Reimagining Childhood Studies Edited by SpyrosSpyrou, RachelRosen, DanielThomas Cook. London: Bloomsbury, 2018 ISBN‐13: 978‐1350019218, 272 pp, £24.99 (pb)

Abstract

Children, as Claude Levi-Strauss nearly said, are ‘good to think with’ and the wealth of scholarship on children's lives and experiences, and the concurrent examination of ideas about childhood over the last 25 years, has certainly given those of us interested in children much to think about. Yet, as the editors and contributors to this complex and challenging book point out, the paradigms used to do so need refreshing and the time has come to ‘think with’ children more imaginatively. Reimagining Childhood Studies is a ground-breaking book which will define the field for many years to come. It is a sometimes discomforting read, disrupting some of the fundamental tenets and taken for granted assumptions of childhood studies, such as the emphasis on social construction and children's agency, and exhorting those of us who work within the subject area to think more creatively about wider histories, contexts and silences. One of the great strengths of this book, however, is that while it is disruptive, it is never destructive and the introduction is exemplary in its positivity and emphasis on dialogue. The clear-sighted acknowledgment of how far the study of childhood has come in the last 30 years is used as a basis to look forward, develop and reframe childhood studies as ‘a critical field which is not merely aware of its own limits and biases but also capable of making political and ethical choices’ (p. 8). This is an engaged and engaging book which demands that the reader critically reflects on their own practices and ideas. The introduction by the editors, Spyros Spyrou, Rachel Rosen and Daniel Cook, does a superb job of reimagining what childhood studies might look like and the significance of the insights it can develop and promote. The interrogation of the notion of agency is pivotal to this project because of its centrality to the field. Yet, as the editors argue, previous theorisations have proved limiting because ‘the constructed, agentic, knowing child – regularly enfolds back on itself, often reappearing as the solution to the problem it poses’ (p. 1). The idea of agency, its histories, limitations and futures is a theme that goes on to be explored and probed throughout the following chapters. The book's contributors also show, in various ways, the need to understand childhood in terms of children's relational ontologies and interdependence. While this does not undermine studies of agency, which remain a central concern of many chapters (especially Cook, Bernardini, Kontovourki and Theodorou), it does challenge the reader to think more carefully about notions of scale and scale-making and the frames within which they work. As the Introduction asks, ‘What kind of child do we choose to bring to light? What kind of inclusions and what kind of exclusions result from our choices’ (p. 6). With this in mind, the editors make the radical suggestion of ‘decentring’ childhood, not to side-line it, but to expand its scope of enquiry and to embed it more explicitly within the political and philosophical realms. It is a challenge taken up by many of the contributors who examine, in different ways, broader concerns such as ways of decolonising childhood and research on children (Balagopalan, Cheney), intersectionality and queer childhoods (Bernardini) and disabled childhoods (Wickenden). Others rethink legal (Cordero Arce) and philosophical ontologies (Beauvais), the role of children in politics and in the political economy (Hart and Boyden, Oswell), while other chapters call for a retheorising of play and material childhoods (Sánchez-Eppler) and place (Kraftl and Horton). Each contributor draws on and expands the theories and ideas set out in the introduction and shows both how central and disruptive the notion of the child is to these broader fields. This is a difficult book to review because every chapter is so rich and engaging that it is impossible to do justice to each one: each deserves an essay and discussion in its own right and each one merits multiple readings and reflections. This is a collection without any disappointments and I found each chapter challenging and enriching. Collectively the chapters work together extremely well, layering ideas on top of each other, discussing and debating with each other, all the while opening the readers’ eyes to the possibilities of a truly new way of understanding children and a genuinely different way of reimagining childhood studies.