And where is the child?

Abstract

The world of childhood is already represented in a fairly large number of sociological and interdisciplinary studies. But we still cannot answer the question – what makes children children? The concept of “childish” continues to be “invisible”, just as before the era of the new sociology of childhood.

Expert knowledge is formed based on adult interpretations of the world of children. Childishness is lost in a set of empirical variables, abstract conclusions, requirements for objectivity and standardization, and lists of quotes. As a result, we see an adult who is interested in himself.

We begin to tell the story of the search for a child from a presentation at a conference (November 2021) where we presented the results of a sociological study of children performed in the methodological framework of the participating approach. Teenage co-investigators conducted interviews with peers on the topic of video blogging. During the work, the teenagers spontaneously selected respondents and creatively transformed questions.

As a result, many aspects of the work were implemented in a very different way compared to what professional sociologists do. And the analysis of this “different way” yields the most interesting results. On the one hand, there is an expert assessment of the correctness or incorrectness of compliance with standard procedures. On the other hand, it turns out that the children’s approach opened up a new perspective that the researchers had not put into the original plan.

The article presents a reflection on the reasons why “childishness” eludes us and on the attempts to find ways to let it manifest itself. The authors propose shifting the focus to activity as a “process”, thereby avoiding the focus on obtaining a certain result, giving the child the freedom to make a decision at each stage of the study.