The year 2018 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of publication of Joan Tronto’s Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. The argument advanced by Tronto in Moral Boundaries represented a significant intervention in feminist scholarship on the question of care and its provision, principally because it called our attention to the political contexts within which this work is always conducted. In this symposium, we have asked contributors to revisit Tronto’s contribution with an eye toward assessing the current state of our theoretical as well as political engagement with the question of “social reproduction” in its many forms. This symposium concludes with a response by Tronto to her interlocutors. For those who are unfamiliar with this path-breaking book or who have not read it recently, Moral Boundaries opens with a question: “What would it mean in late twentieth century American society to take seriously, as part of our definition of a good society, the values of caring — attentiveness, responsibility, nurturance, compassion, meeting others’ needs — traditionally associated with women and traditionally excluded from public consideration?” (2–3). The very asking of this question represented a challenge to much influential feminist scholarship at the

Symposium Review: 25th Anniversary of Moral Boundaries by Joan Tronto

Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care

It can be said that we inhabit a post-human world—an existence characterised by smartphones and social media, genetically modified food and IVF babies, life-extending technologies and prosthetic enhancements. In The Posthuman (2013), Rosi Braidotti offers a roadmap for navigating the global effects of this post-human predicament—one in which clear distinctions between the human and the non-human no longer hold, the nature–culture divide is destabilised, and man’s privileged status is under attack. The situation we find ourselves in, Braidotti argues, is neither dystopian technological nightmare nor futuristic fantasy but one that requires complex and nuanced critical responses to issues of subjectivity, ethics and politics. In the four chapters comprising The Posthuman, Braidotti outlines her vision of the post-human future based on an affirmative politics, which ‘combines critique with creativity in the pursuit of alternative visions and projects’ (54). As a feminist antihumanist, Braidotti expresses little nostalgia for the concept of ‘Man’ and its associated individualism, Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Chapter 1 ‘Post-Humanism: Life Beyond the Self’ charts the Humanist/anti-humanist debates to draw attention to the crisis of the human and the opportunity it affords to imagine alternative subjectivities grounded in relationality and the interconnection between the self and others (49). Methodologically, Braidotti adopts a feminist politics of location in her critique of various Humanist traditions. There is a profound reflexivity to her writing as she guides the reader through the intellectual trajectory that has resulted in her nomadic, affirmative politics. It is a legacy that incorporates social movements of the 1960s/1970s, as well as the continental feminism of Irigaray and Kristeva. Spinoza and Deleuze and Guattari also feature as philosophical touchstones from which she advances her vision for the posthuman as a ‘relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity, that is to say a subject that works across differences and is also internally differentiated, but still grounded and accountable’ (49). By framing her argument within the narrative of her own intellectual story, the book conveys an immediacy and intimacy not often found in academic prose. Stylistically, it is as though we are inside her head—a post-human experience, indeed. Her writing is as expansive and impressive as you would expect—a swarm of ideas assuredly curated into a compelling argument for generating new forms of subjectivity and ethical relations to confront the challenges of a post-human existence. Consistent with existing feminist appraisals of the post-human (Halberstam and Livingston 1995; Hayles 1999; Toffoletti 2007), Braidotti acknowledges the complexity of the post-human predicament, seeking alternative frameworks to think about post-human subjectivity in non-dualistic ways. What Braidotti brings to these debates is an emphasis on materialism by way of Spinozist monism. In championing the relational, embodied and embedded qualities of post-human existence, Braidotti reprises the concept of zoe—a generative and vitalist force that allows for connections and affinities to be made across

Book review : the posthuman

The ambiguity of play

The sociology of childhood has been used increasingly as a theoretical perspective in early childhood education since the late 1980s. In Australia, those who draw on the sociology of childhood have tended to use it in similar ways to European counterparts, being guided by six major tenets identified by Prout and James (1997) that form the basis of the sociology of childhood. These include the notion that childhood is a social construction, that childhood is a variable of social analysis and is closely connected to other variables such as class and gender, and that children's relationships and cultures are worthy of study in their own right (p. 8). Further, children are considered as active (rather than passive) agents in their daily lives and to be competent and knowledgeable about their own lives (p. 8). Although the sociology of childhood is comparatively young, there has been little analysis of the key tenets of the position. Morss is an exception and raises some fundamental issues for consideration, which include refining the notion of the 'socially constructed child', a term that is used widely in much that written about the sociology of childhood.

