Childhood and Intergenerationality:

Toward an Intergenerational Perspective

on Child Well-Being
Leena Alanen

5.1

Introduction

Research on well-being (alternatively welfare) has in recent years grown with the
well-being of children emerging in tandem as a key topic. This handbook in itself
is a clear indication of the recognition of a focus on children in well-being
research as being both justifiable and timely. However, research communities
have by no means been the first to raise this topic on the agenda. Instead, those
child advocacy agencies worldwide (such as UNICEF) and childrens rights
initiatives, which have increasingly based their activities on the UN Convention
of the Rights of the Child, have been the leaders in producing and distributing
information on the state of childhood in the world and in individual countries.
Over the years, initiatives have also been taken to establish both national and
cross-national systems of statistical indicators for measuring childrens wellbeing. However, this has been mostly for the purpose of informing and guiding
policy-making, of testing the performance of policies and, more recently, of
providing reliable data for social reporting on childrens societal status and the
conditions of their lives.
In each of these projects, the meaning of child well-being is given an answer in
one form or another, however implicit that answer may be, and in many cases rests
on publicly accepted and assumed truths on the subject. In the world of policymaking, this is perhaps only to be expected, as the rationalities of policy-making
and of science tend not to coincide (cf. Hudson and Lowe 2004), and the theoretical
foundation of the assumed understandings of well-being takes a second place to the
more immediate aims of developing common protocols and consistent, shared
measures and summary indices of childrens well-being (cf. Hauser et al. 1997;
Gasper 2004; Manderson 2005). In academic research, and in order to gain valid

L. Alanen
Department of Education, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, Finland
e-mail: leena.m.alanen@jyu.fi
A. Ben-Arieh et al. (eds.), Handbook of Child Well-Being,
131
DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_5, # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

132

L. Alanen

knowledge on child well-being, the question of how researchers conceptualize the

object of their work is naturally paramount.
A broad agreement among scholars of well-being continues to be that definitions
of well-being are both variable and often conceptually confused; the field is in need
of conceptual clarification. A useful distinction for rethinking concepts of wellbeing is made by Ruth Lister (2004) in her critical reading of poverty research and
the way its central notion of poverty (which often figures as one of the dimensions
of childrens well-being) tends to be handled. Lister contends that across the
relevant research literature, the same term used in different ways which in turn
transfers to policy-making. She underlines that to understand the phenomenon of
poverty, it is important to differentiate between concepts, definitions, and
measures (Lister 2004, pp. 38). Concepts operate at a fairly general level,
and they provide the framework within which definitions (of concepts) and
measurements (operationalizations of definitions) are then developed. Definitions (and therefore also measures) mediate concepts in the sense that explanations of poverty and its distribution are in fact implicit in definitions of poverty.
For this reason, it is first important that definitions are not divorced from their
wider conceptualizations and, second, that their relationships to wider conceptual frameworks (which may be envisioned as networks of interrelated concepts)
are clarified. Only then, Lister surmises, definitions can function as an adequate
basis for developing measures. The problem in much poverty research, she
notes (2004, pp. 67), is that researchers typically begin their work with
definitions instead of concepts and then continue to develop measures, but
while doing this, they tend to mistake their definition for a concept or simply
conflate definitions and concepts. The result is that the conceptual frameworks
on which different understandings of poverty are actually founded are lost from
sight, not to mention from analysis; in addition, the historical and political
constructedness of the adopted notion of poverty is left unconsidered. Naturally,
this can have crucial implications for the politics of poverty as concepts never
stand outside history and culture; they are always contested and also have
practical effects.
It is hardly an overstatement to note that a similar situation prevails as regards
the notion of well-being and even more so as regards childrens well-being (see,
e.g., Clark and Gough 2005; Nussbaum 2005; McGillivray 2007; Morrow and
Mayall 2009; Camfield et al. 2010). While it might be in one sense true that
there has been a marked growth in studies on childhood well-being in recent
years (Fegter et al. 2010, p. 7), the volume of publishing in the field indicates
that the largest growth is taking place in the development of measurements and
indicators. In fact, a journal (Child Indicators Research) has been established,
beginning from 2008, to publish work in this field: The journal aims to focus on
measurements and indicators of childrens well-being, and their usage within
multiple domains and in diverse cultures. The Journal will present measures and
data resources, analysis of the data, exploration of theoretical issues, and information about the status of children, as well as the implementation of this information in

Childhood and Intergenerationality

133

policy and practice. It explores how child indicators can be used to improve the
development and well-being of children. Generally, ideas and discourses of child
well-being are being constructed in widely different fields, including politics,
professional communities, and media and also academia. A proximity to
policy-making (often the result of availability of funding) may well also
limit possibilities for the research needed to complement the work done on the
measurement end of well-being studies, that is, research that aims to systematically
build up and consolidate theoretical frameworks within which particular notions of
childrens well-being would attain their conceptual power.
The study of well-being is bound to be a multidisciplinary research field, and
therefore, it is increasingly recognized that an adequate understanding of (child)
well-being will need to be interdisciplinary. This chapter aims to work toward such
a goal. It is specifically concerned with delineating the nature of child well-being as
a research object in the social sciences. Until recently, any understanding of
children and their well-being has often been based on psychological perspectives
that work with developmental notions of the individual child. The work presented in
this chapter challenges this hegemony of (mainly) psychological notions of children
and their well-being, by introducing some of the theoretical resources that have
been developed within the sociology of childhood or, more broadly, multidisciplinary childhood studies (see also Jens Qvortrups chapter in this handbook;
Chap. 22, Sociology: Societal Structure, Development of Childhood, and the
Well-Being of Children). The guiding vision is an understanding of children as
social beings which, once fully developed, would need to be integrated with
compatible notions originating in other disciplines (psychology, economics, biology, neuroscience, etc.) to form an overarching framework that also works well in
the study of child well-being.
To ensure such theoretical compatibility, the set of contributions from particular disciplines would need to share some basic (philosophical, ontological,
epistemological) assumptions. Therefore, the starting point in this chapter is
a particular social ontology that helps to conceptualize childhood as
a fundamentally relational phenomenon. This relationality, moreover, implies
intergenerationality, in that children are constituted specifically as children
primarily (although not exclusively) within intergenerational relations, that is,
as a generational category of beings that is internally related to other existing
generational categories, especially adults (see below). Such an approach was
adopted early in the foundation phase of the sociology of childhood in the
1980s. While a relational sociology of childhood can be developed in more than
one direction, the specific ontology adopted in the present case gives a definite
direction in the exercise of constructing a coherent intergenerational framework
for researching childhood and childrens well-being. Arguably then, the framework for an adequate study of children and childhood (and thus, by way of
derivation, childrens well-being) is necessarily intergenerational.
In the next section, a brief description is given on the forms of undertaking
childhood sociology as they have developed so far.

134

5.2

L. Alanen

Sociologies of Childhood

One of the strongly underlined assumptions in childhood studies is that children are
social actors and active participants that contribute to the everyday life of the
societies in which they live. Childrens long-lived invisibility in most social science
research is seen to be linked to various forms of developmental and socialization
thinking which have placed children within the processes of first becoming (and not
being) full social actors, adulthood being the assumed end point of childhood
development. The contrasting, foundational starting point given in the assumption
of childrens (social) agency implies for research that children are to be addressed
as the (sociological) equals to adults or any other social segments of individuals.
In sociology, this has been taken to imply that childhood is a structural concept
at the same analytical level as concepts such as class, gender, and race/ethnicity
(see Jens Qvortrups chapter in this handbook; Chap. 22, Sociology: Societal
Structure, Development of Childhood, and the Well-Being of Children).
Thus, sociologists approach childhood as a socially established and instituted
formation in its own right; it is a culturally, politically, and historically
constructed figuration of social relations which has been institutionalized
for the younger members of societies to inhabit. The relative permanence of such
a societal childhood, once it has been formed and established in a particular society,
justifies the idiom of a common, shared childhood, whereas childhoods
(in the plural) would refer to the social and cultural life worlds and experiences
of individual children within that particular social space of childhood the
phenomenology of childhood. Therefore, to assume that there exists one true,
universal, essential childhood is to succumb to a modernist fiction. The observation
that at some point of time and place a particular form of childhood is generally
considered normal, and tends to prescribe how children are expected to behave
and treated, merely confirms the degree of institutionalization and the socially
gained cultural autonomy of a particular childhood construct. What has been
constructed may also be transformed, and childhood certainly has been transformed,
as evidenced by historians of childhood (e.g., Hendrick 1997; Cox 1996).
While this understanding of childhood is broadly shared within the multidisciplinary childhood studies, different disciplines and research fields, such as sociology, anthropology, history, economics, and cultural studies, vary in the way
they characteristically emphasize and elaborate components of the shared view.
In the early stage of the emerging sociology of childhood, three distinct approaches
could be seen developing, in other words, three different ways of carrying
out childhood sociology within a broadly shared frame. In each of them,
particular discourses and ways of conceptualizing children and childhood have
been in use; moreover, the knowledge that is sought in the research also varies
between them.
(1) A (micro-)sociology of children approach grew out of an early critique of
childrens invisibility in social science knowledge and the subsequent correction of
the then-existing research approach to include children. In the new studies, children
were placed in the center of sociological attention and studied in their own right,

