Lucia Rabello de Castro

Otherness in me, Otherness in Others Children’s and youth’s constructions of self and other

In childhood studies identity and difference are generally framed in the context of adult–child relationships. In this article it is explored how children and youth come to construe self and other in relation to other children and youth. Difference/otherness becomes an important organizing aspect of children’s social practices favouring a new agenda of analysis: that which examines the conditions of children’s constructions of social bonds in the midst of perverse social inequalities and social antagonism. Furthermore, a certain positive ‘value’ of difference is argued for having in view its political underpinnings: difference can be regarded as the result of discursive-material social practices which introduce plurality and diversity in human societies. This point seems to be crucial to the dynamics of social life and to a discussion of social cohesion and social fragmentation.In childhood studies identity and difference are generally framed in the context of adult–child relationships. In this article it is explored how children and youth come to construe self and other in relation to other children and youth. Difference/otherness becomes an important organizing aspect of children’s social practices favouring a new agenda of analysis: that which examines the conditions of children’s constructions of social bonds in the midst of perverse social inequalities and social antagonism. Furthermore, a certain positive ‘value’ of difference is argued for having in view its political underpinnings: difference can be regarded as the result of discursive-material social practices which introduce plurality and diversity in human societies. This point seems to be crucial to the dynamics of social life and to a discussion of social cohesion and social fragmentation.

The ‘good-enough society’, the ‘good-enough citizen’ and the ‘good-enough student’: Where is children’s participation agenda moving to in Brazil?

This article discusses how the new paradigm of children’s participation rights and competence has maintained unchallenged the subjectivity considered apt to be included as an opinion giver in the polity. ‘Developmentalism’ continues to feed as a theoretical input and a practical regulation of adult–children relationships. The article, based on an empirical investigation with Brazilian children, discusses how participation views of students and school staff, premised on the ‘good-enough student’, commit participation to an unchallenged school hierarchy and non-reciprocal adult-child relationships. This single standpoint from where one envisages the educational process leads to a de-politicization of school life. Consequently, the effective inclusion of children in society, constituting an important political challenge of our time, must be faced so that children’s participation can become more real and less rhetorical.This article discusses how the new paradigm of children’s participation rights and competence has maintained unchallenged the subjectivity considered apt to be included as an opinion giver in the polity. ‘Developmentalism’ continues to feed as a theoretical input and a practical regulation of adult–children relationships. The article, based on an empirical investigation with Brazilian children, discusses how participation views of students and school staff, premised on the ‘good-enough student’, commit participation to an unchallenged school hierarchy and non-reciprocal adult-child relationships. This single standpoint from where one envisages the educational process leads to a de-politicization of school life. Consequently, the effective inclusion of children in society, constituting an important political challenge of our time, must be faced so that children’s participation can become more real and less rhetorical.

Juventude e socialização política: atualizando o debate

RESUMO - O presente trabalho examina criticamente a atualidade da nocao de socializacao politica, tendo em vista as questoes que hoje se colocam sobre o distanciamento dos jovens em relacao a politica. O conceito de socializacao politica e analisado sob dois aspectos principais: em primeiro lugar, sao discutidos seus pressupostos relacionados a uma teoria identitaria de subjetividade que essencializa posicoes subjetivas relacionadas a idade, e se apoia numa visao desenvolvimentista da trajetoria de vida humana. Em segundo lugar, discute-se como os estudos de socializacao politica pressupoem uma divisao entre espacos publico e privado, em que as relacoes de transmissao cultural entre jovens e adultos, restritas ao espaco privado, desconsideram a contribuicao da juventude em relacao as decisoes da vida em comum. Palavras-chave: socializacao politica; juventude; relacoes intergeracionais; subjetividade. ABSTRACT - The present work analyses from a critical point of view the notion of political socialization and its current issues about the distancing of youth in relation to politics. The political socialization concept is analyzed according to two main aspects: first, it is discussed its assumptions in relation to an identity theory of subjectivity that essentializes subjective positions related to age, and it is based on a developmental perspective on human trajectory. Second, it is discussed how political socialization studies presuppose a division between public and private spaces, where the relations of intergenerational transmission are restricted to the private space, and thus, do not take into account youth contribution to the decisions of collective life. Keywords: political socialization; youth; intergenerational relationships; subjectivity.

Cidadania e participação social: um estudo com crianças no Rio de Janeiro

The objective of this work is to investigate the process children use to transform the city, being able therefore to construct a feeling of identification and appreciation towards the city they inhabit. It is through these sentimental transformations and the action of the subjects that the citizenship can be structured, based on the participation of children in a community. We conducted a workshop in a school in Rio de Janeiro, with 24 children aged between 7 and 8, in which we intended to accompany these children in the process of making a newspaper about their district. Along the workshop, they were able to build a new subjective and collective position when they searched for common sense to what they see and experience in the city, besides being able to wander in the city in a different way, playing different roles such as photographers, interviewers and researchers. We concluded that citizenship is constructed as a set of feelings and actions, as children may participate more actively in the establishment of bonds with those who they share the urban space with and, throughout narrativization, they can re-elaborate the notion of the city as a common place.