The Sociology of Childhood

Kindheiten in der Moderne : eine Geschichte der Sorge

Relationship patterns in the 19th century: The friendship network in a German boys’ school class from 1880 to 1881 revisited

This article reconstructs multiple enactments of overweight bodies in residential child care by analysing ethnographic field notes. The account links in with current tendencies in childhood studies...

Enacting the overweight body in residential child care: Eating and agency beyond the nature–culture divide:

Partizipative Ansatze werden derzeit als Forschungsprogrammatik vielfach erprobt, und in diesem Zusammenhang werden auch die spezifischen forschungsethischen Herausforderungen reflektiert, die sich hieraus ergeben. Fur die partizipative Forschung mit Kindern stellen sich besondere ethische Fragen, da hier intergenerationale Sorge- und Machtbeziehungen potenziell mit dem partizipativen Anspruch konfligieren, Kinder als "privilegiertes Erkenntnissubjekt" (BERGOLD 2013, S.1) in den gesamten Forschungsprozess konstitutiv einzubeziehen. Mit Bezug auf die interdisziplinaren Childhood Studies diskutieren wir daher im Folgenden, inwiefern es fur die partizipative Forschung eines interdependenten und relationalen Akteur_innenbegriffs bedarf, um Forschung mit Kindern partnerschaftlich zu gestalten. Entlang dieses Arguments pladieren wir fur das Prinzip einer "ethischen Symmetrie" in der partizipativen Forschung mit Kindern. Anhand der Erfahrungen aus einem laufenden Forschungsprojekt zur alltaglichen Zugehorigkeitsarbeit von Kindern loten wir die forschungspraktischen Implikationen aus, die sich aus unseren forschungsethischen Erwagungen ergeben. Sowohl bei der Entwicklung der Forschungsfrage als auch bei der Etablierung von Forschungsbeziehungen sowie bei der "Performanz" der Forschung mussten wir mit ethischen Ambivalenzen umgehen. Wir skizzieren diese Herausforderungen im Sinne einer "praktischen Ethik" und zeigen die Moglichkeitsspielraume sowie Dilemmata auf, die sich aus einem partizipativen Forschungsansatz mit Kindern angesichts der generationalen Differenz ergeben.

/pdf/ethische-symmetrie-in-der-partizipativen-forschung-mit-4vw4owekjj.pdf

Ethische Symmetrie in der partizipativen Forschung mit Kindern

SPYROS SPYROU: Thank you for accepting to participate in this special anniversary conversation of Childhood. All of you are actively participating in the ongoing discussions that are taking place in the interdisciplinary field of Childhood Studies through your own scholarly work and efforts to shape this dynamic field. What has brought you to this field and what do you find particularly interesting and fascinating in the work produced today in Childhood Studies? Feel free to refer to your own work and interests when discussing this. AFUA TWUM-DANSO IMOH: My interest in Childhood Studies was rather accidental I would say. After completing my BA degree in History and Sociology, I decided to embark on a Masters in Development Studies as I felt that was the career path I wanted to follow. This was a decision I made after spending 10 weeks in Ghana the previous summer undertaking fieldwork for my undergraduate dissertation. At this point, I was not aware of any debates in Childhood Studies and I was not especially driven to study development due to any special interest in children’s wellbeing or welfare in the South. However, early on during my Master’s degree, one of my modules focused on complex emergencies and the issue of children involved in armed conflicts was raised. For some reason, this topic struck a chord within me and I became somewhat fixated on this issue. What seemed to interest me in particular was how childhood was understood in societies where children were involved in armed conflict. I completed my MSc dissertation on the issue of child soldiers, focusing on Sierra Leone and Liberia (Twum-Danso, 2000). However, the question of how childhood is constructed and understood in different societies remained on my mind and eventually I embarked on a PhD project which sought to explore constructions of childhood in Ghana and the implications for the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Twum-Danso, 2008). It was when I started my PhD that I began to engage with the Childhood Studies literature (theoretical and methodological). It was at this point that I encountered the works of key thinkers of the time in Childhood Studies: Allison James and her various colleagues (James et al., 1998; James and Prout, 1990); Alanen, 1988; Alanen and Mayall, 2001; 788210 CHD0010.1177/0907568218788210ChildhoodSpyrou et al. other2018

/pdf/emerging-scholars-of-childhood-studies-11ilotwv9c.pdf

Emerging scholars of Childhood Studies

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