Childhood and Intergenerationality

135

and not as appendices or attachments to parents, families, schools, or other institutions (e.g., Qvortrup 1987; Alanen 1988; James and Prout 1990). The discrimination of children in scientific knowledge would end by researchers including
childrens views, experiences, activities, relationships, and knowledges in their
data, directly and firsthand. Children were to be seen as units of research and as
social actors and participants in the everyday social world. It is thus now understood
that through their co-participation, they also contribute to events in their worlds
(including research!) and, in the end, to the reproduction and transformation of the
same social world. Research of this strand has mostly been conducted in small-scale
studies, with a focus on childrens everyday life and their negotiations with other
actors in their immediate social and cultural worlds. The conceptual frameworks
that are used in the micro-sociology of children tend to originate in versions of
interactionist or ethnomethodological theories, and their philosophies of science in
versions of phenomenology or pragmatism. In terms of research methods, qualitative methods in particular various modifications of ethnography and observational
methods have been preferred. (The guidelines given to the chapter authors of this
handbook fully recognize this form of sociological childhood knowledge: Authors
are reminded that the way to best understand childrens well-being includes recognizing and respecting childrens own points of view; their opinions, perspectives,
and perceptions; and their evaluations and aspirations. The handbook editors also
wish to see child well-being being promoted as a people-centered concept
that makes reference to their lives both in the present as well as to their
(social, developmental) future. In accordance with this view, a comprehensive
concept of child well-being would cover both childrens well-being and their
well-becoming).
The second approach, (2) a deconstructive sociology of children and childhoods,
which originated in the discussions and debates of the 1970s1980s social sciences,
brought new insights into how the social world is to be understood and studied.
The deconstructive approach considers notions such as child, children and
childhood, and their many derivations (including child well-being) to be historically formed cultural constructs. Therefore, the approach underlines the political
nature of childhood constructs that the collective (including scientific) images of
children and childhood prevailing at any time and place and beliefs of and attitudes
toward children are, in the end, politically formed. As such, they have consequences
for childrens everyday reality, as images, beliefs, and attitudes have been incorporated in a range of models of action, cultural practices, and, for example, welfare
policies, thereby providing cultural scripts and rationales for people to understand
and to act in relation to, and on, children and childhood. Because of the political
significance of cultural constructs, the task of the deconstructive researcher is to
unpack such constructions. This is done by exposing their creators and the social
circumstances of their formation, as well as the political processes of their (re-)
production, interpretation, communication, and practical implementation. The aim
is to disclose the discursive power of cultural constructs in social life, in this case in
childrens everyday life and experiences. Foucault, Deleuze, and Donzelot are
important sources of theoretical inspiration for followers of this approach.

136

L. Alanen

Useful methods for deconstruction include discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and various other text analytical methods.
The third main form of sociological approaches to childhood is (3) the structural
approach. Here, childhood is taken as the unit of analysis and may be understood as
a social structure in itself. Structure, however, is a multi-meaning concept, and
there are a variety of ways to undertake structural analysis in sociology; what these
approaches share is a consideration given to entities and processes residing on the
macro level. The two main forms of structural thinking may be identified: The
structural-categorical approach is the first of them; it takes the view of children as
a socially formed aggregate, perhaps a generation (Mannheim; see below). Far
less attention is paid to the actual living children, each with their different and
individually experienced childhoods, which are the primary focus in the microsociology of children (see above). Instead, children are assembled under the
socially established category of children, and the aim of a structurally operating
analysis is to arrive at a description of the childhood that is shared by all children in
that society (or any time/space) in question. Among sociologists of childhood,
Jens Qvortrup has strongly fostered this approach (see, e.g., Qvortrup 1993;
Qvortrup et al. 1994; and Qvortrups chapter in this handbook; Chap. 22,
Sociology: Societal Structure, Development of Childhood, and the Well-Being
of Children). Empirical observations (measurements) of focal conditions of childrens lives such as the patterns of their activities, experience of poverty or social
exclusion, use of time, or well-being are linked with macro-level influential
entities and processes (macro-variables). These may be understood to cause
or impact the social category of children as a whole, by powerfully forming
a common, shared, typical childhood through large-scale processes, in interplay
with other macro-variables and linked processes. The structural-categorical
approach is especially useful in studies that aim to contribute to social reporting
and monitoring, for example, a countrys child population, and provide possible
explanations for the condition of children. While the structural-categorical
approach is well suited to large and often comparative studies of child populations
using statistical methods, this is not a limitation. Qualitative methods or mixed
methods are additionally useful and may contribute to the big picture by
providing vivid and child-level information.
In contrast to the first structural-categorical approach, the second mode of
working structurally in the sociology of childhood is one that is grounded in a
relational social ontology. Due to its employment of relational insights in conceptualizing childhood, this approach is usefully called a structural-relational approach.
It is structural in that childhood is conceptualized as a position (or social space)
within an existing (socially generated) generational structure. Children are made
into children (and members of a generational category) inasmuch as they come to
occupy that social space and practically engage themselves with the reproduction of
the (generational) relations that recurrently define them as children. This, then, is
where relationality comes in and a different, relational conceptualization of childhood begins to take shape. The primary focus in research with a relational approach
is on the generational practices, specifically the (relational) practices within which

Childhood and Intergenerationality

137

children co-construct themselves as children as occupiers of a particular generational position, in relation to a non-child category (or categories) of agents (see, e.g.,
Alanen 2001, 2009). The advantage in studying childrens issues relationally is
that it helps to produce a more dynamic analysis than the categorical approach.
A second advantage is that not only can the outcomes of the enacted generationing
processes be studied for features that children display representing the childhood
of the time-space or individual childhoods but also the actual processes and
relations within which those outcomes are produced. Therefore, the agency aspect
in childrens activity comes into view more prominently than in the categorical
version of structural analysis, as children are understood to be the co-constructors of
their own objective and subjective, structured, and structuring conditions. The concept
of generation as a relational social structure is an analytical construct, and childhood
(childrens positionality) is in this approach one of the (relational) components, or
parts, of a generational structure. The concept of generational structure refers to
a macro-entity which, in interplay with other similar relationally constructed social
structures gender, ethnicity, class, (dis)ability, and so on produce the events that
can be observed and understood as facets of actual childhood(s).

5.3

A Relational Ontology

By introducing relational thinking in the case of children and childhood, this

chapter advocates a social ontology and a research program for the sociology of
childhood that is consistently relational.
The terms relational and relationality are not unambiguous; their meaning and
function vary across theoretical contexts. Furthermore, relational thinking is not new
to social science, and there are several relational approaches that are actively used
within social science research. (It can be traced back to some parts of Durkheim and to
Marx. Marx wrote in Die Grundrisse (in 18571861): Society does not consist of
individuals; it expresses the sum of connections and relationships in which individuals find themselves (Marx 1993, p. 77)). For example, Mutzel and Fuhse (2010)
give an account of one specific sort of relational approach the New York School
and claim that this school (together with its transatlantic bridge building) now
presents the most important and innovative theoretical approach in todays sociology.
This particular branch of relational analysis has been developed out of former
modes of network analysis through an engagement with the linguistic turn
(Mische 2011, pp. 28); social networks are conceptualized and analyzed as
sociocultural formations. Mustafa Emirbayer, working close to the New York
school, published in 1997 a Manifesto for a Relational Sociology which is one of
the most quoted articles in relational theory circles and has been an inspiration in
debates on relational social theory, especially in the USA:
Sociologists today are faced with a fundamental dilemma: whether to conceive of the social
world as consisting primarily in substances or in processes, in static things or in dynamic,
unfolding relations. Large segments of the sociological community continue implicitly
or explicitly to prefer the former point of view. Rational-actor and norm-based

