Week 1 – An Introduction to the Sociology of Childhood
The first module session will introduce students, irrespective of background, to the Sociology of Childhood. Students will consider some of the key assumptions behind the `new paradigm` or social construction of childhood, questioning the major assumption that there exists one universal childhood, a `standard` childhood that is based on the experiences of children in developed countries.
Week 2 – Strengths and Limitations in Sociological Approaches to Childhood
In this seminar, we will critically explore the strengths and limitations in social constructivist approaches to childhood. Although researchers working within the new social studies of childhood have researched the active involvement of children in providing meaning to their lives, they continue to face a set of dichotomies in their research programme, such as nature v culture and sociology v developmental psychology. We will investigate the sources and contradictions in these dichotomies by tracing their historical development.
Week 3 – Relational Sociology
Students will be introduced to some of the key thinkers in relational sociology by discussing their relevance and application to childhood studies. We will discuss some of the important relational concepts developed by two of the most important relational sociologists, Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu, showing how these can be used to `bridge` and overcome some of the theoretical tensions in the sociology of childhood.
Week 4 – Relational Perspectives in Developmental Psychology
In this week we focus on one of the most important debates in the sociology of childhood which has centred on the role of developmental psychology – sociologists of childhood have traditionally rejected most forms of `developmentalism`, especially those based on the Piagetian perspective, as a `stage` and `age` approach to children`s development. To foster an alternative and relational understanding of childhood we will develop an interdisciplinary approach that can help to integrate the biological and socio-psychological aspects of children`s lives.
Week 5 – Relational Psychoanalysis
In the early 1980s, a distinctive school of relational psychoanalysis developed in opposition to classical Freudian drive theory. This `new tradition` draws on three long-standing bodies of thinking in psychoanalysis: the American interpersonal tradition that emphasised the importance of understanding the network of relationships within which individuals exist; the British object relations tradition and the more recent work of American psychoanalytic feminists. This seminar explores how we can apply the findings of relational psychoanalysis to understand contemporary childhood, exploring the way in which children are intertwined in a web of interweaving relationships.
Week 6 – Relational Childhoods
How can we integrate the different relational aspects of these three disciplines, sociology, developmental psychology and psychoanalysis to explain how children grow up to adulthood in contemporary societies? We begin this session by introducing concepts that can more fully explain the development of socio-psychological processes in society, emphasising the strong, affective ties that link children with one another across generations in different societies. We will emphasise the importance of personal interdependencies and emotional bonds that bind society together: children are social beings born into and embedded in figurations that are interdependent networks that are always moving, changing and developing.
Week 7 – Institutionalisation of Childhood
More than ever before, children are spending a greater part of their childhood in a range of institutional settings such as nurseries and primary and secondary schools. Such developments make it even more vital to develop a sociological approach that can explain the institutional arrangements that children experience. This seminar will use the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to explore the significance of group processes (social habitus) in children`s relationships. Bourdieu`s theoretical framework is important for providing a set of relational concepts that can be finely tuned to explain the shifting fields of power that affect the lives of children.
Week 8 – Parenting in Families
In the twenty-first century media commentary and discourses on contemporary childhood commonly invoke a notion of `crisis` fuelled by debates about changes in family structure and growing attention to parenting from a broad range of professionals. However, this analysis of the parenting crisis in contemporary families tends to be focused on short-term developments which can be explained by long-term relational processes, based on changes in the balance of power between men, women and children. These changes can be viewed as part of longer trend of informalisation that has occurred from the late twentieth century onwards, a period of movement from an authoritarian to a more egalitarian parent–child relationship where there is a loosening of barriers of authority in relations between children and adults.
Week 9 – Love and Learning Relationships
Students will be introduced to Norbert Elias`s concept of `love and learning`, where it will be suggested that his distinctive approach to learning can be used to integrate the findings of relational of psychoanalysis, where schools are considered as anxious institutions where children have to exercise a more intensive and all-embracing control over their emotions. We will explore two of the major psychoanalytic thinkers of the British object relations school, Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion, to understand how processes of learning are sometimes `blocked` by teachers where it is assumed that pedagogy is predominantly a rational, conscious and deliberate process.
Week 10 – Conclusions: Integration and Synthesis
In this last session we summarise some of the key arguments that have been used for developing an interdisciplinary approach to childhood, one that integrates the different relational aspects in three of the major disciplines in childhood studies, sociology, developmental psychology and psychoanalysis.