Children’s Agency in theory and in

practice within Childhood Studies

Zsuzsa Major
VKTS1019 Children and Childhood in Society
Faculty of Education and Psychology
International Ma, Year I.
Jyväskylä University
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 2
2. Sociology of Childhood ............................................................................................................................ 3
2.1 Definition ............................................................................................................................................ 3
2.2 The New Sociology of Childhood ...................................................................................................... 4
3. Agency ...................................................................................................................................................... 5
3.1 Theoretical approaches to agency (another paradigm-shift in relation to agency definitions?) ......... 6
3.2 Aspects of children’s agency .............................................................................................................. 7
4. Children’s Agency in research and in the institutions of childhood ......................................................... 9
4.1 Studying children’s agency ................................................................................................................. 9
4.2 Children’s Agency in childhood institutions..................................................................................... 11
5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 13
References ..................................................................................................................................14
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1. Introduction
The content of this essay is mostly based on the book Reconceptualising agency and childhood:
new perspectives in childhood studies (Esser, Baader, Betz, & Hungerland, 2016). As the title of
the book suggest, my main goal is to gain a better and more nuanced understanding of children’s
agency and of the concept of childhood by taking in consideration the new perspectives in
childhood studies which are thematising agency, approaching it differently (theoretically,
methodologically, contextually). I also try to incorporate my own ideas in relation to the key
concept of agency with the means of integrating (in a very brief manner) some philosophical
concepts that I feel close to “my way” of looking and thinking at/about children’s agency within
the field of sociology.

For structuring my essay I will first start with the outlining of the background, building up the
historical and slightly theoretical “frame” of agency, which is the Sociology of Childhood. After
giving a definition of this sociology I will discuss the paradigm shift which created the “New
Sociology of Childhood”.

As agency is the focus and the main topic of my essay I will present the theoretical approaches of
children’s agency collected in Esser et al.’s book, after which I will talk in more detail about the
aspects which in my point of view are essential in understanding the concept of agency within this
new way of thinking.

In the last part of my essay I will contextualise agency by having a closer look at the concept
(theoretically and methodologically) in the field of child and childhood research. Then I will
present the studies which were conducted in the context of childhood institutions, which were
meant for positioning and conceptualising agency, understanding how children’s agency work
within these institutions.
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2. Sociology of Childhood

For defining the Sociology of Childhood, within the encompassing field of Childhood Studies, I
am going to simply rely on dictionary-based understandings. In line with these definitions I will
present my own perception, reflection of/to the critical discipline attaching some legitimizing
explanatory views of well-known scholar-figures. Subsequently, (I will try to do this) briefly, I
will also attempt to give an overview of the main discourse, touching upon the distinctive
theoretical approach(es) and its notions/tools framed by the “New Sociology of Childhood”.

2.1 Definition

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary the definitions of the word sociology are the
following: “the science of society, social institutions, and social relationships; specifically: the
systematic study of the development, structure, interaction, and collective behaviour of organized
groups of human beings” and “the scientific analysis of a social institution as a functioning whole
and as it relates to the rest of society“(Merriam-Webster, 2018). Additionally, and very
interestingly, the online dictionary gives another two definitions for the word childhood. The
denotative (primary) meaning being: „the state or period of being a child”, and the connotative
(secondary) meaning being: „the early period in the development of something” (Merriam-
Webster, 2018).

