Researching, not playing, in the public sphere

Abstract

Journals and research networks are awash with advice about how best to promote children and young people’s participation, with young people’s involvement in the doing of research often presented as a specific expression of this wider good. Most of this discussion, however, is concerned with methods, the practicalities of securing research involvement and, more recently, with research training. At the same time, wider debates about the uses of sociological research have unfolded at an abstract level, framed in terms of ‘knowledge for what’ and ‘knowledge for whom’ with little focus on research practice, including who is carrying it out. In this article, I examine the ‘young researcher’ to do two things: embed discussions about young people’s research participation in long-standing epistemological and political debates about the role of research; and add to the broader sociological debate by foregrounding the question of who carries out research.