(with pre-Symposium event May 22-23, 2018) University of Lisboa, Portugal
The ESA Research Network RN04, Sociology of Children and Childhood hereby announces a mid-term symposium which will take place in Lisbon (Portugal) from 23rd to 25th May, 2018. This symposium is organized in conjunction with the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa and the Institute of Education of University of Minho. The symposium continues and articulates the ideas developed during the symposia in Jyväskylä (2012), Modena (2014) and Ghent (2016).
The objective of this symposium is to enhance theoretical understanding of childhood drawing on classical and new directions in sociological theory.
Contributions are invited that take forward the themes of previous symposia: citizenship, rights, responsibilities, participation, status, membership, identity and vulnerability. Contributions are also sought that provide theoretical approaches to understanding children’s engagement with and through cultural processes and cultural products in different contexts (e.g. social, economic, political, organizational, interpersonal, and educational). This includes, for example, theoretical understandings of the economic and cultural mechanisms through which children access or are excluded from, the arts, sports, sciences, education or other aspects of daily life in the current economic and political contexts. It also includes theoretical exploration of how children’s self-expression through, for example, the arts or technology, may enable their participation in public and political life; and, how children’s engagement with cultural products and processes may enable them to transgress the borders of generation, class, gender, ethnicity, age and other axes of inequality.
To strengthen our capacity to theorise within childhood studies the symposium will explore the tensions and synergies between childhood sociology and other theoretical traditions presented, related to, for example, culture and arts, politics and economics, science and sport, architecture and urbanism. We will consider how interdisciplinary connections within sociology and with sociological, cultural, political and economic theory can facilitate a broader sociological understanding of children, childhoods and how childhood studies can contribute a broader understanding of sociology and our social worlds.
Prior to the RN04 symposium a public event will be held to showcase the findings of international research (CUIDAR) that has worked with children to develop a child-centred disaster management framework for Europe and sociological theoretical developments in understanding of cultures of resilience http://cuidarfinale.ics.ulisboa.pt. Participants in the RN04 symposium are welcome to join this event at any time and are encouraged to attend on the evening of May 22nd, when the keynote will be given by Professor Lori Peek of the University of Colorado www.colorado.edu/sociology/lori-peek – details of this event will follow in the New Year.
The two day symposium itself (24-25 May) will be dedicated to paper sessions.
There will be no conference fee for either event.
We therefore invite abstracts from experienced as well as young and precariously employed researchers concerned with the sociology of children and childhood and those from disciplines sensitive to the sociology of childhood. Although presentations and discussions will mainly revolve around theorizing childhood, participants are welcome to discuss theoretical implications of work on childhood for theorizing other streams of sociology.
Presentations can be related to the following areas:
1. Classical sociological theories and new directions in sociological theories of childhood
2. Theoretical concepts of temporality and spatiality in theorising the socio-economic and political contexts childhood
3. Theorisations of cultural processes and citizenship practices (concerned with, for example the arts, sports, sciences, education, food or other aspects of daily life) in current economic and political contexts
4. Theories of rights, inequalities and injustices in childhood
5. Theories of children’s participation in institutional and informal contexts and the role of cultural products and processes.
6. Theorisations around intersections of gender, ethnicity, disability, class, nationality and age applied to children
7. The role of theory in interdisciplinary work on childhood The number of delegates will be restricted to 30 to enable discussion. The papers will be selected according to relevance to the areas of the symposium.
The symposium will be organised around short papers or provocations, with extensive space for open discussion, focused on different aspects of the relationship between
The venue is ICS-ULisboa (www.ics.ul), one of the Portugal’s leading Social Sciences research units. Located in the ULisboa Campus, ICS has108 qualified researchers, allocated to 7 Research Groups and hosts 9 PhD Programmes (most of them in consortia). ICS cutting-edge methodological approaches bridge a wide range of qualitative and quantitative social sciences methods and promote interdisciplinary cross-fertilization through innovative research design. With the support of this broad community of researchers, this research philosophy informs postgraduate teaching, advanced studies courses, young researchers training and outreach activities.
Instructions:
Abstracts must be written in English in no more than 400 words, and include 3-5 keywords. Please submit your abstract and full contact details as electronic files no later than the 1st February 2018. Send the abstract to ESAchildren.2018.lisboa@ics.ulisboa.pt
The deadline for notification for abstracts is 1st March 2018.