Childhood with Bourdieu

229 Pages·2015·0.598 MB·English

by  Leena Alanen, Liz Brooker, Berry Mayall

Childhood with Bourdieu
Leena Alanen
Liz Brooker
Berry Mayall
Studies in Childhood and Youth
Series Editors: Allison James, University of Sheffield, UK, and Adrian James,
University of Sheffield, UK.
Titles include:
Kate Bacon
TWINS IN SOCIETY
Parents, Bodies, Space and Talk
Emma Bond
CHILDHOOD, MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES AND EVERYDAY EXPERIENCES
Changing Technologies = Changing Childhoods?
David Buckingham, Sara Bragg, Mary Jane Kehily
YOUTH CULTURES IN THE AGE OF GLOBAL MEDIA
David Buckingham and Vebjørg Tingstad (e ditors )
CHILDHOOD AND CONSUMER CULTURE
Tom Cockburn
RETHINKING CHILDREN’S CITIZENSHIP
Sam Frankel
CHILDREN, MORALITY AND SOCIETY
Allison James
SOCIALISING CHILDREN
Allison James, Anne Trine Kjørholt and Vebjørg Tingstad ( editors )
CHILDREN, FOOD AND IDENTITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Nicholas Lee
CHILDHOOD AND BIOPOLITICS
Climate Change, Life Processes and Human Futures
Manfred Liebel, Karl Hanson, Iven Saadi and Wouter Vandenhole (e ditors )
CHILDREN’S RIGHTS FROM BELOW
Cross-Cultural Perspectives
Orna Naftali
CHILDREN, RIGHTS AND MODERNITY IN CHINA
Raising Self-Governing Citizens
Helen Stapleton
SURVIVING TEENAGE MOTHERHOOD
Myths and Realities
E. Kay M. Tisdall, Andressa M. Gadda and Udi M. Butler
CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE’S PARTICIPATION AND ITS
TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL
Learning from across Countries
Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, Robert Ame (e ditors )
CHILDHOODS AT THE INTERSECTION OF THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL
Hanne Warming ( editor )
PARTICIPATION, CITIZENSHIP AND TRUST IN CHILDREN’S LIVES
Karen Wells, Erica Burman, Heather Montgomery and Alison Watson ( editors )
CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND VIOLENCE IN GLOBAL CONTEXTS
Research and Practice in Dialogue
Rebekah Willett, Chris Richards, Jackie Marsh, Andrew Burn, Julia C Bishop
( editors )
CHILDREN, MEDIA AND PLAYGROUND CULTURES
Ethnographic Studies of School Playtimes
Karen M. Smith
THE GOVERNMENT OF CHILDHOOD
Discourse, Power and Subjectivity
Spyros Spyrou and Miranda Christou
CHILDREN AND BORDERS
Leena Alanen, Liz Brooker and Berry Mayall ( editors )
CHILDHOOD WITH BOURDIEU
Studies in Childhood and Youth
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Childhood with Bourdieu
Edited by
Leena Alanen
Department of Education, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Liz Brooker
Institute of Education, University of London, UK
Berry Mayall
Institute of Education, University of London, UK
Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Leena Alanen,
Liz Brooker and Berry Mayall 2015
Individual chapters © their respective authors 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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Contents
Notes on Contributors v ii
1 I ntroduction 1
Leena Alanen, Liz Brooker and Berry Mayall
2 I ntergenerational Relations: Embodiment over Time 1 3
Berry Mayall
3 C ultural Capital in the Preschool Years: Can the State
‘Compensate’ for the Family? 34
Liz Brooker
4 B etween Young Children and Adults: Practical Logic in
Families’ Lives 57
Pascale Garnier
5 E arly Childhood Education as a Social Field: Everyday
Struggles and Practices of Dominance 7 8
Mari Vuorisalo and Leena Alanen
6 ‘ A Fish in Water?’ Social Lives and Local Connections:
The Case of Young People Who Travel Outside Their
Local Areas to Secondary School 99
Abigail Knight
7 C hildhood in Africa between Local Powers and Global
Hierarchies 120
Géraldine André and Mathieu Hilgers
8 ‘ Those Who Are Good to Us, We Call Them Friends’:
Social Support and Social Networks for Children
Growing up in Poverty in Rural Andhra Pradesh, India 1 42
Virginia Morrow and Uma Vennam
9 S truggling to Support: Genesis of the Practice of Using
Support Persons in the Finnish Child Welfare Field 1 65
Johanna Moilanen, Johanna Kiili and Leena Alanen
v
vi Contents
10 D ecision-making Processes in Review Meetings for
Children in Care: A Bourdieusian Analysis 1 88
Karen Winter
Index 2 13
Notes on Contributors
Leena A lanen is a sociologist and Professor (Emerita) in Early
Childhood Education and Docent in the Sociology of Childhood,
at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has been active in
promoting Childhood Studies since the 1980s, through her own
research and in international research projects and networks, such
as the International Sociological Association (ISA) and the European
Sociological Association (ESA). She is currently co-editor for C hildhood:
A journal of global child research (Sage). Her research interests include
children and childhood in social theory, intergenerational relations,
and the intersection of gender and generation.
Géraldine A ndré is a Postdoctoral Researcher for the National Fund
for Scientific Research in Belgium. She is currently visiting fellow
at LSE, and in Belgium, she is affiliated to Pôle Sud and the Lasc at
the University of Liège. Her PhD on working class youth and voca-
tional education with a Bourdieusian perspective was published by
Les Presses Universitaires de France (2012). Her postdoctoral research
focuses on the case of African child workers in small-scale artisanal
mining. With this focus, she aims at analysing the effects on the legis-
lation of children’s rights on the evolution of processes of socialisa-
tion in sub-Saharan Africa.
Liz Brooker is a Reader in Early Childhood at the Institute of
Education in London. As a former early years teacher, she developed
