An analytical ethnography of children's agency, power and social relations: an actor-network theory approach

Abstract

This thesis connects with and extends inter alia the recent but as yet peripheral move within the sociology of childhood to open up children's agency to empirical analysis. Drawing heuristically upon actor-network theory and thought of this kind its aim is to expose the networks of heterogeneous associations upon which children's agency and power depends. Focusing upon children's every day play activities; the analytical lens is extended to consider the role of nonhumans that are embedded in children's mundane play interactions within their local neighbourhood and within their school playground. In doing so, this thesis argues that nonhumans are crucial participants in social interaction that are implicated in and pivotal to the heterogeneous networks of associations that children, as heterogeneous engineers, actively create to achieve their particular goals and desires. As a corollary to this, an analytical incorporation of nonhumans has drawn attention to the wider role that nonhumans play in the life worlds of children. In respect to this, the argument this thesis advances is that nonhumans,in their diverse forms, are functionally important in holding children's social relations in place. Drawn from ethnographic fieldwork with children, this thesis argues that children's agency, power and social relations, take their form and are an outcome of the heterogeneous associations that take place between humans and `things'.