Researching materiality and children’s biographies

Sara Eldén, Hayley Davies

Research output: Contribution to conferenceAbstractpeer-review

Abstract

Children’s biographies are only rarely and more recently considered. In this paper, we make a case for thinking biographically about children’s relational lives. Using two qualitative case studies from research with children in middle childhood, in the UK and Sweden, we attend to the materiality of children’s biographies. We explore the way in which home spaces, possessions, family mementoes and memories, photographs or gifts between loved ones mediate children’s biographies and close relationships in relation to ordinary as well as momentous occasions. We reflect upon how biographical data and the materialities of children’s lives may be captured in research with younger children considering that conventional biographical methods have been adult-centric. We wonder whether conventional biographical methods such as life-story or memory work are required for creating biographical data or whether having a biographical radar – and tuning into biographies - would be sufficient? What prompts this question is the vast amount of biographical data we have found in our own work, through undertaking research with young children. We have often found children to be natural narrators of their lives in drawing, writing, speaking and enacting their relationships. Therefore, can a researcher with a keen biographical interest capture biographical data in a whole range of ways through traditional and perhaps more creative research methods too?
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2018 Sept
EventCongress of the European Society on Family Relations: Families through the lens of diversity - Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
Duration: 2018 Sept 52018 Sept 8
Conference number: 9
https://www.fpce.up.pt/esfr2018/about.html

Conference

ConferenceCongress of the European Society on Family Relations
Abbreviated titleESFR
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityPorto
Period2018/09/052018/09/08
Internet address

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)

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