The COVID-19 pandemic as a lens for studying constructions of children and childhood: An opportunity for theoretical creativity?
Prosjektleder: Oddbjørg Skjær Ulvik, OsloMet
Deltakere: Margrete Aadnanes, VID vitenskapelige høyskole; Anne Greve, OsloMet; Mari Dalen Herland, VID vitenskapelige høyskole; Inger-Lise Negård, VID vitenskapelige høyskole; Guro Brokke Omland, Oslo nye høyskole; Ann Phoenix, University College London, UK; Ellen Syrstad, VID vitenskapelige høyskole; Oddbjørg Skjær Ulvik, OsloMet
Formål:
Working title: The COVID-19 pandemic as a lens for studying constructions of children and childhood: An opportunity for theoretical creativity?
The pandemic has underlined how dependent we are on each other and on our environments both locally and globally. It exposes vulnerability in new ways, and particularly, it has revealed new meanings and configurations of children’s vulnerability.
The contrasting discourses «The vulnerable child» (e.g.: Must be protected from strict infection restrictions due to risk of mental health) and «the resilient/robust child» (e.g.: No need for vaccine; can socialize relatively freely due to biological robustness) can be seen as having prominent positions in the understandings of children revealed under the pandemic. Particularly, this can be seen in the government’s responses to the pandemic, as well in the responses from professionals occupied with children and youth’s physical and psychosocial health, education, social work and child protection.
Some questions we engage in:
- How have implications of intersecting social categories changed during the pandemic (e.g. age and biology)?
- How may the state’s life politics (biopolitics) serve as a framework for professional understandings and practices (e.g. the orientation towards understanding children and young people through concepts and models based on statistics (e.g. «population» and «vulnerable groups»)?
- How may relational ontology characterize our analytic gaze on children and youth in research as well as in the practice field?
Prosjektstart: 2021.
Presentasjon på konferanser:
Guro Brokke Omland m.fl. (2022). The Pandemic Child: Vulnerability constructions under Covid 19. 2nd International Childlife Conference, OsloMet 19.-21.9.2022