Tobia Fattore

Children’s multidimensional agency: Insights into the structuration of choice:

The structuration of agency that lies behind children’s accounts of their well-being in Australia is highlighted. The three forms of agency that are evidenced from the data – agency as competence, agency as self-determination and agency as practical action in everyday contexts – provide insights regarding the characteristics of social structure. The multidimensionality of agency appears in practical achievements, individual choices and everyday action that are all constituted intersubjectively. Theories dealing with the complex links between choice and reflexive monitoring allow better understanding of agency.

Children's representations of nature using photovoice and community mapping: perspectives from South Africa

ABSTRACT The aim of the study was to explore children’s representations and perceptions of natural spaces using photovoice and community mapping. The sample consisted of 28 children aged 12–14 years residing in urban and rural communities in the Western Cape, South Africa. Data were collected by means of a series of six focus groups interviews (three photovoice discussion groups and three community mapping discussion groups). For the photovoice missions, children were provided with a 28-exposure disposable camera and given 1 week to complete their missions. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse the data. Three key themes emerged, namely: safe spaces in nature, unsafe spaces in nature, and children’s favourite places in nature. Socio-economic status (SES) was found to be a determining factor in how children make sense of natural spaces. Children from low SES communities indicated being more constricted in their mobility, and were unable to access to safe natural spaces compared to the children from the middle SES community. It is recommended that an expedient starting point would be to work towards and build environmentally and child-friendly communities for children, with children as key contributors in the planning process using a child participation framework.

Activities as Autonomy and Competence: The Meaning and Experience of Leisure for Well-Being

In this chapter we explore the dominant adultist discourse on children’s structured and unstructured activities, as centred on preparing children for becoming adults and furthering the social order. We contrast the adultist discourse with the importance children place in their narrative on leisure activities as conducive to experiences of happiness and well-being In particular we discuss how children prioritise the use of leisure in their lives over formal education and link it with virtues and skills that are socially valued, especially those required for success in the labour market. For children, leisure is associated with well-being where it is an arena for autonomous action and provides opportunities for developing competence and being recognised for this competence.

Findings and Conclusions on Well-Being from the Unique Vantage Point of Children

This chapter presents some conclusions on the nature of child well-being, derived from considering, in totality, the implications of the standpoint on child well-being as aggregated from the findings conveyed in the individual chapters in this book. We identify the significance of constructing a child standpoint on well-being from qualitative research where a structural analysis is applied. We summarise the child standpoint arrived at—in terms of the overwhelming importance of sociality and meaning in life, for child well-being—the way children’s experiences of well-being stand in tension with the emphasis on child well-becoming and the way this tension reflects the generational structuring of adult–child relations. The significance in this context of intragenerational relations for children is identified. Our analysis illustrates that inter- and intragenerational relationships are characterised by potentials for both well-being and oppression (or ill-being) of children. In drawing out the policy implications of our construction of child well-being, we comment on the importance of cultural, economic, social and historical considerations. We end the book with the concretisation of policy implications in a set of ‘Indicator Concepts’ that can provide guidance for developing more specific and concrete indicators.

Children’s Health and Well-Being

In this chapter we illustrate how a child standpoint, in ‘looking up’ informs us of ways in which conventional adult discourses of healthism and developmentalism conflate health and well-being and place parents as the agents in promoting their childrens health. The children’s narrative in this chapter inform us that children mediate between different sets of health discourses when discussing the significance of health to their well-being. We show that children identify health as just one aspect of well-being. In discussing what is a healthy body, children emphasise the body as functional and as sense experiencing. While dominant health discourses emphasise individual responsibility for health, children discuss health practices as occurring in multiple social sites embedded within civil society. While children engage as agents intersubjectively, in furthering their health through eating and physical practices, when we look both ‘down’ and ‘up’, we gain some understanding of the multiplicity of network relationships in which children must engage in order to acquire a sense of well-being on issues of health.

Money, Markets and Moral Identity: Exploring Children’s Understandings and Experiences of Economic Well-Being

In this chapter we explore two themes regarding the relationship between children’s well-being and economic practices. We discuss how children’s economic well-being is deeply embedded in the economic well-being of their families. Children emphasise household standard of living as important to their sense of well-being but also discuss how it is children’s access to direct and indirect resources, intersubjectively negotiated within households, that is significant to their well-being. We discuss the importance that children place on being autonomous producers and consumers, a theme that has been taken up recently in economic sociology, but the realisation of which is deeply embedded in significant social relations. Underlying both themes is children’s emphasis on the importance of enacting moral practices as part of economic practices. In discussing these themes, we explore the implications of children’s experiences of economic well-being for understanding the relationship between market and society as it is relevant to the structuring of childhood and children’s well-being.

Researching Children’s Understandings of Well-Being

In this chapter we describe the epistemological approach in which our research and analysis of findings on child well-being has been situated. Our use of standpoint theory is explained in terms of our attempt to construct an understanding of child well-being based on children’s knowledge. We outline the methodological framework and methods we used for researching with children and for analysing what they told us. This framework is positioned within a tradition that has promoted the contributions of other marginalized, emic groups to knowledge-producing forums.

Overviewing a Child Standpoint on Well-Being

This chapter provides an overview of the elements of a child standpoint on well-being, as identified from what participants in our research project told us well-being meant for them. We attempt to convey something of the complexity and multifaceted nature of the child standpoint as identified in our research. We outline the importance of interlocking domains of agency, security and sense of self-identity for well-being and the salience children give to health, leisure activities and economic issues when describing how they experience happiness and well-being in their day-to-day lives. We attempt to convey the significance of emotions and relationships as they underlie children’s discussions of the meaning of well-being in all identified themes. In situating children’s narratives within the social science literature on these themes, it is evident that children place more emphasis on emotions and relationships, than has previously been reflected in the literature on child well-being. Their narratives give special significance to relations of care and also to friendships as experienced in child–child relations.

Agency, Autonomy and Asymmetry in Child-Adult Relations

This chapter provides an in-depth discussion of children’s experiences of agency. Children tell us that the exercise of agency is relational and as such fundamental to their experiences of well-being. We explicate from what children tell us the importance of extending the concept of agency from the notion of agency as participation, or self-determination, to the notion of agency as a form of social action, or self-determination through freedom of action in everyday life. In this context, we identify the importance of distinguishing between horizontal symmetries that characterise children’s affective relations with significant others and the vertical asymmetries in adult–child relations which, where they impact on children’s agency, can be obstacles to their experiences of well-being. This discussion highlights the tension between children’s everyday practices of agency and autonomy and macro-level structuring of child–adult relations.

Safety and Ontological Insecurity: Contesting the Meaning of Child Protection

This chapter positions issues of child safety and ontological security within the traditional focus on child protection and the contemporary focus on risk. The children’s narrative in this chapter points to complex interconnections between their vulnerabilities, their existential concerns and the ordering of social relations. Children emphasise the importance of home in providing both physical and ontological security; at the same time, they draw attention to the way in which adult–child asymmetrical relations, together with the way social anxieties are channelled into concerns for childhood and children, undermine safety, both in the home and in public spaces.