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Continuities and Change PART 1 Continuities and Change Children are often thought of in terms of number of key questions and debates of change, representing the future. Indeed, this is significance for anyone wishing to engage one of the stable features of modern discourses with children’s media culture from a time- on childhood. In a similar manner, since the based perspective. This introduction maps early days of print, media have been defined out some of the questions and debates that and debated in terms of innovation. These underpin most historical studies of children’s continual mappings of change are themselves media culture in order to clarify the theoretical indications of the dilemmas and challenges and empirical landscape and draw out some of which are taken up and analysed in this first the main implications for future research. part of the Handbook. The contributors set The first argument concerns the very notion children’s media culture within a historical of historical enquiry itself. A popular claim perspective in order to trace the continuities is that we need systematic studies of the and possible changes in the ways in which past in order to understand the present these cultures have been positioned by adults better, and even be in a position to predict and practised by children. In so doing, they the future. Historical studies are based on stress that historical analysis is a necessary an underlying understanding of research in antidote to any simple accounts of the rela- which comparisons across time appear valid, tions between children and media, balancing and so a salient issue is on what grounds such the often grand claims made regarding the comparisons may be made. Most prevalent beneficial or detrimental implications for through much of the past two centuries has children. In pursuing this main argument, been a teleological view of history whereby the authors range widely across theoretical historical development is understood as new conceptions, from a mainly deconstructionist events adding to existing states of affairs like focus on discourses on childhood (Prout) to pearls on a string. Such a view frames standard a mainly socio-cultural focus on practices of histories of childhood (Aries, 1973; Walvin, appropriation (Fleming). These four chapters 1982) as well as most media histories (Briggs were selected in order to display some of these and Burke, 2002). Inspired by philosophers key conceptual approaches and to represent such as Nietzsche and Foucault, historical some of the main fields pursuing historical scholarship from the 1980s onwards began to studies of the relations between childhood argue for the adoption of an archaeological and media culture (sociology, visual culture, view of history. Here, the focus is on literary criticism, film studies). In their deconstruction rather than construction, on differing accounts, the authors take up a detecting possible sediments of practices and [18:42 20/9/2007 5002-Drotner-Ch01.tex] Paper:a4 Job No:5002 Drotner:The International Handbook of Children, Media and CulturePage:17 17–35 18 THE INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF CHILDREN, MEDIA AND CULTURE excavating conflicting claims to power, with discourse of modernity to Reid-Walsh’s the present operating as the starting and end incisive and eye-opening empirical study of point of enquiry.This change of focus is part of analogies of interactivity in children’s media a wider scholarly reorientation in the history since the advent of moveable books in the of science towards shifting ramifications of eighteenth century. power and claims-making, and it surfaces, for If it is, indeed, possible to conduct historical example, in new histories of women (Offen studies of children’s media and their social et al., 1991), children (Stearns, 2006) and uses, then we may begin to ask more ethnic minorities (Gilroy, 1993). In media pragmatic questions about what it is we studies, the clearest examples of this more may learn about today’s media (and even deconstructionist approach appear in histories tomorrow’s) by investigating media in the of technology and new media (Marvin, 1988; past. How have media operated in children’s Winston, 1998). everyday lives in the past, and may we identify The archaeological approach to history has similar functions today? Which aspects of served to undermine a determinist view of children’s relation to media have changed both childhood and media, and it has offered and for what reasons? Comparing media a welcome reflexive component to histori- cultures across time is to begin asking cal scholarship by insisting that analytical questions about the grounds on which we complexity is no less when studying the may study empirical continuities and changes. past that in understanding the present. In so The possible correlations between continuity doing, histories of childhood, for example, and change remain among the most vexed have gained in analytical insight by tracing debates in historiography; this is perhaps commonalities across generations and by the historians’ equivalent of social science highlighting shifting definitions. For example, debates about structure and agency. As Prout the pre-modern definition of youth according (this volume) cogently states, these very oppo- to social status may be resurfacing in late- sitions are not neutral conceptualizations, modern societies permeated by discourses of but are modern constructions. He links the youthfulness to a degree that it becomes less discussion of continuity and change to a relevant to define youth in terms of age, as wider epistemological debate on universalism has been common in modern, industrialized and particularism in which universalism is societies. linked to biological laws and particularism is The archaeological approach to history linked to socio-cultural factors; and he argues tends to offer fairly abstract, macro-level for an inclusive understanding of childhood forms of analysis. Its popularity over the as ‘a heterogeneous biological-discursive- past two decades has meant that academic social-technological ensemble’. attention has moved away from studying This inclusiveness is productive, in that children’s media and their social uses in a it stresses the value of conceptual com- historical context towards critiquing discur- plexity in understanding childhood. Still, in sive constructions of childhood and media terms of empirical analysis, it leaves the culture. This shifting focus brings into view problematic of development, or formative another key question in historical scholarship. change, unresolved; or, rather, it transports Is it at all possible to make distinctions it into a discussion of universalism and between historical discourses and practices, particularism which may be helpful in framing or, as Swedish ethnologist Orvar Löfgren research questions but which is less felic- terms it, Sunday culture and everyday culture itous in seeking to unpack more mundane (Löfgren, 2001)? The authors in this part dimensions of empirical analysis. So, the of the Handbook offer differing answers, question of continuity and change raises ranging from Prout’s meta-discursive stand in fundamental epistemological issues about deconstructing historical notions of childhood the knowledge claims made within different as varying inflections of a dichotomous scientific paradigms (Danermark et al., 2002; [18:42 20/9/2007 5002-Drotner-Ch01.tex] Paper:a4 Job No:5002 Drotner:The International Handbook of Children, Media and CulturePage:18 17–35 CONTINUITIES AND CHANGE 19 Schrøder et al., 2003); and it points to scholarship immediately prompts discussions, the necessity of defining which dimension not only of empirical contextualization and of analysis are appropriate for conducting its limits, but of analytical contextualiza- particular types of research. The contributions tion and its possibilities. How much does to this part of the Handbook represent forms the researcher need to know about which of analysis ranging from macro-level (Prout, contextual aspects in order to make a valid Holland) to meso-level (Fleming) and micro- analysis of, for example, children’s film of level (Reid-Walsh). the 1920s? Knowing very little, one detects All contributors to this part of the Handbook only difference; knowing too much, one may endorse the formative role played by media recognize only commonalities. There is room in children’s lives both today and in the past. for reflection on these demarcations in the Prout emphasizes the conceptual importance following chapters, since they illuminate var- played by Vygotsky’s notion of material and ious historical moments in children’s culture symbolic technologies, including language, and offer analytical insights about childhood text and images, mediating between inner across a wide temporal and spatial spectrum. and outer realities through joint practices. The authors in this first part of the Fleming and Reid-Walsh both note how tech- Handbook make a claim for the usefulness nologies of play, such as toys, help constitute of historical studies in understanding the modern, Westernized definitions of childhood complexity of children’s mediatized cultures as an age-bound phase of life defined by of today. In doing so, they also illustrate the removal from economic production, yet important debates for future study. First, all preparing for its gendered realities; and the accounts are by adults and are framed by they both offer insightful examples of the adult eyes and experiences, while children’s conflation of toys as objects of play and media
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