Uses the idea of children's agency to survey the main issues in childhood studies.

The idea of children's agency is central to the growing field of childhood studies. In this book David Oswell argues for new understandings of children's agency. He traces the transformation of children and childhood across the nineteenth, twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and explores the dramatic changes in recent years to children's everyday lives as a consequence of new networked, mobile technologies and new forms of globalisation. The author reviews existing theories of children's agency as well as providing the theoretical tools for thinking of children's agency as spatially, temporally and materially complex. With this in mind, he surveys the main issues in childhood studies, with chapters covering family, schooling, crime, health, consumer culture, work and human rights. This is a comprehensive text intended for students and academic researchers across the humanities and social sciences interested in the study of children and childhood.

Are children the passive recipients of influence from their parents and from society? Is their development determined by their genes and their neurons, or do they have the capacity to think about and influence their own lives and the world around them? How does their interaction with their social and material worlds support or hinder agency? Are children agents, and what do we mean by agency? Children as Agents in Their Worlds aims to answer these questions through a critical psychological and relational approach, while referencing and critiquing a wide range of perspectives from other disciplines including sociology, anthropology and education. Greene and Nixon review the pioneering work of scholars of childhood studies and current post-human theories of agency and offer a developmental perspective on the emergence of the sense of agency and the exercise of agency in children. They discuss key themes including agency in families, agency within the school context and with peers, and children as agents in the wider public sphere. They explore agency and diversity, examining sex, age, genetic inheritance and contextual sources of difference, such as social class and geographical location. Offering a stronger theoretical base for research and policy, through a synthesis of both psychological and relational theories, Children as Agents in Their Worlds will be essential reading for students and professionals in developmental psychology, sociology and anthropology, as well as education, childhood studies, children’s rights and related fields.

By regarding children as actors and conducting empirical research on children’s agency, Childhood Studies have gained significant influence on a wide range of different academic disciplines. This has made agency one of the key concepts of Childhood Studies, with articles on the subject featured in handbooks and encyclopaedias. Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood is the first collection devoted to the central concept of agency in Childhood Studies. With contributions from experts in the field, the chapters cover theoretical, practical, historical, transnational and institutional dimensions of agency, rekindling discussion and introducing fundamental and contemporary sociological perspectives to the field of research. Particular attention is paid to connecting agency in the social sciences with Childhood Studies, considering both the theoretical foundations and the practice of research into agency. Empirical case studies are also explored, which focus upon child protection, schools and childcare at a variety of institutions worldwide. This book is an essential reference for students and scholars of Childhood Studies, and is also relevant to Sociology, Social Work, Education, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and Geography. Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Combining social, psychological and child development aspects, this book provides a holistic view of how children develop agency.