[with Doris Bühler-Niederberger] Rethinking the sociology of childhood: conflict, competition and cooperation between children and adults in contemporary social life (original) (raw)

A Window on the ?New? Sociology of Childhood

Sociology Compass, 2007

This article is intended as a window on the body of research that has come to be known as the ‘new sociology of childhood’. To elucidate its underlying tenets I identify three major weaknesses that scholars in the ‘new’ sociology find in the ‘old’ conceptualization – socialization – and discuss implications for doing research on children and childhood. I suggest that scholars in the United States are on a somewhat different path than their colleagues in other Western countries. Finally, I argue that the view that children are not yet members of their societies is one that is difficult to undermine.

SOCIOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD

Sociology of Childhood, 2021

In this book, the term "childhood and children studies" is used as a collective concept that includes both micro- and macro sociological ideas about children and childhood. At the same time, childhood is interpreted in many ways as an age stage of individual development from 0 to 18 years old, as a socio-demographic community a set of children and as a social phenomenon inscribed in a certain macro- level context.

THE MEETING BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD

2018

ABSTRACT. The text aims to build an interdisciplinary dialogue on conceptions of childhood, child development and education based on the propositions of Developmental Psychology and Sociology of Childhood for the study of children. The study presents axes of approximations and distances between these fields of knowledge based on an epistemological view that reveals interfaces and articulations between these perspectives regarding conceptions, approaches and methodologies. The studies of children and childhood in the contemporary world point to the need to deepen the understanding of phenomena from an interdisciplinary reflection on the historical and cultural constitution of the subject, the transformations along the development and the implications for education. It is an epistemological debate with implications in the discussion about ethics in research on/with children. The advances in this debate involve the same critical reflection of the human sciences on the relations of power and knowledge that have as central and constituent aspect the language for the understanding of human dimensions. At the end, there is a reflection on the formulation of a new conceptual, theoretical and methodological framework for the debate and research of childhood in the contemporary world.

What's New in the New Social Studies of Childhood? The Changing Meaning of 'Childhood' in Social Sciences

2008

The article explores how towards the last decade of the twentieth century, children and childhood, from being on the margins of research in social sciences, appeared in its limelight. It examines, in particular, the emergence of the interdisciplinary approach called the 'New Social Studies of Childhood', its principal theoretical assumptions, as well as some of the wealth of research that appeared in the wake of the NSSC. Among main theoretical positions of the NSSC are the view of childhood as socially constructed and the view of children as capable social actors (agents). These trends have, in turn, led to the appearance of the body of research into diverse childhoods, depending on the culture, class, gender, (dis)ability, and historical circumstances, with a primary focus on child-centered, child-friendly and child-empowering, participatory research methods. The core NSSC assumptions, critical and even revolutionary for their time, also nurtured what I call the 'geogr...

Understanding childhood: An introduction to some key themes and issues

MJ Kehily (red.), An introduction to childhood studies, 2004

Recent developments in education and the social sciences have seen the growth of childhood studies as an academic field of enquiry. Over the last decade or so childhood studies has become a recognized area of research and analysis, reflected in the success of publications such as James and Prout (1997) Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood and Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers (1992) Stories of Childhood: Shifting Agendas of Child Concern. A growing body of literature points to the importance of childhood as a conceptual category and as a social position for the study of a previously overlooked or marginalized group -children. Childhood studies as a field of academic endeavour offers the potential for interdisciplinary research that can contribute to an emergent paradigm wherein new ways of looking at children can be researched and theorized. This book aims to bring together key themes and issues in the area of childhood studies in ways that will provide an introduction to students and practitioners working in this field.

Contemporary Childhood and the Institutional Context

2015

Recently, research on the child and childhood as a social and cultural phenomenon has been approached from the position of multidimensionality and extreme complexity. Childhood, as opposed to the beliefs of the majority of adults, is not an isolated, protected, well controlled and predictable manner of guiding a child towards the adult world. Childhood is more focused on the general perception of child and suggests the existence of a special, separate and fundamentally different social group and category. A child’s status as seen from the adult view and its culturally and historically defined construct changes and varies with its definition of the physical and/or sexual maturity, legal status or age group affiliation. The concept of child and childhood deals with the individual, usually defined from the point of view of an adult person. Two extreme views of children and childhood are related to the concept of designing, modeling, building and desirable socialization, or emphasizing ...

Social Constructions of Childhood (2007)

Childhood and Youth Studies, 2012

Each of us has experienced not one, but two childhoods: the first as a biological state of growth and development and a second as a social construction, which is to say as an institution that has been socially created. If this is true then it follows that childhood is dependent on the nature of a society into which an individual is born and will vary from place to place and time to time. In the last half of the twentieth century a number of thinkers and writers in a variety of fields began to consider the ways in which this process of constructing childhood has been carried out, both in the past and today, and what the implications are for our experience of childhood and for current and future generations of children. If we accept this thesis then it follows that we can only understand childhood if we comprehend how it has been formed and how it varies and changes.