Childhood Cultures in Transformation Childhood Cultures in Transformation
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Childhood Cultures in Transformation Childhood Cultures in Transformation 30 Years of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Action towards Sustainability Edited by Elin Eriksen Ødegaard and Jorunn Spord Borgen leiden | boston This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. All chapters in this book have undergone peer review. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. isbn 978-90-04-43365-6 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-43368-7 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-44566-6 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Elin Eriksen Ødegaard and Jorunn Spord Borgen. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Foreword vii Gunn Helene Engelsrud Preface ix Acknowledgements xii List of Figures and Tables xiiI Notes on Contributors xv 1 Introducing Childhood Cultures in Transformation 1 Elin Eriksen Ødegaard and Jorunn Spord Borgen 2 In the Best Interests of the Child: From the Century of the Child to the Century of Sustainability 13 Liv Torunn Grindheim, Jorunn Spord Borgen and Elin Eriksen Ødegaard 3 On Equal Terms? On Implementing Infants’ Cultural Rights 37 Pauline von Bonsdorff 4 Children with Severe, Multiple Disabilities: Interplaying Beings, Communicative Becomings 54 Kristin Vindhol Evensen 5 Spaces for Transitions in Intergenerational Childhood Experiences 74 Czarecah Tuppil Oropilla 6 Managing Risk and Balancing Minds: Transforming the Next Generation through ‘Frustration Education’ 121 Ida Marie Lyså 7 Children’s Food Choices during Kindergarten Meals 138 Hege Wergedahl, Eldbjørg Fossgard, Eli Kristin Aadland and Asle Holthe 8 Children, Food and Digital Media: Questions, Challenges and Methodologies 162 Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, Jonatan Leer and Susanne Højlund Pedersen vi Contents 9 ‘Children at Risk’ in Public Health Policy: What Is at Risk? 178 Jorunn Spord Borgen, Gro Rugseth and Wenche S. Bjorbækmo 10 ‘Childish’ beyond Age: Reconceptualising the Aesthetics of Resistance 197 Susanne C. Ylönen 11 Approaching Agency in Intra-Activities 214 Liv Torunn Grindheim 12 Studying Families’ and Teachers’ Multilingual Practices and Ideologies in Kindergartens: A Nexus Analytic Approach 229 Anja Maria Pesch 13 Studies of Child Perspectives in Methodology and Practice with ‘Osallisuus’ as a Finnish Approach to Children’s Reciprocal Cultural Participation 246 Liisa Karlsson 14 Global Paradoxes and Provocations in Education: Exploring Sustainable Futures for Children and Youth 274 Jorunn Spord Borgen and Elin Eriksen Ødegaard Index 297 Foreword While you read this book thousands of children around the world are suffering. More than 30 years after the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) established a global standard for children’s rights, the gap between the ideals espoused in the convention and the hardships still faced by children around the world is tragic and shocking. Despite the formal establish- ment of a “children’s bill of rights”, political calculation and economic concerns still take precedence over the wellbeing of millions of children: children who live in the Moria refugee camp, indigenous children in the Brazilian rainforest, orphans who have lost their parents in the COVID-19 pandemic. Not to men- tion the countless children who are struggling to contend with the dark cor- ners of the digital world and social media, the ones who are trapped in violent relationships, dealing with poverty, deprived of cultural stimulation or crip- pled by existential anxiety about the destruction of the natural world and their diminishing chance to enjoy a viable future on our planet. Moreover, global politics are unstable, and leaders threaten or engage in war without thinking of the consequences for children and young people’s lives. Nevertheless, chil- dren are not without hope. Inspiring young people such as Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai cry out for justice and sustainability, and their voices are heard around the world. They influence and inspire thousands of other young people to speak up for their right to education, peace, and preservation of the wilderness and natural world. This is where we are today. But how can the perspective of the Nordic re- searchers who contributed to this book shine a light on to how we understand children and childhood cultures? How do the researchers amplify the voices of the most vulnerable children, and contribute with knowledge, ensuring that they are not drowned out in the clamor of globalisation and change? All chapters provide up-to-date knowledge and discussions of various meth- odologies and philosophies in childhood studies and beyond, and they discuss findings and relate to ongoing debates over current knowledge in the field. By doing so, the book highlights the complexity of cultural studies of childhood in an inter-disciplinary manner and argues for an awareness pedagogy and trans- formative research agenda. Even though the studies presented in this book are derived from a Nordic researcher network, the authors believe that childhood is simultaneously local and global, and therefore that research on the lives of Nordic children can offer useful insights for people who work with children around the world. The work of these researchers provides rich empirical de- scriptions and new knowledge to help readers understand the conditions of viii Foreword the children in their studies – how they live their lives in the twenty-first cen- tury, how childhoods vary and how culture matters in their specific contexts. Ask yourself: How can the book you now hold in your hand help you rethink what you know about children? Children’s voices are the most fresh, vital, and authentic voices of our time; we can learn much from them – if we take the time to listen. When we become aware of the paradoxes, inconsistencies, ten- sions, and contradictions that exist in children’s lives and their possible impact on a sustainable future, we are called to action. “To make the world a better place for all children” may seem like a dream, but a path to that better world can be built. With its contributions of knowl- edge and insight, this book can help show the way – for the benefit of the chil- dren of today, and those who are yet to come. Gunn Helene Engelsrud September 2020 Preface When the BIN-Norden Child Culture Research Network invited to a conference in Oslo, Norway, called Fears and Pleasures in Nordic Childhoods in 2016, we raised provocative questions to the Nordic network of 300 researchers. The response was engaging and rich. Through a series of panels and a range of papers and course for master’s students at the conference, supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers (Nordplus – Higher Education fonds), we stated that childhoods can no longer be seen as a world within a world, but as differ- ent experienced childhood(s). Our previous uniform understanding of Nordic childhood was challenged as the conditions for cultural participation by chil- dren and adolescents are negotiated and co-constructed in new ways through interaction between the local, regional, and global and interferences through migration, refuges, travels, media, digitalisation, world economics, etc. The ed- itors of this book were at that time leaders of the network and invited research- ers to contribute to this book. Soon an interdisciplinary group of researchers, working in the Nordic region, agreed on taking the challenge to renew existing understandings of childhoods and education though developing their papers, and also researchers in the outskirt of the network were invited to give a com- prehensive contribution. The BIN-Norden research network was established in the 1970s and for the last 25–50 years, researchers in the fields of child culture, educational sci- ence, sociology and media have focused on studying and viewing children and young people in their own rights in order to grasp their perspectives and then both critique and analyze the child culture industry, child culture professions and the instrumentalisation of childhood and education. The book is a result of a three-year project entitled New Nordic childhoods – Paradoxes and trans- formation, supported