Call for papers – Norbert Elias and Sociology of Childhood

Norbert Elias and the Sociology of Childhood will be edited by Tatiana Savoia Landini (Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Brazil) Norman Gabriel (University of Essex, United Kingdom), and published by Palgrave.

Since its emergence in the 1990s, the growing field of Childhood and Youth Studies has fuelled debates about ways of conceptualizing childhood in society, making children’s views heard, promoting children’s rights and participation and encouraging ground-breaking interdisciplinary methodology and analysis. One of the long-term projects of childhood sociology has been to fill the conceptual, methodological, social and political lacunae that still exist in the theories and research of mainstream sociology. However, innovative thinking about children and childhood is not limited to those scholars that identify themselves as part of the Childhood and Youth Studies. For Norbert Elias, sociologists need to develop an approach that is relational and processual, investigating long-term historical processes which are dynamic and structured in different societies. Understanding long term processes related to children and, at the same time, new figurations formed by and with children may be an important contribution that comes from Elias´s theory. Such as approach is multidisciplinary, making important connections with other related disciplines, such as developmental psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, biology, history, anthropology, geography, literature and politics. In this connection, the goal of this book is to discuss Norbert Elias´s processual and figurational sociology contribution to this research field. By the same token, this book seeks to raise questions about how Childhood and Youth Studies contribute to the wider discipline of sociology, especially to Elias´s sociology. We invite all scholars that are keen to develop Elias´s sociology and to the research field on children and youth to contribute to this book. We welcome proposals that are more theoretical as well as proposals focused on empirical research. The dominant (though shifting) ideals of children, youth and upbringing; processes of social learning, integration, distinction and fragmentation; processes of violence against and involving children and youth; social and public policies on culture, education, health, immigration and public security are all topics that we want to see addressed in the book.

Proposals should be sent directly to both editors and should consist of an expanded abstract (3pages max). New Deadline for proposals: October 30th, 2020

Tatiana Savoia Landini – tatiana.landini@unifesp.br

Norman Gabriel – n.r.gabriel@essex.ac.uk