The Agency of Children: From Family to Global Human Rights

316 Pages·2013·1.3 MB·English

by  David Oswell

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The Agency of Children
The idea of children’s agency is central to the growing field of childhood
studies. In this book David Oswell argues for new understandings of
children’sagency.Hetracesthetransformationofchildrenandchildhood
across the nineteenth, twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and
explores the dramatic changes in recent years to children’s everyday lives
asaconsequenceofnewnetworked,mobiletechnologiesandnewformsof
globalisation.Theauthorreviewsexistingtheoriesofchildren’sagencyas
well as providing the theoretical tools for thinking of children’s agency
as spatially, temporally and materially complex. With this in mind, he
surveys the main issues in childhood studies, with chapters covering
family, schooling, crime, health, consumer culture, work and human
rights. This is a comprehensive text intended for students and academic
researchersacrossthehumanitiesandsocialsciencesinterestedinthestudy
ofchildrenandchildhood.
david oswell is Reader in Sociology and Director of Postgraduate
Research in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of
London. He is the author of Television, Childhood and the Home:
A History of the Making of the Child Television Audience in Britain
(2002), Culture and Society (2006), Cultural Theory, volumes I–IV
(2010)andvariousarticlesinacademicjournalsandeditedcollections.

The Agency of Children
From Family to Global Human Rights
david oswell
cambridge university press
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Singapore,SãoPaulo,Delhi,MexicoCity
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Firstpublished2013
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Oswell,David.
Theagencyofchildren:fromfamilytoglobalhumanrights/DavidOswell.
p. cm.
ISBN978-0-521-84366-9(Hardback)–ISBN978-0-521-60470-3(Paperback)
1. Children–Socialconditions. 2. Children’srights. 3. Childdevelopment.
I. Title.
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ISBN978-0-521-84366-9Hardback
ISBN978-0-521-60470-3Paperback
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Contents
List of figures pagevii
Acknowledgements viii
PartI Introduction
1 Introduction 3
2 Agencyafter Ariès: sentiments,natures and spaces 9
PartII Social theories of children and childhood
3 Modern social theories: agencyand structure 37
4 Partial and situatedagency 51
5 Subjectivity,experience and post-social assemblages 62
PartIII Spaces of experience,experimentation and power
6 Family and household 89
7 School and education 113
8 Crime and criminality 139
9 Health and medicine 162
10 Play and consumer culture 193
11 Political economies of labour 215
12 Rightsandpolitical participation 234
v
vi Contents
PartIV Conclusions
13 Conclusions 263
Bibliography 281
Index 301
Figures
3.1 Modellingchildhood asoutlined by James,Jenks
and Prout, 1998. page49
7.1 Example of achild-centred primaryschoolclassroom. 124
vii
Acknowledgements
To my three daughters – Beatrix, Matilda and Amelia – who are
alwaysan inspiration;and to my gorgeous Maria.
Thanks to various colleagues and undergraduate and postgraduate
students for always keeping me thinking. And thanks also to the
production and editorial staff atCambridge UniversityPress.
viii