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Culturally Contested Corporeality: Regulation of the Body in New Zealand and Japanese Early Childhood Education

Mon, April 20, 10:35am to 12:05pm, Swissotel, Floor: Event Centre Second Level, St. Gallen 2

Abstract

Children’s bodies occupy a culturally contested space in the early childhood arena. In New Zealand, children’s bodies have increasingly become the focus of surveillance and regulation (Foucault 1995). Under the rubric of greater visibility and safety, the bodies of children have become more exposed through measures such as removing doors and installing mirrors. The early childhood centre has become a site of constant surveillance, turning teachers into “disciplinary individuals” who are internally controlled by their own behaviour (Foucault 1995, p.227).
This increased regulation mirrors that of other Western contexts, where the child’s body is viewed as a site for anxiety and fear in the face of rising debate over appropriate policy and practice (Phelan, 1997; Piper & Stronach 2008). Children’s bodies have been repositioned as embodying a moral panic, resulting in previously insignificant early childhood routines to be viewed with suspicion (Farquhar, 1997; Jones, 2001; Robinson, 2008; Tobin, 1997). This has not only impacted on practice but on the quality and type of research able to be conducted around the issue of children’s bodies (Montgomery 2009).

In contrast, Japanese early childhood education still places children’s bodies at the centre of preschool life. Experiences such as co-sleeping, eating and bathing together serve to embody certain traits and qualities identified as Japanese (Ben-Ari, 1997). The Japanese child is viewed essentially as a physical self whose body is pivotal to intellectual development (Walsh, 2004). Intimate physical contact is seen as vital both within families and in the context of early childhood education (Hendry, 1986). In Japanese early childhood centres it is common to see teachers lying down to sleep with a child who is having trouble nodding off at naptime, bawdy jokes between teachers and children about bodily functions and body parts, or a lone teacher assisting a child with toileting.
This paper is based on ethnographic research carried out at an early childhood centre in suburban New Zealand and a kindergarten in rural Japan, and follows anthropologist Joseph Tobin’s Preschool in three cultures methodology which utilises film to present comparative views of early childhood education through the eyes of teachers. We argue that in New Zealand early childhood circles, like other Western contexts, the child’s body has become the focus of civilising routines which limit physical touch between adults and children, and minimise attention to the body and its products. Asian early childhood education contexts are often depicted as overly controlling from Western perspectives (Martinez, 1998). However, this paper suggests that while Japanese children’s bodies may be subject to routine and management, they are viewed through a lens of nostalgia and innocence which allows for greater freedom of the corporeal.

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