Child and Adolescent Cultural-Social Research

Child and Adolescent Cultural-Social Research

The needs of childhood studies as interdisciplinary fields: the definition of a child

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Reza safari shali 1
MAHDI ABBASI 2
1 Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Kharazmi University. reza_safaryshali@khu.ac.ir
2 Assistant Professor of Childhood Studies, Research Institute of Culture, Art and Communication. Mahdiabbasi93@gmail.com
10.22083/cssca.2024.484953.1039
Abstract
Abstract
Objective: The second half of the 20th century can be seen as the beginning of a broad and systematic attention to the relationship between cognition, knowledge and science in the field of scientific policies. In the meantime, thinkers such as "Foucault", "Derrida" and "Lyotar" by emphasizing the era of postmodernism, announced the passing of the explanations of the modernism period. The logic of modern rationality was to analyze and simplify everything. By discarding the general perceptions of the existence, the society was considered as parts that not only had no connection with the "wholeness", but were also separated from the existence and history. On the other hand, due to the phenomenon of information explosion, today we are faced with an increasing and huge amount of data. This situation has made it difficult to establish a connection between the components of information and the received data, and secondly, people with a wide range of useful information, meet theoretically and developmentally; While in practice and facing real phenomena and situations, they cannot use them. In this situation, a solution called "interdisciplinary approach" should be resorted to in order to create a balanced situation between the fields of knowledge. The result of this conventional situation can be called "unity of knowledge". Interdisciplinarity in a general sense includes the cooperation and companionship of different disciplinary perspectives in order to reach common points of understanding of phenomena and also to provide the possibility of benefiting from perspectives other than the common perspective of a discipline to look at phenomena. Childhood studies is often described as an interdisciplinary approach. This approach emerged and expanded as an interdisciplinary research field since 1990. As stated, one of the basic requirements in interdisciplinary approaches is to reach the points of common understanding of the phenomena and in other words to "align" and find a common language about the subject in question. It is not wrong to say that one of the most important examples to reach consensus is to have a single or close definition of the topic under study. As Aristotle believed that "we should start the conversation from the definition". In examining the existing works and studies in the field of "childhood studies", as an interdisciplinary view of a subject that seems to be neglected and perhaps considered unimportant, this is the question of "who is a child?". In fact, the definition of a child as a missing link is one that studies in this field have not paid attention to. This lack, in addition to the disadvantages described earlier, causes a problem in the field of practice where the policy makers of this field, especially the cultural policy makers of the childhood field, when formulating cultural policies for children and setting cultural policies and plans in this field, it is necessary to define a single And at the same time, it should be comprehensive and prevent the subject under discussion, i.e. the child, and in the absence of such a definition, the scope of policy making in this area is very limited. The side will be incomplete and useless. Thus, the first step in cultural policymaking in this field is to have a definition of a child. Therefore, as a necessary introduction to other researches in this field, this research sees its mission as responding to this need by using data taken from the specialized sources of each of the peripheral fields of this field-childhood studies-which specifically approaches: lexicology, law, sociology, religion. Islam), including psychology, first examine what definition each of these mentioned approaches has provided about children and childhood? and, secondly, what are the scopes and characteristics of each of these definitions for children? And finally, is it possible to reach a common definition among these approaches, or at least provide a kind of classification and genealogy of the existing definitions. which will be useful for researchers, policy makers and decision makers in this field.
Method: To answer the questions of this research, the library and document method has been used because specialized texts are the only source of answers for the questions of this research.
Conclusion: By adopting an analytical-critical view, it is possible to identify the elements and components in each of the areas, in "lexicology"; We witnessed "predominance of the biological approach", "link with traditional discourses" and "being influenced by the cultural context", in the field of "legal" definition; "Tension between quantitative and qualitative approaches", "impact of human rights discourses" and "challenges of operationalizing standards" were deduced. In the field of "national and international documents" we witnessed the "impact of global policies and discourses" on how to understand and define children, in the field of "religious"; "Emphasis on qualitative criteria", "Link with value system" and "Challenge of different interpretations" were observed, in the field of "Sociology" we saw "Criticism of deterministic approaches", "Attention to the agency of the child" and "The child is a product of society". and finally in the field of "psychology"; "Evolutionary approach" and "age-oriented" were central in the definition of the child. It seems that the only theoretical approach available in the field of sociology of childhood that can explain this level of variety of views and perspectives in the understanding of children is the theory of social constructionism. According to this theory, childhood is a fundamentally historical and cultural concept. In this theory, not a specific definition of a child but various definitions of a child can be understood based on different cultural and social discourses. In fact, this theory emphasizes that childhood is a social phenomenon and not a natural stage of development. Therefore, the cultural environment in which a child grows up has a profound effect on his learning and cognitive development process, hence, as mentioned, it is the social-historical background that determines and defines the child's dimensions and coordinates. In fact, affairs in this theory are contextual and belong to time and place, and the universal issue is ruled out. In the situation of the diversity of different perspectives that have affected the definition of the child, it is naturally ambitious and unscientific to expect a single definition from a scientific article that has the necessary comprehensiveness and limitations. But the authors of this article believe that a conceptual framework can be presented for this purpose. By analyzing and reviewing the findings, it seems possible to propose a unified framework for understanding and defining childhood in Iran. This model is based on 3 guiding principles, which are: a. Accepting the complexity and multidimensionality of childhood b. Simultaneous attention to biological and cultural factors and c. Flexibility in definition and application. Also, in this framework, the four key dimensions that were extracted from the findings of this research should be taken into consideration. These dimensions are: 1- the biological-developmental dimension of the child, 2- the psychological-cognitive dimension of the child, 3- the social-cultural dimension of the child, and finally, 4- the legal-political dimension related to the child.
 
Keywords
Keywords: Childhood studies
interdisciplinary
divergence
convergence
social constructionism
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