138

L. Alanen

analyses diverse holisms and structuralisms, and statistical variable analyses all of
them beholden to the idea that it is entities that come first and relations among them only
subsequently. (Emirbayer 1997, p. 281)

Alongside network analysis, relational approaches have been promoted in

science and technology studies (e.g., Actor Network Theory), in systemic sociology (e.g., Niklas Luhmann), and in the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias.
Relational sociology has also been thriving beyond the borders of Anglophone
social science: In Italy, Pierpaolo Donati has since the 1980s labored on his
sociologia relazionale. (An introduction to his sociology is his book that has
been newly published in English (Donati 2011). See also Margaret Archers
introduction to Donatis sociology: Archer (2010)). Germany (Fuhse and Mutzel
2010) and France (Vautier 2008) can also boast research groups developing their
brands of relational sociology. The Canadian-based journal Nouvelles perspectives en sciences sociales: revue international de systemique complexe et detudes
relationelles published a special issue on French-Canadian relational sociology
in 2009.
Relational thinking has been developing in other human and social sciences as
well. Stetsenko (2008), for instance, writes that such classics of psychology (and
pedagogy) as Piaget, Dewey, and Vygotsky embodied strong relational thinking.
Currently, a relational ontology has been adopted and has also become quite
prominent in developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, social psychology,
and education. (For a representative of one contemporary relational psychology, see
Gergen (2009)).
Within sociology, undoubtedly the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu is the most
prominent and most developed example of relational sociology; below, the
Bourdieusian framework is introduced as an insightful platform for relational,
intergenerational childhood studies. For Bourdieu, thinking in terms of relations
instead of substances is paramount. It is central to his vision of sociology as
a science, and essentially all the concepts he has developed are relational
(Wacquant 1992, p. 19).
Bourdieu incessantly criticizes what he calls substantialism, or the spontaneous theory of knowledge that he sees as a key obstacle to developing genuine
scientific knowledge of the social world (Swartz 1997, p. 61). Substantialism
designates an epistemology that focuses on the realities of ordinary sense experience and treats the properties attached to agents occupation, age, sex, qualifications - as forces independent of the relationship within which they act (Bourdieu
1984, p. 22). Moreover, substantialism is inclined to treat the activities and
preferences specific to certain individuals or groups in a society at a certain moment
as if they were substantial properties, inscribed once and for all in a sort of
biological or cultural essence (Bourdieu 1998, p. 4). Thus, substantialist thinking
reflects a commonsensical perception of social reality, a perception which is also
embedded in the very language we use, as it expresses things more easily than
relations, states more readily than processes (Bourdieu 1994, p. 189, 1998,
pp. 34). Therefore, it is easier to treat social facts as things or as persons than it
is to treat them as relations (Bourdieu 1994, pp. 189190).

Childhood and Intergenerationality

139

The methodological alternative that Bourdieu advocates and which he identifies as fundamental to all scientific thinking is relationalism (or relationism).
This is a mode of thinking that identifies the real, not with substances, but
with relationships, for the stuff of social reality lies in relations (Wacquant
1992, pp. 1519).
It is argued here that the conceptual tool kit that Bourdieu developed in his
lifework is useful for re-crafting the practices of sociological childhood research
on a structural-relational basis. His relational ontology is, furthermore, consistent
with some important trends and recent developments across natural, human, and
social sciences where a systemic (i.e., structural) and at the same time emergentist
understanding of reality both natural and social has gained new ground. (For
the development of systemic theory in sociology and of emergentism as the most
important element of the theorys third wave, see Sawyer (2005) and Wan
(2011)). Owing to this, by adopting a consistently relational orientation and
putting it into work in researching childhood, the field will profit from being
open toward the possibilities of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary collaboration with a range of other disciplines and research fields, such as (relational)
psychology, economics, philosophy of mind, and others. The intergenerationality
of childhood will also be exposed as a methodological perspective, instead
of merely a substantive research object (which, moreover, tends toward
substantialism).

5.4

Childhood as a Generational Phenomenon

The structural sociologies of childhood that began to develop in the work of the
international project Childhood as a Social Phenomenon (19871992) were already
based on (intuitive) forms of relational thinking (see Qvortrup et al. 1994). The
concept of generation particularly was seen as the key to a new, relational understanding of childhood (Alanen 1994; 2009).
In the 1980s, joined by a concern for studying childhood, a loose network, and
then later, an international community of sociologists, gave rise to the term generation, identifying it as a key concept for establishing this new manner of thinking
in the social sciences. Jens Qvortrup (1985, 1987) was one of the first to argue the
case: In 1987, for instance, he wrote that in industrial society the concept of
generation has acquired a broader meaning than in earlier societal formations as
children and adults have now assumed structural attributes relative to each
other. It was therefore useful, he wrote, to treat childhood and adulthood as
structural elements in an interactive relation and childhood as a particular social
status (Qvortrup 1987, p. 19).
In everyday discourse as well as in social science, generational relations tend to
refer to relationships between individuals who are located in different stages within
their life courses such as adults and children or between individuals currently
living through the same life stage Intergenerational in this parlance refers to the
relationships or connectedness between individuals belonging to different

140

L. Alanen

generations. In addition, other uses of generation exist as a range of sociological

discourses and modes of generational analysis. However, the idea of childhood
proposed by Qvortrup, as an element of social structure, called for sociological
tools that were not readily available in this literature. What was particularly missing
from the literature was a new focus on the acknowledgement and elaboration of the
fundamentally relational nature of the socially recognized categories of children
and adults.
Isolated calls had been issued for the need for relational understandings of
childhood as well as of the other generational categories with which childhood
was connected; for example, in 1982, the British scholars, John Fitz and John HoodWilliams (1982), wrote that
If we wish to understand youth and childhood we have to proceed not by studies of
discrete phenomena but by studies of relationships, since youth [or childhood/LA] is not
a function of age but a social category constituted in relation to, and indeed in opposition to,
the category adult (as is feminine to masculine). (Fitz and Hood-Williams 1982, p. 65)

Later in the 1980s, a structural generational perspective was adopted in the

research of the international Childhood as a Social Phenomenon project
(19871992), assembled and organized to study the characteristic social features
of childhood across a number of Western societies. The core idea in the projects
approach was the dynamic social relations between generations which now were
understood as the elements (or units) of a social, generational structure.
As remarked upon above, generation is common currency in everyday speech,
used in many senses and for a variety of purposes. Children, for instance, are
frequently spoken of as being the next generation (of adults), or reference is
made to the contemporary generation of children. We also identify ourselves
and other people as members of different generations (the 68 generation, my
grandparents generation) and thereby point to and make sense of both the
differences that we observe between people of different age and their interrelationships, in terms of exchange, solidarity, conflict, or gaps in mutual
understanding. Moreover, by identifying people as members of particular generations, we locate them in historical time, such as when speaking of the war
generation (those adults who lived and suffered through the war years) or the
war children. (This refers to the tens of thousands of Finnish children who were
sent from Finland during the Second World War to a safer life in neighboring
Sweden or Denmark).
As the Greek and Latin etymologies of the word imply genealogies and succession, generations are frequently defined according to relational lines of descent
(Jaeger 1977, p. 430; Corsten 1999, p. 250). The original meaning is linked to
kinship: descent along family lineage, but the sense has been generalized to also
cover social descent so that people speak of, for instance, second generation
sociologists (Corsten 1999, p. 251). This sense of kinship relations is the one that
particularly demographers wish to reserve for generation (e.g., Kertzer 1983). This
is also the sense in which generation is used in historical research: to describe
succession in collective history (Jaeger 1977).

