In this paper we explore some current issues in, what has come to be called, the new sociology of childhood and how these relate to the process of researching children's lives in general, and to our own research in particular. We discuss the developmental model of childhood, before going on to explore ideas about children as, on the one hand, inhabiting a relatively autonomous realm and, on the other as part of the same social world as adults but with different sets of competencies. The implications of these differing positions for researching children will be assessed prior to a discussion of the design of our current research, on children and risk, and the wider implications of our reflections on the research process.
In this paper we explore some key antionomies which have emerged in relation to children and childhood in late modernity: tensions between autonomy and protection and between perceptions of children as `at risk' and as potentially threatening. A particular focus here is on the sexualisation of risk, the degree of public concern expressed whenever the sexual `innocence' of children is thought to be endangered. We argue that the concept of risk anxiety provides a useful means of analysing contemporary fears about children and childhood and may thus be understood as contributing to the ongoing social construction of childhood. Here risk anxiety must be located within the context of gendered and generational power relations, in which children's lives are bounded by adult surveillance. Furthermore, risk anxiety may have material consequences for children's daily lives and for everyday adult-child negotiations around safety and danger, protection and autonomy.
While the institutionalisation of love in marriage and its representation in romantic fiction have been the focus of considerable attention in sociological and feminist writing, the cultural meaning of love as an emotion has been neglected. This paper explores the possibility of developing a sociological approach to love based upon the assumption that emotions are culturally constructed. Existing sociological and feminist work is suggestive of themes which the paper seeks to develop: the distinction commonly made between being `in love' and love as longer term affection, the mysterious power accorded to the former emotion, the contradictions between these two forms of love and the ways in which the ideology of romance has been associated with women's subordination. As a means of theorising these aspects of love, a conceptualisation of subjectivity as constituted through narrative or discourse is considered. This perspective may enable us to account for the cultural specificity of emotions, but there are questions which it leaves unanswered.
Article:Jackson, Stevi orcid.org/0000-0001-6981-0712 and Scott, Sue (2007) Faking like a woman? Towards an interpretative theorization of sexual pleasure. Body and Society. p. 95.
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