Children’s Agency and Welfare Organizations from an Intergenerational Perspective

Excursions as corporate agents: A critical realist account of children’s agency

“…An account of scale is important in childhood studies, as there is controversy about the extent to which children's actions can result in influence because children themselves are often dismissed as insignificant or incapable of informed decision-making. Esser (2016) argues that theorising scale needs to move beyond binaries in which agency is described as thin (rather than thick) when it achieves only small change, or agency is described as collaborative (rather than revolutionary) when it maintains inferior social positions. Oswell (2016) argues that in theorising scale the focus of study should be the multiplicity and overlapping nature of space and children's interactions with and through these.…”

“…Recent developments in theorising agency within childhood studies move away from Giddens’ approach to agency. Accounts of individual agency are rejected as these reflect majority world (Punch, 2016), liberal, rational and conscious (Esser, 2016) or essentialist (Raithelhuber, 2016) misconceptions. Relational approaches are proposed, which conceive of agency as a social (Esser, 2016) or collective achievement (Oswell, 2013), because a course of action can only be implemented (and changes in social contexts potentially achieved) through dispersed networks or assemblages of human and non-human actors (Oswell, 2016) or people, things and process (Raithelhuber, 2016).…”

“…This can result in there being no distinction between structure and agency collapsing. Whereas for Giddens (1984: 377), ‘Rule-resource sets, implicated in the institutional articulation of social systems’ are structures, for Esser (2016: 15) ‘Rules and regulations … may work as agents’. Esser (2016: 8) suggests that avoiding duality thinking, relational theories make visible the social by revealing ‘the materiality and messiness of agency as well as its intersectionality’.…”

“…Whereas for Giddens (1984: 377), ‘Rule-resource sets, implicated in the institutional articulation of social systems’ are structures, for Esser (2016: 15) ‘Rules and regulations … may work as agents’. Esser (2016: 8) suggests that avoiding duality thinking, relational theories make visible the social by revealing ‘the materiality and messiness of agency as well as its intersectionality’. Roets et al (2013) suggest moving towards a lifeworld orientation, to focusing attention on systems as well as individual and social interactions.…”

“…A recent flurry of academic debate highlights the lack of theoretical underpinning for the concept of agency within childhood studies (Esser, 2016; Oswell, 2016; Spyrou, 2018; Stoecklin and Fattore, 2018). In many empirical studies of children and childhood the term agency is used without clear definition (Kallio and Häkli, 2013).…”