Schneider / Dinter Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Childhood in Contemporary Britain

Literature, Media and Society
Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-1-315-31335-1
Verlag: Taylor & Francis
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 266 Seiten

Reihe: Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present

In the light of the complex demographic shifts associated with late modernity and the impetus of neo-liberal politics, childhood continues all the more to operate as a repository for the articulation of diverse social and cultural anxieties. Since the Thatcher years, juvenile delinquency, child poverty, and protection have been persistent issues in public discourse. Simultaneously, childhood has advanced as a popular subject in the arts, as the wealth of current films and novels in this field indicates. Focusing on the late twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, this collection assembles contributions concerned with current political, social, and cultural dimensions of childhood in the United Kingdom. The individual chapters, written by internationally renowned experts from the social sciences and the humanities, address a broad spectrum of contemporary childhood issues, including debates on child protection, school dress codes, the media, parenting strategies, the representation and construction of children in audiovisual media, and literary awards for children’s fiction. Appealing to a wide scholarly audience by joining perspectives from various disciplines, including art history, education, law, film and TV studies, sociology, and literary studies, this volume endorses a transdisciplinary and meta-theoretical approach to the study of childhood. It seeks to both illustrate and dismantle the various ways in which childhood has been implicitly and explicitly conceived in different disciplines in the wake of the constructivist paradigm shift in childhood studies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schneider, Ralf

Dinter, Sandra

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Altersgruppen Kinder- und Jugendsoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Kinder- und Jugendliteratur, Märchen, Mythen, Sagen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Conceptions of Childhood in Contemporary Britain: Themes, Potential, and Challenges Sandra Dinter and Ralf Schneider

Section I. Contemporary British Childhood between Rights and Regulations

1. The Recognition and Distribution of Children’s Agency in the UK Michael Wyness

2. Dressing up for School: Beyond Rights and Welfare Daniel Monk

3. The Shifting Politics of Child Protection in Britain Nigel Parton

Section II. Contemporary Medial and Visual Constructions of British Childhoods

4. Images of Childhood in Flux: Britain and the United States Ellen Handler Spitz

5. Adults Looking at Children: Books, Bodies and Buying in Children’s Book Covers Jessica Sage

6. Children’s Television and Public Service in the UK Jonathan Bignell

7. Animation, Temporality and Skin: Performance and the Future(s) of the Child Karen Lury

Section III. Historical and Social Dimensions of Contemporary British Childhoods

8. Parenting Strategies, Social and Cultural Capital, and Online Communities: An Analysis of Mumsnet Ken Jones

9. Childcare for the Under-Fives in post-1945 Britain: Contemporary Reflections on Past Childhoods Angela Davis

10. Conceptualising Contingent Connections between German and British Childhoods Marion Daltrop: Theorist and Practitioner of Childhood, and Survivor Erica Burman

Section IV. Childhoods in Contemporary British Literature and Literary Criticism

11. Writing Plural Childhoods: Some Thoughts Concerning the Recent Carnegie Medal Shortlists Anja Müller

12. Children’s Literature, Cognitivism and Neuroscience, or, Capitalism and/as the Return to the Same Karín Lesnik-Oberstein

13. Narrating Childhood in Contemporary British Novels of Migration Sandra Dinter and Marcus Hartner

Über Autor(innen)

Sandra Dinter is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher in British Literature and Culture at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.

Ralf Schneider is Professor of British Literature and Culture at Bielefeld University, Germany.