Children and Young People's Relationships

This book challenges the current state of childhood studies by exploring children and young people's agency and relationships. It considers how recent theorisations of relationships and relational processes can move childhood studies forward, particularly in relation to re-thinking claims of children and young people's agency and uncritical assertions around children and young people's participation and voice. It does this by bringing together case studies of children's inter-generational and intra-generational relationships from both the Majority and Minority Worlds. The main themes include negotiated power, agency across contexts and negotiations of identity. The chapters show both the heritage of childhood studies, particularly within the UK, and where it may be going. One of the key aims of the book is to add to the limited but growing cross-world dialogue that encourages cross-cultural learning from research and practice in both Majority and Minority World contexts leading towards a more integrated global approach to childhood studies. This book was published as a special issue of Children's Geographies.

Samantha Punch is a senior lecturer in Sociology in the School of Applied Social Science at Stirling University. Her research interests include rural childhoods and youth migration in Latin America and Asia, children's food practices, sibling relationships and birth order in Scotland. Her recent publications include Global Perspectives on Rural Childhood and Youth (Routledge: 2007) and Sociology (with Harden, Marsh, Keating, Pearson: 2013). E. Kay M. Tisdall is Professor of Childhood Policy at the University of Edinburgh. She is Programme Director of the MSc in Childhood Studies) and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships.

1. Introduction: Exploring children and young people's relationships across Majority and Minority Worlds 2. Not so 'new'? Looking critically at childhood studies 3. Children and young people's relationships, relational processes and social change: reading across worlds 4. Conflict and coexistence: challenging interactions, expressions of agency and ways of relating in work with young people in the Minority World 5. Agents of support: intra-generational relationships and the role of agency in the support networks of child-headed households in Zambia 6. 'Beings in their own right'? Exploring children and young people's sibling and twin relationships in the Minority World 7. Berg-en-See street boys: merging street and family relations in Cape Town, South Africa 8. Children's peer relationships and social identities: exploring cases of young children's agency and complex interdependencies from the Minority World 9. An afterword: some reflections on a seminar series