1.3.- hipótesis para la elaboración de esta teoría

As I have argued earlier in this chapter with reference to Qvortrup (2002), childhood is a structural category. Approaching childhood as a structural category means that we need to locate children and childhood in the wider “generational order” – an ongoing structural and relational process in which children themselves are active participants in the construction of identities (James, 1993). According to Alanen (2001), the idea of

‘generation’ as conceptualised by Mannheim is a social and historical category that is collectively interpreted, shared, experienced and practiced among those who are situated in a common generational location. This common generational location implies not only

19There are primarily two kinds of early childhood institutions in Japan; \ǀFKLHQ (kindergarten) and hoikuen (day-care centre). There are now fewer differences between the two than before, yet they have different historical origins and development (see Burke, 2008). <ǀFKLHQ, which are under control of the Ministry of Education (MEXT), generally have school oriented programmes. In contrast, hoikuen, which are under control of the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHLW), have focused more on full-day care of infants and toddlers and served working mothers (Tobin et al., 2009).

being born in the same social and historical time period but also shared experiences of a specific range of social events and ideas. This shared notion of “actual generation” tends to lead to the formation of “generational units”, characterised by face-to-face interaction among their members and similar ways of performing. Alanen’s term “generationing”

implies that the relations between generations – what it means to be a child (adult) or what childhood (adulthood) means – are defined in various manners in the context of particular institutional and social spheres, such as the preschool, the peer group, the family and the commercial market. In other words, like gender, children’s identities are defined and performed in different ways, in different contexts, and with different intentions (cf. Butler, 1990; James, 1993; Wærdahl, 2003).

The concept of generationing is important in childhood studies because children’s identity construction – recognising him/herself as a child, and a certain kind of child – is neither an external transformation of knowledge nor his/her own internal production of a category (Alanen, 2001; Mayall, 2002). Rather, it is constituted through both inter-generational and intra-inter-generational interactions. This means that certain kinds of childhoods are historically and socially generated and acted out in relation to other generationally located groups and group members.

The commercial market provides particular definitions and accounts of what it means to be a child, a preschool-age child, or a boy or a girl, and so do parents and preschool teachers (see Chapter 4). Those cultural definitions or even ideologies are part of the implications that children use in constructing their sense of becoming and being. There are multiple definitions, images and expectations that may overlap and conflict with each other. However, children may not necessarily recognise themselves in the definitions that are provided for or targeted at them; or, even if they do, they can choose to reject or resist them. The children’s market has historically used an age-based approach, and in contemporary marketing terms, the children I have observed can be categorised as ‘toddlers’ or ‘pre-schoolers’ with particular interests, needs and concerns.

Like the market, parents and preschool teachers construct their own ideologies of childhood and being a child, which are not necessarily independent of the market or other factors surrounding them (see Chapters 4 and 5). Neither children’s identity as a

child nor adults’ identity as an adult can exist without the other, since being a child (or adult) or a particular child (or adult), is an ongoing, reflexive cultural process of constructing identities: each of them is dependent on its relation to each other (Alanen, 2001). From an inter-generational perspective, it is usually adults who draw a line between adults and children, but children’s pursuit of their own categorisation as children, separating themselves from adults, needs to be also recognised and valued.

Moreover, intra-generationally speaking, children generate their own generational, often age-based cohorts, as illuminated in Chapter 6.

Like performing generation, performing gender is not only socio-culturally determined but also individually experienced and collectively controlled and maintained by children in their own peer culture (Aydt & Corsaro, 2003; Chen, 2009; Davies, 2003a, 2003b;

James, 1993; Thorne, 1993). A lot of research on children’s gender identity has been conducted on different age groups, from preadolescents and adolescents (cf. Boyle et al., 2003; Johansson, 2007; Swain, 2005; Thorne, 1993) to younger children (cf. Aydt &

Corsaro, 2003; Blaise, 2005; Davies, 2003a; Davies & Kasama, 2004; Marsh, 2000;

Martin, 2011; Nakamura, 2001). A common aspect of many studies, I would argue, is the strong focus on or even hypothetical presumption of gender polarisation. Studies on gender are often based on the assumption that gender is an either/or preposition – boy or girl – in which boys and girls are seen to be opposite and to live in two separate cultures (Thorne, 1993). The separate worlds of boys and girls are usually framed in a series of dualisms: boys’ groups are larger than girls’; boys take a large public space while girls take up a smaller private space; boys tend to like more physical and rough play, but girls more sedate and communication centred play (ibid.). Some scholars report that these differences among young children are less significant than these among older children (Adler & Adler, 1998; Corsaro, 2005; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987), although others dispute this (Blaise, 2005). Meanwhile, other scholars suggest that there are also cross-cultural differences in this respect (Aydt & Corsaro, 2003; Corsaro, 2005). As I shall indicate, these differences were not strongly apparent among the children in my sample although they were invoked at various times (see Chapter 7). However, the focus of my discussion is not so much on the level of gender boundaries themselves but on young

children’s understanding and interpretation of gender – which also includes gender integration and commonalities – in relation to people, goods and contexts.

Preschool-aged children, including the children in my study, do have a sense of gender in their peer relationships and daily encounters, but I would argue that doing gender is not only about detaching one’s self from other gender groups and having a segregated world, but also about two gendered cultures overlapping, and being interdependent and complementary (see Thorne, 1993). Yet these two gendered cultures, which are often considered different, share the preschool world, which is also intersected and further shaped by a series of other socio-structural factors such as generation (age), physical appearance and learning competences²⁰. This is not the case in my study, but class and ethnic issues in fact sometimes override gender matters – as discussed, for example, in studies of the literacy practices of primary school children in Australia (Davies, 2003b) and the superhero play of primary school children in England (Marsh, 2000). Even so, in my much more homogeneous sample, children’s preferences for interacting with same-sex peers were not as significant as in other studies (see Chapter 7). The children in both preschools had known each other intimately for 2-3 years as classmates and they were already familiar with each other’s interests and personalities, and therefore I argue that they might not have needed to rely much on gender in seeking to establish common interests (also see Aydt & Corsaro, 2003). In addition, the children at hoikuen might be more used to an environment with less gender dominated roles since both of their parents work (see 2.4.3.) and their fathers also seem to take care of household chores.

An interesting aspect of gender among Japanese preschool children was found by Davies and Kasama (2004) who used a similar process in their 2003 study of Australia, which involved reading feminist stories to children and listening to their responses. Like the Australian children, Japanese children drew meaning from the stories based on dichotomous gender categories. However, their evaluation and projection of the

20I have intentionally excluded ethnicity/race and religion, which are widely discussed in the Western contexts. They were not the relevant issues in my study because all the children in my research had Japanese heritage, and religious variations/differences were not discussed or examined during my participant observation. At the point at which I conducted my research, the part of town in which the preschools were located remained ethnically homogeneous, and there had been hardly any inward migration.

characters in the stories was centred on moral imperatives – harmony, social rules and obedience to authority.

This discussion of social identities – such as mothering through caring consumption and performing generation and gender – indicates that identity is a multi-dimensional, reflexive and relational process of identification. The process consists of a variety of practices characterised by forms of action and by the involvement of objects (Johansson, 2007), which are fluid and sometimes ambiguous. In these practices, there is some sort of balance of power, which does not necessarily mean ‘powering over’ somebody but shaping, sharing and maintaining a certain level of control in individual and collective lives, depending on different contexts and purposes.