Childhood and Intergenerationality

5.5

141

Generational Analysis: Mannheim and Beyond

Such usages of generation similarly circulate in sociological texts. However, in

scientific reviews of the field, Karl Mannheim is unanimously credited as the
scholar who brought generation into sociology in his famous essay on the
problem of generations (Mannheim 1952/1928). (See for example, Jaeger 1977;
Matthes 1985; Attias-Donfut 1988; Pilcher 1994; Becker 1997; Corsten 1999;
Turner 1999). Mannheim worked out his notion of generations within a sociology
of culture frame (Matthes 1985; Corsten 1999). In this view, generations needed to
be understood and investigated as cultural phenomena that were formed in specific
social and historical contexts. More specifically, Mannheim argued that generations
are formed when members of a particular age-group (or cohort) live through the
same historical and social events during their youthful years and experience them as
significant to themselves. Through this shared experience, they come to develop
a common consciousness, or identity, which can be observed particularly in the
world view and the social and political attitudes of the age-group in question. In
addition, world views and attitudes tend to persist over the life course of cohort
members, making membership in the same generation easily identifiable to the
members themselves and to others later on.
In Mannheims cultural sociology, generations grow out of age-groups (cohorts),
but they become identifiable generations only under specific circumstances. His
conceptualization of the formation of generations proceeds in three stages. Firstly,
people born (or located) in the same period of social and historical time within
a society are exposed to a specific range of social events and ideas. At this stage,
they can be identified as sharing a generational location; here they are only
a potential generation, which exists merely in the mind of the researcher, not
for the group members, who are not linked through actual relationships.
Mannheim reflects on the analogy between class and generation, noting that the
class position of an individual is a different sort of social category, materially quite
unlike the generation but bearing a certain structural resemblance to it. The bases
of the two positions class and generation naturally differ, and generation, as well
as all the further historical and social formations growing out of shared generational
positions, is ultimately seen to be based on the biological rhythm of birth and
death (Mannheim 1952/1928, p. 290). He then extends the analogy to class and
generational positions and sees both as an objective fact, whether the individual in
question knows his class [generational] position or not, and whether he acknowledges it or not (Mannheim 1952/1928, p. 289). The second stage in the formation
of generations involves the development of a shared interpretation of experiences
and definition of situations among those who share a generational location:
When this takes place, the potential generation becomes an actual generation
analogous to the development of a class in itself to a class for itself. Thirdly, in
some cases, the differentiation within actual generations may lead to the formation of generational units, characterized by face-to-face interaction among its
members and similar ways of reacting to the issues they meet as a generation
(Mannheim 1952/1928, pp. 290, 302312; Corsten 1999, pp. 253255).

142

L. Alanen

In summary, Mannheim conceptualizes generations as being first socially and

historically formed and then, once formed, as possibly exerting an influence on the
course of events. Thus, his aim was to propose his theory of generations as a theory of
social change, or of intellectual evolution (Mannheim 1952/1928, p. 281), in which
particular culturally formed groups act as collective agents and cultural bearers of
social transformation, based on the socialization of cohort members during their
formative years of youth (Becker 1997, pp. 910; cf. Mannheim 1952/1928,
pp. 292308). (For criticisms directed at Mannheims theory, among them the assumptions on youth and socialization on which he relies, see Pilcher (1995, pp. 2325)).
For decades after the publication of his seminal essay (in 1928), there was not much
treatment of the subject in sociology. Later, Mannheims thinking did evoke some
response but mainly from a few small subdisciplines, such as the study of youth groups
and youth cultures. Since the 1960s, developments in a few specific areas of social
research, such as social demography, life course analysis, and gerontology, have taken
a closer look at Mannheims theory of generations and utilized it in their research.
In this activity, scholars clarified some of the confusion found in earlier usages
(including Mannheims) of generation and developed precise distinctions and
conceptualizations useful for the empirical aims of research. These include particularly the conceptual and terminological distinctions between generation, cohort, and
(individual) age (e.g., Ryder 1965; Kertzer 1983; Becker 1992; Becker and Hermkens
1993). Specific new research programs have evolved out of this activity, and space has
been made for the field of generations research or, more accurately, for cohorts and
generations research to emerge (Becker 1997).
In her book on age and generation in Britain, Pilcher (1995, pp. 2225) presents
the similar cohorts and social generation theory as one of the ways in which
sociologists have tried to explain the social significance of age. The other four in
her book are the following: the life course perspective, functionalist perspectives,
political economy perspectives, and interpretive perspectives (Pilcher 1995,
pp. 1630). An abundant discussion on the concept of generation and generational
issues has in recent years also been going on in German-language social science
research (and public debate); see, for example, Liebau and Wulf (1996), Ecarius
(1998), and Honig (1999). For some of the causes for this renaissance, see
Corsten (1999, pp. 249250)).
Concerning the current situation, research on generations in the Mannheimian
tradition has forged for itself a secure place within (empirical) social research. In
this research, Mannheims original emphasis on youth as the key period for making
fresh contacts with social life and forming generational experiences has remained
strong. Sociologists of childhood may, for good reasons, question this continued
stress on youth by asking the following: Why first young people? Are not children the
obvious fresh cohort entering social life and, therefore, also capable of sharing experiences in historical time and place, that is, of becoming a generation in a true
Mannheimian sense? While there has been some criticism directed at generations
research for its tendency to overlook cohorts that are living through their later years,
and their potential for generating specific generational experiences (e.g., Pilcher 1995),
a similar criticism has not been directed at the treatment of children in generations

Childhood and Intergenerationality

143

research. One plausible explanation for this curious omission lurks in Ryders article
(1965, pp. 851852) where he writes of the model of socialization and development
dominating the literature of his time. He argues that as long as life is conventionally
seen as a movement from amorphous plasticity through mature competence towards
terminal rigidity, young children are seen as being merely in a preparatory phase,
whereas youth (and adults) are considered participants in social life.
The more recent sociological work on childhood would object to this view and
bring forward evidence to the effect that children, too, are participants in social life,
and therefore, the Mannheimian frame is fully applicable in childhood research as
well. A rare case of this is the German research on children war, of consumption
and of crisis (Preuss-Lausitz et al. 1983), by a group of altogether thirteen
researchers who explore the shared experiences of three different cohorts of children in post-World War II Germany. The research was done before the emergence
of the sociology of childhood, and the authors identified their project as being one in
socialization history. (This book can in fact be seen to be pioneering the sociology of childhood in the German-language area). If the applicability of the
Mannheimian frame also in the study of childhood, then the further Mannheimian
question of do children also form active generational groups (or units)? can
likewise be opened to further investigation.
In summary, very little attention has been given to generational issues outside
this generations and cohorts research niche within the social science field. Nor have
issues of age been attended to until recently and in a few cases. In the British
context, Janet Finch (1986) describes the use of age in ways that are theoretically
informed and empirically rigorous as relatively uncharted territory, and Jane
Pilcher (1994) notes that the neglect of the sociology of generations parallels the
lack of attention paid to the social significance of age. In the 1990s, there has been
a burgeoning of theorizing and research on age, Pilcher (1994) writes, lamenting
that in this new activity there still is a lack of theorizing and research in terms of
generations meaning theorizing and research in the Mannheimian tradition.
Harriet Bradley, too, in her book subtitled Changing Patterns of Inequality
(Bradley 1996), sees age as the more important dimension of stratification than
generation and accordingly devotes one full chapter to Age: The Neglected
Dimension of Stratification. Within that chapter, generation is given two pages,
mainly introducing Mannheims work.
There is however more to discover and rediscover in generation, by going
beyond the line of analysis that has stemmed from Mannheims important work.
In recent decades, many social conditions to which childhood has also been
compared gender, class, ethnicity, and (dis)ability have been submitted to
a critical, deconstructive gaze, by first interpreting them as social constructions
and then reconceptualizing and researching them from a number of theoretical
(post-positivist) perspectives. In feminist/gender studies, gender continues to be
discussed and analyzed and is variously theorized as a material, social, and/or
discursive structure, while naturally through the history of sociology as
a scientific discipline, (social) class provides a central concept for analyzing
and explaining social divisions and structural inequalities. Both ethnic studies and

144

L. Alanen

disability studies are more recent fields of research; they bring into focus and
redefine both race/ethnicity and disability as socially constructed phenomena
and seek to generate theoretical perspectives for research on these particular social
constructions of inequality and exclusion. (On discussions on this in, for example,
disability studies, see the collection edited by Corker and French (1999)).
There are good reasons to believe that in a similar manner, sociologists will
learn more about childhood as a social and specifically generational (structural)
condition by working on the notion as an analogue to class, gender, ethnicity, or
disability. The suggestion is that generation needs to be brought into childhood
studies and childhood needs to be brought into generational studies. Such an
approach, moreover, needs to be one that also holds to the basic premise of the
new childhood studies: childrens agency.

