The article is based on a longitudinal qualitative study carried out by the author on children and their families in two areas of Belgrade (Serbia) in 1993-4 and 2000. Its goal is to provide an insight into how everyday life is structured and constructed for children by their family habitus. There are significant distinctions in how families from different social strata use their resources and thereby provide different cultural contexts for children. The main conclusion is that family habitus has a strong influence on allocation, distribution and the use of family resources and thereby structures the everyday life of children. At the same time, it activates different kinds of capital for (and by) children and thereby constructs different childhood practices.
The article is based on the longitudinal qualitative research (LQR) with 20 young people from the two social strata in two urban neighbourhoods of Belgrade carried out in four waves from 1993 to 2014. It deals with interpretation of changes in agency within social biographies through analysis of the narratives from two biographies. Its aim is exploration of agency as a response to changing contexts, and of its biographization-the interpretation of how the young people relate their agency to their identity and subjectivity. The last goal of the article is to discuss the advantage of LQR for exploring and interpreting changing agency. It is argued that interpretation of contextualization and biographization of agency contributes to its understanding as embedded into changing contexts within the social biography. It points that LQR provides invaluable methodological approach for understanding the complexity of interrelations of contexts, agency and meanings in time perspective.
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