As we can see from the connotative meaning of childhood given by the online dictionary, the use
of the word childhood in everyday language, even though the efforts of the New Sociology of
Childhood discourses try to re-write/re-conceptualise this and basically delete the attached
(secondary) meaning of the word (which will be discussed more in depth later on), underpinds
how childhood can refer to something (and not necessarily in close relation to children as such)
that is still in the process of becoming, to something that is not complete. I find this linguistic-
semantic fact very interesting, because it highlights how in an underlying way, implicitly, we truly
think about childhood. How we attribute this secondary meaning of incompleteness to the notion
of childhood when using the word on a daily basis. Challenging this semantic convention with
strong critical means is the novelty that the New Sociology of Childhood brings in to the discourses
of Childhood Studies (and not just, because the paradigm implicitly might change the word’s
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semantic field as well). Children are thus themathized as beings in opposition to becomings within
the field of Child/Childhood Sociology. (Wihstutz, 2016)

Therefore, as pinpointed by Bolling and Kelle, the major achievemnet of the Sociology of
Childhood, which also legitimisez and defines the discipline itself, is the emphasis of the
sociological perspective on children being members of a distinct social group and who
consequently have to be studied in their own right. The idea of the New Childhood Sociology
pioneers, namely Prout and James, is that the impact of children on the society in which they live
is considered to be a major-constructive one, the argument being that children are actively
constructing their own life, the life of the people around them and thus the society they live in
(Bolling & Kelle, 2016).

2.2 The New Sociology of Childhood

In the 1980s and 1990s a new paradigm emerged from the debates on elemental matters within the
field of Childhood Studies embedded in sociological discussions. The conceptualisations of
children and childhood in the social sciences were critically revised by the scholars of Childhood
Studies and thus the field itself became more “sociological”, gaining the new referencing name of
New Sociology of Childhood. (Nonetheless, as already emphasized, they are not the same: the
sociology of childhood is one of the childhood study branches, which studies children and the
concept of childhood from sociological perspectives.) The representatives of the new paradigm
opposed to the traditional socialisation theories (mostly based on structural functionalism) that
defined childhood as a process and as a time frame in which children had to acquire the necessary
skills and knowledge in order to become equal members of society, as gaining/obtaining their
definitive “form” of adults/becoming adults. By contrast, in Childhood Studies the idea of
childhood was reconstructed focusing on children’s agency, stating that children already possess
the social actancy needed for being regarded as social actors. The argument for this call-out on
“social inequality”, which was simultaneously pointing out the engrained opposition between adult
and child in the sociological narratives, was that by using their agency, children act against (Esser,
2016), or on the contrary, to straighten existing social structures. This dualist view, theorizing
oppositions such as children and adults, agency and socialisation, action and structure, actor and
society, seems to be a key characteristic of this shifting paradigm of the New Sociology of
Childhood. However recent approaches tend to further develop and stratify the initial idea/theory,
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that children are active participants in society, such as Esser’s (and by different means others’)
relational understanding of social processes (Esser, 2016, p.49).

Within the new conceptual and empirical field of the Sociology of Childhood, discourses
constantly touch upon James and Prout’s theory of the socially constructed nature of childhood
(childhood as a social structure), which constitutes one of the key (and initial) sociological theory
approaches of the field, of the new paradigm. Other theoretical concepts that were revoked by this
new sociological analysis of childhood, such as generational difference and power (see the above
mentioned strong child-adult opposition), more concrete methodological aspects (and related
questions) of studying children and childhood, and the notion of agency (see above) emerged as
well. Meanwhile the decisive key concept of agency became a separate branch of research within
Childhood Studies, and was first explicitly themathised by David Oswell (Esser, Baader, Betz, &
Hungerland, 2016). To already pinpoint the ambiguity of the notion (agency), I am referring to
Whistutz, who emphasizes that the Sociology of Children is not the same as the one of Childhood,
saying that the former focuses on the interactions between social actors and the latter understands
childhood as a constitutive for social structure: “an ontologisation of children is paradoxically
promoted by that new form of child research, which had accused approaches founded in
developmental psychology and socialisation theory of precisely that same failing.” (Wihstutz,
2016, p.62)

In the upcoming section(s) I will try to build up a nuanced definition of children’s agency by using
bits and pieces from the different theoretical approaches, from the divergent discourses and
researches that aim for its contextualisation and explanation not just for agency’s theoretical but
for its practical usage as well.