5.6

Childhood Relationally: Generational Order(ing)

In the final product of the Childhood as a Social Phenomenon project (Qvortrup

et al. 1994), a number of analyses were presented on the relations between children
and childhood and between childhood and adulthood. Furthermore, new concepts
were suggested to develop further the projects idea of macro-level generational
structuring that impacts the everyday conditions, actions, and experiences of
children. The notion of a generational order was one of them (Alanen 1994; also
Alanen 1992, pp. 6471); it was proposed as a useful analytic tool to work on and to
refine, as well as to develop into a comprehensive sociological framework.
The central idea in the notion of a generational order is that a system of social
ordering exists in modern societies that specifically pertains to children as a social
category and circumscribes for them particular social locations from which they
act, and thereby participate in ongoing social life.
As children are seen to be involved in the daily construction of their own and
other peoples everyday relationships and life trajectories, the notion would also
capture the idea of children as social actors the idea that would become the
central idea in the sociology of children (cf. Prout and James 1990), with its
preference for ethnographic research with children, and sensitivity to childrens
subjective constructions. Thereby, the notion of a generational order could also
hold the promise of helping to transcend the theoretical and methodological divide
between structure and agency a divide that continues to keep apart, theoretically
and methodologically, the different sociologies of children and childhood that have
emerged in the subfield. This disconnection remains even today a challenge to the
sociology of childhood.
In addition, the notion of generational order, once fully elaborated both theoretically and methodologically, and put into empirical use, promises to help sociologists to understand and account for the interconnections between childhoods many
structurations: Generational ordering can be included as one of the organizing
principles of social relations in social life, in this case the social relations in
which children are a significant partner, in addition to and alongside the more

Childhood and Intergenerationality

145

recognized such as social class, gender, ethnicity, and (dis)ability. Each of these
latter categories was long understood as pre-given conditions within the natural
order of things, and each of them has been submitted to critical analysis and
deconstruction. As their socially constructed nature has been revealed and their
long-lived misrecognition (Bourdieu) as natural facts undermined, new questions
on their construction, operation, and effects could be raised for study, driving
forward their reconceptualization to the point that now each of these structural
categories has a place within social theory and research, even if they also have
remained contested concepts. Furthermore, as they all operate in the same social
space, that is, society, their interconnections have emerged as a topic (intersectionality) for social science research.
The major significance of the notion of a generational order then is that it gives
a name and sociological content to the processes through which the social world is
organized in terms of generational distinction: The social world is a gendered,
classed, and raced world, and it is also generationed. In the case of children,
their lives, experiences, and knowledges are not only gendered, classed, and
raced (and so on) but also and most importantly for the sociological study of
childhood generationed.
To begin to do so, conceptual autonomy (cf. Thorne 1987) is to be granted to
the generational segment of the social world. Generational order provides one
conceptual starting point and an analytical tool for framing the study of childhood
in ways that will capture the structured nature of childhood as well as childrens
active presence in generational (structuring) structures while endorsing the internal,
necessary connectedness the relationality of generational structures.
During the work of the Childhood as a Social Phenomenon project, the
fundamentally relational nature of generational categories of which childhood
and adulthood were the projects primary focus was assumed but did not receive
special analytical attention. What the project did achieve was an argument for and
demonstration of the usefulness of collecting statistical information, using children
as units of counting and of quantitative analysis.
Compiling childhood statistics on childrens families, their living conditions,
poverty, and other aspects and comparing the information with data on the
other generational categories (adults), is a case of categorical generational analysis
(cf. Connell 1987). The interrelations within and between the categories are external, or contingent, in the sense that the category is defined in terms of a number
of shared attributes, such as income, education, attitudes, and life chances, the
generational category of children being typically categorized in terms of age.
The relations between the categories may also be internal, or necessary, in the
sense that what one category is dependent on its relation to the other, and the
existence of one necessarily presupposes the other (Sayer 1992, pp. 8990; Ollman
2003). It is this feature of internal relationality that characterizes the generational
order as it has been introduced earlier. The idea of a modern nuclear family
exemplifies the case of a generational structure in which the relations are also
internal: It is a system of relations, linking to each other the husband/father, the
wife/mother, and their children, all of which can be conceived as positions within

146

L. Alanen

the structured network of relations (cf. Porpora 1998, p. 343; Porpora 2002).
Internality implies that the relations of any holder of one position (such as that of
a parent) cannot exist without the other (child) position. What parenting is or
becomes that is, action in the position of a parent in its defining relations is
dependent on the reciprocal action taken by the holder of the position of child.
Similarly, a change of action in one position will probably effect change in the other
position. The interdependency of positional performance as well as identity
does not work only one way, unidirectionally, from parental position to child
position. Interestingly, the term that in the family example corresponds to the
positional performance of the holder of the child position is missing from both
everyday and sociological discourse, presumably because the culturally normative
basis for understanding the child-parent relationship tends to be one way only.
Logically, as Berry Mayall has suggested (1996, p. 49), childing would be the
appropriate counter term to parenting.
A parallel example is given by the structured system of teacher-student
positions. The case can be expanded from micro- to meso- level interrelations,
by bringing in the complexities in which the holder of a teacher position also defines
a position within a broader schooling system. The complex structure of schooling
(including even the family system) can further be seen to exist in an equally internal
relation to a particular welfare state structure, or a labor market structure, and this
in turn will be internally related to wider economic and cultural structures that
potentially extend to global (economic, cultural) structures. (It is commonly
assumed that social structures include only big objects, such as the international
division of labor, or the labor market, while they of course include also small ones
at the interpersonal and intrapersonal levels (Sayer 1992, p. 92)).
Thus, the generational structures that we may find to exist as truly relational
structures can be expected to be embedded in chains or networks of further
relational structures, be they generational or otherwise (e.g., class or gender
structures); the implication is that the determinations of generational structures
and positions within them (as within any social structure) are always dynamic and
complex.
The distinguishing feature, by which we may find relational social structures
in existence and the way by which to determine the possibilities of actual
performance of the holders of its structured positions, is interdependency. However,
as Sayer (1992, pp. 8991) notes, the relationship need not be, and often is not,
symmetrical in both directions. The familial generational structure, for instance, is
(usually) one of asymmetry, as are the generational structure of teacher-student, and
many other structures of relations embedded in the organization of the welfare state
and the organizations of global governance.
To further expand on the notion of internal versus external relations, toward
categorical versus relational theorizing, it is instructive to think also of gender
(or gender structures) as being composed of internal relations and then relate this
idea to a concept of gender based on external relations. R. W. Connell (1987) does
this in an examination of some of the most current frameworks of gender theory.
Among them are theories that Connell called categorical (1987, pp. 5461).

Childhood and Intergenerationality

147

In an analysis based on categorical theorizing, the gender categories as they exist

for us mostly men and women, or some subcategories of each are taken as the
starting point, and the study aims at finding how the categories relate to each other
in terms of a chosen aspect, for example, life chances or resources. The problematic point in categorical theorizing, Connell concludes, is that an analysis that
begins by setting a simple line of demarcation between gender positions is not able
to pay attention to the process of how the gender categories and the relations
between the categories are constituted in the first place and are subsequently
reproduced or, as it may be, transformed. The consequence is that categorical
theories of gender are forced to treat both genders in terms of internally undifferentiated, homogeneous, and general categories, thereby inviting criticism of false
universalism and sometimes even of falling back on biological thinking. To resolve
this categoricalism, Connell advocates what he calls practice-based theorizing
that focuses on what people do by way of constituting the relations they live in
(Connell 1987, pp. 6164).
The risk of undifferentiated treatment of category members is also evident in the
structural approach to childhood that starts from the social category of children as
their unit and demarcates this unit (mostly) on the basis of chronological age (cf.
Qvortrup 2000). Children, as well as their counterparts in the analysis (i.e., adults),
are in fact brought into the analysis as demographical age categories or sets of birth
cohorts. The translation of the generational into the social construct of age
moves the analysis close to cohort-based (statistical) generational analysis. In the
kind of structural approach to generational analysis that Jens Qvortrup has advocated, the (contingent) relations between the categories of children and adults are
given an economic interpretation, and (macro-)economical processes are brought
into the analysis to explain the economic situation of the age-defined category of
children. Therefore, Qvortrups approach could be seen as a modification of
Weberian class analysis or, closer to the study of childhood, a modification
of Karl Mannheims generational analysis; only children are now shown to form
not a cultural but an economic generation in that they are shown to share a set of
economic risks and opportunities. In this view, the definition of their generational
nature their childness is based on an observable similarity or shared attribute,
or sets of them, among individual children, therefore, on more external than
internal relations.
There is also another interesting feature in category-based analyses in which the
focus is on the economic aspects of generational relations. An example is David
Oldmans thought-provoking framing of childrens activities in the Children as
a Social Phenomenon book Childhood Matters (Oldman 1994). Oldman aims to
show how in capitalist societies the relations between the (generational) classes of
children and adults have become organized as economic relations. The suggestion
is that adults and children are social categories which exist principally by their
economic opposition to each other and in the ability of the dominant class (adults)
to exploit economically the activities of the subordinate class (children). Children,
through their various everyday activities, in fact produce value to adults who
perform child work, that is, work in which children are the objects of the adults

