Une approche intergénérationnelle de l’enfance

Abstract

International audienceThe rationale for any concept of childhood is based on the confidence that childhood is something distinctively different and separate from its ‘Other’ which most obviously is adulthood. The child and the adult, childhood and adulthood have since long formed a contrastive pair. From the philosophers of Hellenic Antiquity to modern psychology, education and social science, such confidence has held sway and, across centuries, various conceptions of childhood have been produced based on particular views on the child’s difference from the adult. These conceptions have been naturalized in educational, political, economic and judicial thinking and institutionalized in modern societies, and they continue to influence our thinking and practice, also in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). But they have been also contested and from this contestation new forms of conceptualization have emerged. In my presentation I take you through this historical movement of six concepts of childhood, and the ways in which each has been contested, making way for new and multiplying understandings of the child and childhood