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Childhood studies – time for a new paradigm?

Childhood studies – time for a new paradigm?. Prof. Allison James, University of Sheffield ICRYNet Conference, September 2012 . Overview: Childhood Studies. Where did we come from? Short history, some revisions Where are we now? Diverse fields or interdisciplinary fields

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Childhood studies – time for a new paradigm?

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  1. Childhood studies – time for a new paradigm? Prof. Allison James, University of Sheffield ICRYNet Conference, September 2012

  2. Overview: Childhood Studies • Where did we come from? • Short history, some revisions • Where are we now? • Diverse fields or interdisciplinary fields • Where might we go? • New paradigm –(s)?

  3. In the beginning….. • Childhood studies’ mythology….: • 1970s-80s – • scholars from sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, law, health gradually come together • Ethnography of Childhood Workshops • 1990s – new paradigm? • Childhood as a social construction • Children as social actors • Other studies of children: • Late 1800s – children & evolutionary perspectives • 1920s –2000s Piaget & growth of developmental psychology • 1930s –50s anthropology ( Mead, Bateson, Benedict) culture and personality • 1950s –2000s– child-rearing & culture ( LeVine et al; e.g.Tudge 2008) • 1960s – 1980s interpretive sociology (Denzin); ethnography of schooling etc • 1979 – International Year of the Child – global perspective on children's rights

  4. What was new about the new paradigm? • ‘Childhood’ as a descriptor for a structural feature of society, not just the phase of biological immaturity • Ideas about childhood change, reflected in practices towards children • Children to be considered as articulate informants about their own experiences & as co-constructors of childhood as a social space • Therefore…. • Dominant discourse of childhood as universally shared experience challenged by all of the above

  5. What was new about the new paradigm? • Interdisciplinary potential • James and Prout 1990: • consider potential ‘emergent paradigm’ has for future developments in childhood sociology’ (1990:8) • BUT • needs to draw on the debates of the social sciences at large – and contribute to them…if it is not to become an isolated and esoteric specialism’ (1990:24).

  6. Old shoes……. • Radicalism of 1980-90s, now commonplace in 2000s • ‘Children’s voices’ ‘children’s perspectives’ • In research: • Shared ontology – childhood as a social phenomenon, children as social actors • Growth of child-centred methodologies • In policy: • Children’s rights – UNCRC (1989) • Best interests

  7. Fractures…….. • Interdisciplinary potential not being fully realised with re-assertion of ‘disciplinary’ perspectives & dominance • Potential for fracture within the academy: • Geographies of Childhood ( including journal) • Sociology & anthropology special interest groups • History of childhood groups • Early Childhood (as distinct from middle & later) • Children’s advocacy & children's rights links to policy, politics and practice • Neuro-science developments & resurgence of biologism

  8. Risks….. • Privileging of discipline over topic risks marginalizing children once again: • Children as research objects of neuro-science, rather than their subjects • Childhood as phase in the life course to consider…ideas of space & place, the role of culture in social reproduction, how class works as a social division etc. • Childhood as a research laboratory, children’s interests risk becoming marginalised

  9. Risks…. • Irony of privileging of children’s rights & children’s advocacy discourses within policy risks: • Return to biological essentialism, potentially threatening to individual children's rights by downplaying differences between children • Return to universalism potentially threatening to individual children's rights by down-playing cultural contexts

  10. What next….? • Is it time for a new paradigm to avoid childhood studies • Either • being swallowed up and its insights dissipated • Or • Becoming an esoteric backwater…..

  11. Possible futures…. • Focus on generations ( Alanen & Mayall) • Temporality and relationality of childhood – child-adult relations • Life course & biographical perspectives • Re-focus on the primacy of topic, rather than discipline • using a range of disciplinary tools to understand children and childhood, rather than the other way round, as is becoming increasingly common.

  12. Interdisciplinary futures Prout (2005) The Future of Childhood Childhood’s history has witnessed the rise of a ‘radical disjunction between society and biology’ does not represent a sustainable way forward for childhood studies’ childhood studies needs to come to grips with complexity of what childhood is – a ‘mix of cultural, biological social, individual, historical, technological, spatial, material discursive’ constructions’ Does not mean abandoning ‘disciplinary-based studies’ but, instead, ensuring a ‘meeting place’ of ideas (2005:146).

