A preliminary call for a critical public childhood studies

Abstract

My call in this editorial is for Childhood Studies to become more public with the added caveat that it should retain its critical rigor while doing so. Yet, despite my stated preference, my interest with this editorial is less to convince that this is indeed a good move for the field and more to encourage a discussion around the issue—in that sense, my call is meant to be preliminary. After all, fields do not follow individual injunctions, but move and develop in ways which are impacted by multiple forces which coalesce at particular times, many of which escape any individual’s control. A concern with becoming more public has been an ongoing preoccupation for many disciplines and fields of study. Much of the discussion often revolves around questions of relevance and impact. How relevant is our discipline or field beyond academia? What kinds of public concerns are we responding to and how much impact do we have? In recent decades, there has been a more systematic attempt to address such questions in fields like sociology and anthropology, where explicit fears of becoming too obscure and irrelevant to the ongoing challenges faced by humanity, have sparked productive dialogues. In a much influential presidential address in 2004, Michael Burawoy (2005a) called for a public sociology that would address diverse publics and become a legitimate enterprise within the field. Burawoy argued that a public sociology would not negate but rather complement the work of professional, critical and policy sociology. Burawoy’s address has been discussed and debated since then with both supporters and critics contributing towards a more productive dialogue about sociology’s mission and trajectory as a discipline. In anthropology, Robert Borofsky (2019) has recently levelled a harsh critique on the field calling for a paradigm shift and a move towards a public anthropology which does not seek to sharply differentiate itself from a well-established applied anthropology but attempts to become more relevant and responsive to contemporary public concerns in public ways. That Borofsky’s book was endorsed by 35 prominent anthropologists is perhaps suggestive about the recognition and consensus around this need. I suggest that Childhood Studies might also benefit from a more explicit discussion around this issue which expands on Karl Hanson’s recent editorial in Childhood (Hanson 2019) on the societal impact of academic childhood and children’s rights research. If nothing else, a dialogue around this issue will encourage the field to reflect on its own practices and interventions as well as its overall remit. So what does it mean then to call for a public Childhood Studies? It first and foremost means to engage with diverse publics beyond the scholarly worlds of academia and research. Those of us who work in academic settings already engage with a significant public, namely our students, but depending on the research work we do, with other 987149 CHD0010.1177/0907568220987149ChildhoodEditorial editorial2020