Call for papers 2025 Volumen 10(2) Publication: second semester of 2026
Volumen 10(2)
Publication: Second semester of 2026
Social representations of chilhood and adolescence: what´` s new?
Deadline for article submissions: July 15, 2026
The concept of social representation, understood as a form of socially constructed and elaborated knowledge, has become a strong theoretical foundation in childhood studies, particularly when exploring how images constructed by the adult world define what childhood and adolescence should be, both viewed as stages in the human life cycle. It also informs the expectations around what are considered appropriate, desirable, and expected behaviors of children and adolescents as they go through these stages. At the same time, the sociology of childhood has, since its inception, recognized that children are co-constructors of the realities of childhood and adolescence. Through their actions, they transform both the constructed frameworks, and the images projected onto them by society.
The question posed in this call is how these two concepts have been interrelated and have interacted: that of socially constructed childhood and that of children and adolescents as constructors of childhood, in connection with the changes that have taken place over time in society.
On the side of the adult imagination, the call emphasizes three key questions:
a) What possible changes may have occurred in the social representations of contemporary childhood, and how are these linked to what we already know about such representations?
b) How do representations of childhood and adolescence differ (while sharing certain traits) across cultural diversity or socioeconomic status?
c) What new representations may have emerged within the sociocultural sphere—for example, representations of children with diverse gender identities, childhood in the digital world, or childhood in the Global South?
From the perspective of children and adolescents:
- What are the representations of childhood and adolescence "from within"? How are they expressed and narrated by children and adolescents themselves?
- Do children's social representations align with those of adults? Are there observable forms of adaptation or transformation that allow both to coexist without losing meaning?
- Within today’s audiovisual culture, can we identify whether children, as content creators, are modifying, refining, or reinforcing conventional representations of what it means to be a child?
- And are these human representations extending to the non-human? Is generative AI reinforcing or reshaping these representations as it increasingly interacts with people in digital environments?
Open call with no deadline for other sections
➢Miscellaneous
➢Reviews
➢Other contributions
Submissions: Contributios written for in Spanish, Portuguese, and English will be accepted.
Guidelines for authors: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/SOCI/about/submissions
Submission method: registration on the jounal’s website http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/SOCI
Contact: Journal’s Secretariat: sociedadeinfancia@ucm.es
Sociedad e Infancias thanks all those who, as authors, reviewers, or advisors of the journal, are contributing to making it a reference for childhood studies, especially in the Ibero-American sphere.