3. Agency

First I am going to present four different theoretical critiques/approaches that aim to shed light on
agency and to define it differently in comparison to other theories or theoretical concepts. Then I
will describe in more detail only two aspects of agency after which I will argument this decision
(selection) briefly.
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3.1 Theoretical approaches to agency (another paradigm-shift in relation to agency

definitions?)

Oswell distinguishes two major ways of thinking within Childhood Studies that approach the
concept of children’s agency in two distinctive ways (2016). The first stand referenced by Alanen,
James, Prout and Jenks, holds in its centre a notion of agency which has a child-centred political
and epistemological standpoint. This is aligned with the theory of the child situated within the
context of social structure that is constantly made and re-made. Children’s agency here is defined
in line with the sociological problem of duality between agency and structure and this idea is linked
to the social theory of Anthony Giddens. The second stand referenced by Lee, Oswell and Prout,
looks at the ontologically heterogeneous and contextually dependent capacities of children. Here
agency is mostly understood as distributed (agency) across actor-networks within post-social
theories of Latour and Deleuze. (Oswell, 2016)

Bollig and Kelle also touch upon the tensions between the two kinds of agency-discourses
thematised by Oswell. They mention how in regard to collectivistic understandings of agency or
the contextualisation of children’s agency (looking at the way in which children receive agentic
positions - or not in heterogeneous networks) might impose a challenge to the traditional agency
concepts that rely on Giddens’ social theory of structuration. The co-authors outline the tensions
created by the limits of these traditional agency concepts giving as concrete example the
framework of the generational order-structures and the position of children’s agency within.
Explicitly drawing on Oswell the claim is that the then New Sociology of Childhood (which was
depicted in the first part of the essay) can be considered now outdated and that a post-modern or
post-structural approach has the potential of creating new, more functioning model(s) of children’s
agency. Introducing practice theory perspectives on agency, Bolling and Kelle focus on describing
the actor concept (studying the relationship of sociality, agency and actors in practice theories)
putting in parallel practice theories with actor theories. (Bolling & Kelle, 2016)

As implied above, the widespread understanding of agency as “the capacity of individuals to act
independently” (Esser here refers to: James & James, 2012) is heavily contested in Childhood
Studies. The main idea of the criticism is that the voluntaristic or substantialist approach towards
the concept of agency could lead to reification. Since children are proclaimed social actors it is
expected from empirical research to give evidence of this pre-existing agency of children which is
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hardly documented (Esser, 2016). Esser, with a relational approach, argues that agency is a social
phenomenon and not the capacity of the individual, of the child. Therefore, agency can only be
tackled through concrete relationships, because agency is the actual effect/result of social
relationships. This thread of thoughts evolves in the idea of contextualising agency and tracking
down its relation(s) to the children’s social context itself, to their childhood. Children thus are
viewed within their social relationality (2016). Esser’s question related to this relational
understanding of agency is the following: “What agency does childhood involve and what
actorship are children allotted as children in different contexts?” (Esser, 2016, p.)

The last perspective on children’s agency that I am about to present is from the feminist ethic of
care thematised by Wihstutz (2016) and based on the theoretical works of Tronto (as referenced in
Wihstutz’s paper). The dichotomies founded on the oppositions between children and adults as
well as actors and structures are questioned, the focus being “on interdependent and reciprocal
conditions of dependence and independence.” (Wihstutz, 2016, p.61) Thus relational theories are
again emphasized. Wihsutz also tries to respond to the criticism within Childhood Sociology
“directed towards, respectively, the insufficient consideration of the social conditioning of
children’s lives, the absence of contextualisation” (Wihstutz, 2016, p.62) and the little
acknowledgement of the way childhood is structured by generational hierarchies. In this
difference-centred, feminist theoretical approach children are perceived as equal members of
society in a different way. This difference is then expanded putting children’s agency in the context
of feminist ethic of care. (Wihstutz, 2016)

