Rematerialising Children's Agency by Blazek Matej

Author:Blazek, Matej [Blazek, Matej]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Children's Studies, Political Science, Public Policy, Social Services & Welfare
ISBN: 9781447334620
Google: Uk3RDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2016-06-01T05:30:33+00:00

Conclusions

The very particularities of how children encountered material objects indicate differences in what children’s encounters with things were even possible in Kopčany in relation to underlying factors such as children’s material background, their everyday mobilities and spatial awareness in the neighbourhood, but also their moral strategies (such as whether to steal things or not). This discussion not only outlined the topographies of children’s practices in relation to things and to children’s aforementioned circumstances, it also showed that while children’s encounters with things can be dependent on children’s social connections, these social relationships can be themselves affected by children’s possession, or at least disposition, of various material objects. Through things, children often built their social or symbolic capital, or developed their cultural and economic capital so their relative social position could have been adjusted. Hence, things did not only serve as an extension to children’s agency, but through practices stemming from these extensions, children also affected their other circumstances and consequently reshaped their agency.

The particular modality of impact that things have over children’s agency proved to depend largely on children’s experiences with different contexts, a statement I link to the discussions in Chapter Six, where similar arguments were given for the discussion of the role of the body. I suggest that the more intuitive and immediate forms of capital, such as the use value of things or symbolic capital, were more significant for how children perceived and understood things than those forms that depended on highly intentional arrangements, such as the patterns of exchange value or cultural capital. The need to draw on the latter forms of impact that things have, but also the capacity to understand how they can be formed in an encounter with things, emerged with children’s expanded social experiences and particularly with more standardised schemes of economic or cultural values that children increasingly encountered. While this pattern of difference can be related to children’s age, there are other factors that impact the level of children’s experiences, including their social and spatial mobility, affluence, range of social contacts and others. Together they outline complex topographies of children’s practices in relation to everyday material objects as well as highlight the critical element of (material) inequalities being important factors in the formation of children’s agency.

While people were present in the three empirical chapters so far as implicit factors in the formation of children’s practices in relation to things, bodies and spaces, I have not paid any explicit attention to the specific differences that the presence of other people made. Before discussing more grounded children’s relations, such as in the family, with friends or in formal institutions, Chapter Eight will focus on the immediate encounters of children with other people in the neighbourhood and their impact on their actions.

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