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Unexpected allies: Expanding the theoretical toolbox of the
children’s rights sociologist
Michele Poretti University Institute Kurt Bösch (IUKB)
Sion (Switzerland)
Theorising childhood: Citizenship, rights, participation ESA RN 04 Sociology of Children and Childhood, Modena, 21-23 May 2014
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Outline
1. A theoretical turning point
2. Two tales about children’s rights
3. Expanding the toolbox
4. Applications to the study of public policies
5. Discussion
6. Conclusion
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1. A theoretical turning point
• Reflexivity, normativity and critique (Alanen, 2010, 2011; Reynaert et al., 2012)
• Main theoretical debates : – Beyond the structure-agency binary (Tisdall & Punch, 2014)
– Accounting for both the biological and the social nature of the child (Lee & Motzkau, 2011)
– Beyond human agency (Prout, 2005)
– Ideal-types, static views vs. movement, change, diversity... “assemblages” (Lee, 2001)
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2. Two tales about children’s rights
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3 . Expanding the toolbox
• A powerful, but heavy, Bourdieusian legacy • Bourdieusian dissidents
– Refusal of the “epistemological break” (Latour, 2006) – Refusal of heavy conceptual frameworks:
o “No groups, no social classes, no workers, no contexts, no youth, no women, no voters, etc. with which the social sciences (…) have made us all so comfortable… This work overflows with a multitude of beings, sometimes human, sometimes things, which never appear unless the state in which they occur is simultaneously described” (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991).
o “a flat world” (Latour, 2006b)
• A pragmatic research strategy, i.e. follow the actors and study situated action: – Disputes and critique – Test (“épreuve”) – Justifications
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4. Applications to the study of public policies
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“Living my municipality”
• Approach: Combining “unexpected allies” to enhance knowledge (Buzelin, 2005) and to foster reflexivity (Bénatouil, 1999)
• Research strategy – Localize the global
• Focus on processes rather than results
• Focus both on people and material arrangements
– Historicize the local • Locate action in history
• Situate the local within intertwined and/or nested contexts (e.g. networks, arrangements, ideas of the “good”, etc.)
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ADMINISTRATION (APPOINTED)
HEALTH EDUCATION PROTECTION PROMOTION PARTICIPATION
ELECTED POLITICAL BODIES
Mapping landscapes of critique
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Reaching consensus in situation open to critique
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A key test: State support to “youth projects”
• Factual criteria - residential status - age
• Relative criteria - project presentation - number of beneficiaries - autonomous mobilization of resources and network - youth-led
• Normative criteria - risk-free - feasibility - being (pragmatically) « realist »
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Into a network The Regional Conference of Child/Youth delegates
(CRDEJ)
• Hybrid institution (cantons and municipalities; children, youth and beyond)
– “A strange beast”… “a funny beast” (“drôle de bête”)
– “Who’s delegating us?”
• Relational positions, diversity and tensions
• Explicit efforts to maintain the capacity to critique despite growing institutionalization
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5. Discussion
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Strengths
• Disputes and critique do allow revealing key stakes
• The research strategy allows to reveal the social and material conditions through which particular “truths” are instituted – Sheds light both on change and stability of institutions
– Public policies as sites of tension, conflict, resistance
– Allows to account for complexity, uncertainty, paradox
• Particularly adapted to analyse current bio-politics (biological-social-technological)
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Challenges and sites of tension
• Practicing a “different kind of exteriority” (Garnier, forthcoming): – Following the actors… to what extent? What for?
– The risk of being prisoners of the cave
– A nomadic “bricoleur”?
– How to justify (technically, morally, politically, etc.) the pragmatic combination of partially antagonist approaches?
• Learning to live with the Otherness of objects
• How to navigate complexity without getting lost (Lee & Motzkau, 2011)?
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6. Conclusions
• A pragmatic engagement with theory: theories as “tools” (Garnier, forthcoming) or “research strategies” (Bénatouil, 1999)
• Not a new “grand theory”, but an expanded toolbox allowing a nuanced account of children’s rights practices
• The uncomfortable productivity of epistemic frontiers (Fassin, 2010; Foucault, 1984)
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Bibliographical references Alanen, L. (2011). Critical childhood studies? Childhood, 18 (2), 147-150.
Alanen, L. (2010). Editorial: Taking Children's Rights Seriously. Childhood, 17 (1), 5-8. Bénatouïl, T. (1999). A tale of two sociologies: The critical and the pragmatic stance in contemporary french sociology. European Journal of Social Theory, 2, 379-396. Boltanski, L. (2009). De la critique. Précis de sociologie de l'émancipation. Paris: Gallimard.
Boltanski, L., & Thévenot, L. (1991). De la justification. Les économies de la grandeur. Paris: Gallimard.
Bourdieu, P. (1997/2003). Méditations pascaliennes. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Buzelin, H. (2005). Unexpected allies. How Latour’s network’s theory could complement Bourdieusian analyses in translations studies. The Translator, 11(2), 193-218. Chateauraynaud, F. (2011). Argumenter dans un champ de forces. Essai de balistique sociologique. Paris: Editions Petra.
Fassin, D. (2010). La raison humanitaire. Une histoire morale du temps présent. Paris: Seuil/Gallimard. Foucault, M. (1984). What is Enllightenment? In P. Rabinow, The Foucault reader (pp. 32-50). London and New York: Penguin Books. Garnier, P. (forthcoming). Childhood as a question of critiques and justifications: Insights into Boltanki's sociology. Childhood.
Latour, B. (2006a). "Les 'vues' de l'esprit". Une introduction à l'anthropologie des sciences et des techniques. Dans M. Akrich, M. Callon, & B. Latour (Éds.), Sociologie de la traduction. Textes fondateurs (pp. 33-69). Paris: Mines Paris.
Latour, B. (2006b). Changer de société, refaire de la sociologie. Paris, L: La Découverte / Poche. Lee, N.M. (2001). Childhood and society: Greowing up in an age of uncertainty. Maindenhead: Open University Press
Quennerstedt, A. (2013). Children's rights research moving into the future - Challenges on the way forward. International Journal of Children's Rights, 21, 233-247. Reynaert, D., Bouverne-De Bie, M., & Vandevelde, S. (2012). Between 'believers' and 'opponents': Critical discussions on children's rights. International Journal of Children's Rights, 20, 155-168.