Childhood and Children's Culture

This book is the meeting place of two closely related fields of research: children's culture and the history of childhood. The two "camps" share a joint methodological view of children as agents in their own lives, environments and even in society at large, yet it is also agreed that their lives and welfare are largely formed by adults and the society in which they live. Both research areas have been vital for the development of new strands of childhood research which are in many ways characterized by a departure from more conventional approaches, concepts and understandings that have dominated childhood research - and childhood itself - in much of the 20th century. The articles in this book represent numerous aspects of the two areas of research. In a critical vein, the sociologically and anthropologically oriented contributions cover studies on structural aspects of childhood as well as qualitative studies of children's everyday life, while the culturally oriented contributions comprise classical studies of children's culture products, history, media, play culture and symbolic forms of expression. The articles present general differences of divergences in methods and perspectives, but also show what the two types of approaches have in common.