Contemporary Childhoods in Asia: Becoming (Pre)School Students in Hong Kong

Abstract

Drawing from post-structural theoretical and conceptual frameworks, preschools and kindergartens are thought of as sociopolitical institutions where productions of values, rules and regulations are omnipresent. Highlighting a kindergarten in Hong Kong as an example, this article unpacks the production of a desirable childhood in which the making of young children as miniature students is a sociocultural construction in the early years. Seeking to destabilise such sociocultural production of miniature students as a normative way of being and becoming in childhood, this article de-naturalises the process of (pre)schooling while critically analysing the multiple discourses that come to shape the formation of children as school subjects to further unpack the cultural politics and imaginations of what shall count as a good student/child as well as a productive young citizen in the twenty-first century.