Globalization, History, Theory & Writing

Globalization, History, Theory & Writing The “Local” and The “Global” of Contemporary Children’s Culture

THREE VOICES • Institutional Voices: about children • Institutional Voices: for children • Children’s Voices It is at the intersection of all three that we find access to contemporary children’s culture

CHILDREN’S VOICES • what children themselves have to say about their own lives • Because of the imbalance of power - are often produced and published with ADULT ALLIES • Are subversive • Children are the gate keepers to this information • Therefore it require an ethnographic approach to research • BUT one that must be ethical, anti-oppressive, and child centered

Using Anthropology to study children’s own culture

The Importance of Ethnography • Ethnography is: the study of culture • Doing Ethnographic Research means: observing first hand and note taking/artefact collecting regarding the practices of the local culture • Writing Ethnography: is to describe local cultures as they are experienced and understood in the everyday lives of people of that culture.

Spaces and Third Spaces

A Re-Interpretation of the Public Sphere? • Access to children’s third spaces connects to Habermas’s ideas of the public sphere (1962) • And raises the notion that a) Children need access to a public sphere b) It may already exist • As Kellner argues (2000) there is an importance of conceptualizing the public sphere as not as ONE, but as MANY, overlapping- and often in conflict

Children’s Voicesexample: Researching WITH Children Requires a generational and a macro approach (James & Christensen, 2009)

This means asking questions about research methods According to Smith (1999) practicing “Indigenous Research” means asking (both before and throughout): • Whose research is it? • Who owns it? • Whose interests does it serve? • Who will benefit from it? • Who has designed its questions and framed its scope? • Who will carry it out? • Who will write it up? • How will its results be disseminated?

This means asking questions about research methodologies Questions to consider Spaces to find feedbacl David Buckingham’s work at London University, and Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media (2010) Or Kellner and Kahn’s work on oppositional politics on the internet (2005) Our students work with kids • Can the subaltern speak (Spivak, 1988)? • What does it mean to speak back to dominant norms? • What does it look like when the empire writes back to the centre (Rushdie, 1982)

Youth Voices Speak Back

Concluding Thoughts “When indigenous peoples become the researchers and not merely the researched, the activity of research is transformed. Questions are framed differently, priorities are ranked differently, problems are defined differently, people participate on different terms.” (Smith, 193)

Summary • To understand contemporary children's culture- requires an understanding of globalization. • A three pronged approach that explores the three voices that encompass children’s lives • A commitment to ethical, anti-oppressive, indigenous, and child-friendly research • And a dialogue between the local and the global This is globalization, history, theory and writing.

Globalization, History, Theory & Writing