The Production and Reproduction of Childhood

Abstract

Given the variation between concepts of childhood and the variation in children’s social experiences noted in previous chapters, it might be argued that childhood is always best understood in terms of its local diverse context; that it is no longer credible, as has often been the case in the past, to speak of ‘the child’ as a universalised and apolitical subject of the modern world or of ‘childhood’ as an unproblematic and universal feature of the generational order (see Chapter 1); and that, instead, we might best concentrate on exploring the local diversities and cultural variables which fracture the coherent sensibilities of the notion of ‘the child’ as a common and shared category status.