor play, is well positioned to illustrate the recursive relationships between locality, seasonality and (historical) practices.