The New Social Studies of Childhood

HowNew Is the “New” Social Study of Childhood? The Myth of a Paradigm Shift John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sigmund Freud, John Dewey, Erik Erikson, Margaret Mead, and countless lesser-known philosophers, social scientists, and political theorists have not only discussed children at length but also centered their view of humanity and society on the possibilities of childhood. One of modernity’s cardinal features is the special importance that it has granted to childhood in the discourses on being human. As a result, the apparatus of the modern state is dedicated to unprecedented levels of service, regulation, protection, and segregation based on the age of individuals and modern ideas about their development, conditioning, agency, and innocence. Yet, over the past two decades, a group of determined researchers (mostly sociologists) have created an increasingly selfconscious body of writing questioning some of the most commonly held opinions about children and youth. Leaders of this cadre of researchers have repeatedly claimed that their work constituted a “breakthrough,” a “new wave,” to quote Qvortrup. James, Jenks, and Prout have called it an “epistemological break,” moving research away from a “pre-sociological child” premised on traditional theologies, romantic discourses, and developmental theories. Not long after the proclamations of “a distinct paradigm shift,” or a “new paradigm,” were trumpeted, leaders in this “new” aeld worked diligently to publish synthetic reoections upon its emergence, implications, and future. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xxxviii:4 (Spring, 2008), 553–576.