A MBIENTE DE DESARROLLO

Another theoretical consideration in my research – particularly in relation to the discussion of children’s work/child labour in Part One – is the view of childhood as a social position in movement, as beings in the process of becoming (Vigh, 2006; Kesbey et al., 2006). As a developmental phase of the life course leading to adulthood, childhood represents, it is argued, a notion that is rooted in the concept of socialisation. Thus, debates surrounding ‘child development’ were reflected in the critique of socialization, which was seen as not taking

children seriously and viewed them as ‘becomings’ instead of as ‘beings’. Hegemonic representations that cast young people as next-generation adults reproduce notions of them as incompetent and incomplete objects in the making. This further valorises ‘adulthood’ as a norm and ‘finished article’, as a ‘state of human being’ that ‘incomplete, immature, and hence, inferior humans have to aspire to…become’ (Horton and Kraftl, 2005: 135).

As I have noted already, these arguments mirror the split between the notions of ‘sociological child’, which views children in the ‘here and now’, and the ‘developmental child’, which views them in terms of their future. However, a mere focus on children as beings as opposed to becomings creates a false analytical separation between the two. In his recent book The Future of Childhood, Alan Prout (2005) questions the ‘social’ that lies at the heart of the not-so-new paradigm of social studies of childhood. He argues that works which fall into this multi-disciplinary arena of childhood studies have tended to focus on something called the

‘social’ at the expense of what might be thought of as the ‘natural’ (quoted in Horton and Kraftl, 2005: 135). Since childhood had been treated primarily as a universal phenomenon, Prout suggests, the ‘social’ view of childhood was opposed to the ‘developmental’, thus forming a binary with the older biology-centred paradigms. However, the legacy of this opposition is that terminologies that are used to ‘denaturalize childhood’ became analytically problematic.

The emphasis on children as ‘social beings’ undermines how certain universal regularities of pathways in biology interact with culture in the development of children. It also downplays the significance of early childhood development in outcomes for adulthood (Burman, 1996b;

Woodehead, 1998, 1999b), as well as the interface between children’s evolving capacities and competences and how that shapes their social experiences (Kjørholt, 2005b). Because of their rapidly developing bodies and minds, children growing up in extreme poverty and material deprivations are clearly susceptible to the impacts of malnutrition, a non-nurturing environment and material poverty. These are manifested in a lack of access to food, clean water, sanitation, education or health facilities, which impact on their lives in both the short and long terms (Montgomery et al., 2003; Boyden and Mann, 2005). As Ennew et al. (2005:

31) rightly point out:

Although “childhood” is socially constructed in different ways, all are based on some observable physical facts: children are biologically immature human beings who

initially are highly dependent on others for survival yet gradually develop capacities that decrease dependency. It is universally true also that biological survival and development are closely tied to the social arrangements through which children are nurtured from infancy to adulthood, arrangements that vary according to culture and climate, historical period, status and so forth. These social arrangements are complex systems of rules and expectations about who children are, what their role is, and what childhood is or ought to be.

The impacts of childhood deprivation resonate throughout life, with long-term consequences for capacity in adulthood (Boyden, 2006).¹ The case studies of the lives of orphans and working children make it clear that childhood experiences are shaped by and are the result of both ‘nurture’ and ‘culture’ (see LeVine, 1999; Scheper-Hughes and Sargent, 1998; Prout, 2005). Many children in my field sites struggle greatly to make ends meet, to provide their bodies with food, for which they engage in activities that might be damaging to other aspects of their physical development and well-being. As one of the child participants pointed out, growing up poor means ‘being hungry now and then, sleeping rough on the streets and staying unhygienic for months and even years’ (fieldwork notes, Addis Ababa, 2005). However, these physical needs – food, fluids, rest and sleep – tend to be taken for granted in ‘social’ studies of childhood, rather than being articulated explicitly.

Children are not only potential members but co-producers of life that enable them both to participate currently in and join particular communities of practice (Bourdillon, 2006; Katz, 2007). They develop and change and, like all human beings, they are in a state of becoming rather than of simply being. As Katz (2007: 1020) argues, learning, development and socialization are not restricted to young people, nor are they terminated at the plateau of adulthood. Researchers who view socialization as a dialectical process further argue that it does not suggest any contradiction between children’s lives at present and their learning for adulthood (Nilsen, 2001; Schildrout, 2002; Kjørholt, 2004).

Schildrout (2002) rightly points out that the process of socialization has wrongly been viewed as a one-way process in which children absorb the actions and practices of adults. Similarly

1 Boyden (2006) distinguishes between the life course transmission of poverty in which factors that prevent children’s development have impacts on adult life, and the intergenerational transmission of poverty, in which poverty is being transmitted to future generations through the experiences and developmental impacts of the current generation of children.

Nilsen (2001: 8) calls for reconstructing and reinvesting the ‘socialisation concept’ in her study of kindergartens in Norway. She argues that, by taking attention away from its future orientation and adult perspective, the analytical power of socialisation could be reinvested to reveal children’s agency and the ways in which the process of social interaction and resistance are deeply embedded in everyday life. Doing so, I would add, enables one to study how children live their childhoods today, and how they can anticipate taking on future roles and responsibilities through training, apprenticeships and education. I therefore view the notion of a ‘socially developing child’ as being able to function, and, in line with Aitken (2001: 21), as an embodied experience of becoming mature and accumulating competence. As Articles Four and Five amply demonstrate, children are actors in family livelihoods as well as vulnerable becomings in need of social protection. And, their childhood constitutes both being and becoming.

I further argue that the debate over the being or becoming of children might fruitfully be approached from the vantage point of ‘growing up’ in order to conceptualize childhood as a shifting phase in a life course. As noted already, childhood is a ‘state of being’ which is internally and externally shaped and constructed, as well as a ‘state of becoming’ that is part of the larger social and generational process. However, what is concealed between these

‘states’ is the multifarious and dynamic ‘process of growing up’. Childhood, however conceived culturally, is a temporal event, a stage of life before one takes up full adult roles and responsibilities. This phase of life can be viewed more holistically in terms of survival, protection, developing capacities; as ‘being’ (thinking, feeling, and values); and as

‘functioning’ (experiencing, roles, relationships) (Boyden, 2006). These interrelated dimensions, I argue, capture how growing up is flexible, agentive and ever-changing more for children than for people of any other age group.