Childhood and its Regimes of Visibility in Brazil An Analysis of the Contribution of the Social Sciences

This article analyses the contribution of the social sciences to the visibility of children’s issues in Brazilian society from the 1960s to the present day. The first regime of visibility considered childhood a relevant structural component of social inequalities, a ‘social problem’, stimulating social scientists to support social policies. Studies of children’s labour and, most importantly, of educational issues stimulated a variety of research directions. The second regime of visibility disclosed the actor behind the child, revealing the child as a social actor and a subject of rights. Childhood studies gained impetus on account of new legislation following the internationalization of children’s rights. Despite the broader scope of issues that social research on childhood has addressed, more sustained investment is needed so that childhood can attain a more equal position vis-a-vis other more salient research topics, and secure, de facto, the role of active participants in social life for children.

Oficinas da cidade em Fortaleza

This paper presents an intervention-based project with children in the city of Fortaleza, when children were asked to elaborate, through focused group discussions, their constructions about living in the city. It was assumed that to live in a big city means to be able to position oneself critically before the demands of collective life. Discussions were stimulated about three distinct aspects: what is to live in the city today; what possibilities for collective life could be imagined; and how lived and sought for experiences could entail a realistic construction of city life. Children showed capacity of critically analysing their experience in the city, indicating those aspects that were, from their point of view, hardest to face. They also showed capacity of pointing out collective endeavours that could make it easier for them, as children, the task of living in a big city.

Children— Democracy and Emancipation

Modern conceptions of politics are intrinsically related to theories of subjectivity shaped by a teleological narrative expressing claims about instrumental rationality, moral and psychological autonomy, and individualized selfhood. Consequently, children have been considered to be lacking both the credentials necessary to act and participate in politics and the subjective dispositions of proper political subjects. This overwhelming conception of subjectivity as a purposefully and rationally oriented individual produced by a sovereign politics may be contested. Empirical data deriving from recent research on children’s and youth’s participation in schools are presented to show how children and youth effectively manage “to speak” and build a different point of view from those of adults about their school experience. Such research provokes analysis of insidious but unpublicized forms of domination and resistance. The inclusion of children in politics seems to depend on our capacity to overcome taken-for-granted truths about adult-centered society.

Children in the Cities: Un-invited Participants

Abstract This paper discusses the role of children and youth in the construction of city life. Institutionally, children and youth have been considered minor social actors, those to whom scarce participation is afforded in the planning, discussing and decision-making concerning change and improvements of city life. However, children and youth have invariably affected urban environment, though their contribution is almost always unaccounted for. The purpose here is to examine children’s and youth’s understandings of the city, the way they make sense and make use of urban environment. What sites, locations, displacements and trajectories children and youth make in the city are analyzed in order to search for the nature and the modes of their social participation and social recognition vis-à-vis other social actors. Special attention is given to the nature of social bonds that children establish in contemporary cities, producing new forms of sociability, thereby contributing to city life beyond radical or simplistic understandings, be them conceived as of a full and straightforward participation or of a straightforward marginalization.

Brazilian Youth Activism In Search of New Meanings for Political Engagement

This article discusses alternative forms of political participation among Brazilian youth today. The prevailing context of social and economic inequalities in Latin America stands as a key factor for understanding young people’s experimentations with new forms of activism. The article considers research based on in-depth interviews with twenty young residents of Rio de Janeiro about new youth collectives engaging with issues of social change. The analysis shows that the meanings of politics and political action are extended to encompass direct and effective action motivated by a personal interpellation against social injustice. It also shows the importance of experiencing politics as a “bottom-up” undertaking resistant to hierarchical constraints and characterized by individual autonomy. Finally, the article discusses whether this new political engagement may evade a broader political view of conflicting social forces at play and impose limitations on the construction of a political project that can be embraced by different collectives.

Politizar as relações entre jovens e adultos? a construção da experiência escolar pelos estudantes

Politicize youth and adults’ relationships? Students’ construction of their school experience. The present work departs from the problematization of two aspects. Firstly, a conventional view about youth’s political action which deters from investigating new forms and spaces of activism in youth’s daily life; secondly, the view of the school as a pre-political space unsuitable for the political. In an empirical investigation conducted with 1,291 students of private and state schools of Rio de Janeiro, we looked for the ways whereby they created a new position for themselves at school despite the prevalent logic of subordination which locates them as learners. The analytical categories resulting from the analysis – the modelling of students’ action, the construction of the students’ point of view and youth’s political-ideological profile and their action at school – show the difficulties and the potentialities of the process of politicizing youth and adults’ relationships at school.