148

L. Alanen

labor (Oldman 1994, pp. 4347). As family is only one of many sites where this
class opposition and exploitation takes place (school being another), Oldman
concludes that there exists a distinctive generational mode of production that
articulates with two other existing modes of production: the capitalist mode that
dominates in the industrial sphere and the patriarchal mode that dominates in the
domestic sphere (Oldman 1994, pp. 5558).
In his bold interpretation of child-adult relations, Oldman clearly confines the
generational ordering of social relations under the logic of production. Many of
the analyses that have focused on structural relations between childhood and
adulthood have followed the same idea when outlining the evolving structures of
economic relations between the two generational categories of children and
adults (e.g., Qvortrup 1995; Wintersberger 1998, 2005; Hengst 2000; Olk and
Wintersberger 2007).
In contrast, the notion of a generational order advocated above intends to provide
a frame for analysis by leaving it to empirical study to discover what actually is the
constitutive principle in the social ordering, and organizing, of child-adult relations
in each (i.e., national or institutional) case and in different social fields. In some
cases, it may be primarily economic; in the case of other structures, the cultural may
dominate. In any case, this approach enables a more dynamic conceptualization of
generational structures than seems possible if the starting point is based on generational categories.
To conclude on the basic features of an analysis of generational structures, the
aim is to be able to identify the internal relations that link children to the social
world, the (relational) positions that define childness in each historical timespace, and the social (relational) practices (cf. Connell 1987) in which the positions
constitutive of childness are concurrently produced and maintained and
occasionally transformed.
To summarize the generational order, the basic principles of the social order
that is, the ways in which members of a society relate to each other and to the whole
of their society also include the arrangement of relations between generational
groups. In this sense, the social order is also always a generational order (e.g.,
Buhler-Niederberger 2005, p. 9; cf. Honig 1996; 1999, p. 190).
The ideas of a generational order and processes of generational ordering already
embrace some of the basic ideas of relational thinking. In order to further develop
a relational conceptualization of childhood, a second analytical round will be taken;
we will return to the conceptual tools that Pierre Bourdieu developed in his
lifework based on a relational ontology.

5.7

Toward a Relational Sociology of Childhood

One of Bourdieus central goals in developing his theoretical approach was to assist
in overcoming sociologys customary antinomies, such as individual versus society,
micro- versus macroanalysis, phenomenological versus structural approaches, and
subjectivism versus objectivism antinomies that are also clearly visible in the

Childhood and Intergenerationality

149

existing polarity between (1) micro-sociologies of children that focus their

analysis directly on children as (inter)actors in their everyday social worlds and
(2) macro-sociologies of childhood that take childhood to be an element of the
social structures or a structure in its own right. Bourdieus route for transcending
such polarities is to move social analysis from its more customary substantialist
mode of thinking to a relational mode. This is why Bourdieus work can be used as
a thinking model for bridging the gap that currently complicates theoretical and
methodological advancement in the social study of childhood.
As argued above, generation has been identified as a particularly useful notion
for sociologists of childhood to work with; the proposal is to approach generation
relationally and not as a property or substance attached to agents. The invitation
is to envision distinct socially and historically constructed sets, or systems, of
relations between groups or categories of people relations that we may recognize
as specifically generational relations. As earlier remarked, relations between the
generational categories of children and adults, or parents and children, or
teachers and students present lucid examples of such relations that are internally related, in the sense that one category (such as children) cannot exist
without the other, and the socially constructed meaning of one category is dependent on the meaning of the other category.
The following section expands on Bourdieus relational approach by describing
the main contours of his theory of social fields; the suggestion is to utilize it by
applying it to the study of the intergenerational encounters (family being the case),
now conceptualized as social fields.

5.7.1

A Sociology of Fields

Instead of affirming that the ontological priority lies with structure or with actors,
the collective or the individual, Bourdieus sociology affirms the primacy of social
relations (Wacquant 1992, p. 15). To think relationally means, as presented above,
to move away from substantialist thinking that begins from socially pre-given
categorical entities; relational thinking, in contrast, centers on the relations and
the systems of relations that generate and naturalize the observable (and often
conventional) social categories (i.e., children).
In sociology there is a tradition of relationalism it was by no means Bourdieus
invention. Bourdieu, however, labored particularly relentlessly in order to establish
a thoroughly relational sociology, well evidenced by the fact that his key concepts
(such as field and habitus) designate bundles of relations (Wacquant 1992, p. 16).
Field, according to Bourdieu, should also be the primary focus of social analysis:
The notion of field reminds us that the true object of social science is not the individual,
even though one cannot construct a field if not through individuals, [. . .]. It is the field that
is primary and must be the focus of the research operations. This does not imply that
individuals are mere illusions, that they do not exist: they exist as agents and not as
biological individuals, actors, or subjects who are socially constituted as active and acting
in the field under consideration by the fact that they possess the necessary properties to be

150

L. Alanen

effective, to produce effects, in this field. And it is knowledge of the field itself in which
they evolve that allows us best to grasp the roots of their singularity, their point of view or
position (in a field) from which their particular vision of the world (and of the field itself) is
constructed. (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 107)

What then is a field?

In analytical terms, a field may be defined as a network, or a configuration, of objective
relations between positions. [. . .] In highly differentiated societies, the social cosmos is
made up of a number of such relatively autonomous social microcosms, i.e., spaces of
objective relations that are the site of a logic and a necessity that are specific and irreducible
to those that regulate other fields. For instance, the artistic field, or the religious field, or the
economic field all follow specific logics: while the artistic field has constituted itself by
rejecting or reversing the law of material profit [. . .], the economic field has emerged,
historically, through the creation of a universe within which, as we commonly say,
business is business, where the enchanted relations of friendship and love are in principle
excluded. (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, pp. 9798)

In his early empirical work in which he also developed his theory of practice,
Bourdieu gave field a minor place. It is in his later works that field comes increasingly to replace the polysemantic concept of structure that he used in earlier texts
(Reed-Danahay 2004, p. 133). Subsequently, field gains an increasingly central
place in Bourdieus theoretical system. He continued to refine his conceptual tools
throughout his career in empirical studies, with the analytical weight of field
increasing as Bourdieu moved toward analyzing contemporary French society
and its structuredness into fields and as fields (Swartz 1997, p. 117).
In the 1970s and 1980s, the main focus of Bourdieus work was on class, culture,
and education. In these studies, field was made to refer to the social space in
which Bourdieu (with the help of the method of correspondence analysis) located
the actors of the social domain in question according to the volume of the economic
and cultural capital that the actors possessed. In an essay on the intellectual field
(1966), he had already developed some of the main ideas of his forthcoming theory
of fields (Lane 2000, pp. 7273), giving the concept the analytical meaning that the
concept retained in his later, distinctly relational theory.
Bourdieus theory of fields may be considered to be his theory of society. While
in archaic societies (such as the Kabyle he studied in Algeria, in the 1960s) there
is only one field, in modern differentiated societies the number of fields grows:
They exist parallel to each other, they intersect, and there may be subfields within
larger fields. In Bourdieus conceptualization, modern societies are composed of
multiple domains of action fields that are distinct from each other. A field is
a relational historical formation: a network, or configuration, of objective relations
between positions (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 125), a system of positions,
and a social space structured by positions. Accordingly, action (practice) taking
place in a field is understood and explained only by identifying the agents
individuals and institutions currently active in the field, the structure of relations
that differentiate (and connect) them, and the game that is taking place among the
actors, the game being struggles about control of the resources (capitals) that are
valued and held legitimate in the field. Each field has its own rules, or logic, and

