Tiago Carvalho

Children and digital diversity: from 'unguided rookies' to 'self-reliant cybernauts'

This article discusses the heterogeneity in children’s appropriation and use of the internet that make up contemporary digital divides. Based on a survey of Portuguese children in mandatory education (8- to 17-year-olds), it relies on multivariate statistical procedures to build a topological mapping of internet use patterns. Variations in digital practices and parental mediation are analysed in relation to social backgrounds and demographic traits. Four clusters of users were thus identified: ‘self-reliant cybernauts’, ‘nurtured cybernauts’, ‘nurtured beginners’ and ‘unguided rookies’. This article aims to contribute to deepening the debate on digital divides and digital diversity within the sociology of childhood.

Internet, children and space: Revisiting generational attributes and boundaries:

At the dawn of modernity, in the 18th century, space became a critical category in defining generational attributes and locations. However, borders that previously tightly isolated adults and children are nowadays continuously challenged and modified by a constant and ubiquitous use of new information and communication technologies, namely the Internet, blurring notions of ‘private’ and ‘public’, ‘outdoors’ and ‘indoors’, ‘real’ and ‘virtual’. Giving voice to children, this article explores qualitative empirical data from a research project carried out in Portugal. It focuses on children as subjects and actors of these processes, especially in the way they combine ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ space and place in a geography of their own.

Class Inequality in Austerity Britain: Power, Difference and Suffering

O livro Class Inequality in Austerity Britain. Power, Difference and Suffering organizado por Will Atkinson, Steven Roberts e Mike Savage surge na sequencia de um conjunto de outros trabalhos sobre classes sociais realizados desde ha uma decada. No final da decada de 1990 surgiu no Reino Unido um conjunto de autores que, com base no quadro teorico desenvolvido por Pierre Bourdieu, fizeram ressurgir as classes sociais enquanto objeto cientifico, apos o seu desvanecimento das correntes mainstre...