Spyros Spyrou

The limits of children's voices: From authenticity to critical, reflexive representation

This article provides a critique of the preoccupation with children’s voices in child-centred research by exploring their limits and problematizing their use in research. The article argues that critical, reflexive researchers need to reflect on the processes which produce children’s voices in research, the power imbalances that shape them and the ideological contexts which inform their production and reception, or in other words issues of representation. At the same time, critical, reflective researchers need to move beyond claims of authenticity and account for the complexity behind children’s voices by exploring their messy, multi-layered and non-normative character.

Constructing ‘the Turk’ as an Enemy: The Complexity of Stereotypes in Children's Everyday Worlds

The information presented in this chapter is drawn from ethnographic fieldwork with Greek Cypriot elementary school children and illustrates the process by which national identity is constructed as primordial by teachers and children at school. In this process, the Turks become the primary Other, against whom a sense of Self is constructed. However, in-depth interviews with children outside the school show that their constructions of the Turks can be more complex and nuanced, and thus less stereotypical, especially when the children are encouraged to reflect on who the Turks really are.

Between Intimacy and Intolerance: Greek Cypriot children's encounters with Asian domestic workers

This article explores how Greek Cypriot elementary school children construct their identities in relation to Sri Lankan and Filipino women who come to Cyprus as domestic workers. The article focuses primarily on the views of children whose families employ these women; however, the views of children whose families do not employ domestic workers are also explored to illustrate how these women are popularly constructed in childrens imaginations and in the absence of direct daily interaction with them. The study reveals that children access different cultural discourses and construct identities that are often ambivalent and contradictory and are revealing of new forms of nationalism and racism. For the children whose families employ domestic workers, the home becomes an arena for renegotiating their status as children in their interactions with these women. Thus, the encounter between Self and Other becomes critical to understanding reconstituted definitions of childhood and adulthood.

Researching children’s silences: Exploring the fullness of voice in childhood research

This article attempts to problematize the notion of children’s voices by focusing on one of its more problematic features, namely, silence. It argues that far from being absences or lack of data, children’s silences are pregnant with meaning and a constitutive feature of their voices; childhood researchers who need to account for children’s voices must therefore attend to their silences rather than merely their voiced utterances. Drawing on poststructuralist critiques of voice, this article illustrates the value of taking children’s silences seriously by situating them within the proper interactional, institutional, and discursive contexts which give rise to them.

Border Encounters: How Children Navigate Space and Otherness in an Ethnically Divided Society.

The article draws on ethnographic material from an ongoing study which explores 10- to 12-year-old Greek Cypriot children’s experiences of crossing to the north, the occupied part of Cyprus. By focusing on the act of crossing and the actual physical experience of visiting the occupied territories, the study seeks to highlight the mechanisms implicated in the construction of ethnic difference as children move through spaces and places and encounter ‘others’. The article argues that to understand how children navigate ethnic divisions in the context of these visits, we need to attend to the role of place-making in the construction of identity.

Motherhood in utero: Consuming away anxiety

This article focuses on examining and understanding the way motherhood and babyhood are constituted in the midst of cultural practice and particularly though consumption as a fundamental and constitutive element of modern-day definitions and understandings of motherhood and babyhood. More specifically, the article focuses on how middle-class first-time (to be) Greek Cypriot mothers acquire a sense of motherhood and simultaneously construct notions of babyhood as their pregnancies unfold; how the experience of pregnancy is lived and perceived by expectant mothers as a state of anxiety and a condition of risk; and, finally, how all these processes are mediated by consumption broadly conceived. Findings of this qualitative study show that the experience of pregnancy for these women was associated with feelings of acute anxiety for the amelioration of which they engaged in a variety of consumptive practices, especially medically related, which served to further institute consumption as a constitutive element of ‘motherhood proper’.