Childhood and Intergenerationality

151

therefore, the game and rules of one field are different from the games and rules of
other fields. What fields do share is their (homologous) structure: All fields are
structured by relations of dominance. This applies also to the family which can be
described in field-analytical terms. As fields are dynamic formations, they have their
birth (genesis) and developmental history, and the game played in a field may
remain even after the field disappears. In addition, the relations of influence between
fields vary; therefore, fields might subsequently vary in their degree of autonomy.
Bourdieus probably best-known analysis of fields concerns the field of cultural
production (the production of arts and literature) in France. Bourdieu
(1993) explained how this area first struggled into an autonomous position in
relation to the heteronomous forces of economy, politics, and the state. The
analysis was focused particularly on the struggles of nineteenth-century painters
and writers (Manet, Flaubert, Baudelaire) for freedom from the structural dominance of, first, the court and the church, then of the salons, and, finally, of the
Academy of France. Once autonomy was successfully fought for and gained for
the field of cultural production, space was assured for the artists own game. The
development of this field took place in three stages: First, it was born by way of
separating itself from dominance by other fields already in existence. The move
from a state of heteronomy to that of autonomy marked the arrival of the second
stage in which the avant-garde guaranteed the field autonomy. However, the
accomplishment of autonomy was simultaneously the beginning of internal differentiation, as the struggles within the field were reorganized by actors that in the new
state of autonomy developed new logics (strategies) of action. The third stage in the
development of a field is thus marked by diminishing autonomy. In Bourdieus
example of cultural production in nineteenth-century France, the field of economy
was expanding its influence on cultural production. The market for art objects was
born, relying on a new logic, and the field moved back to a state of heteronomy,
albeit of a qualitatively different kind from the earlier stage of heteronomy.
Many of the fields that Bourdieu himself studied are cultural spaces, such as art,
literature, religion, justice, education, university, and journalism, all of which are
well-institutionalized social domains, with a fairly large degree of autonomy
although they also constantly need to struggle to keep this autonomy. Most of
the research on fields by other scholars has also focused on well-established,
institutionalized, and public arenas, such as the media, higher education,
economic policy, the world of academic research, or public welfare services.
Much less attention has been focused on private domains, such as the household
or family, or on informally organized or voluntary relations (peer relations,
friendship). Can these also be understood as fields?
A second question concerns who or what qualifies as an agent in a specific field.
Agents exist not as a biological individuals, actors, or subjects, but as agents who
are socially constituted as active and acting in the field under consideration by the
fact that they possess the necessary properties to be effective, to produce effects, in
this field (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 107).
This qualification will not exhaust the whole range of actors that sociologists
(including sociologists of childhood) commonly think of and treat as social actors.

152

L. Alanen

Bernard Lahire (2001, pp. 3237) follows Bourdieu in his contention that the
existence of a field presupposes illusion, that is, that there exist a sufficient number
of participants that actually invest in the struggles (games) of the field and keep
up the game these are agents in the Bourdieusian sense:
In empirical work, it is one and the same thing to determine what the field is, where its
limits lie, etc., and to determine what species of capital are active in it, within what limits,
and so on. (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, pp. 9899)

The systemic nature of Bourdieus theory implies that all of the concepts of his
relational theoretical universe have a role to play in recognizing/reconstructing
a field. (See Lahire (2001, pp. 2426) for a meticulously compiled list of altogether
13 characteristics by which to recognize and analytically construct a Bourdieusian
field). But how and where to start the study of a field? Where to start especially
when the object of concern is the everyday world of ordinary people children and
adults instead of such wide institutionalized worlds of action as government,
university, church, or media world?
The institutional aspects in the action of individuals and groups are significant
issues to focus on in a field analysis, but a field is not identical to an institution
(Swartz 1997, pp. 120121). A field may be in fact located within an institution or it
may reach across two (or more) institutions; the institution may also be one of the
positions in a field. Moreover, a field may be emerging in which the practices are
not yet strongly institutionalized. The most distinctive differentiating feature of a
field from an institution is that the concept a field underlines is by nature conflictual
(Swartz 1997). This is a clear distinction from the (functionalist, consensus-based)
understanding of an institution.
Bourdieu himself identifies three internally connected moments in a field analysis (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, p. 104). First, one must analyze the position of
the field in relation to the field of power and, next, the objective structure of the
positions held by actors or institutions that compete for the legitimate form of
capital specific to the field. The field of power is not situated on the same level as
other fields (the literary, economic, scientific, state bureaucratic, etc.) since it
encompasses them in part. It should be thought of more as a kind of meta-field
with a number of emergent and specific properties (Wacquant 1992, p. 18).
Finally, the habitus of the actors need to be studied. Habitus together with the
concepts of field and capital form Bourdieus principal conceptual triad. Habitus is
a durable and transposable system of schemata of perception, appreciation,
and action; habitus focuses on our ways of acting, feeling, thinking and being,
it captures how we carry within us history, how we bring this history into our
present circumstances, and how we then make choices to act in certain ways and not
with others (Maton 2008, p. 52). It is the construct of habitus with which Bourdieu
intends to transcend the series of deep-seated dichotomies such as subjectivismobjectivism and structure-agency, among others. However, as the concept of field
does not offer any ready-made answers, fields need to be constructed case by case
(Maton 2008, p. 139). (For a detailed account of the three analytical stages for
constructing a field as an object of study, see Alanen (2007)).

Childhood and Intergenerationality

5.7.2

153

A Case of Generational Ordering: Family as a Social Field

The significance of family in Bourdieus theorizing and in his studies (especially

Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Bourdieu 1984) stems from his interest in understanding the social mechanisms by which social inequalities are reproduced. In
modern societies, family, alongside education, is a central reproductive mechanism.
Family, therefore, appears in Bourdieus theorizing in several contexts: Family
appears as a field; it may also be a component of habitus; family may also provide
the members of a family group with resources social capital that they can
convert into other forms of capital in their exchanges in other fields, thereby helping
them to function effectively in the games of other fields. Lastly, the family can be
understood as a form of practice. Next, only an outline of family as a field is
presented.
A sociologist will without difficulty recognize and analyze any family, or a large
group of kin, as a field of interactions taking place between family members.
Bourdieu, however, is adamant in asserting that family should not be identified as
a domain of everyday domestic interactions. Within his relational theorizing, it is
important to notice that the family
tends to function as a field, with its physical, economic and above all symbolic power
relations (linked, for example, to the volume and structure of the capital possessed by each
member), and its struggles to hold on to and transform these power relations. (Bourdieu
1998, pp. 6869; also 1996, p. 22; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977, p. 18)

To perceive family as a social body within which members struggle or compete

with each other goes utterly against contemporary and conventional thinking.
B
uchner and Brake (2006, pp. 2526), in their study on the intergenerational
transmission of cultural capital, are among the few researchers that make this
point. Following Bourdieu, they note that we tend to be attached to an (idealized)
picture of family in which emotional closeness and relations of trust and confidence
take a central place, and the intrinsic purpose of family is to create an emotional
counterbalance to the harsh competition and obligations to perform outside family.
This idea as well as the idea of society being divided into a public and a private
sphere and of family as the center of the latter has been asserted by numerous
sociologists (since at least Talcott Parsons). This vision of the family as a domain
separates from the public domain of the economy and the state and, following
a specific logic of its own, is reinforced by the division of society into families
(Bourdieu 1998, p. 66). Both the vision and the division are, of course, historical
constructs, although commonly experienced as being natural (see below).
In contrast, it is Bourdieus claim that in its modern representation the family
should be approached as only a word, a mere verbal construct, or paper family
(Bourdieu 1998, p. 65). Nevertheless, it is also a well-founded fiction and an
active word in that it is a collective principle of construction, perception, and
categorization of collective reality (Bourdieu 1998, p. 66; Lenoir 1992, 2008)
Family, then, is an instrument of construction of reality that exists both in the
objectivity of the world, in the form of elementary social bodies that we call

154

L. Alanen

families, and in peoples minds, in the form of principles of classification that are
implemented both by ordinary agents and by the licensed operators of official
classifications, such as state statisticians (Bourdieu 1998, p. 71). The state, then,
is the main agent of the construction of the official categories through which
both populations and minds are structured (Bourdieu 1998, 1996, pp. 2425;
Lenoir 2008, pp. 3940). Therefore, in a society that is divided into family groups
(such as contemporary Western industrialized societies), the family is not
just a subjective idea, a mental and cognitive category, it is also an objective social
category. Thus, as such it is in fact the basis of the family as a subjective social
category the mental category which is the matrix of countless representations
and actions (such as marriages) which help to reproduce the objective
social category. The circle is that of reproduction of the social order (Bourdieu
1998, p. 67), and
[t]he near-perfect match that is then set up between the subjective and objective categories
provides the foundation for an experience of the world as self-evident, taken for granted.
And nothing seems more natural than the family; this arbitrary social construct seems to
belong on the side of nature, the natural and the universal. (Bourdieu 1998)

