Reconceptualising Children’s Agency as Continuum and Interdependence

Abstract

Although the idea that children are social actors is well-recognised within childhood studies, the structural contexts shaping child agency and the everyday practices that manifest in children’s social relationships with other generations are not fully elucidated. This article identifies and discusses multiple and often contradictory concepts of agency as well as a framework for re-conceptualizing it as a continuum, and as interdependent. The central argument I make is that there is a need to go beyond the recognition that children are social actors to reveal the contexts and relational processes within which their everyday agency unfolds. It is also vital to ask what kind of agency children have, how they come by and exercise it, and how their agency relates them to their families, communities, and others. The article draws on research and ongoing debates on the life worlds of children in diverse African contexts in order to critically demonstrate how their agency is intersected by experience, societal expectations, gender, geography, stage of childhood, and social maturity. In so doing, the contextualized discussions and reflections have implications to rethink childhood and child agency elsewhere.

Children’s Agency in the Modern Primary Classroom

“…As such, agency is not possessed as an internal capacity; instead ‘the capacity to do and to make a difference is necessarily dispersed across an arrangement’ (Oswell, , p. 270). Within such an analysis, the ‘societal contexts that shape, enable or restrict’ (Abebe, , p. 5) possibilities for agency are an important focus.…”

“…They do not sufficiently advance what children know and do not use what they know to create something unique. The paper highlights a false binary between conformity and resistance, and the dual dimension of agency as both ‘potential and constraint’ (Abebe, , p. 8); within conformity there is also resistance, and where children appear to deviate they are pursuing a desire to be educated.…”

Vulnerability and agency across treatment-seeking journeys for acutely ill children: how family members navigate complex healthcare before, during and after hospitalisation in a rural Kenyan setting

“…These strategies demonstrate a form of agency, albeit from a position of weakness, which potentially expose her to new vulnerabilities. Vulnerability and agency should, therefore, be seen as multiplicitous and mutually constituted, arising from the intersection and interrelatedness of 'cultural, social, historical, political, institutional and material' contexts [19]. These contexts can promote and constrain the nature and level of individuals' agency.…”

Beyond Binaries

“…Treating children as social actors with agency has been a pivotal tenet within childhood studies (cf. Abebe, 2019;James et al, 1998;Oswell, 2013). In the upcoming analysis, we direct our attention on the distribution of agency in video recordings of ECEC activities.…”