Activating Micropolitical Research Practices in the Early Years

• In Event: Doing Deleuze: Exploring Qualitative Research Methodologies in Education

Abstract

1. Objectives or purposes
The purpose of this paper is to work with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) philosophical concepts, as well as considering the material as an active agent in the construction of difference and reality, for producing new knowledge about researching child gender/sexuality. In particular, this paper shows how micropolitical research practices can be activated in the early years, opening up possibilities for collective and intensive experimentation with difference.

2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
In order to think differently about researching gender/sexuality in the early years, this paper experiments with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concepts ‘micropolitics’ and ‘segmentatarity’. In order to activate micropolitical practices that can productively engage with difference a different kind of research process is needed. Therefore, this paper shows how a Deleuze and Guattarian inspired logic makes room for the material, non-human and affective physicality and how this might be one way for engaging with relationality and difference while researching child gender/sexuality.

3. Methods and Data Sources
The experimentation with Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concepts begins by revisiting qualitative data from an evaluative study on multiage grouping across five Australian early childhood centres (Edwards, Blaise & Hammer, 2009). Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) philosophical concepts, micropolitics and segmentarity will be used to work with data. Revisiting data with an intentional focus on the material, in this case ‘breasts’ and ‘hair’ as part of the segmented researching female adult-body, and red dangling earrings, reveals how they are activating a micropolitics of difference.

4. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
Findings show that although the researching feminized adult-body provoked child-bodies, it was the child-bodies that activated micropolitical practices. In particular, it was girl child-bodies, in relation to the non-human and the material, that were capable of turning binary framings and logic over and over and over. These micropolitical acts, initiated and carried out by child-bodies, are examples of how developmentalism can be disrupted through researching gender/sexuality.

5. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
This experimentation with segmentarity, micropolitics, and materiality is significant because it shows how researching child gender/sexuality in the early years can be enacted in ways that appreciate and engage with difference from a Deleuze and Guattarian inspired stance. This work also raises new questions about the role of the researcher whose aim is to work with difference and the kinds of moves that are required of researchers and participants (humans, non-humans, the material) that allow for lines of flight and a politics of becomings to occur while researching child gender/sexuality.

Author

• Mindy Blaise, The Hong Kong Institute of Education