Intersectionality and Cultural Politics of Childhood

This proposed session will explore the cultural politics of childhood in the background of intersectionality. This session focuses on two interrelated issues: the cultural politics of childhood and the intersectional experiences of language learning. The cultural politics of childhood is factored by different histories, geographies and anthropologies pointing at the interplay of constraining structures and the dynamism of agency. The intersectional experiences of children are mostly socially constructed. Everyday language use of children plays a significant role in constructing and reconstructing social realities including their gender, class and religious identities. This session calls for theoretical, methodological and empirical papers exploring the interface between global and local processes in the production of childhood culture focusing onthe lived experiences of children from different parts of the world regarding their experiences of language learning and usage so as to identify how gendered, class-based, regional or religion specific linguistic and behavioural patterns come into play. The session will also focus on how the structure-agency debate can be related to the study of children’s language of children across the globe.