3.2 Aspects of children’s agency

According to feminist theory (see above) societies which are “unjust” in the way they are built
upon hierarchies of gender and of generational order (Alanen raises awareness that these are
theoretically and empirically connected), have a great impact on being and acting both as children
and as adults as well. Taking this factual context in consideration, perceiving children as actors
and outlining their agency means researching their expressivity and their relative independence.
(Esser, Baader, Betz, & Hungerland, 2016) Hence mapping their agency with and within this field
of social-construct-interdependence and finding the effects of their contextual-dependence on their
agency is crucial to see what are the real aspects or children’s agency.
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From the angle of practice theory, children are participants of practices and their agency is
expressed, manifested throughout the practices. According to Schatzki’s definition (referenced in
Bolling & Kelle, 2016) practices are bodily doings and sayings. Practices (and I am suggesting
that so are the revealed agency with them) are regarded as having a strong aspect of knowledge
incorporation and having an aspect of knowledge performance. Understandability is a key concept
here, because the performances have to be identified both by the performer and by the
performer’s/agent’s social environment. The understanding of agency (by the agent and by the
social environment) is then again emphasized as being relational (the understandings themselves
being relational). (Bolling & Kelle, 2016)

Furthermore, this realisation that children are situated in the generational power structure, that they
are “structurally disadvantaged in relation to adults and thus have the status of a social minority,
has found its way from Childhood Studies into socio-political practice aimed at improving the
position of children in society.” (Esser et al., 2016, p.4) I look at this developement as a milestone
in children’s agency discourses and practices, because after the adoption of the UN Convention on
the Right of the Child in 1989, children became right holders. Since then, they have the possibility
to exercise their rights (as well as bearing the burden of having obligations in accordance), one
might say that the status of children became more equal in relation to adults’ within society at
large. But then again, law doesn’t just streighten children’s agency politically (own-note: in order
to „use”/”take advantage” of your rights, you need to know about them... being a child I didn’t
know what that meant or what those rights really were – I think that learning in childhood
institutions about children’s rights would empower children to consciously act by the means of
their agency in line with their rights – aspect of mastering agency), it also limits chilren’s by
defining children „minors” and not giving them the same rights as to adults. (Esser et al., 2016)

The reason why I don’t mention aspects such as: ability and doing (the ability to do things and
doing things actively), influencing (the impact of the child on the sorrounding social environment)
and the possible consequences of this influencing (reference: ppt form lecture, 2018), is because I
touched upon these earlier in the essay and I believe that the two most predominant aspects are:
relationality/contextuality and having the sense of agency/mastering agency. In this section I
wanted to put a bigger emphasis on these two and I tried to describe them in more detail.
 9

I see a great potential in connecting the two agency aspects with Bourdeau’s theory of education
reproducing inequalities. This is especially concerned with societal power that is generationally
transferred, thus mantaining the social order across generations. (Green, 2013; Kleanthous, 2013;
Rawolle & Lingard, 2013) His key concepts of field (in line with the institutionalisation of
childhood), of cultural capital (in line with inequalities), habitus (in line with acting agency) and
of symbolic violence (in line with generational order) can be used as linkages between the aspects
of relationality and sense of agency. More precisely, I think that the aspect of agency-mastering
could be considered as a potential break-out from the Bourdieau-ian deterministic world-view.

4. Children’s Agency in research and in the institutions of childhood

In this section first I will talk about the changes that impacted the ways of thinking in child and
childhood research (shift in methodological approaches, data collection and the “choosing” of the
concrete data) along with the appearance of the New Sociology of Childhood. The second part
starts with a short description of Foucault’s education-surveillance theory and with a slight
connection to this (for my own reflection and idea of children’s agency within childhood
institutions) I am presenting some contemporary researches that aimed for depicting children’s
agency in childhood institutions.

