Negotiating Power Relations — The Self and Others

Abstract

As the last chapter showed, morality is used by children as a means of filtering and understanding the social world around them. However, this chapter will move on from the five fictional characters and explore more directly the way in which children’s moral understanding forms part of their everyday lives, as an expression of individual agency. It will continue to contextualise earlier discussions around the nature of morality and develop further the extent to which moral meaning must be seen as fluid, and tied to individual reflections on the self in the presence of others. It will continue to demonstrate the extent to which the process of self-identity is relevant in the shaping of moral codes through a closer consideration of belonging, and the way in which it is used by the children to help with reinforcing similarity, as well as to identify and avoid difference. However, to really develop this discussion and to further our understanding of children as social agents, it is important to recognise the role of power as an added dimension within children’s perceptions of themselves in the context of others. Consequently it must be seen as a central feature of the way in which children develop moral attitudes and opinions as expressed in their daily lives. The chapter therefore looks at this issue by considering the self and others in the context of three different sets of power relations: mutuality, powerlessness and powerfulness.KeywordsSocial CapitalPhysical ContactSocial WorldGood FriendMutual RelationshipThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.