Children's Cartographies

childhood narratives as a methodology of enchantment

Abstract

This article explores children's narratives as a research methodology, emphasizing enchantment as an epistemological and political principle. Drawing from cartographic ethics and incorporating poetry as a methodological tool, we argue that researching with childhood requires attentive listening and an approach that values their unique ways of narrating the world. Children are not merely subjects in development; they embody creative and ancestral forces capable of challenging adult-centric and colonial structures. Researching enchanted narratives enables a reconfiguration of power relations and knowledge production, fostering a perspective that intertwines the visible and the invisible. Inspired by scholars such as Renato Noguera, Luiz Antonio Simas, Luiz Rufino, and Ailton Krenak, we propose that enchantment, inherent in childhood experiences, functions as a counter-colonial tool and a form of resistance. The concept of children's cartography as a methodology allows for rewriting life through play and joy, subverting hierarchies and promoting a politics of the sensitive. Thus, we reaffirm the importance of research that does not seek to translate and domesticate childhood but rather walks alongside it, learning from its multiple ways of fabulating the world.