This book brings together case studies from a wide range of societies with varying social expectations in order to examine childhood and how this stage in life differs from adulthood, for example in terms of work and status.

Conceptualising Child-Adult Relations focuses on how children conceptualise and experience child-adult relations. The authors explore the idea of generation as a key to understanding children's agency in intersection with social worlds which are largely organised and ordered by adults. The authors explore two interconnected themes: how children define the division of labour between children and adults, and how far children regard themselves as constituting a seperate group. This book is ground-breaking in its focus on the variety and commonality in children's lives and views across a broad...

This book breaks new ground in its theorizing of childhood within sociological concepts. Over the course of nine chapters, authors give detailed accounts of the lives of children in a range of societies, including England, sub-Saharan Africa, Northern Ireland, France, Andhra Pradesh and Finland. They describe their studies in the light of Bourdieu's key concepts - field, habitus and capital - to consider the social status of childhood, the tensions between schooling and work in the lives of children, children's relations with adults, and the pressures on childhood resulting from globalization...