Abstract
In the report on the state of the art in childhood sociology in 10 countries published in the journal of the International Sociological Association (Current Sociology 58(2)) Jo Moran-Ellis finds some important creative tensions at present in the field of childhood sociology. Her observations concern specifically the UK, but they most surely have a much wider bearing. One of these tensions – and challenges – concerns the position of childhood sociology in the academic world. To what extent, she asks, is the sociology of childhood part of mainstream knowledge and understandings about the social world? Or is it a subject which is popular with students but at risk of being marginal to the main project and concerns of sociology (Moran-Ellis, 2010: 197)? In an overview of the situation in Finland in the same publication Harriet Strandell finds a similar situation, and notes that interestingly the demand for sociological concepts and approaches to children and childhood seems much greater in disciplines other than sociology, particularly in disciplines that educate professionals to work with children (early childhood education, social work), whereas in sociology childhood continues to remain a fairly narrow research area, frequently conceived of as a specific field of study far from current sociological concerns. This state of affairs clearly calls for work to be done in order to properly anchor the study of childhood in sociology. The salience of such work is obvious: it surely is ‘a key to a more comprehensive understanding of society at large’ (Strandell, 2010: 178–179).
Similar comments on the state of childhood sociology in its relation to general, mainstream sociology are heard across many more countries as well. This reasserts the strong belief among childhood sociologists that was expressed in an editorial introduction to an early issue of this journal: without theorizing childhood there can be no adequate account of the social (Childhood 4(3): 261). Across the years, such a conviction has provided some of the basic motivation for many sociologists in their work to construct a sociology of childhood and also has set for us a long-term agenda. Sociology – the discipline that from its very birth has been the science of the ‘social’ – surely remains an incomplete discipline as long as in its knowledge it is missing the childhood ‘piece’ of the social mosaic. A timely question to ask ourselves is, in Jan Kampman’s (2003) wording, how can we move childhood sociology forward from being a ‘marginalized provocateur’ within sociology to a recognized ‘supplier’ of sociological knowledge?
Currently, and disappointedly, it is clear that a full recognition of childhood’s place in sociology has yet to come. Childhood sociology has found very little resonance in sociological theory or general sociological analysis and the default position of most social and political theory is either to discard children entirely or to regard them only as ‘adults in waiting’ (e.g. Bühler-Niederberger, 2010: 155–156; Thomas, 2012; see also Qvortrup, 2003). This became (again) acutely evident to the childhood sociologists who in the conference of the European Sociological Association (ESA) in Geneva (2011) were listening to the plenary talks in the conference’s opening session. One of the messages delivered to conference participants was the firm view of childhood as a preparatory stage for adulthood, that is, the view that was dominant in the pre-1990s – and evidently still dominates in general sociology. Absent was an acknowledgement of the rich and multifaceted empirical research on children and childhood of the recent decades, of the discoveries made on the diversity of children’s life-worlds and their interdependencies with social, economic and cultural structures, of children’s active engagement in the social, economic and cultural production, distribution and consumption of their societies, of the revisionings of long prevalent public images of children as ‘innocents’, and so on. And this in spite of the existence of an active childhood research network within the ESA itself!
The bafflement that such an announcement aroused among network members led to discussions during the conference on what would need to be done in order to at least update the prevalent understanding of childhood among the sociological community. If we take the ultimate aim of doing childhood sociology to be the full incorporation of childhood into the body of the sociological discipline, it is not sufficient that we remain speaking with our colleagues within the childhood studies community; we obviously need also to speak back to, and within, the mainstream. A strong investment in theorizing childhood was felt to be one necessary route, and the decision was made in Geneva to issue a call for papers for the network’s mid-term meeting with the title ‘Theorising childhood’. Childhood sociologists were invited to come to discuss a range of topics, such as the place and relevance of the discipline’s ‘classics’ (Marx, Durkheim, Weber) in childhood sociology and a range of newer approaches (e.g. Bourdieu, Luhmann, Foucault) and directions (e.g. network theories, theories of spatiality and of rights) and their relevance to the development of the sociology of childhood. In the summer of 2012, 30 sociologists assembled in Jyväskylä (Finland), where around 20 papers were presented and discussed on the topic of the meeting. Hopefully this small gathering is a sign of a large and growing interest, as well as an encouragement, among childhood sociologists to rethink the role of theory in their work. (Some of the papers presented in the meeting have already been developed into journal articles and have been published or are on their way to be published, also in Childhood.)
