Abstract
Traditional theories of socialisation, in which the child was viewed as a passive subject of external influences, are increasingly being rejected in favour of a new sociology of childhood which frames the child as a social actor. This article demonstrates the way in which conversation analysis can reveal children's agency in the micro-detail of naturally occurring episodes in which children express bodily sensations and pain in everyday life. Based on 71 video-recordings of mealtimes with five families, each with two children under 10 years old, the analysis focuses on the components of children's expressions of bodily sensation (including pain), the character of parents’ responses and the nature of the subsequent talk. The findings provide further evidence that children are social actors, active in constructing, accepting and resisting the nature of their physical experience and pain. A conversation analysis of ordinary family talk facilitates a description of how a child's agency is built, maintained or resisted through the interactional practices participants employ to display knowledge.
Highlights
As assumptions about the nature of childhood have developed, the view that the child is merely subject to social forces is increasingly being rejected in favour of a new sociology of childhood that frames the child as a social actor (Moran-Ellis 2010)
The corpus of mealtimes contained various talk relating to health, pain and the body, such as discussions about a friend being treated in the burns unit, talk about a child’s medication, parents’ reports of pain or parents initiating enquiries into a child’s wellbeing
This study focused on sequences in which children initiated expressions of bodily sensation, on the basis that they were more prevalent in the data and represented a distinct set of phenomena for elucidating commonalities in how they were formulated and delivered
Summary
As assumptions about the nature of childhood have developed, the view that the child is merely subject to social forces is increasingly being rejected in favour of a new sociology of childhood that frames the child as a social actor (Moran-Ellis 2010) This emergent paradigm, which stands in contrast to a traditional framework that positioned children as passive victims of external influences (Alanen 1988), instead understands childhood as a social construction; a negotiated set of social relationships in the early years of human life (Prout and James 1997).
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