Childhood studies, children's politics and participation: perspectives for processes of democratisation

ABSTRACT

From the early Frankfurt School through to the work of Manuel Castells, there has been a rich body of work on the cleavage between technological and social developments of the twentieth century in respect of the consequences for the constitution of subjectivity. However, little attention is paid to the role of children during their childhoods in attempts to bridge this gap beyond discussions about the democratic actors children will become when they are adults. This paper argues that only the full integration of children, during their childhoods, into democratic development of societies will prevent the deepening of the rift between technological and social progress. The paper traces the correspondence between the new childhood studies and those concepts of politics and politicisation which can support social progress towards an emancipatory social perspective undergirded by particular and democratisation of all areas of everyday life. Drawing on Bourdieu and ideas of participation as action, the paper critically examines the various mechanisms by which children are conventionally excluded from democratic participation and then explores how a deeper consideration of agency in childhood and social actorship opens up alternative mechanisms of inclusion and the concomitant expansion of the concept of democracy.

KEYWORDS:

• Participation
• sociology of childhood
• children
• democracy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jo Moran-Ellis is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Sussex. She works within the sociology of childhood, and in social research methods. Her work on childhood focuses on children's agency and the significance of material contexts of interaction whilst her methodological work deals with mixed methods and interdisciplinary methods.

Heinz Sünker is Rudolf-Carnap-Senior-Professor at the University of Wuppertal, Germany, in the School of Human and Social Sciences. His research interests include critical social theory/western Marxism, childhood studies, social policy and social work, national socialism and resistance. He gained his Ph.D. and habilitation at the University of Bielefeld.

Notes

1 The U.N.C.R.C. defines children as those being under the age of 18 – we follow this nomenclature in this article but specifically mean it to include those from birth up to the age of 18.

2 Vandenhole, Desmet, Reynaert, and Lembrechts (2015) have criticised the use of these different categorisations on the basis that they depart from the primary categorisation of human rights as being on the one hand concerned with civil and political rights, and on the other hand economic, social and cultural rights. (Handbook of Children's Rights Studies Chapter 1, p. 6) However, the 3Ps conceptualisation is widespread in childhood studies and does at least serve the purpose of focusing attention on the fact that there are a set of rights concerned there are a set of right which differ from the conventional protectionist approach to children.

3 The U.N.C.R.C. has been adopted by all nations with the exception of Somalia, South Sudan and the U.S.A. Somalia is without a government, South Sudan did not become a country until 2011, and the U.S.A. signed it in 1995, but are yet to ratify the Convention. The main reasons for this are opposition from parent-rights group to what they see as the downgrading of parental authority, especially in connection with children's participation rights but also with regard to some of the provision and protection rights which could make physical punishment illegal (see e.g. http://www.nocrc.org/). A second source of opposition comes from Republicans concerned about the financial burden of state provision implied in the Convention and support for continuation of the judicial option of life-long incarceration of children without parole. For a more detailed analysis of objections, see Kilbourne (1998a, 1998b).

4 We use the term performative here to mean action. This differs from some other meanings of performative such as that used by Horgan, Forde, Martin, and Parkes (2017) to mean formal structures of participation as opposed to everyday experiences of participation which they frame as informal and principally ‘social’.

5 See Bachrach and Botwinick, 1992 and Sünker, Farnen, and Széll, 2003.

6 Especially the developmentalism based on Piaget's approach.

7 In general the voting age is now 18 for all, although in some German states (Länder) it is 16 and in some circumstances, such as the referendum on Scottish independence in 2010, it was lowered to 16 on a temporary basis.

8 See Child Poverty Action Group (2018).

9 As Meyer argues, there are other discourses that are mobilised around childhood such as the evil child, and of course the discourse of rights. As she notes:

child crime tends to be marked by the discourse of innocence when children are victims (Kitzinger, 1997) and through the discourse of the evil child when children are perpetrators (Valentine, 1996). Yet even these trends are patchy, some liberal commentators for instance use the discourse of the ‘innocent yet damaged’ child in discussing child crime (e.g. Morrison, 1997). (2007, p. 87)

10 With respect to the German traditions, see Chisholm’s 1992 literature review on childhood entitled ‘Paradise Lost – Lost Paradise. Ist die deutsche Kindheitsforschung zur Entromantisierung fähig?’.

11 Flawed as his claim is that childhood did not exist before the Middle Ages (see Cunningham, 1995; Luke, 1989).

12 There are of course some problems with making a universal statement such as this – at times children force themselves successfully into the polity as in school strikes or strikes as child workers; at other times, the differentials of class and gender, ethnicity and so on place them into spaces of differentiated (non)entitlement as we have already set out. In addition, the passage into adulthood varies by class and gender, and at different historical periods there have been other exclusions from the polity – women; working class men; non-property owning individuals; age groups; those incarcerated for mental illness or crimes, non-citizens, and so on. Nonetheless, as a group children are outside the polity in any legitimated way for the main portion of their childhoods and such exclusion is persistent. This is the case even with the moves to participation we have already described since these do not constitute a sustained or guaranteed democratic presence and indeed the form of participation may have little to do with democracy as such.

13 However, they also maintain ‘no capitalist society today may reasonably be called democratic in the straightforward sense of securing personal liberty and rendering the exercise of power socially accountable’ (Bowles & Gintis, 1987, p. 3)

14 Also called the new social studies of childhood especially in continental European academies reflecting the contributions of other disciplines such as pedagogy, social pedagogy, and social theory.

15 See Bühler-Niederberger (2010) with particular reference to the articles by Moran-Ellis (2010) and Zeiher (2010) for British and German developments in this period.

16 This term also features in the U.N.C.R.C.

17 Noting too that many adults also need additional support and information, training etc. in order to be able to take part in institutional processes with any degree of ease or effectiveness (cf. Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995).

18 A useful comparison here would be between the results of worker's participation (cf. Széll, 1992, 1998) and children's participation, including their democratic participation in paid work (cf. Liebel, Meade, & Saadi, 2012).