52.063 - The Child in Question: Exploring Social Constructions of Childhood

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Because the concept of childhood is complex and constantly changing, it demands critical inquiry, for as elusive and elastic as they may be, social constructions of childhood have real material consequences for the children whose lives and educational opportunities they shape. The papers in the session session answer Valerie Walkerdine’s (1993) challenge to look at the ways that social discourses “cut up and shape reality” as well as to account for “the real effects they produce” (p. 454). Here, we take up a variety of theoretical and methodological lenses to examine both the fictions that inform contemporary constructions of childhood and the real ways in which those constructions shape and are shaped by the lived experience of childhood.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Critical Perspectives on Early Childhood Education

Chair

• Julie C. Garlen, Georgia Southern University

Papers

• What You Do to Children Matters: Memory, Crisis, and the Myth of Childhood Innocence - Julie C. Garlen, Georgia Southern University

• The Counterfeit Child and Unequal Terrains of Innocence: Race, Gender, and Murder in Junior High - Lisa Farley, York University

• Disabled Childhoods: A Comparative Ethnographic Study of Inclusion Policies - Gail M. Boldt, The Pennsylvania State University; Joseph Michael Valente, The Pennsylvania State University

• Luk Thep Dolls and Child Angels - Sandra Chang-Kredl, Concordia University

• Michael DeForge's Big Kids and the Problem of Childhood Memory and Representation - David Lewkowich, University of Alberta

Discussants

• Julie C. Garlen, Georgia Southern University

• Lisa Farley, York University