4.1 Studying children’s agency

When it comes to research, very often the great divide (Fuchs, as referenced in Esser et al. An
Introduction, 2016) within the social sciences dictates the methodology of the academic/scientific
endeavour. This divide is between micro-level and macro-level, between subject and object and
between action and structure. (Esser et al. also draws on different Childhood Studies traditions
such as Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon and German, which are characteristically more micro-, or
more macro- framed). The structure oriented research is focusing on the object, embedded in a
“macro society”, it is more triggered on emphasising the “social production” of childhood, while
the more ethnographic, actor-oriented tradition works with/on micro-levels, focusing on children’s
views and perspectives – this also aims to critique children’s marginal position in society
(criticising in a way of the macro-level dynamics and children’s position within?).

Esser et al. (2016) further divides the two research approaches by highlighting (and also criticising)
the shift that came along with the “New Sociology of Childhood”, concluding that the view of the
 10

child as actor “is ultimately substantialist and anthropological, while there are fewer articles
examining the talk of the child as actor from a (de-)constructivist perspective” (Esser et al., 2016,
p.6). The shift also meant that the political and academic agenda, thus research and incorporated
methodology, was not interested in adults’ perspective anymore, but children became the absolute
and focal point/source of data, focus of research. ” (Esser et al., 2016)

The difference in researching children as actors or as agents is also distinguishing the research
approaches, since when they are approachet as actors, studies focus on their “activeness” in their
own lives, and when they are conceptualised as agents agency goes beyond “activeness”, the
emphasis being on the ways in which children are not just represented (by themselves) in
independent social relationships and culture but also how they form these in the process of play
and “living”. (ppt from lecture, 2018)

In line with this exclusive focus of children within Childood Studies-discourses Spyros raises
awareness of the value and of the nuances children’s voice can have in research, thus how these
are influencing directly the results of research (which is highly dependent of the interpretations of
the researcher). The author’s post-structuralist critique of voice challenges putative autencity, and
suggests treating children’s voice as performative practices (in relation to their researched agency).
The three features of voice (material, contradictory and ambiguous, and silent) pinpointed by
Spyros offers a model of qualitative interpretations within education/childhood research. (Spyrou,
2016)

Hanne Warming on the other hand, in her paper (while presenting two of her researches) reflects
on different ways in which children’s agency can be mapped/tracked down, highlighting the
importance of letting children, as subjects of study, to influence the research and letting them being
influenced by the process (of the research). She connects the concept of agency to the idea of
context dependent identity positions, framed by power relations that can not be totally suspended,
but can be “paused” by playing with these socially constructed (identity) positions. By offering
means of “authority”, bigger freedom to the children participating in the research, Warming
suggests that their agency becomes “thicker” and more nuanced which makes agency itself easier
to tackel. The idea of empowering children in order to recognise and master their agency (after the
research, in the future) is also evident in the researcher’s report/article. (Warming, 2016) (I very
much liked her approach and her ways of “empowering” the children.)
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4.2 Children’s Agency in childhood institutions

When thinking of childhood institutions, Foucault’s theory of surveillance within/in connection to

the construction/concept of panopticon (his examples are concrete settings like prisons and
schools) comes to my mind. The post-modernist and poststructuralist philosopher explains how
surveillance, and the belief of being constantly observed has the great power of behavioural control
and the power to generally change the individual’s (in our case the students) behaviour. This
implies that the institution itself has a (not just symbolic) subtle authority over the individual (in
our case the student). (Allan, 2013; Fejes, 2013; Hope, 2013) Next to the Foucaultian idea of
panotpicon-surveillance (for educational purposes, naturally), agency appears to be very „thin”,
transparent or even non-existent.

