Global Childhoods in International Perspective: Universality, Diversity and Inequalities

Claudio Baraldi,Lucia Rabello De Castro

• Verlag: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Jahr: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781529717174
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Sozialwissenschaften
• Thema: Studien über Kinder in der Soziologie

Global Childhoods in International Perspective gathers a wide spectrum of contributorsfrom Europe, the U.S., South Asia, South Africa and Latin America, who, attuned with present dilemmas in the area of childhood studies, discuss some key theoretical and empirical aspects of child scholarship, such as identity, child wellbeing, child mobility and migration, intergenerational relationships and child abuse. Through these expert contributions, the bookexplores the many ways in which the relationship between universality and particularities of childhood plays an important role in describing global childhoods. The book highlights childhood as a cross-cutting issue in global sociology withchapters on globalization and schooling in Burkina Faso, child abuse andneglect in India, identity and integration amongchildren of African immigrants in France, social class mobility of Filipino migrant children inItaly and France, and an investigation intoKyrgyz childhoods. Ideal reading for researchers, practitioners and students interested in both childhood studies and the other areas including community research, sociology of education, social stratification, and the sociology of migration.

1 Roots and Problems of Universalism The Concept of Children’s Agency

Claudio Baraldi

The Western Narratives of Children and Childhood

The social meaning of children and childhood may be analysed through narrative theory. According to Fisher (1987), narratives are social constructions, in which the observed reality is interpreted and storied in different ways, historically and culturally grounded. Somers (1994) differentiates among narratives of the self, public narratives, conceptual narratives, including scientific concepts, and metanarratives, concerning the basic features of society in a specific historical period. This chapter is interested in conceptual narratives, in particular sociological narratives, public narratives and metanarratives regarding children and childhood, and in the links among these types of narratives. Moreover, this chapter points out that the importance of narratives depends on the structural conditions which are created in society, in this particular case, the structural conditions of children’s actions and relations.

The conceptual narratives of children and childhood have been enhanced in Western society since the beginning of modernity, and later expanded to the global society. In particular, I am interested in a recent conceptual narrative which has been proposed by the Sociology of Childhood and which aims to enhance new metanarratives and public narratives in the global society. Sociology of Childhood criticizes the traditional narratives of childhood and children in Western society, thus proposing a new form of universalism.

In Western society, the metanarrative of childhood is traditionally made up of the combination between the importance of children’s self-realization and the need to exercise control on children (Prout, 2000). The importance of self-realization is associated with a more general historic tendency to observe that individuals choose their identities rather than finding them already prescribed by society and groups; this conception is defined by Wells (2015) as ‘liberal’. Self-realization is regarded as a process that gradually unfolds in the course of childhood. It follows that some form of educational control of children’s self-realization is considered necessary, because it must be guided towards a positive outcome, i.e. a stable identity, cognitive maturity, emotional self-control, and an awareness of norms and limits – ultimately, responsibility in choices.

Educational control requires specialization and technique: for this reason, early in its constitution, Western society established an education system in order to shape the personality of the child (Luhmann, 2002). Through education, children are introduced to society and learn how to find a place in it once they become adults (James and James, 2004). The general objective of education is to guide and orient children’s choices and actions on the basis of socially acceptable values: a careful pre-selection of forms of social conditioning seems to be the best way to achieve this goal. In so doing, education also addresses the issue of the unpredictability of children’s development: as children’s exposure to the social context produces unpredictable results, it is necessary to direct it. Children need to be guided towards self-regulation (Hill et al., 2004): they must develop the conviction that their way of thinking only has meaning in the framework of a coherent collective construct. Self-regulation means that educational orientations are thought and felt to be their own by children.

Against this background, an issue that has grown in importance over the last few decades is the debate about children’s ability to make choices (Baraldi, 2014), thereby demonstrating a capacity for self-realization. Achieving this ability is considered to be one of the fundamental objectives of educational action: therefore, paradoxically, the child’s ability in making autonomous choices depends on adults’ educational choices. This paradox depends on the specific form of the relation between the incompetent child and the competent adult. This paradoxical relation is taken for granted as the desirable form of education. However, relevant problems may pose a threat to self-realization in the forming of the child’s personality. These problems are traced to particular social conditions that create severe difficulties for and amongst children. In these social conditions, children are observed to be not safeguarded because they do not have adequate protection and educational opportunities Therefore, the key question that is being asked is whether it is possible to include children in society more effectively. In this public and conceptual narrative, children are frequently viewed as passive recipients who benefit from or are harmed by the actions of adults, despite some recognition of their autonomous choices.

Starting with a radical critique of adult control, Sociology of Childhood has proposed new ways of viewing childhood in society. Sociology of Childhood sets out to identify and analyse the meanings of social relations involving children, and the conditions according to which children participate in those social relations (e.g. Cockburn, 2013; James and James, 2004; James and Prout, 1997; James et al., 1998; Leonard, 2016; Mayall, 2002). Thus, Sociology of Childhood enhances a conceptual narrative which points out that, although childhood is socially constructed and children’s experience is conditioned by social and cultural conditions, children are competent in assigning meanings to the social world, and in participating in social relations. It is pointed out that children can be considered as social actors because they are as socially competent as adults when it comes to participating in social relations and in construing their meanings. Therefore, they are also capable of modifying the social bonds in which they act, that is, they are active subjects of change.

This set of children’s abilities has been defined as agency. Firstly, the meaning of agency involves children’s competence in giving meanings to the social world (Bjerke, 2011). In this view, children’s socialization is based on children’s active construction of the meanings of external social and cultural conditions; children actively participate in their own socialization, which is not determined by either adults or society (Baraldi, 2008; James, 2013). Socialization is determined by the capacity of children to extract meanings from social processes with which they come into contact: this is self-socialization (Luhmann, 1995). Secondly, and more importantly, agency means action (Giddens, 1984): children’s agency can be defined as ‘the capacity of individuals to act independently’ (James and James, 2008: 9). What is basically asserted here is that children’s actions are not socially or culturally determined. In fact, socialization and children’s agency are complementary concepts (Baraldi, 2008). On the one hand, socialization is based on the agency of the child, who self-socializes by participating in social pr...