ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, we outlined how Bakhtinian ideas (notably Bakhtin, 1981; 1990; 1993) have been influential in our thinking about a relational ethics owing to their move away from technicism and abstraction to an ethics in which the universalistic and the particularistic come together in a complex web of relation - ships. Bakhtin (1993: 59) argues for the ‘thisness’ of ‘this human being, these human beings and their world with all its actual moments’. And, following the ideas of Bakhtin (1990; 1993), it is the concreteness or ‘thisness’ of our respective research projects that we aim to convey throughout this book while maintaining the constancy of our commitment to issues of social justice in early childhood education and care (ECEC).
