Barndom berör oss alla. Vad barndom är och bör vara sysselsätter bland annt forskare, pedagoger och föräldrar, samt barn själva. Med den här boken vill författarna bidra till förståelsen av barns och barndomars plats och roll i samhället. I boken behandlas barndomens historiska föränderlighet såväl som nutida variationer av barndomar och vad barndom kan tänkas vara i framtiden.

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This article asks questions about the ontology of child culture. It aims to position the concept of child culture at the forefront of theoretical research without creating a true or singular definition of the concept. It is rather a conceptual exploration of partial consistencies of child culture in and through practices. The focus of the analyses is on five institutional cultural practices created for children: two childrens museums, a science centre, a theme park and an amusement park. A cross-analysis of these practices provides the empirical material for proposing the notion of child culture multiple.

Even though fiction and fantasy are fundamental to how childhoods today are understood, thisis a topic that is seldom explored either theoretically or academically. We address the questionof how the relationship between material real and fictive real can be understood in new ways incontemporary society. We suggest that fiction can be understood in other ways than the hithertodichotomized approaches to it, and our aim is to focus on the hybridity that is created throughthe interconnecting word and, as in fiction and childhood and material real and fictive real. Thisarticle explores how fiction can be understood as hybrid and interrelated rather than a pure andseparate phenomenon, and in particular how materiality as something real and fiction as realmingle. This article introduces ways to talk about the fictive real as realunreality and highlightsthe drawbacks that might stem from these concepts since in several ways they re-enact childhoodinnocence and nostalgia, as well as negative differences between childhood and adulthood, wheredifferent childhoods share a subordinate position in society.

This book provides an ethnographic contribution to research on children’s consumption, family life and happiness. Various and shifting notions of happiness are explored, as well as conditions for and challenges to happiness, through an analysis of video-recorded interviews and mobile ethnography conducted in two of the most popular theme parks in Sweden. Initially, the study outlines how previous research has conceptualized happiness in association with time and place in a rather static way. Based on a treatise of notions of happiness in philosophy and the social sciences, there is a turn in this thesis towards practice. It generates fundamental knowledge about the complexity of happiness. By employing this approach, it is possible to highlight how happiness is enacted as part of and in relation to ideals of family life, time, childhood, money, consumption, experiences and material things. As we explore the practices of children and their families, we discover that shifting meanings of happiness are located in contemporary culture, where emotions and consumption are of central importance.

The approach is interdisciplinary, and draws on theoretical and methodological contributions in sociology, anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS). Notions of meshwork and enactment become important for the exploration of happiness as a complex and changing matter, which productively involves social relations and material things. Throughout the thesis there is a dialogue with previous research on happiness, consumption and childhood which highlights the importance of exploring messy practices, in movement. It is argued that explorations of practice contribute to a critical understanding of how happiness and contemporary ideals of childhood can be approached – through consumption and as part of citizenship in a consumer society where happiness is of central importance.

Denna avhandling utgör ett etnografiskt bidrag till forskning om barns konsumtion, familjeliv och lycka. Genom en analys av videoinspelade intervjuer samt familjebesök till två av Sveriges mest välbesökta temaparker utforskas skiftande betydelser av lycka, liksom dess förutsättningar och utmaningar. Tidigare temaparks-forskning har generellt tagit lyckans existens för given. Utifrån en inledande diskussion om bland annat olika filosofiska och samhällsvetenskapliga lyckoteorier argumenterar avhandlingen för att studier av praktik tillför ny och grundläggande kunskap om lyckans komplexa sammansättningar. Avhandlingen visar därigenom att lycka iscensätts som en del av – och i förhållande till – ideal om familjeliv, tid, barndom, pengar, konsumtion, upplevelser och materiella ting. Genom att fokusera på barn och deras familjers praktiker lokaliseras lyckans skiftande betydelser i en samtidskultur där emotioner och konsumtion är centrala.

Avhandlingens ansats är tvärvetenskaplig och hämtar teoretisk och metodologisk inspiration från sociologi, antropologi samt teknik- och vetenskapsstudier (STS). Genom denna ansats synliggörs sammanflätningar av sociala relationer och materiella ting som produktiva i iscensättandet av lycka. Genom en dialog mellan empiriska beskrivningar och forskning om lycka, konsumtion och barndom belyser avhandlingen nödvändigheten av att synliggöra och utforska röriga och rörliga praktiker. Det bidrar till en kritisk förståelse av praktik som kan förändra hur vi närmar oss lycka och samtida barndomsideal – som konsumenter och medborgare i ett lyckosträvande konsumtionssamhälle.

Résumé

L’enfant actif, compétent et capable d’autonomie : qualité intrinsèque ou résultat d’un processus de recherche ? Nous proposons dans le présent article d’explorer comment la conception de l’enfant actif, compétent et capable d’autonomie dans ses actions peut être interprétée à la lueur des choix méthodologiques effectués, lesquels exercent une influence directe sur les conclusions de recherche en situation d’observation participante. L’idée sous-jacente à cette étude est d’examiner ce que l’observation participante de type ethnographique peut nous apprendre sur la culture enfantine. Les choix méthodologiques ainsi que la façon dont les chercheurs abordent leur domaine de spécialité sont loin d’être neutres. De plus, ces mêmes choix méthodologiques actualisent en quelque sorte la réalité du sujet à l’étude. Notre article met en évidence la façon dont l’intersection des grandes lignes méthodologiques d’un projet de recherche, de l’approche privilégiée et des interactions chercheur-participant lors de l’étude conditionne la notion-même d’enfant actif, compétent et capable d’agir de manière autonome dans le domaine de la culture enfantine. À partir de l’analyse détaillée d’une étude de cas, nous envisagerons ce que les méthodologies de recherche en général et l’observation participante en particulier nous apprennent sur la conduite d’une recherche.

Abstract

The present article explores how “the active, competent child capable of autonomous action” is enacted through the methodological consequences of participant observations. The underlying idea is to investigate what ethnographic participant observations can tell us about child culture. Methodological choices and the ways in which researchers approach a field are not neutral processes. Moreover, the methodological choices made produce the ‘realities’ of the topic under study. The article highlights how a research project’s methodological outline, the way the field was approached, and the way the researcher and research participant interacted during the study enacted notions of the active, competent child capable of autonomous action in child culture. This is done by exploring – using detailed analyses of a single example – how research methodologies, in general, and participant observation, in particular, can tell us something about a research topic.

Providing extensive examples of the conditions of children's everyday consumption as well as how children themselves understand issues of work, money, scarcity, and consumer products, this book challenges the prevailing theories of consumption and opens up new ways of thinking about children. Arguing that consumption simultaneously reflects on the changing social role of children, family relations, market interaction, and state regulations, this account marries consumer studies with perspectives that emanate from the disciplines of childhood sociology and the history of childhood. With contributions from novice and established researchers, it generates consumer values no longer based on the idea of the naive or competent child.