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Children as social actors, agency, and social competence: sociological reflections for early childhood

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 11:29 authored by Jo Moran-EllisJo Moran-Ellis
The study of children in early childhood has, for most of the last 100 years, been dominated by developmental perspectives. This has resulted not only in a huge body of work documenting, accounting for and theorising how children grow up (controversies notwithstanding), but has also led to early childhood being in effect ›colonised‹ by this type of science and by questions of development and change. Qvortrup (1994: 4) summed this up as a dominant focus on what children will become to the neglect of what they are as persons in their early life. This hegemonic emphasis on development has been to the detriment of understanding childhood and children’s lives from a fully social scientific perspective. Until the 1990s the grip of developmental framings of the study of children and childhood left little room for sociological accounts of childhood, other than those stemming from theories of socialisation. This situation was challenged by sociological work which foregrounded an empirical sensibility towards children as social actors. This opened up a space of enquiry for understanding the social significance of the subjectivities of children and the implications of these for analyses and theorisations of both those social phenomena which are directly relevant for children and/or childhood and those which intersect with children’s lives and social worlds.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Neue Praxis

ISSN

0342-9857

Publisher

Verlag Neue Praxis

Issue

4

Volume

43

Page range

323-338

Department affiliated with

  • Sociology and Criminology Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth Publications

Notes

Published simultaneously in German and English

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2018-01-09

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2020-03-11

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2018-01-09

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