Third Childlife Conference

Description

Symposium: Childism and Childhood Prism Research, at the Childlife Conference in Norway
This symposium presents the core ideas of Childism and Childhood Prism Research, as well as four examples of research drawing on a childism and/or childhood prism approach.
Childism has been presented as an analogy to Feminism (and other isms) however promoting equality for Children (Wall 2019). In its broadest sense, Childism represents a critical stand towards adultism, developmentalism and ageism in society and academia, aiming at empowering the lived experiences of children “through the radical systemic critique of scholarly, social, and political norms” (www.childism.org).
Childhood Prism Research has emerged from the acknowledgement, rooted in childhood studies, that “understanding childhood properly is to understand society differently” (Roet & Thomas 2017). Thus, the core claim of Childhood Prism Research is, that childhood research holds potential for significant theoretical development beyond “childhood studies, as well as for empirical exploration of broader societal issues” (Warming 2022).
Childism and Childhood Prism Research share an inspiration from feminism and anti-racist approaches and are both based on the critical acknowledgement of the generational order (and its intersection with other discriminative norms and social orders) as impacting academia and society in a way that most often marginalize children. While Childism aims to empower children’s lived experiences, and Childhood Prism Research often include child participatory approaches, neither of them grants epistemic authority to children.

Presentation 1: Childist research by adults with and without children
By Tanu Biswas, Associate Professor, Bergen University, Norway
Children’s participation in various stages of research is common in childhood studies. The field distinguishes between research with, for and on children, and has emphasized the importance of research with children. When it comes to childist research, the matter of children as research participants must be treated slightly differently because childism as a perspective, a theoretical lens, a philosophical approach pertains the point of departure of research i.e., the research question itself. What is key for childist research is its critical relation to adult-centrism in scholarship and society. My argument is that children’s participation is not a necessity for childist research because childism is not limited to research questions concerning children and childhood. Children and childhood’s influence and role in society orients childist research questions and analyses which can deal with questions concerning the lives of adults, adulthood seen in relation to children and childhood. I will explain this orientation with the example of the school strike movement for climate justice which influenced political discourses globally, by adding intergenerational and educational considerations to questions of economy and post-colonial justice.

Presentation 2: Children’s perspectives and rights to be heard
By Christina Haandbæk Schmidt, docent & Anna Busk Rasmussen, lecturer at UCL University College, Denmark
Since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, there has been a growing interest in incorporating children's perspectives into policy, childhood research, and pedagogical practices (Clark, Kjørholt & Moss, 2005; Schwartz & Clark, 2017; Kampmann et al, 2017; Warming, 2019; Koch, 2020; Gräfe & Englander, 2022). In the Nordic countries, there is a strong tradition of establishing child-centred policy models in the field of early childhood education, where children's participation, democracy, autonomy, and freedom are fundamental values. Despite this, research has identified it as a democratic problem that children continue to occupy a non-privileged position in which their voices are often unheard, silenced or disregarded in many contexts (Moosa-Mitha, 2005; Tisdall, 2015; Warming, 2018; Wall, 2013, 2022).
At this symposium we will present our article “Access to children’s perspectives?” (Rasmussen & Schmidt, 2024). Drawing on childism, agential realism and an empirical example from a daycare centre, we demonstrate how children's perspectives emerge from and become entangled with pedagogues, ethics, spaces, materials and discourse. As childism aims to criticize and reconstruct fundamental normative assumptions and challenge the generational order (Franck, 2017; Wall, 2022), we find that the question is not about gaining access to children's perspectives, but rather to be concerned with the interactions wherein children's perspectives can emerge. This involves a critical view of the structures and basic assumptions that manifest themselves in the daily life of daycare centres and which underlie, and can result in, a subordination of children and children's perspectives.

Presentation 3: Depoliticizing children’s experiences
By Jeanette Sundhall, Senior lecture, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Drawing on a childist approach, this presentation examines the positioning of young LGBTQI+ persons in a political hearing about their school conditions.
In 2022 the City of Gothenburg released a report on the conditions of young LGBTQI+ persons in Gothenburg’s schools. The purpose of the report was to investigate what it is like to go to school for pupils who do not align with society’s norms for gender identity, gender expression, and/or sexuality. Based on the result of the report, which evinced difficult conditions for LGBTQI+-pupils, a group of young LGBTQI+-persons invited local politicians to discuss the issues, and at the same time demand change. Among others, a right-wing nationalist politician accepted the invitation. In this presentation, I will present an analysis of how this politician responded to the experiences formulated by the young LGBTQI+-persons. The analysis draws on the concepts of adultism, childism and political subjectivity as well as homonormativity, homonationalism and homotolerance. The overall finding of the analysis is, that the young people’s perspectives are depoliticized.

Presentation 4: Listening to children: A Childist analysis of family law cases
By Sarah Alminde, postdoc, Roskilde University, Denmark.
Building on critical childhood studies, childism and childhood prism research, this presentation will elaborate on an analysis of children’s participation in family law cases in Denmark (Alminde, 2021, 2024) Spurred particularly by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, together with a general shift in the view on children, several jurisdictions, including Denmark, have implemented legislative reform in the last decades to accommodate children’s participation rights. Even though such legal participation rights have increased, research in the family law field indicates that children’s perspectives are often undermined or excluded.
The presented analysis of qualitative data (workshops, observations, and interviews) establishes how the positioning of children and children’s perspectives (as well as how “listening to children” is enacted) can be crucial to understanding the mechanisms that either subsidize or undermine children’s perspectives in family law cases. It is further argued that “listening emergent” to children can offer a path to deconstructing the norms and structures that undermine and exclude children’s views—and thus a childist contribution to childhood studies. In continuation, the comprehensions of children, childhood, family, parental separation ect. that presents themselves in the analysis of family law cases, can indicate more general determining societal discourses as well as point to societal changes. Consequently, childhood can work as a productive prism for stimulating new understandings of society at large.

Period	23 Sept 2024 → 25 Sept 2024
Event type	Conference
Conference number	3
Location	Oslo, NorwayShow on map