In a sense theory and theorizing are always a part of social scientific research. The need of (re)theorizing childhood – which in the end brought forth the ‘new’ sociology of childhood in the 1980s and 1990s – in itself demonstrates this. ‘Theorizing’ is a way of describing what sociologists of childhood are in the business of doing: they develop ‘theories’ of childhood. It is also a widespread belief within social science that empirical sociological research should always be driven or informed by ‘theory’. This provides one justification also for editors of social science journals and reviewers of submitted papers to reject papers if they are ‘atheoretical’ or ‘undertheorized’ or fail to make a ‘theoretical’ contribution.
‘Theory’ is thus a largely taken-for-granted resource in sociology. It is however also a term with multiple meanings in the sociological language. Gabriel Abend (2008), for an example, notes that ‘theory’ is overloaded with meanings and this places ‘theory’ in danger of losing any semantic traction. He identifies seven different senses of the ‘theory’ as used by sociologists, from universal propositions and causal explanations of particular social phenomena to ways of understanding, interpreting or making sense of them. In other cases the meaning of ‘theory’ is the study of the writings of named theorists, or a particular perspective from which one sees and interprets the world which is the general intention in references to a ‘theoretical approach’, ‘school’, ‘framework’, ‘tradition’, ‘viewpoint’ or ‘paradigm’ (Abend, 2008: 179–180). Confusions about the meaning of ‘theory’ may in turn have undesirable consequences, such as (artificial) disagreements, conceptual muddles and miscommunication.
While instructive, the practical help that any taxonomy of meanings of ‘theory’ can provide for the enterprise of theorizing will remain slender. A more fruitful way of assessing the present state of theorizing in childhood sociology – with the aim of outlining possible future agendas for theorizing childhood – is by juxtaposing with trends in current theorizing within general sociology. Sociological theory has a long history of taking stock of itself, and general reviews of the existing sociological literature are not just occasional undertakings but part of the routine activity of doing sociology. There are also many ways of theory construction; e.g. for the period starting from the mid-1980s Camic and Gross (1998) have identified as many as eight different ‘projects’ of theorizing in contemporary sociology. Their list is both selective and non-exhaustive, and in other periods of time the list would most certainly be different. Also the ‘projects’ are internally heterogeneous and, as a rule, are not mutually exclusive of each other. Camis and Gross (1998) identify altogether eight theoretical ‘projects’ of the period and describe examples of each: (1) constructing general analytical tools for use in empirical research; (2) synthesizing multiple theoretical approaches; (3) refining existing theoretical research programmes; (4) stimulating dialogue among different theoretical perspectives; (5) enlarging and reconstructing current theoretical approaches conceptually, methodologically, socially and politically; (6) engaging with past theoretical ideas; (7) offering a diagnosis of contemporary social conditions; and finally (8) dissolving the enterprise of sociological theory (enacted by the post-modernist ‘anti-project’).
Of these ‘projects’ the one that perhaps best describes the intention of much of the work done within childhood sociology has been within the frame of project 5: ‘Enlargement and reconstruction of current theoretical approaches’, especially if we here substitute the whole field of sociology for ‘current theoretical approaches’ in sociology. It has been the long-term project of childhood sociology – since a lack of childhood issues in mainstream sociology was identified in the 1980s – to fill the conceptual, methodological, social, moral and political lacunae that still exist in the theories and research of mainstream sociology. For the few past decades this work has understandably been oriented towards the empirical, in the aim to bring children and childhood into ‘visibility’ as social and sociological issues. As this first, enlarging phase of childhood hopefully continues to expand, there now seems to be an increasing trend towards a more self-confident and sophisticated mode of theorizing childhood. Camic now increasingly take into use and work with theoretical resources from other areas of sociology, with the aim of theorizing childhood and moving childhood into these theories, i.e. reconstructing the subject matter of those theories. In Childhood 19(4), for instance, Nigel Thomas (2012) explores the usefulness of Axel Honneth’s theory of a ‘struggle for recognition’ for a theory of participation that would include also children’s participation. In the present issue Cath Larkins (2014) develops a new understanding of how children enact themselves as citizens, thus challenging dominant definitions in citizenship theory, and in a forthcoming article Pascale Garnier (2014) draws on Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology of critique and justification to understand child–adult relations as a moral and political order.
I would like to think that texts like these in fact foreshadow a ‘theoretical turn’ in childhood sociology. Such a turn, in parallel and in interplay with the rich and multifaceted empirical research on childhood, will help to provide not just critiques of, but also forceful interventions into mainstream sociology that will assist in incorporating the missing childhood piece into what we conceive of as the discipline of sociology.