  13. Interdisciplinary futures James ( 2013/4) !! Current project: Re-visiting socialization as core to children's experiences of childhood Aiming for child-centred perspective: how do children grow up and make sense of the world Coming to grips with children as both being and becoming (Uprichard 2007)

  14. Past perspectives (Psychology, social psychology, sociology) • Bodily & cognitive development • Internal rather than external • Nature with a bit of nurture • Isolated individuals • Socialization • External more than internal • Nurture with a bit of nature • Children’s active agency ignored

  15. Position children at the centre of their lives • See children as belonging to particular times and places • Social, structural , material, economic, political, environmental conditions • Choices children make • Choices others make for children • Making sense of life experiences for the self & identity • Participating in life as children in the world

  16. Academic interdisciplinary bricolage…. (1) children have personal lives which, as individuals, they reflect on from time to time; (2) children’s life experiences are fundamentally embodied; (3) children have biographies i.e. their personal lives are lived in historical time and encompass changing social and material environments; (4) children’s lives are lived in interaction with other people and other lives, where decisions are taken and choices made, by children themselves as well as other people; (5) the structures and institutions that comprise the human world are experienced by children through the interactions that they have with them, experiences which are both diverse and multifaceted.

  17. Sociology and anthropology • Smart (2007) • To live a personal life is to have agency, and to make choices, but the personhood implicit in the concept requires the presence of others to respond to and to contextualise these actions and choices.’ (2007:28) • Rapport (1997) • ‘There is no ontologisation, institutionalization, sacralisation, objectification or negotiation which does not manifest itself through personal relations, and which is not animated, maintained, originated – in a word, caused, by personal relations .’(1997:25).

  18. Sociology, anthropology and history • Personal lives are not private lives but lived through interactions • Smart: • [people’s) …self-reflection and also their connectedness with others’ (2007:28 • Rapport: • ‘the actual nature of the human world is of individuals in interaction. This is its causation – the cause of there being human worlds of culture and society- and its manifestation – the practice of human worlds is individual’s interactions with one another’ (1997:25)

  19. Importance of history • Do institutions determine what children do? • Rapport (2003) • ‘individuals are not determined by prior or extraneous conditions but are always in active relationship with them’ …. ‘the experience of these conditions is neither preconditioned nor passive’ (2003: 67) • Stones (2005) • reproduction is contingent , inter alia, on the activity of position-taking and making and is by no means automatic .’(2005:63) • ‘[individuals] should always be thought of as caught up in flow of, position practices and relations.’ ( 2005:93)

  20. Parallels in cognitive psychology • Lave and Wenger (1991) • Social interaction critical to learning • Communities of practice • Learning by doing • Wenger (1998) • ‘we cannot become human by ourselves’ (1998:148) • Smart (2007) • The term ‘personal’ is… significant in denoting the centrality of the individual, yet avoiding the sense in which it can convey ideas of separateness, autonomy and the conceptual slide into individualization. So the term ‘personal’ allows for the role of agency and personal meanings, but also retains notions of connectedness and embeddedness in and with the social and the cultural.’ (2007:188)

  21. ………and narrative analysis techniques! HS26FP1SRD Mm. Yeah. I like say, now I’ve got cereal but I don’t like cereal. Well I like one but like that’s so (laugh) expensive so. KE Which one do you like? HS26FP1SRD Erm, you know the crunchy nut clusters? KE Yeah. HS26FP1SRD Mm. KE You like those do you? HS26FP1SRD Yeah. Yeah, 'cause we’ve started having pocket money. And, erm, I wanted pineapple. Erm, er, but then, and my Mum said well get it if you like and I said well, it’s two pound seventy five (laugh) or something. KE Yeah. HS26FP1SRD And I s(incomplete word) and I didn’t want to risk my pocket money because of the cereal. KE Yeah. HS26FP1SRD So I just kept with the pineapple. KE Did you (laugh) HS26FP1SRD Yeah, 'cause it KE Oh (laugh) HS26FP1SRD was cheaper and stuff so. KE Would your Mum have bought you pineapple but you had to buy the cereal? HS26FP1SRD No. But like I was ju(incomplete word)er, n(incomplete word)n(incomplete word) Sorry. Erm, well no, she’d buy it t(incomplete word) for me anyway but I didn’t want to risk losing the five pounds (laugh) if you know what I mean.

  22. And he hasn’t like he doesn’t contri (incomplete word) you know how like divorced couples are meant to give like say a thousand pounds to the mum. Or whoever’s looking after them, a month. Then he doesn’t do anything like that so. Over six months he’s only (incomplete word) he’s only paid fifty. So that’s like horrific really isn’t it.

  23. Mum said that like well he’s only got a few years (laugh) to live and he’s gonna have a massive heart attack soon. Because he’s like, 'cause he doesn’t do anything to help himself so

  24. Interdisciplinary approaches – a new (er) paradigm? Enables analysis to remain child- centred Enables exploration of process over time… how children get to know about the world Enables explanation of individual children’s use of the knowledge they acquire Should help – in the end – theorise how children, in general, participate in the world and their role in its reproduction

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