Nevertheless, the theoretical and methodological developments set forth by the New Sociology of
Childhood, its new/added narratives and its paradigm shift within the field of Childhood Studies,
without a doubt (it is well known, and proof can be easily found- the Finnish New Curriculum
would be a good example I think) also shaped the field of pedagogy, the practices and attitudes of
educators in their proffesional life. In the following I will present some researches in which
children’s agency was studied in the context of different childhood institutions, trying to reflect on
the positionality of children’s agency within these institutions as well. With Foucault’s theory in
the backgroung I want to answer my own question: do children really have the possibility to
exercise their agency? How thick/thin children’s agency is in childhood institutions?

Claudia Dreke used photographs as symbolic objects to show social relations in a kindergarten,
being interested in the demonstration of social regulations of the childcare and -education setting.
She depicts how in pedagogy, the concept of agency and the expectations around it towards
educators influence their own and the education-institution’s (in which they work) representation
as well: “pothographs are thought to affirm the orienting concepts of pedagogical institutions . Yet
a closer look at the pictures enables us to detect contradictions”. (Dreke, 2016, p.239) (status of
agency=false, not real, transparent)

Timo Ackermann and Pierrine Robin study how children’s agency is represented and how it is
operationalised in ten child protection cases, they show how the conceptualisation of minors in ten
child protection case files is realised. They found three ways of conceptualising children and their
 12

agency within this particualr child institution (child protection services/field of social work), the
three categories were: the child as invisible, child as an object, and the child as a disturbing and
discomforting actor. The conclusion of the study is that even though the child has the right to
participate in processess that are determining her/his future, the child’s agency is rarely
operationalised, the child’s voice and will is rearely considered in decision making. (Ackermann
& Robin, 2016) (status of agency=false, not real, transparent)

Eckermann and Heinzel introduces the concept of „children as adressees” in their paper. They wish
to initiate with their research a praxeological rehabilitation of childhood within the school as an
institution. The research question is the following: “How do children as actors and addressees
generate addressing practices under school conditions, and to what extenht in this process do they
fall back on previously shown addressing practices in order to “institute” themselves as (studemt)
subjects?” (Eckermann & Heinzel, 2016, p.256) The case study reveals that children are able to
gain agency through calls to order, within school practice. (Eckermann & Heinzel, 2016) (status
of agency=real, children “using” their agency among their peers)

The last research that I am about to present is (surprisingly for me, concerning its topic) a
quantitative one, this research also calls out for more studies based on quantative methodology
within the field of Childhood Studies. Frederick de Moll and Tanja Betz slightly draw on
Boudieu’s theory on the mechanisms of inequality-reproduction of education and educational
institutions, since they focus on the role of children’s agency in socio-cultural reproduction of
educational inequality.The data used in the research comes from elementary school children and
their parents. The authors ask how children contribute to the reproduction of education inequality.
The links between children’s social class, their out-of school practices and their dispositions
towards school are explored. The analysis reveals classed activity patterns in children’s lives, the
conclusion is that children’s out of school lives are shaped by social class in several ways and that
their attitudes also show class-attributed patterns. (for detailed results see: De Moll & Betz, 2016)
(status of agency=ambivalent)
 13

5. Conclusion
In my understanding children’s agency can only be truly depicted from a very entangled relational
theoretical approach. The hierarchical gender- and generational order of the society, also the
Bourdieu-ian concept of capital needs to be taken in consideration when studying childhood and
children’s agency. Children can only act with/on their agency consciously within or outside of
childhood institutions, when they are mastering their agency.

In the process of writing, I have to say, that sometimes I felt like I completely lost myself in the
(somewhere in the) middle of all the agency theories and all the different agency approaches. I did
not always know how to continue, I did not know which book chapter could give me yet
(unfortunately) another, very different, and in this sense a new starting point. When I realised how
complicated this endeavour is, I simply decided to go chapter by chapter – I think this technique
is also visible in the structure and the narrative of my essay.

Now I can say that agency is not as blurry and untouchable concept-wise as is it was before. I feel
like by following the structure of the book I didn’t let my creativity flourish in the writing process
but because I still find the topic (children’s agency), a hard and very difficult topic, I am not fretting
myself.
 14

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