The Sociology of Childhood and Bourdieu: Dialogues on the Field in Spanish-Speaking Countries

Abstract

The Sociology of Childhood was the first discipline to focus on children as social actors and to consider childhood as part of the social structure. This sociological perspective requires epistemological, ethical and methodological implications, at the same time as it demands transformations in the way of analyzing childhood and the role of children in society. To consider the Sociology of Childhood as a scientific field that has its own structure within a larger field, such as Sociology, points out the need to explore Bourdieu's work in order to understand how the structuring of a field occurs. In dialogue with this author we analyze the way in which an object of study has come to be conformed as a scientific field, as is the Sociology of Childhood. This has happened especially in the Anglo-Saxon area, but also in Latin America and Spain, whose main productions are identified, classified, analyzed and compared in this article. Some coincidences were found in the main themes in English and Spanish production, such as discussions related to the rights of citizenship of children. At the same time, in Spanish-speaking productions, there are concerns about studying the situation of "childhood at the margin", an interest related to specific research demand in this context.