DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Childhood Studies

Making Young Subjects

Karen Wells author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:John Wiley and Sons Ltd

Published:3rd Nov '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This paperback is available in another edition too:

Childhood Studies cover

What does it mean to think of children as social subjects and how should we go about studying childhood in society? Childhood is a key site where children come to understand themselves as particular kinds of people, not only as individuals but also as members of social and cultural groups. This compelling and accessible book explores how immature humans enter into political, economic, social and cultural life.

Integrating key theories from a range of disciplines, Karen Wells provides a set of analytical tools to explore how culture, society, politics and economics shape childhood and children's lives. She explains how childhood is not only culturally shaped, but also formed at the intersection of politics and economics. At this intersection between governing practices and the affordances of children's bodies, young subjects are made.

Childhood Studies will be essential reading for students and scholars in childhood and youth studies and related disciplines, and for anyone who wants to understand the impacts of social inequality on children and what it means to be a child in the contemporary world.

"Wells offers an interesting, astute and highly accessible analysis of the interconnections between liberalism, racism and the creation of the child subject. Her work compels Childhood Studies to become more self-critical."
Sarada Balagopalan, Rutgers University

"This original and provocative book has the potential to shift several key paradigms within Childhood Studies and set the agenda for future debates. Focusing on the interplay between the biological and the social, the book offers new and challenging ways of theorizing childhoods."
Heather Montgomery, The Open University

ISBN: 9780745670249

Dimensions: 229mm x 150mm x 18mm

Weight: 318g

216 pages