a research interest in the cultural transitions of young children from
ethnic minority communities into English mainstream schools and
preschools. Since returning to teach in universities, her interest in
transition has extended to the experiences of infants and toddlers,
and the contrasting beliefs of parents, practitioners and childcare
providers about children’s best interests. Her most recent studies are
of young children’s play experiences, and of childminders. She is an
editor of Early Years: An International Research Journal.
Pascale G arnier is a sociologist and Professor of educational sciences
at Paris 13 University (France). She studied sociology in Ecole des
vii
viii Notes on Contributors
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris), with Boltanski, a
close colleague of Bourdieu. Her PhD, published in 1995, was about
an historical sociology of childhood in France. Her main points of
interest and research are the theoretical analysis of childhood and
children, early childhood education (politic, partnership, practices),
body, physical activities and material culture. She belongs to the
networks of sociology of childhood and children of the European
Sociological Association (ESA) and the International Association of
French Speaking Sociologists (AISLF).
Mathieu Hilgers is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Université
Libre de Bruxelles, visiting fellow at University of London (Goldsmiths)
and associate researcher at the Department of African and African
American studies at Harvard University. He has worked extensively
in Africa and has published several papers on Bourdieu, notably on
his theory of dispositions and his theory of social field. Together with
Eric Mangez, he edited B ourdieu’s Theory of Social Fields. Concepts and
Applications (Routledge, 2014) which gathers the world best special-
ists to provide the first complete in-depth introduction to Bourdieu’s
theory of field together with a range of case studies that test the theory,
and critical discussions emphasising its potentiality and limitations.
Johanna K iili is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at
the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She is off duty from her standing
post as a senior officer in the Office of Ombudsman for Children in
Finland. She has a PhD in Social Sciences (Social Work) and has previ-
ously worked as a lecturer in social work, as a project coordinator and
as a researcher. Her research interests include children’s participation,
child welfare and intergenerational relations.
Abigail Knight is a researcher at the Thomas Coram Research Unit,
Institute of Education, University of London, where she carries out
research with and about children, young people and their families.
With a background in history and the social sciences, her research
interests include the lives of disabled children, food and family life,
notions of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ for children, and using historical
sources in sociological enquiry. Her doctoral study concerned the
experiences of teenagers travelling long distances to school each
day and the implications of these journeys for their social lives and
connectedness with their local areas.
Notes on Contributors ix
Berry Mayall is Professor of Childhood Studies at the Institute of
Education, University of London. She has worked on sociological
approaches to childhood since the 1980s, ran the first UK seminar
group on childhood in the early 1990s, started one of the first MAs in
the sociology of childhood (with Priscilla Alderson) and has written
many journal papers and books. Most recently she has written A
History of the Sociology of Childhood, in order to highlight its anteced-
ents and current directions (2013, Institute of Education Press).
Johanna Moilanen is an MSc and doctoral student in social work
at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of
Jyväskylä, Finland. She also holds the position of Senior Lecturer
at the JAMK University of Applied Sciences, School of Health and
Social Studies. Her research interests include child welfare history, the
history of social work and historical sociology.
Virginia Morrow is Associate Professor in the Department of
International Development, University of Oxford and Deputy
Director of Young Lives. Her research focuses on children’s work in
developed and developing countries, sociological approaches to the
study of childhood and children’s rights, the ethics of social research
with children, children’s understandings of family, and children and
‘social capital’. She has been co-editor of Childhood: A journal of global
child research since 2006.
Uma Vennam is Professor of Social work at Sri Padmavati Mahila
Visvavidyalam, Tirupati, Andra Pradesh, India. Uma is Lead
Qualitative Researcher for Young Lives. She has an MA in Social
Work, specialising in Urban and Rural Community Development,
from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay and a PhD from the
University of East Anglia. She has been involved in various research
projects dealing with poverty alleviation, rural livelihoods, SLMF,
poverty and HIV/AIDS, trafficking of women and children, child
labour and Aids Prevention Education Programme (APEP) for school
children, working with international agencies, including the World
Bank, DFID and UNICEF.
Mari Vuorisalo is currently working as a university teacher at the
Department of Education, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has a
PhD in Education (Early Childhood Education). Her research concerns
children’s everyday life and participation in a preschool setting. In