Childhood Studies, An Overview of

Introduction

Childhood studies are an emblematic concept and lens incorporating a number of approaches, disciplines, theories, and ideas about children and childhoods. This field of study encompasses both scholarship and activism and includes a philosophical grounding and thinking about children and childhoods. Philosophies revolve around the changing notions of how we understand childhood – a shift from the biological understanding of immaturity to an idea that childhood is socially constructed, and through various philosophical approaches negotiated, in any given moment in a particular society. Historical, political, economical, and geographical considerations, alongside the influences of globalization and ideology, are acknowledged as fundamental driving forces of this field. Particularly in the past 30 years, many disciplines have been claiming the right to define, shape, and provide an understanding of childhood studies and to prove that their disciplinary and methodological lens...