The Sociology of Children, Childhood and Generation - Paperback

by Madeleine Leonard (Author)

Outlining sociology's distinctive contribution to childhood studies and our understanding of contemporary children and childhood, The Sociology of Children, Childhood and Generation provides a thought provoking and comprehensive account of the connections between the macro worlds of childhood and the micro worlds of children's everyday lives.

Examining children's involvement in areas such as the labour market, family life, education, play and leisure, the book provides an effective balance between understanding childhood as a structural phenomenon, and recognising children as meaning makers actively involved in constructing, co-constructing and reconstructing their everyday lives.

Through the concept of ′generagency′ Madeleine Leonard offers a model for examining and illuminating how structure and agency are activated within interdependent relationships influenced by generational positioning. This framework provides a conceptual tool for thinking about the continuities, challenges and changes that impact on how childhood is lived and experienced.

Author Biography

Madeleine Leonard is a Professor of Sociology at Queen's University, Belfast where she teaches a course on Sociological Approaches to Understanding Children and Childhood for the Doctorate in Childhood Studies. She is particularly interested in creative and participatory approaches of including children in the research process. She employs a range of mainly qualitative methods in her research with children and their childhoods. Her main research interest is in teenagers' everyday experiences of growing up in politically sensitive societies and she has carried out research into the perceptions and experiences of Catholic and Protestant teenagers growing up in Belfast as part of an ESRC project 'Conflict in Cities and the Contested State' - www.conflictincities.org. She has also carried out research with Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot teenagers growing up in Nicosia funded by the British Council. She is a founder member of the Research Network for Sociology of Children and Childhood of the European Sociological Association's Research Network for the Sociology of Children and Childhood and she is involved in planning and organising the childhood sessions of the Association's bi-annual conferences. She is also secretary of the International Childhood and Youth Research Network (ICYRNET) based at the European University, Nicosia.