Researching Everyday Childhoods: Time, Technology and Documentation in a Digital Age

by Rachel Thomson, Liam Berriman, Sara Bragg

Overview

How can we know about children's everyday lives in a digitally saturated world? What is it like to grow up in and through new media? What happens between the ages of 7 and 15 and does it make sense to think of maturation as mediated? These questions are explored in this innovative book, which synthesizes empirical documentation of children's everyday lives with discussions of key theoretical and methodological concepts to provide a unique guide to researching childhood and youth. Researching Everyday Childhoods begins by asking what recent 'post-empirical' and 'post-digital' frameworks can offer researchers of children and young people's lives, particularly in researching and theorising how the digital remakes childhood and youth. The key ideas of time, technology and documentation are then introduced and are woven throughout the book's chapters. Research-led, the book is informed by two state of the art empirical studies - 'Face 2 Face' and 'Curating Childhoods' - and links to a dynamic multimedia archive generated by the studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350011731
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/25/2018
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Rachel Thomson is Professor of Childhood and Youth Studies at the University of Sussex, UK.

Liam Berriman is Lecturer in Digital Humanities/Social Science at the University of Sussex, UK.

Sara Bragg is a Senior Research Fellow in the Education Research Centre, University of Brighton, UK.

Table of Contents

Foreword, David Buckingham
Acknowledgments
1. Everyday Childhoods: Time, Technology and Documentation, Rachel Thomson, Liam Berriman and Sara Bragg
2. Recipes for Documenting Everyday Lives and Times, Rachel Thomson with Susi Arnott, Lucy Hadfield, Mary Jane Kehily and Sue Sharpe
3. Protection, Participation and Ethical Labour, Rachel Thomson with Ester McGeeney
4. Spectacles of Intimacy: The Moral Landscape of Teenage Social Media, Liam Berriman and Rachel Thomson
5. Materialising Time: Toys, Memory and Nostalgia, Liam Berriman
6. The Work of Gender for Children: Now You See It Now You Don't, Rachel Thomson, Sara Bragg and Mary Jane Kehily
7. Tracing the Affects of Contemporary Schooling, Sara Bragg
8. Recipes for Co-Production with Children and Young People, Liam Berriman and Kate Howland with Fiona Courage
9. A Fellow Traveller: The Opening of an Archive for Secondary Analysis, Jette Kofoed
10. Researching as a Popular and professional Practice, Rachel Thomson
Appendix 1: The Story of the Study, Rachel Thomson
Appendix 2: The Cast, Liam Berriman
Glossary
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

A fascinating and well-researched look at how kids and teens actually use, understand, and feel about digital media that provides an important counterpoint to moralizing and panic. By listening and working with young people, the authors provide a sorely-needed empirical perspective on a topic often characterized by sensationalism.
Alice Marwick, Assistant Professor, Media & Technology Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US

From its opening pages, the leading authors guide us through a nuanced engagement with key theoretical ideas about contemporary technological change and the lives of young people subtly synthesised with rich and detailed empirical case studies. This book, set apart from the rest, is tender and responsive to both the participants and the data. It is insightful in quite profound ways. This is a book from which to learn and to change one's practice as a researcher and a social thinker.
David Oswell, Professor of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

From the very first page this compelling polyvocal book bursts with an abundance of detailed conceptual-methodological practices for understanding everyday childhoods and contemporary research. While demonstrating new commitments to the ethical labour required for care in research, it also provides an accessible guide to how we might all enact this in practice. Holding the research archive in mind from the beginning, this book is an instantiation of a transformed research practice, and I cannot wait to see the future archive of research that this text will inspire.
Niamh Moore, Chancellor's Fellow and Deputy Director of Research (Ethics), University of Edinburgh, UK

From the Publisher