IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021)

649

Southern Childhoods: An Agenda for Child Studies?

Abstract Submissions Closed

RC53 Sociology of Childhood (host committee)

Language: English

Session Type: Oral

The current four global challenges namely ‘Democracy, Environment, Inequalities, and Intersectionality’ are critical to the discourses and debates on children and childhood, particularly the lived realities, social complexities, and inequalities in the Global South. In Childhood Studies how do we critically engage in a sociological and an intersectional analysis that is sensitive to how gender, ethnicity, migration, race, age, status, disability or geography is represented and positioned in our thinking, writing, talking and researching childhoods of Southern countries? What are the contributions of the actors, epistemologies and cosmologies of the South and of invisible/underrepresented geographies and social groups in studies on children and childhood? In what ways do our contributions deepen, unsettle, contest and/ or dismantle epistemic hegemonies and injustices in our field? How do our debates and discussions unravel perspectives on decolonisation and decoloniality, postcolonialism, indigenisation, subalternity, and/ or Africanisation in studies on children and childhood? The broad aim of the session is to focus on the Global South contexts and perspectives on and about children and childhood, but also to advance the voices of scholars from the Global South indicating the relevance of a future and extensive agenda for childhood scholarship. This does not, however, exclude the participation from and scholarship of invisible/underrepresented geographies or social groups in the Global North. This session, therefore, welcomes papers that address the theoretical, epistemological, methodological and pedagogic (particularly the teaching and learning curriculum contexts in childhood studies) challenges and opportunities from a Global South perspective.