Theorising childhood and youth: Interdisciplinary perspectives

This course addresses theoretical perspectives, key concepts and debates in Childhood Studies since it emerged as a research field in the 1980s until today. This includes children and childhood as socially, culturally and historically constructed, children's perspectives and active contribution in defining and giving meaning to their lives. Further, this course addresses children's lived lives, generational relations, and the importance of context as well as issues at a structural and political level that have implications for children and childhood. This course addresses childhood as a social phenomenon in time and space, and how children are both shaped by and themselves shape their childhood experiences as these unfold within diverse societal and daily life conditions, practices, power and generational relations. Central issues to be explored in this course are images and understandings of children and childhood as well as children's meaning-making processes, and experiences in relation to peer activities and the adult organization of their lives. The course further attends to the interrelations of childhood and culture, power, gender, social class, and ethnicity.

By the end of the course the student:

Knowledge:

• Has obtained in-depth knowledge of theoretical perspectives, concepts and ongoing debates in the interdisciplinary Social Studies of Children and Childhood.
• Has obtained an understanding of why Social Studies of Children and Childhood emerged as a research field, as a critical approach to mainstream theorizing of children and childhood.
• Can critically examine childhood as a social, cultural and historical phenomenon, and obtain an understanding of how children's everyday lives and well-being are related to cultural, societal and political circumstances in changing societies.

Skills:

• Has the ability to critically approach and deconstruct views, understandings, discourses and theorizations of children and childhood.

General competence:

• Has developed the ability to question implicit and taken-for-granted assumptions.
• Has developed skills in conceptualizing/theorizing childhood in different contexts.

Total lecture and seminar hours: approximately 30 hours.