Child as Method

‘Child as method’ is an analytical approach that addresses sociopolitical practices focusing on the positioning accorded the child/children. It formulates a set of problems and agendas for but also beyond childhood studies. It counters the abstraction of concern about (and for) children from other cultural–political contexts and dynamics, to attend to the ways these contexts and dynamics produce and interact with meanings and practices of childhood. Focused on children and childhoods, this approach is oriented to situating both in relation to wider sociopolitical relations. The multiple indexing of ‘the child/childhood/children’ highlights how constructions of childhood produce and constrain the forms of childhood that children actually live and practice. Far from disallowing children’s agentic activity, this particular, critically focused attention to modes of childhood available within ...