Childhood Studies in France

Abstract

This article deals with research on childhood and children in the social sciences in France, which has contributed to bringing childhood out of the field of education and psychology—that is to say, roughly what would be called “childhood studies” in English. This expression, however, is not easily translated into French. It is not widely used in France, where the scientific field is not organized by studies but by disciplines. When the expression appears, it is in English in the text, to designate works from the Anglosphere, sometimes with a critical distance. When dealing with “childhood studies in France,” it is essential to keep this in mind and to follow disciplinary frontiers. Sociology and anthropology—two closely related disciplines in France—have arguably played the most important role here. Central here is a current of thought that rose from the year 2000 onward and that in fact considers itself as a French-written version of English childhood studies. Although it intends to be multidisciplinary, this current is centered on sociology and, to a lesser extent, anthropology, so that it is reasonable to refer to it as a “socio-anthropology of childhood.” It has engaged in a dialogue with other subfields, such as the sociology of the family and the anthropology of kinship, the sociology of socialization, Africanist anthropology or Americanist anthropology, and sociology, among others. Its influence is also felt today in other disciplines, especially history, geography, or law and philosophy. However, even as the main ideas from this current were progressively integrated into the social sciences, controversies arose, particularly among sociologists, about the soundness of this field of research. Does childhood, in all its diversity, constitute a coherent research topic? Paradoxically, while scientific work on “childhood” is now subject to some suspicion and tends to become more fragmented, methodological work on children has recently experienced a certain boom, suggesting an evolution of the scientific discourse that may be specific to the French field. Finally, a caveat is in order: in French research on childhood and children, importance was given from the outset to the French language that brings together researchers from France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Quebec among others. The present article focuses on France: it does not pretend to be comprehensive of “Francophone childhood studies.” However, it makes sense to include important contributions to the scientific debate in France originating from other places in the Francosphere.