Florian Eßer

Relationship patterns in the 19th century: The friendship network in a German boys’ school class from 1880 to 1881 revisited

Abstract The article presents a friendship network from 1880 to 1881 in a school class, which goes back to the exceptional mixed-methods study of the German primary school teacher Johannes Delitsch. The re-analysis of the historic network gives insights into what characteristics defined the friendship networks in school classes in Germany at the end of the 19th century. ERGMs of the so far unmarked data show structural patterns of friendship networks similar to today (reciprocity, transitive triadic closure). Moreover we test the influence of the class ranking order (Lokationsprinzip), which allocates the pupils in the class room according to their school performance. This ranking order produces a hierarchy in the popularity of pupils, through hierarchy–congruent friendship ties going upwards in the hierarchy. In this respect, concerning the effect of school achievement on popularity, we find a strong stratification, which is not always prevalent today.

Enacting the overweight body in residential child care: Eating and agency beyond the nature–culture divide

This article reconstructs multiple enactments of overweight bodies in residential child care by analysing ethnographic field notes. The account links in with current tendencies in childhood studies to reach a more material and relational understanding of children’s agency. Examining concepts of embodiment as discussed in science and technology studies and phenomenology, the article offers an approach to childhood studies which connects the corporeal and agency. It shows how different enactments of children’s bodies and food produce different forms of agency.

Touch in residential child care: staff’s bodies and children’s agency

ABSTRACT This paper concerns the significance of touch in the everyday life of those living and working in residential child care. Public and professional awareness about child abuse has focused attention on the bodies of children and their vulnerability – but the same cannot be said of the bodies of staff members who touch children. This ethnographic study of a Scottish residential child care unit shows such touch to be central to the everyday participation of children and young people in care. On the basis of participant observation, the paper analyses how care workers influence the agency of children and young people by bringing their own bodies into their relationships with them. Based on a relational understanding of care, the paper elaborates on how tender and restraining forms of touch form part of care workers’ professional repertoire of actions. The analysis of various instances of touch in terms of sociology of the body shows how staff members can help to shape children and young people’s opportunities for participation with their own bodies. In conclusion, the paper therefore argues for a professional and reflexive engagement with bodies rather than a general avoidance of touch between care workers and young people.

Die Organisation von Schutz als alltägliche Praxis: Sexualität und Schutzkonzepte aus der Perspektive von Jugendlichen in stationären Einrichtungen

Stationare Einrichtungen sind beauftragt und verpflichtet, die Sicherheit der dort lebenden Kinder und Jugendlichen zu wahren. Die Autor_innen konstatieren in ihrem Beitrag, dass die Etablierung eines Schutzkonzeptes gegen sexualisierte Gewalt mit einer organisationalen Kontextualisierung sowie der Einnahme einer Adressat_innenperspektive einhergehen musse. Es werden insbesondere die Umsetzung der Schutzkonzepte in der sozialpadagogischen Praxis sowie der organisationale Kontext in den Blick genommen.

Theorising Children’s Bodies. A Critical Review of Relational Understandings in Childhood Studies

This chapter takes a relational understanding of agency as its starting point in order to systematise up-to-date approaches to reconceptualising the body in childhood studies. Starting from the observation that childhood studies has long had difficulty with the theorisation of the body, empirical studies are presented that approach the child’s body from the perspective of science and technology studies, of practice theory and of phenomenology. The thesis of the chapter is that the yield of a theorisation of the body is not limited to this, but, at the same time, helps to overcome common dichotomies in childhood studies between childhood as a social construct and children as actors. These can be dissolved in favour of a concept of childhood that is both material and social.

Zwischen Selbsttätigkeit und Erziehungsbedürftigkeit: das Kind in der “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung”

In the history of education it is rather common to distinguish two opposing ideas of childhood: the romantic image of the innocent child on the one hand and the image of the evil child that has to be rescued on the other. According to historiography at the beginning of the twentieth century this dichotomy has gained a particular shape in German pedagogy: the exponents of Progressive Education recover the child and founded their pedagogy on trust in its good nature. Their agenda tries to overcome the prevailing Herbartian pedagogy. Those “conservative” educators stress the importance of the technological aspects of education. They are said to have no explicit understanding of the child as they would regard it only as the negative counterpart to an education that aims to overcome its nature. This article claims to prove that such a simple dichotomy is not sufficient to describe the complex image of the child in the German pedagogical debates at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century. For this purpose the article concentrates on the first volumes of the “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung” (Journal of Child Studies) that was founded in 1896. The ideology of the main editors of the journal is attributed to Herbartianism. In the “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung” those Herbartians aim to bring together pedagogy with child studies as well as with medicine and psychiatry. Moral education is an important topic within the journal’s discussion but the child is usually not morally judged itself and therefore regarded neither as evil nor as good. Instead the knowledge of natural research and child studies is adapted to learn about the nature of the child and its development. According to the journal’s authors the results of child studies form a crucial background for professional education in general. Later on, those children that do not develop as scientifically expected can be declared the object of special pedagogical care. Should the deviating development be classified as pathological, this “treatment” will be inspired by medicine and psychiatry. Thus the religious or ethical categories of “good” and “evil” are partly replaced by scientific ones such as “normal” or “pathological”. Nevertheless pedagogical theorising remains highly moral in its goals – and setting these goals is regarded as the duty of adults. Although the child is understood as an active being, the educational authority has to be borne by the grown‐up generation. Altogether the educational programme of the “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung” conforms to the attitude of the Wilhelminian era. In contrast to most of the “progressive” movements, the ideas are not utopian – they aim neither for a republican society nor for the improvement of the German race as the basis for a new nation. The editors explicitly neglect the notion of a child as a political subject with its own rights. Later they remain highly sceptical about the character of human nature itself and do not believe that a new society can be built only upon the faith in it. Nevertheless some of the key authors are regarded as representatives of Progressive Education today – for example Karl Wilker, who acted as an editor of the journal and was also engaged in the New Education Fellowship later on. Also the journal authors’ claims for a renewal of education resemble those of the “progressive” movements: They also call for a turn to the child as the basis of pedagogy. These findings lead to the result that a history of childhood and education may not start out from a distinction between a child‐centred progressive education on the one hand and a conservative education on the other. Phrases like “the child” or “child‐centred” are to be found in very different pedagogies and hence are not sufficient to characterise a particular educational programme. In fact a great number of very different pedagogues recovered “the child” at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century and founded their model on this idea. In consequence “the child” turns out to be more like a metaphor. This insight does not mean that “the child” was an empty and useless phrase for historiography. On the contrary: as a medium of education it may help to gain a deeper understanding of the contrasts and similarities between different pedagogical approaches – regardless of whether they turn out to be more “progressive” or “conservative”. Therefore it is necessary to analyse in which contexts within the pedagogical discourse “the child” arises and which special functions it is meant to contain.