Constructing and Re-Constructing Childhood by Allison James and Alan Prout

Allison James and Alan Prout have written the seminal text, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood (1990). In it, they refer to the nature of the social institution of childhood as being "...an actively negotiated set of social relationships within which the early years of human life are constituted. The immaturity of childhood is a biological fact of life but the ways in which this immaturity is understood and made meaningful is a fact of culture... It is in this sense, therefore, that one can talk of the social construction of childhood and also, as it appears in this volume, of its re- and deconstruction. In this double sense, then, childhood is both constructed and reconstructed both for children and by children." (p.7)

This New Paradigm of Understanding Childhood has at least six key features:

1. Childhood is understood as a social construction. As such it provides an interpretive fram for contextualizing the early years of human life.

2. Childhood is a variable of social analysis. It can never be entirely divorced from other variables such as class, gender, or ethnicity.

3. Children's social relationships and cultures are worthy of study in their own right, independent of the perspective and concerns of adults.

4. Children are and must be seen as active in the construction and determination of their own social lives, the lives of those around them and of the societies in which they live. Children are not just passive subjects of social structures and processes.

5. Ethnography is a particularly useful methodology for the study of childhood. It allows children a more direct voice and participation in the production of sociological data than is usually possible through experimental or survey styles of research.

6. Childhood is a phenomenon... (that) engage(s) in and respond(s) to the process of reconstructing childhood in society. (p.8) (See Kyung-Man Kim's explaination of Anthony Giddens' theory of the double hermeneutic)

It would be beneficial to have a look through this book before attending the seminar of The Playground of Youth in At-Risk Communities.

Steve