‘Extraordinary survivors’ or ‘ordinary lives’? Embracing ‘everyday agency’ in social interventions with child-headed households in Zambia

Abstract

Child-headed households (CHHs), in which adults or guardians are either absent or not fully functioning in terms of providing for the material and emotional needs of children, have been largely explored through a coping strategies approach. These studies emphasise the ability of children and young people to exert agency in the face of adversity, typically casting them as extraordinary survivors. This perspective continues to drive social interventions with CHHs, which take less account of how children and young people themselves make sense of their daily lives. Drawing on ethnographic research with 11 CHHs in Zambia (2004–2008), this article theoretically extends notions of agency by moving beyond an approach which considers the agency of children and young people in CHHs as inherently connected with coping, resilience and competency. It introduces the concept of ‘everyday agency’, not to offer a new view of agency, but to convey a picture of daily life in CHHs from the vantage points of children and young people living in them, and considers the implications of this standpoint for social interventions.