Examining discursive formations in early childhood media research

A genealogical analysis

Bibliographic Data

ID13005508
AuthorsAllison S Henward (0000-0003-2831-3992, Pennsylvania State University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume8
Issue3
Pages225-237
Publication date2018-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGlobal Studies of Childhood (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2043-6106 • E-ISSN: 2043-6106
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/2043610618797512
OpenAlexW2891555176
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited59

The study of popular culture and children has a long and intimate relationship in many fields within the humanities and social sciences, yet in the applied field of Early Childhood Education and Care, the relationship is rather fraught. Employing a Foucauldian genealogical approach, I trace the ways in which intellectual traditions and discourses (i.e. history, politics, and sacrosanct values of European aesthetics and childhood innocence) have shaped contemporary understandings and debates in the field. With attention to Foucault’s concepts of power/knowledge couplet, and discursive archives, my focus in on how these axiomatic “myths” have assembled as “regimes of truth.” I thus argue for the need for the field of Early Childhood Education and Care to engage in and consider more contextualized, nuanced, and empirically oriented studies of young children and their engagement with consumer culture

Aesthetics · Childhood studies · Developmental psychology · Early childhood · Early childhood education · Episteme · Epistemology · Field (mathematics · Innocence · Media studies · Mythology · Pedagogy · Political science · Politics · Popular culture · Power (physics · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociology · Children's Rights and Participation · Gender Studies · History · Law · Literacy, Media, and Education · Psychology · Themes in Literature Analysis