This paper presents a broad outline of intellectual developments in child well-being research. Four intellectual currents are identified, the 'objective', 'subjective', 'standpoint' and 'praxeological' approaches. The narrative developed emphasises the role that critical contests over epistemological, ontological and methodological issues serve for developments in research. Drawing upon the various approaches identified, the paper concludes by discussing well-being in terms of social integration and system integration, advancing a concept of well-being that is nether relativist nor culturally monopolizing.
The collection of articles in this special issue highlights the benefits of interdisciplinarity for understanding the complexities of state violence. The authors include legal and political scholars, criminologists, historians, social workers, sociologists, anthropologists and literary theorists, who, by adapting their disciplinary lenses and international perspectives have provided a fulsome understanding of modes of state violence, its effects on citizens and communities, and ways in which civil society and state instrumentalities may aim to prevent, respond to and seek redress and remedies for the injuries inflicted by the state in this threshold year of 2020.
This article examines the relationship between state violence in the form of practices aimed to humiliate and acts of resistance to these practices. Focusing on the experiences of women and girls in the Parramatta Female Factory (1804–1848), Parramatta Girls' Training School and Hay Institution for Girls (1950–1974), we suggest that the practices used to govern women and girls can be read as attempts at humiliation—to degrade and denounce an individual's entire subjectivity as being unworthy. We argue that while shame can be the basis for reintegration, humiliation leads to other responses, including at an individual level, reclaiming one's status as being of worth, and at the level of social action through movements that reclaim group status and invert the direction of who has morally transgressed.
The collection of articles in this special issue highlights the benefits of interdisciplinarity for understanding the complexities of state violence. The authors include legal and political scholars, criminologists, historians, social workers, sociologists, anthropologists and literary theorists, who, by adapting their disciplinary lenses and international perspectives have provided a fulsome understanding of modes of state violence, its effects on citizens and communities, and ways in which civil society and state instrumentalities may aim to prevent, respond to and seek redress and remedies for the injuries inflicted by the state in this threshold year of 2020.
This article responds to the theme of this special edition by drawing on the findings of our research on child well‐being, where children linked a holistic understanding of well‐being with an emphasis on the socially situated nature of their experiences of well‐being. We briefly outline our epistemological approach and methodology, involving a multistage qualitative study with children 8–15 years, about their understandings and experiences of well‐being. We discuss the liberal predispositions in well‐being research and the ways in which these predispositions exclude discussion of the significance of the social for well‐being. We posit an explanation for the disparity between our findings on the significance of the social for child well‐being, and the way these topics are marginalised in much research on well‐being. In the remainder of the paper we outline the centrality of affective solidarity for children's well‐being, how generation structures adult–child relations and frames the ways in which children's experiences of well‐being can be facilitated by symmetrical, or jeopardised by asymmetrical, adult–child relations. We conclude by discussing how these conceptions of well‐being suggest metaphors of the social which challenge liberal conceptualisations of well‐being.
The book presented here describes an outstanding attempt, not only to include children's views but to partner with children to develop the concept of well-being and to study the phenomenon as the children understand it. The authors do this by placing the concept of children's well-being within the existing discourses on the topic and by developing their unique theoretical approach to the concept. Then, and based on what children told them, the authors identify different domains and dimensions of children's well-being and touch upon its multifaceted nature. The book concludes with drawing research and policy implications from an integrated summary of the study's findings and lists indicator concepts that present an alternative framework and conceptualisation of well-being from a child standpoint.
Das Konzept des kindlichen Wohlbefindens gewinnt in international vergleichenden Studien zunehmend an Bedeutung und ist von zentraler Bedeutung für das Verständnis von Kindheiten und Generationenordnungen in Gesellschaften. Aktuelle Herausforderungen der theoretischen Konzeptualisierung kindlichen Wohlbefindens betreffen die Normativität des Konzepts, die Art und Weise, wie Kinder selbst Wohlbefinden konzeptualisieren und die Bedeutung sozialer und kultureller Kontexte. Dies gilt auch für die räumliche Dimension kindlichen Wohlbefindens, die bisher kaum systematisch untersucht wurde. Diese Leerstelle hat erhebliche theoretische und empirische Auswirkungen. In diesem Artikel gehen wir davon aus, dass ein besseres Verständnis der räumlichen Dimension von Wohlbefinden hilfreich ist, um nicht nur Wohlbefinden aus Sicht von Kindern besser zu verstehen, sondern auch, wie sich Kindheiten aktuell refigurieren. Auf Basis einer vergleichenden, multinationalen qualitativen Studie diskutieren wir den Wert einer raumanalytischen Auswertung jenseits eines methodologischen Nationalismus. Wir stützen uns dabei auf empirische Beispiele aus Baku (Aserbaidschan), Genf (Schweiz), Berlin (Deutschland), Sydney (Australien) und Tel Aviv (Israel). Unsere Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass Handlungsmächtigkeit, Demokratisierung von Kindheit und die Bedeutung eines translokalen digitalen "eigenen Raums" zentrale Normen im Verständnis von Wohlbefinden der interviewten Kinder sind und zugleich Strukturmomente einer gegenwärtigen Refiguration von Kindheiten unter je spezifischen lokalen Bedingungen. ; Children's well-being has become the subject of attention in international comparative studies of childhood. The concept is central to understanding childhoods and generational orders within societies. Current challenges in conceptualizing children's well-being include addressing the normativity of well-being, how children themselves conceptualize well-being, and how this is embedded in social and cultural contexts. This is especially true ...
