Short Abstract:

The panel is aimed to discuss whether research with children can inform anthropology and support seeking new approaches within. At the same time, we reflect on how new approaches in ethnography and anthropology may be reflected in research with children.

Long Abstract:

Childhood studies methodology can help anthropology break the dominance of the interview as a research method and approaches to research which are based on oral accounts. Moreover, research with children reveals the need to look at the world and people in relational, material, sensory and embodied ways, which is in line with recent methodological approaches in anthropology. We ask whether research with children can inform anthropology and support seeking new approaches within. At the same time, we reflect on how new approaches in ethnography and anthropology may be reflected in research with children.

Our ‘unwriting’ is a call to look at children and research with children as a powerful inspirations for new ways of thinking, “how we have been doing things and how they can be done differently.” We aim to challenge the methodological and epistemological frameworks that have shaped our anthropological habits and conventional ways of thinking, pushing anthropologists to reconsider and rethink established practices. It is also a call to rethink ways of doing things in childhood studies. So, we are also looking for 'unwriting' in the research with children. How “after childhoods”(Kraftl 2020) paradigms challenge ethnography with and about children? What research tools do they provoke and what themes do they promote in research with children?

We welcome presentations of both bold, unconventional methodologies and research topics, as well as ethnographies that present children’s worlds in a non-obvious way.

This Panel has so far received 1 paper proposal(s).
Propose paper