Time to decenter childhood?

Autor/in	Spyrou, Spyros
Titel	Time to decenter childhood?
Quelle	In: Childhood, (2017) 4, S.433-437Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext (1); PDF als Volltext (2); PDF als Volltext (3) Verfügbarkeit
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0907-5682
DOI	10.1177/0907568217725936
Schlagwörter	Rights; Childhood; Studies; Autonomy; Children; Adolescents; Youth
Abstract	The category of “childhood”—as well as the related notions of “children” and “child”—requires a rethinking and, in fact, a decentering. In making this case, I draw upon and recognize, with gratitude and appreciation, the intervention made by my immediate predecessor as Childhood co-editor, Virginia Morrow (2015), who called attention to the political “work” our categories do when left unexamined. In her last editorial, Ginny discussed the current global move to re-introduce the term “adolescents” in official documents of the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of the Child, pinpointing the dangers of uncritically adopting terms which carry with them problematic assumptions which may subtly impose ways of thinking in the Global North to the Global South. Here, I take her concern with categories as a more general challenge for childhood studies to rethink the centrality of its most basic concept and category as a way to incite further reflection on what our categories entail regarding the kind of knowledge we produce—and will produce—as a field. In a recent (Spyrou, 2016) talk at the Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth (CSCY) 6th International Conference in Sheffield, UK, I attempted to make the case that it might be time for childhood studies to decenter its very categorical focus—childhood—and to utilize more boldly some of the insights from the so-called “ontological turn” to explore the very processes by which entities (human and non-human, including technological ones) come into being through their participation and entanglement in emerging phenomena. Although childhood studies, I argued, had good reasons to be child-centered in its early years of development (mainly to assert its difference and autonomy as a legitimate field), it now needs to move beyond that moment and reconnect with the wider world of scholarship and, in so doing, engage with real-life emerging concerns which escape the narrow confines of a “child-centered” field of study.
Erfasst von	OLC
Update	2023/3/07