Das Konzept des kindlichen Wohlbefindens gewinnt in international vergleichenden Studien zunehmend an Bedeutung und ist von zentraler Bedeutung für das Verständnis von Kindheiten und Generationenordnungen in Gesellschaften. Aktuelle Herausforderungen der theoretischen Konzeptualisierung kindlichen Wohlbefindens betreffen die Normativität des Konzepts, die Art und Weise, wie Kinder selbst Wohlbefinden konzeptualisieren und die Bedeutung sozialer und kultureller Kontexte. Dies gilt auch für die räumliche Dimension kindlichen Wohlbefindens, die bisher kaum systematisch untersucht wurde. Diese Leerstelle hat erhebliche theoretische und empirische Auswirkungen. In diesem Artikel gehen wir davon aus, dass ein besseres Verständnis der räumlichen Dimension von Wohlbefinden hilfreich ist, um nicht nur Wohlbefinden aus Sicht von Kindern besser zu verstehen, sondern auch, wie sich Kindheiten aktuell refigurieren. Auf Basis einer vergleichenden, multinationalen qualitativen Studie diskutieren wir den Wert einer raumanalytischen Auswertung jenseits eines methodologischen Nationalismus. Wir stützen uns dabei auf empirische Beispiele aus Baku (Aserbaidschan), Genf (Schweiz), Berlin (Deutschland), Sydney (Australien) und Tel Aviv (Israel). Unsere Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass Handlungsmächtigkeit, Demokratisierung von Kindheit und die Bedeutung eines translokalen digitalen "eigenen Raums" zentrale Normen im Verständnis von Wohlbefinden der interviewten Kinder sind und zugleich Strukturmomente einer gegenwärtigen Refiguration von Kindheiten unter je spezifischen lokalen Bedingungen.
AbstractThere is widespread discourse and policy on children's participation in decision‐making. This is not matched with an equal level of implementation in practice. This qualitative research explores the policy to practice gap with senior decision makers in the child protection system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Their reflections on the challenges associated with translating the participation principles into practice are deconstructed to understand the complex and overlapping ways in which participation is perceived. The research data indicate there are competing understandings of participation at play, depending on the actor, their role and organisation. This paper suggests that genuine participation in practice relies on bridging the epistemic differences and interests of different stakeholder groups who are all critical to achieving children's participation in service decision‐making.
AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic represented not only a health crisis, but a social crisis for children, one that has disrupted notions of what a good childhood is. However, the longer-term implications of the pandemic are still to be seen, for children, their families and communities. This article is concerned with what these ongoing changes may be, based on a qualitative multi-stage study that asks children about their experiences of well-being before the pandemic, during lockdowns and post-COVID-19 lockdowns. This included asking seven children in online semi-structured interviews about what aspects of life brought on by COVID-19 restrictions they would like to see continue post-lockdown. We outline some of our findings. We describe new rituals and ways of organising time developed by children, facilitated by the use of digital technologies. We describe these new ways of managing time as task-based rather than rule-based, with children experiencing slowness of and greater control over their time. We found that lockdowns provided a possibility for children to assert a public agency through banal acts of sociability, for example, by conforming to public health measures such as mask-wearing and hand-washing. Whilst small acts, children discussed these in terms of being moral agents (protecting the safety of others) and as part of a larger civic attitude they observed around them. Thus, their acts can be seen as expressions of larger forms of social solidarity that contributed to a sense of collective effervescence.
AbstractThis paper presents a scoping review of the literature on child participatory research in Australia published in academic journals between 2000 and 2018. The review focused on research designed to engage with children and young people in the development, implementation and evaluation of services. A total of 207 papers were identified and distributed across eight service sectors: child protection and family law, community, disability, education, health, housing and homelessness, juvenile justice and mental health. The papers were reviewed against Shier's participation matrix, demonstrating that almost all of the identified papers included children only as participants who contributed data to adult researchers. Only a small number of papers involved children and young people in the other phases of research, such as designing research questions, analysis and dissemination. There is a clear interest in the engagement of children and young people in service design and decision-making in Australia. This paper is intended to serve as a catalyst for discussion on where there are gaps and where further Australian research is needed.
