Are There Politics in Childhood?

Abstract

This paper sets out to explore children's worlds as potential fields of political action. Children are approached as competent political agents whose mundane lives are permeated by politics in which they have their own positions and roles. The paper discusses how children can be found to act politically in their everyday lives and, to some extent, also practice their own political geographies. The main objective is to propose a theoretical basis for recognising the political aspects of children's agency and studying political geographies embedded in children's lived worlds.

Notes

The scope and the constituents of childhood vary between diverse locations. To foreground this plurality we use the concept ‘childhood(s)’ when referring to the position of a child as an overarching phenomenon. When addressing certain children's lived worlds we use ‘childhood’ in the singular to stress their particularity.

‘The set of procedures whereby the aggregation and consent of collectivities is achieved, the organization of powers, the distribution of places and roles, and the systems for legitimizing this distribution’ (Rancière, 1999, p. 28).

Officially ‘youth’ is usually considered to cover the period of life from teenage to nearly 30 years of age. The European Union defines youth to include ages from 15 to 25. Yet even in European countries youth is understood diversely. For instance, the UK Youth Green Paper (2005) discusses the rights of young people between 11 and 19, whereas the Finnish Youth Act (2006) concerns all people under 29 years of age, setting no minimum age to youth.

We do not wish to suggest that adults would always be reflexively and rationally aware about the politics of their action (for comparison, see Ringmar, 1996, p. 83). Rather, we want to accentuate that whereas adults' conceptions and perceptions of politics range widely, children's ones are gradually non-existent, regardless of the context or individual. As our empirical findings concerning children's participation in communal activities reveal, only when empowered to participate in adult-led policy-making and activism, may children think of themselves as political actors (Kallio and Häkli, 2011b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kirsi Pauliina Kallio

The authors wish to thank the Academy of Finland (grants SA126700, SA133521, SA134949) for the financial support of this work and the University of Tampere Department of Regional Studies for the inspiring research environment.

Jouni Häkli

The authors wish to thank the Academy of Finland (grants SA126700, SA133521, SA134949) for the financial support of this work and the University of Tampere Department of Regional Studies for the inspiring research [email protected]