Children's outdoor roaming is generally viewed in a positive way, yet precisely how children roam in rural, outdoor environments is not well understood. There are also concerns about children's use of technology replacing their outdoor time for roaming. This paper addresses both concerns by exploring the relationship between human and nonhuman agencies through assemblage theory. This theory is based on the idea that an assemblage is a contingent coming-together of agents, where the agents' capacities and relations are not pre-determined. This paper looks specifically at the agencies of technologies and plants in relation to children's outdoor roaming. The assemblage theory framework suggests that these agencies “call a response” from the children. This framework moves the focus from the individual child to child-nature relations.
Children (age 4-11) attending a “summer club” in a National Park in South Wales participated in a self-directed video and photography exercise with GPS-enabled cameras. This relatively unstructured exercise was conducted twice, each time with six children in three pairs. Each pair had a digital camera, which in addition to being capable of taking photographs and video, also included a GPS which tracked the children's movement and the location of each photograph. The children were free to roam wherever they liked within the boundary of two fields. They were also given a great deal of freedom to take pictures and videos with a minimum of adult supervision.
Data analyzed for this study were drawn from participatory observations and GPS traces, along with the 450 photographs and 55 videos produced by the children. The analysis focused on how assemblages were contingently brought into being through the actions of what technologies, plants and children did together. Results indicate that the activity of 'capturing' photographs motivated the children to follow their curiosity and find things to photograph. While the “vitality” of the GPS to operate as a GPS was manufactured and pre-programmed, its “vitality” to animate the children's roaming and the properties of plants and other natural elements emerges as children move between macro- (woodland, rivers, fields) and micro- (tree roots and vegetation) assemblages. The children's roaming pathways and the geolocated photographs illustrate the intra-activity produced by the agency of the technology and the children. As the children roamed, they also seemed to engage with the affectual properties of the nonhuman natural elements at both the macro and micro-scale.
This study illustrates that nonhuman agents -- including technologies, plants and water – can be equally incorporated in the relational assemblage of children's outdoor roaming. Based on these findings, it can be misleading to view technologies and children's outdoor roaming and engagement with nature as opposing forces in their lives. This research also suggests that interactions with plants can spark children's curiosity.
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