JS-55
Visualities of Childhoods – Images of Innocence, Vulnerability, and Inequality. Part I
Abstract Submissions Closed
RC57 Visual Sociology (host committee)
RC53 Sociology of Childhood
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
The historical and social fabrications of childhoods rest upon images of children’s innocence, indicating their disinterestedness and powerlessness vis-à-vis the immorality of society. Such forms of representation therefore allowed for the instrumentalization of children in the name of political, cultural, or scientific claims. Contemporary representations of childhoods added further dimensions of marginalization, which at the same time recognize and exploit children’s positions as powerless compared to adults, e.g., their victimizations, exclusion from education, forms of consumption, or decision-making, etc.
Therefore, this session raises questions on the current visual imagery of childhood. We welcome papers that take stock of global, regional, or local visual repertoires of childhoods and the wider network of interests that are tied to their position of powerless: What are the arenas, locales, and spaces that serve as the stage for these images? What are central iconological elements, who are the makers and users of those images, and which groups or institutions profit from such representations of children as vulnerable, innocent, or excluded?
Papers may also address the performativity of images in the reproduction of or challenges to the generational order and its inequalities: How do such images institutionalize, legitimize or criticize its structural features? Finally, we invite papers that address the children as the makers and users of the images that represent their own social position and respective claims of inequality, vulnerability, and injustice.
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