Modern Childhood Studies: Agency, Identity, and Society
Sociocultural Perspectives and Agency
A. Abbas (2017) addresses the concept of universal childhood problems. Transnational events, such as climate change, significantly impact youth mental health, while social media has become an extremely important factor in these experiences.
Week 1: Foundations of Childhood Studies
- Sociocultural System: A cultural knowledge system shared by a society.
- Critical Thinking: Involves multiple perspectives, evidence, and bias awareness.
- Active Reading: The ability to question, evaluate, and retain information.
- Agency: The ability to act within a given context to shape the world.
- Social Norms: Accepted behaviors within a group.
- Reproductive Justice: The right to not have children and the right to safe parenting.
- Active Agents: Children are viewed as active participants in their lives.
- Incident: Floods have a major impact on childhood stability.
Week 2: Climate Crisis and Eco-Anxiety
- Eco-Anxiety: Anxiety related to the climate crisis and the perceived lack of effort from governments.
- Climate Grief: A response to the loss of humans, animals, and ecosystems.
- Social Actors: People whose actions are evaluated by themselves and others.
Week 3: History and Settler Colonialism
- Historical Context: Historically, children were not always emotionally important to parents (e.g., medieval paintings). Childhood changes across history and culture.
- Settler Colonialism: Displacement and removal of Indigenous peoples.
- Settler Common Sense: Social norms that dictate who is considered “normal.”
- Biopolitics: Treating a population as a problem (e.g., residential schools).
Week 4: Disability and Bodymind Difference
- Bodymind: The concept that the body and mind are inseparable.
- Ableism: Valuing people based on perceived normalcy.
- Medical Model: Views disability as a problem to fix.
- Social Model: Views society as the creator of barriers.
- Pathology-Centered: Focuses on diagnosing disability and separation.
- Deficit-Oriented: Assumes disability is undesirable.
- Professional Control: Relying solely on expert knowledge.
- Eugenics: Beliefs and practices aimed at “improving” the human population.
- Anti-Eugenics: Understanding disability as a difference, not a problem.
Week 6: Race, Power, and Justice
Power, justice, and race affect identity, socialization, educational outcomes, and well-being. Key concepts include:
- Brown v. Board of Education: A landmark case in educational justice.
- Human Genome Project: Proved humans are 99.9% identical; race is social and political, not biological.
- Scientific Racism: Rooted in eugenics and the self-direction of human evolution.
- Social Construction: Children develop an understanding of race through institutions (e.g., the doll video).
- Code-Switching: Adapting to the dominant culture.
- Capital: Economic (money), Social (connections), and Cultural (status symbols).
- Systemic Racism: Structural inequality that privileges the majority.
- Intersectionality: Overlapping identities such as race, class, and gender.
Week 7: Innocence and Gender
- Childhood Innocence: A social construct; some children are viewed as “more innocent” than others.
- Gender: A social position learned and reinforced through structure.
- Gender Binary: A classification system of male or female.
- Moral Panic: Exaggerated fear regarding state interventions and public safety.
- Escape Artists: Children as agents who navigate social constraints.
Week 8: Youth Subcultures and Technology
- Youth: A Global North social construction for young people “out of place.”
- Global North: Nations characterized by high economic development.
- Subculture: A group that deviates from mainstream society (Hebdige).
- Tribal Subculture: Flexible and temporary groups.
- Counterculture: The idea that society can be transformed.
- Deviance: Violation of social norms (Formal vs. Informal).
- Techno-Solutionism: The flawed belief that technology solves everything.
- Transhumanism: Improving humans via technology.
Week 9: Consumer and Material Culture
- Consumer Culture: Identity formed through buying; kids are both targets and producers.
- Material Culture: Physical objects associated with the experience of childhood.
- Bedroom Culture: Private spaces for cultural production and consumption.
- Playbour: A mix of play and labor (e.g., kids creating value on Roblox).
- Sharenting: Parents sharing images of children on social media.
Week 10: Transnationalism and Rights
- Transnational: Activities transcending national boundaries (e.g., COVID-19, climate change).
- Mobilities: Movement across spaces vs. Sedentarism (staying in one place as a privilege).
- Factors of Movement: Sports, family reunification, human trafficking, immigration, and international adoption.
- Transnational Families: Families separated by borders who maintain collective welfare.
- Rights: Protected choices dictated by the UN Convention, Charter rights, and child welfare laws.
Week 11: Future Trends and AI
Interconnected topics include educational evolution, environmental concerns, and advances in AI. Inspiration porn refers to using disabled people as inspiration for the non-disabled. New frontiers include children in the metaverse and AI schools.
Key Theoretical Perspectives and Authors
- Spyrou: Views children as active political agents who challenge authority and shape discourse.
- Lee et al.: Studied youth media projects about AI; found that creating AI helps children move from passive consumers to active creators with agency.
- Uprichard: Defines the child as being (present), becoming (future), and been (past).
- Abbas (2017): Argues disability is socially constructed. Replaces the myth of the “normal child” with interdependence.
- Keith and Morris: Critique “care discourse” for ignoring the agency of disabled individuals.
- Curran: Argues childhood must be understood socially rather than universally.
- Wente: Examines residential schools as tools of forced assimilation and cultural erasure.
- Ransom: Rejects single narratives of Black childhood, emphasizing creativity and resistance.
- Latifi: Discusses the exploitation of children as social media content without financial rights or privacy.
- Tse and Waters: Explore the split identities of youth in migrant families.
- Hughes et al.: Warn that AI parenting risks treating children as optimized outputs, losing human connection.
Applying Anti-Eugenic Perspectives
Thinking about children in anti-eugenic terms involves three key examples from the lectures:
- Abbas: Rejects the idea of disabled children as burdens to be “fixed” or normalized. Instead, it introduces interdependence as a valid way of being.
- Hughes: Rejects algorithmic control and the treatment of children as data points to be optimized. It emphasizes emotional unpredictability and imperfection.
- Wente: Rejects the assimilation policies of residential schools that viewed Indigenous culture as something to be “improved.” It values cultural identity and community knowledge.