Allison James

Social identities across the life course

PART 1: Problematising Ageing and Identity The Structuring of Age The Experience of Times Passage PART 2: Histories of the Life Course The Making of Life Course Histories Postmodern Lives? PART 3: Revitalising the Life Course Gender, Sexuality and the Body in the Life Course Family Sociality Across the Life Course Production and Consumption Across the Life Course Time, Memory and the Life Course

Growing up and growing old : ageing and dependency in the life course

Introduction Infantilization as Social Discourse Constructing Personhood Changing Categories of the Child Young at Heart Dependency, Family and Community The Making and Sustaining of Marginality Weakness and Power

Public perceptions of childhood criminality

This paper begins with the Jamie Bulger murder in Britain in late 1993 and sets out to examine the sociological contexts of the waves of shock and reaction that were manifested in the public perceptions of this event. Traditional conceptions of the child through modernity and their social and moral implications for generating a particular view of innocence and dependency are considered as providing the baseline from which childhood today appears to drift. Public reaction is analysed in terms of mass media content, against a general ignorance of the actual childs point of view. The paper concludes with the broader idea that images of childhood have become closely aligned with expectations of social integration and any fracture of one subsequently threatens the other.

Pump Up the Volume: Listening to Children in Separation and Divorce.

This article seeks to build on the theoretical advances made by the new sociology of childhood by exploring how recently postulated models of childhood might be applied to an analysis and understanding of an important issue relating to children and childhood which is currently the subject of considerable debate - the welfare of children in separation and divorce and the policy and practice issues surrounding this. It is argued that while these theoretical models offer some valuable insights, their explanatory power and applicability to issues affecting the lives of children can be considerably enhanced by an empirical focus on the role of law as a key influence in the social construction of childhood and by the addition of a temporal dimension to reflect the dynamic nature of such a process.

Embodied Being(s): Understanding the Self and the Body in Childhood

Though so commonplace as to be unremarkable, the school photograph offers us a splendid iconography of childhood and the child’s body. In British primary schools of the 1950s and 1960s, three sometimes four rows of children are lined up to face the camera. In the back rows the children stand tall: backs straight, with arms hanging down by their sides or, just occasionally, with hands clasped together. The front row kneels or sits crossed legged, hands in laps. Bearing smiles and half-smiles, bodies are visually uniform, if not in accordance with school rules of dress, certainly with that era’s fashion for children’s clothes and hair styles. Here is a class of children, barely differentiated members of a group, united by a common age, fixed at a particular point in time (see also Prendergast, this volume). Though now often displaced by portraits of the child (occasionally accompanied by a sibling, reflection of perhaps the growing recognition of children’s agency and an increasing sense of individualism), now in colour, the school photograph of the 1990s none the less continues to offer us a redolent image of childhood: still wearing the badge of school membership, with a uniformed body, hair brushed and newly washed face, the child poses, its stilled body presenting us, quite literally, with a picture of the school(ed) child: of a body tamed, ordered and controlled.

Childhood: Toward a Theory of Continuity and Change

The socially constructed character of childhood is, by now, recognized as an important factor in shaping childrens everyday experiences. It is no longer possible to see childhood simply as a common and universal biological phase in the life course. However, at the same time, it is being increasingly recognized that although acknowledgment of the social and cultural diversity of childrens lives is important, there remain many things that children do share as occupants of the conceptual space of childhood. Although contemporary sociological theorizing about childhood has highlighted this tension, it has, as yet, offered few solutions. In this article, it is proposed that by examining the role of law and social policy over time from an interdisciplinary perspective, it is possible to account for both change and continuity in childhood as a structural space and, in turn, to see this as being the source of the diversities and commonalties that pattern childrens everyday lives.

To Be (Come) or Not to Be (Come): Understanding Children’s Citizenship

This article explores notions of the “child as citizen” and “children’s citizenship” in the context of possibilities and promises for the rights of children that are laid out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It poses the question, Can “children’s citizenship” ever be fully accomplished for and/or by children? The article begins with an examination of contemporary theories of citizenship and considers the grounds for children’s citizenship in the light of the ways in which “childhood” is culturally, socially, economically, and politically constructed in different societies. It suggests that in social investment states, such as the United Kingdom, the contemporary cultural politics of childhood mean that children’s citizenship remains ambiguous. What is needed, the article suggests, is a greater understanding at the local level of how children’s experiences as members of society unfold. Thus, taking England as a case study, and drawing on some empirical research with children’s experiences in children’s hospitals, the article illustrates the ways in which adults’ ideas about childhood limit children’s agency and actions, thereby denying them status as citizens.

The good, the bad and the delicious: the role of confectionery in British society

Food, contemporarily, has a high political and public profile in British society particularly in relation to health and health education. In this paper I explore why, despite the advice of the body technocrats, confectionery continues to occupy a prominent and pre-eminent place in the British diet. I suggest that the particular place which confectionery occupies in the system of food classification is between ‘real’ and ‘junk’ food, and, as a ‘liminal‘ foodstuff, confectionery has the symbolic power both to mediate social relationships and to confer particular sets of social meanings. These meanings are resonant of the wider moral space within which attitudes towards food in Britain are conceptually located. By exploring the “mythology’ of confectionery some explanation may be found as to why the much publicised warnings and advice of health educationalists and nutritionists go unheeded.

Children's snacking, children's food: food moralities and family life

This work considers the construction of childrens food and childrens eating practices, in the narratives of children, aged 11–12, and their parents, and explores what these constructions reveal about child–adult relations and the nature of family life. It argues that, implicit to the differentiation of childrens and adults food and eating practices within families are generationally nuanced food moralities. We suggest that the day-to-day, ongoing negotiation and management of these generationally nuanced food moralities is integral to the constitution of intergenerational relations and generational identity and, indeed, the idea of ‘family’ itself.

Seeking the analytic imagination: reflections on the process of interpreting qualitative data

In the light of the changing landscape of social research, this article explores the role of the analytic imagination in the process of qualitative data analysis. It argues that while team research, secondary data analysis and the use of computerized qualitative data analysis packages may be altering the ways in which research and analysis are carried out, this need not change the processes of interpretation that are at the heart of qualitative data analysis. Here, as the article explores, imaginative acts are key to the analytical craftsmanship involved in interpretive analysis. This a process illustrated through the analysis of parent and child narratives gathered during a project about families and food.