Disclosing Childhoods

Abstract

This introductory chapter outlines the basic argument of the book, namely that research plays a crucial role in the production of knowledge about children and childhood and that a critical childhood studies needs to attend to issues of representation, reflexivity, and ethics by making explicit and transparent the ontological and epistemological premises on which its knowledge practices rest. Drawing on new materialist thinking and the ontological turn, the chapter argues that our knowledge practices disclose or enact diverse childhoods as material-semiotic phenomena reflecting diverse political and ethical commitments.