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This article focuses on how girls create places of meaning and opportunity through collective movement. It is based on an ethnographic study of the everyday experiences and mobility of 10-13 year old girls living in a suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark. The girls ventured for a sense of freedom and a "place of their own" to pursue their interests and social relationships. For some girls the creation of places where they felt "at home" would entail breaking rules and transgressing spatial boundaries set by adults. (Contains 4 notes.)

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01046.x Byline: Pia Christensen (1), Miguel Romero Mikkelsen (2) Keywords: childhood body; capacity of health; risk landscape; risk management; children Abstract: Abstract This article addresses the complexity of children's risk landscapes through an ethnography of 10- to 12-year-old Danish children. The data revealed how children individually and collectively engaged with risk in their everyday activities. The children assessed risks in relation to their perceptions of their health as strength and control, negotiated the conditions of playing, and attuned their responses to situations of potential social and physical conflict. In the paper this risk engagement is illustrated in a variety of contexts: children's decisions to wear or not to wear a bicycle helmet; playing and games and routine pushing and shoving at school. In looking after themselves, children negotiate rules of participation and they safeguard personal and collective interests. Gender differences in these processes are addressed and discussed. The article argues that risk engagement is an important resource through which children also learn from their own mistakes. This is a necessary learning process when children engage with their personal health and safety. The article critically discusses different sociological frameworks and shows the significance of the study for the growing literature on understanding the meaning of risk in childhood. Author Affiliation: (1)Institute of Education, University of Warwick (2)The Research Unit for General Practice, Copenhagen Article note: Address for correspondence: Pia Christensen, Institute of Education, University of Warwick, Westwood, Coventry CV4 7AL, e-mail: P.H.Christensen@warwick.ac.uk

This article focuses on how girls create places of meaning and opportunity through collective movement. It is based on an ethnographic study of the everyday experiences and mobility of 10-13 year old girls living in a suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark. 1 The girls ventured for a sense of freedom and a 'place of their own' to pursue their interests and social relationships. For some girls the creation of places where they felt 'at home' would entail breaking rules and transgressing spatial boundaries set by adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to contribute to studies of family decision making during food buying. In particular a theoretical framework is proposed for structuring future studies of family decision making that include children's influence and participation at specific stages of the process. Design/methodology/approach - The conceptual framework is developed on the basis of earlier theoretical work focused on family shopping as well as an ethnographic study of parents and children. The framework was refined after testing in a survey with 451 Danish families with children aged ten to 13 using questionnaires for both children and parents. Findings - Family food decision making is often a joint activity, and children's active participation, among other things, determines the influence they gain. Parents and children do not always agree on how much influence children have in the various stages of the process, indicating the importance of listening to both parties in research into the family dynamics and processes involved in everyday food buying. Research limitations/implications - Future research should further extend the knowledge about the areas where children have influence, about the techniques used by children to achieve influence, and more about those factors that explain when they gain influence. Practical implications - Marketers can benefit from the findings when promoting food products to adults as well as to children. Specifically, the findings suggest that children have most influence on decisions regarding easily prepared meals. Originality/value - This mixed-method approach provides interesting new results, and the main findings emphasise the importance of looking at food decision making as a joint activity where children participate actively and gain influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]