Children's agency, that is, children's ability to interact with and affect their social and physical environment reflexively, is the focus of Matej Blazek's recent book. By defining childhood as a period of becoming, one in which children's agency is in a process of constitution (7) through children's creativity, networking and interacting with space, objects and people, Blazek demonstrates the complexity and significance of children's capacities in creating their own culture, affecting others and the contributions of children to building a community. By focusing on children in Kopcany, a “deprived and isolated neighborhood on the outskirts of the Slovak capital of Bratislava” (3) over the course of more than one year, Blazek also adds to the literature on the practice of fieldwork illuminating ethical dilemmas and the role of subjectivity and experience in developing ethnography.

Blazek begins by carefully describing the site, methods and personal dilemmas of his fieldwork. His exploration of the fieldwork experience frames the book, offering insight into both general and specific ethical dilemmas he faced. By personalizing his study he reveals the performative nature of ethnographic research and the importance of participant-observation in uncovering the depth, intricacies, indeed, the soul of his subject. In describing his methodological premise, he combines the philosophies of Massey (2003) and Nast (1994) in the following way: “I think about the field only as fieldwork, a dynamic and performed composition that destabilizes boundaries between the research and the researched and challenges the imagination of the passive field and the active researcher” (34).

His dynamic, interactive, and reflexive approach to discovery is based on a strong foundation in theory but is not limited by it. His hope is to engage with theory as a “relay of praxis rather than its foundation” (55). In effect, Blazek uses theory to explore and reveal his findings, rather than using theory as a structuring device a priori.

Ultimately, Blazek demonstrates the larger relevance of his method by analyzing a small impoverished neighborhood in which children suffer dual marginalization: first, as members of an underdeveloped locale affected by post-socialist transformation and second, as minors with unequal power relations with adults (22–23). His ethnographic microanalysis offers a template for further studies on children's agency while addressing the importance of social-scientific focus on such research as “a political responsibility of adults (23).”

Blazek's perspective is that of a Human Geographer. While recognizing the social-scientific scholarship that emphasizes children's mobility and spatial range, Blazek offers an impressive microanalysis of children's interaction with, creation of, and influence of everyday space, introducing “links between spatiality and other aspects of children's agency” (15) in a more limited neighborhood, contrasting it to the significance of other spaces such as family and home. Blazek's notion of space extends to include children's bodies as domains of practice and symbolism.

Meaning is found in the symbolic nature that evolves through the engagement of children with space, objects, each other, and adults. Blazek reveals the significant semiotic nature of the superficially-presumed mundane. In his analysis of children's manipulation of objects, for example, he reveals their symbolic capital and agency that ultimately affects children's relationships and status specific to Kopcany (136). Regular encounters with friends and family reveal institutional roles ultimately interacting with children to help formulate their social identity.

Individual children's identities including their gender, age and ethnicity are revealed, accepted and contested through everyday interactions. Agency becomes apparent when children do not simply accept their assigned roles, but interact in situations to transform themselves (198). Most significant is that children's identities are not predetermined by any one factor such as age, socioeconomic status and the like, but depend on their experiences. Blazek labels this as “counter-topographies of children's practices,” a useful analysis of “multiple axes of difference” contributing to children's agency (227).

Blazek's work contributes to scholarship on childhood studies and agency and is written for an academic readership. His book offers a springboard for further studies on the socio-political and cultural relevance of child agency. The scholarly language may not invite a broader audience even though the importance of child agency might be interesting and important to those outside the social sciences, including the medical fields and even child caretakers such as teachers and parents. Allowing insight on child agency to reach a larger audience could truly affect how we as individuals and as a society interact with our children.