Introduction: Children’s interethnic relations in everyday life – beyond institutional contexts:

Though the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies is now well established and highly productive and the study of ethnicity, ethnic relations and nationalism has been so for much longer, the two have largely failed to inform one another in a mutually enriching fashion. This is not to suggest that there have not been notable exceptions but by and large the potential for cross-fertilization is still to be harnessed. It is in light of this general realization that we endeavour, through this Special Issue, to contribute to the debates initiated by others before us on the intersection between childhood and ethnicity. Our focus in this Special Issue is on what we consider to be one of the most neglected areas of enquiry in relation to this intersection, namely children’s interethnic relations beyond institutional contexts and the school in particular. By focusing on children’s daily interactions with peers and adults and exploring how children navigate between a variety of formal and informal institutional spaces we hope to shed light on the processes that give shape and form to what we commonly refer to as ‘identity’ and ‘belonging’. In line with the theoretical insights of the new social studies of childhood, the articles in this Special Issue highlight how children and youth are not passive recipients of adults’ representations and practices, but are rather competent social actors that actively shape the social and political worlds around them. This theoretical position underscores on the one hand the need to examine various institutional strategies (e.g. by the state, religious establishments, ethnic groups) that shape children’s experiences and choices while simultaneously emphasizing the need to investigate how children cope with society’s

Children's educational engagement with nationalism in divided Cyprus

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a situated, theoretically informed account of national identity construction by exploring childrens engagement with nationalism in the context of the classroom in divided Cyprus. The paper aims to illustrate how children enter and participate in the cultural world of nationalism in the classroom by accepting, resisting, and negotiating the ideological meanings they encounter there.Design/methodology/approach – The research on which the paper draws used an ethnographic approach. The paper draws primarily on teacher‐student exchanges during class lessons and, to a lesser extent, on interviews with children.Findings – The paper suggests that the process of engagement between children, teachers, and nationalism often produces powerful senses of belonging which are, however, always limited and unstable both because of ideological contradictions and ambiguities and because of childrens access to alternative knowledge.Research limitations/implications – Though ...

Time to decenter childhood

The category of “childhood”—as well as the related notions of “children” and “child”— requires a rethinking and, in fact, a decentering. In making this case, I draw upon and recognize, with gratitude and appreciation, the intervention made by my immediate predecessor as Childhood co-editor, Virginia Morrow (2015), who called attention to the political “work” our categories do when left unexamined. In her last editorial, Ginny discussed the current global move to re-introduce the term “adolescents” in official documents of the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of the Child, pinpointing the dangers of uncritically adopting terms which carry with them problematic assumptions which may subtly impose ways of thinking in the Global North to the Global South. Here, I take her concern with categories as a more general challenge for childhood studies to rethink the centrality of its most basic concept and category as a way to incite further reflection on what our categories entail regarding the kind of knowledge we produce— and will produce—as a field. In a recent (Spyrou, 2016) talk at the Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth (CSCY) 6th International Conference in Sheffield, UK, I attempted to make the case that it might be time for childhood studies to decenter its very categorical focus—childhood—and to utilize more boldly some of the insights from the so-called “ontological turn” to explore the very processes by which entities (human and non-human, including technological ones) come into being through their participation and entanglement in emerging phenomena. Although childhood studies, I argued, had good reasons to be child-centered in its early years of development (mainly to assert its difference and autonomy as a legitimate field), it now needs to move beyond that moment and reconnect with the wider world of scholarship and, in so doing, engage with real-life emerging concerns which escape the narrow confines of a “child-centered” field of study. In one sense, this has to be done at the level of theorizing with a renewed commitment to exploring those processes at work which constitute and delineate both the child as an entity and childhood as a phenomenon. Some of the recent work on agency which has criticized the more mainstream understanding of the independent, autonomous childagent has clearly moved toward this direction by seeking alternatives to essentialist ontologies (e.g. Eßer, 2016; Gallacher and Gallagher, 2008; Oswell, 2013), but obviously this is just one of many possibilities for critical engagement in the field. Asking questions about the relational encounters and the emerging entanglements of children with the world at large opens up a new world of inquiry which can help rethink the value and utility of attending to matters of ontology. Such encounters may include other humans (intraand inter-generationally), non-humans (including matter and physical materials in all their various forms), and technologies which alter in minor or major ways what it is to be 725936 CHD0010.1177/0907568217725936ChildhoodEditorial editorial2017

Growing up in divided societies: confronting continuity and change

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the six main articles which represent the special issue on “Growing up in divided societies” and to locate the articles within a framework of childrens experiences of divided societies.Design/methodology/approach – The article reviews the main methodologies employed by authors of the six articles and evaluates how these methodologies contribute to debates on researching children and young peoples everyday lives.Findings – The paper presents the core findings of the six articles and discusses these in relation to core themes, methodologies and policy implications.Originality/value – The authors argue that there is a dearth of research on children and young peoples everyday lives in politically contested societies and the special issue responds to this vacuum.