Excavating Gaza’s Children’s Voices: Generational Continuity and the Ongoing Genocide
Abstract Submissions Closed
RC53 Sociology of Childhood (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
The Palestinian generational sequence has historically served as a central mechanism for the reproduction of social life, collective memory, and cultural continuity under conditions of recurring violence. The ongoing genocide in Gaza presents a distinctive historical moment in which the infrastructures that sustain generational continuity—families, neighborhoods, educational institutions, and networks of care—have been subjected to systematic destruction. Women and children have borne a disproportionate share of this violence, while thousands of entire nuclear and extended families have been erased from official records.
Despite the growing scholarship on the genocide in Gaza, relatively little attention has been devoted to children's experiences and their role in reconstructing social life amidst destruction. This session seeks to bring the voices of Gazan children to the forefront of sociological inquiry, examining them not only as victims of violence but also as active agents engaged in sustaining and rebuilding generational continuity.
Children's experiences have been documented through a wide range of media, including drawings, diaries, oral testimonies, children's literature, social media content, and audiovisual archives. Together, these materials constitute an expanding archive of everyday life during genocide. By examining these sources, researchers can explore how children narrate, remember, and make sense of their experiences, and how they contribute to the reproduction of social life under extreme conditions.
The session welcomes theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions addressing children's voices, agency, memory, intergenerational relations, archival production, and the reconstruction of social life in Gaza during the ongoing genocide.