NEWSLETTER
Society for the History of Children and Youth
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No. 10 |
Summer 2007 |
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Review Essay: ‘In the Name of the Child’ Åsa Pettersson & Johanna Sjöberg We, Åsa Pettersson and Johanna Sjöberg, were honoured to take on the task, given to us by the SHCY-newsletter editors, to write a review of the conference, ‘In the name of the Child’. This was the first SHCY conference held outside the USA but also the first for us to participate in. During the opening session of the four day long conference professor Bengt Sandin, Department of Child Studies, Linköping University, and member of the executive committee of SHCY, welcomed everyone and outlined the aims and hopes for the conference but also for the field of history of children, childhood and youth. (Sessions referred to are listed at the end of the review). The emphasis was laid on the importance of an interdisciplinary, international, inclusive and interactive approach. These themes could also be found in Kriste Lindenmeyer’s presidential address, where she pointed out that the history of children and childhood is an eclectic field already but not as much as it could be. The aims, stated above, are the point of departure for this review. In one of the two roundtable discussions, Harvey Graff, James Block, Bengt Sandin, and Pavla Miller focused on the issue of the future of the history of childhood. The title ‘How can the history of children and childhood grow up? Revision and Redefinition?’ was quickly altered by Harvey Graff to ‘What is wrong with the history of children and childhood?’ But is there anything wrong with the field or is the future perhaps already here? We took on this question as part of our focus for this review but with a somewhat limited approach to the massive conference program. As our research interests are linked to issues of media, images and the visual in the study of children and childhood, we chose to attend sessions on these topics. A few of the different genres represented in the sessions were literature studies, research regarding computer games, film studies, photographs as a means for outlining a historical era, Chinese toy advertisements bridging the creation of a new national identity, and consumerism and multimedia tools for teaching history. Within the sessions the research questions could be argued to belong to different themes. One of these themes was: The child in the media. In the session on "Youth, Media, Violence and Protection in History," John Pahl outlined the development of adolescence in American films from 1936-1996. Eileen M. Ford discussed, in a later session, how media pictures of children were used in raising a critique of the state in Mexico from the 1940 to 1968. Analysing the representations of children was also a topic in the roundtable discussion, "Children and the Visual Arts," where Patricia Holland argued that her research on contemporary pictures of children in the media was ‘not about the children but about adults’ attitudes towards children’. Hence the research within this theme sheds light on the attitudes regarding children that children themselves would and will have to relate to. Jackson Albarrán’s research project also links to a different theme: Media for children. In the session on children’s literature several researchers showed how fictional media can be used as a source for childhood history. Doris Bühler-Miederberger presented, in the session regarding children’s taste, a project on cooking books for children and in her analysis viewed several notions of childhood linked to the rules and advices presented regarding the preparation of food. Another way of finding sources for the writing of a more traditional childhood history could be seen in the research made by Loren Lerner and Luminita Dumanescu. Though not in the same session, they showed the use of pictures as essential for understanding the lives of the children in the past in Canada and Rumania, respectively. They represented a theme called: History of children and childhood through visual sources. All these themes were, as shown, not located within the same sessions but running trough the ones we attended. The sessions themselves where held together by other headline topics such as region, genre and/or usage, but one that seemed to be of importance, implicit or explicit, to all the sessions was the issue of childhood socialisation over time. The conference shows that the visual and its artifacts are interesting sources for bringing forward the history of children and childhood. The focus chosen, media, images and the visual is, we would like to argue, an interdisciplinary field in itself. This may have resulted in that the sessions on visuality where more interdisciplinary than the others may have been. Though according to the conference program the diversity of papers and the interesting mix of sessions also points out how strong the interdisciplinary ambitions of the field already are. We can therefore conclude that the papers showed that much of the hopes for the future of the field already are in progress. But obviously improvements can always be done and the wishes for the field of history of children, childhood and youth are not only to be an interdisciplinary field but also an international one. Several voices were raised during the conference for the field to grow more comparative and become even more open for global approaches. A comment during the roundtable discussion, ‘How can the history of children and childhood grow up?’ was that few scholars from non-western countries were present at the conference and that this should be kept in mind when finding locations for forthcoming conferences. Making it easier for scholars to attend the conference might help the field to gain a more extended awareness of the diverse experiences of children. Pavla Miller put forward the importance of recognizing that growing up can be something of great difference and that the research to be conducted within the field actually should be studying childhoods and not childhood. This also relates to what both Hugh Cunningham and Linda Gordon raised in their keynote addresses. Hugh Cunningham stressed that there still is a living myth of an ideal childhood. This myth dichotomises children, making some of them invisible. He argued for a more differentiated view on childhood beyond the myth, allowing for all children’s everyday lives to be researched. Linda Gordon discussed the mainstream traditional stereotype of children as innocent. She pointed out that this view can lead to violations of children’s rights. She would like the research of this field to reach out and influence the society when it comes to policymaking regarding children. The issue of children used in the rhetoric for a variety of political purposes, were brought up by both Bengt Sandin and Harvey Graff during their roundtable session. This stresses the importance for the historical field of reaching out beyond the academy towards the public. To reach out was a topic that was stressed during several discussions and it was pointed out to be one of the most challenging tasks for the future of the field. It is therefore important for the teaching within this field to move in new directions. Examples of this could be seen in the session on teaching the history of children and childhood. The discussant of that session, Steven Mintz, argued that the public actually is interested when it comes to the research done on children and childhood. He stressed that anyone who is interested in the best interests of the child should therefore also be interested in the field of history of children since it has the opportunity to provide new perspectives on understanding the conditions and lives of children, past and present. So is there anything wrong with the history of childhood? As shown so far in this review, this conference has proved to give good examples of its aims but there are naturally things that we have found wanting. This regards discussions and reflections on theory and methodology. These were not topics of discussion during any of the sessions we attended and it seems a difficult task to manage to be both an interdisciplinary field and an interactive one if issues regarding the explicit research done are not on the agenda. According to this we were somewhat surprised that gender was not a topic often used to shed light on the different research questions. Childhood is always gendered and depending on age, ethnicity etc. and, as stated earlier, we are to be researching childhoods. This conference has shown how very interdisciplinary the field of history of children, childhood and youth are. It has also in an interesting way brought forward an interactive solution for the conference sessions in short presentations and extensive time left for discussions. When it comes to the international approach the conference has provided many interesting research projects form a variety of countries but the Western dominance still remains and will have to be revised if the field is to reach its goals. The inclusiveness of this meeting can, however, not be questioned. A lot of interesting discussions about the development of the field have taken place in a friendly and all embracing way. So, the future is at least in some ways already here. After this conference we are very much looking forward to follow the development of the field of history of children, childhood and youth and even more so we are looking forward to the next (SHCY) Conference. Sessions attended on the SHCY Conference in Sweden June 2007: The opening of the conference Bengt Sandin, Linköping University Keynote address: Professor Hugh Cunningham, University of Kent Keynote address Professor Linda Gordon, New York University SHCY President Kriste Lindenmeyer Address Roundtable 1 Children and the Visual Arts Roundtable 2 How can the history of children and childhood grow up? Revision and Redefinition? Session 1 Youth, Media, Violence and Protection in History Session 11 Cultivating children’s taste – socialization in individualized societies Session 22 Being Seen and Heard: Growing up in Modern Mexico Session 36 Childhood in the fictional world of literature Session 43 Children’s Agency, Consumption and Play Session 48 Teaching the History of Childhood © Society for the History of Children and Youth, 2007 |