The circle of reproduction of the social order leads us to regard the family as
(falsely) natural, by presenting itself with the self-evidence of what has always
been that way, although as historical family research has amply shown it is
a fairly recent social invention (Bourdieu 1998, p. 64). The immediate congruence
between the subjective, mental structures and the objective structures of the family
is historically constructed, and the family is thus the product of countless acts of
institutionalization (Bourdieu 1998, pp. 6769).
Remi Lenoir (1991, 1992, 2003) has extensively analyzed this historical process
of the birth and development the long duree of the family field in France, as it
has appeared in the growth of family thinking (familialism) in state policy, and
the resulting institutionalization of the family in and through, for example, civil law
and family policy. According to his analysis, the family has been (re)constructed
at the intersection of several social fields (such as politics, law, religion, and
medicine) within the struggles between concerned agents in these fields, each
striving to establish from their positions in the respective field, as well as in the
emerging family field, the functions that were to be left to the family to take
care of. In Western Europe, according to Lenoirs analysis, the genesis of the family
field started at some point in the twelfth century and followed much of the
same general pattern as various other social fields analyzed by Bourdieu and his
colleagues: by fighting for its autonomy from the church and the state, most clearly
by the dominant economic classes of the time. The field of religion (in which the
church of course was the most powerful agent) and the field of the state (with its
growth of an apparatus of governance) continue even today to be the most powerful
fields that presently affect the development of the family field. Dandurand and
Ouellette (1995) present a similar analysis of the emergence and structuration of the
family field in Canada. Whether the family field has, and to which degree, achieved
in Western societies a state of autonomy is an open question. Scientific work to

Childhood and Intergenerationality

155

construct a social history of the process of state institutionalization of the family

(Bourdieu 1998, p. 72) will be needed to provide answers which undoubtedly are
conditional on the developments of nation-states.
However, as was presented earlier, the perpetuation of the family as both an
objective and subjective category does not only depend on the constant work of
institutionalization by a range of agents active in the emerging family (macro-)field.
Indeed, the practical and symbolic work of creating (and recreating) the family is
also required on the mundane everyday level within the family groups (actual
families) themselves as well as between them. It is this practical and symbolic
work that
transforms the obligation to love into a loving disposition and tends to endow each member
of the family with a family feeling that generates devotion, generosity, and solidarity.
(Bourdieu 1998, p. 68)

This family feeling which is a cognitive principle of vision and division that
is at the same time an affective principle of cohesion (Bourdieu 1998, p. 68)
needs to be continuously created to function as the basis for the adhesion that is vital
to the existence of the family group in the broader family field. The obliged
affections and affective obligations of family feeling (conjugal love, paternal and
maternal love, filial love, brotherly and sisterly love, etc.) enter, for their part, into
the construction of (real) families. The implication is that a society divided into
families tends to constitute in its members a specific mental structure, or family
habitus (Bourdieu 1998, pp. 6667; Lenoir 2008, p. 34). The daily work that goes
into creating and recreating the family the subjective and mental category and
the division of society into family groups can be studied as sets of relational
practices of familialization (family making). The fact that everyone believes to
know what the family is confirms the success of the social work (Durkheim)
(consisting of both the private work of families and the public work of state
and other agents) that has been implemented in constructing the institution of the
family, which is also manifest on the level of public discourses mobilized to support
the vision of a thoroughly familialized world (Lenoir 1991, pp. 781782).
Thus, when considered as a social field, the family is a space structured by
positions that are defined in and by the struggles and the specific interests mobilized
in these struggles by a broad ensemble of agents, groups, and institutions, often
following divergent logics (Dandurand and Ouellette 1995, p. 104; Lenoir 2003;
2008). It is worth pointing out that family as a social field does not only refer to the
broad societal (macro-)space studied by, for example, Lenoir and Dandurand and
Ouellette; on the contrary, Bourdieu (1998, pp. 6869) reminds us that any family
group (which may be understood as a subfield of the broader family field) also
tends to function as a field, with their physical, economic and, above all, symbolic
power relations (linked, e.g., to the volume and structure of the capital possessed
by each member), and its struggles to hold on to and transform these power
relations. The key struggles (or the game) in the broad family field concern
what defines the family or, in Bourdieus terms, the species of capital specific to
the family and who are well positioned to define it and have their definition accepted

156

L. Alanen

as legitimate. Yet, this structure is always at stake in the struggles within the family
field; therefore, there is never any guarantee of there being unanimity at any time on
what the legitimate representation of the family is or should be.
Bourdieu points clearly to what the familys specific capital may consist of
when he writes on the socially arbitrary but naturalized family, in contemporary
societies:
In order for this reality called family to be possible, certain social conditions that are in no
way universal have to be fulfilled. They are, in any case, by no means uniformly distributed.
In short, the family in its legitimate definition is a privilege instituted into a universal norm:
de facto privilege that implies a symbolic privilege the privilege of comme il faut,
conforming to the norm, and therefore enjoying a symbolic profit of normality [emphasis
by LA]. Those who have the privilege of having a normal family are able to demand the
same of everyone without having to raise the question of the conditions (a certain income,
living space, etc.) of universal access to what they demand universally. . . . This privilege is,
in reality, one of the major conditions of the accumulation and transmission of economic,
cultural and symbolic privileges. (Bourdieu 1998, p. 69)

The so-called nuclear family is the prototypical normal family at the core of
family practices in the contemporary world (Uhlmann 2006, p. 9); it acts as
a realized category by being both a model of reality (in the sense that it reflects
the general practice) and a model for reality, meaning that it becomes a prescription
that members of society follow. As a realized category, the nuclear family forms
a gestalt which incorporates many specific cognitive models, such as the division
of labour within the family group, the convergence of social and biological parenthood, and the dependency of children on parents (Uhlmann 2006, pp. 4647).
These are some of the doxic aspects of the family which are taken for granted and
commonly experienced as universal. The concept of doxa broadly refers to the
misrecognition of forms of social arbitrariness that engenders the unformulated,
nondiscursive, but internalized and practical recognition of that same social
arbitrariness. It contributes to its reproduction in social institutions, structures,
and relations as well as in minds and bodies, expectations, and behavior
(Deer 2008, p. 119). Moreover, the transparency of normalcy, that is, the fact that
the family passes unnoticed and remains uninterrogated by public opinion, is as
Bourdieu (see above) has pointed out part of the privileged position it
has acquired: the right to question and not to be questioned, the authority to
contemplate others but not to be contemplated (Uhlmann 2006, p. 47). Therefore,
having a normal family has the potentiality of being a privilege that has the
status of being for their possessors valuable cultural capital and, moreover,
symbolic capital.
This chapter has sought to clear some conceptual ground for developing a
relational sociology of childhood. The discussion arose from the idea that childhood
is a fundamentally relational phenomenon and that, therefore, the study of children
and childhood, and the circumstances of childrens lives, necessitates a social
ontology that is consistently relational. The movement within childhood studies
toward a relational conceptualization of children and childhood has been described,
as well as the advance of relational sociologies elsewhere, exemplified by Pierre

Childhood and Intergenerationality

157

Bourdieus field theory. These developments additionally provide conceptual and

methodological tools for developing a reasoned conception of intergenerationality
as well as an ontologically and epistemologically secured foundation for
intergenerational studies.

References
Alanen, L. (1988). Rethinking childhood. Acta Sociologica, 31(1), 5367.
Alanen, L. (1992). Modern childhood? Exploring the child question in sociology. Publication
Series A: Research reports 50. Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla, Institute for Educational
Research.
Alanen, L. (1994). Gender and generation: Feminism and the child question. In Qvortrup, J.,
Bardy, M., Sgritta, G. & Wintersberger, H. (Eds.), Childhood matters. Social theory, practice
and politics (pp. 2742). Aldershot: Avebury.
Alanen, L. (2001). Explorations in generational analysis. In L. Alanen & B. Mayall (Eds.),
Conceptualizing child-adult relations (pp. 1122). London: Routledge.
Alanen, L. (2007). Lasten ja aikuisten kentat Kenttaanalyysi sukupolvisuhteiden tutkimuksessa.
In L. Alanen, V.-M. Salminen, & M. Siisiainen (Eds.), Sosiaalinen p
aaoma ja paikalliset
kent
at (pp. 103124). Jyvaskyla: Finnish Institute for Educational Research.
Alanen, L. (2009). Generational order. In J. Qvortrup, W. S. Corsaro, & M.-S. Honig (Eds.), The
Palgrave handbook of childhood studies (pp. 159176). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Archer, M. S. (2010). Critical realism and relational sociology. Complementarity and synergy.
Journal of Critical Realism, 9(2), 199207.
Attias-Donfut, C. (1988). Sociologie des generations: Lempreinte du temps. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de Frabce.
Becker, R. H. (Ed.). (1992). Dynamics of cohort and generations research. Amsterdam: Thesis
Publishers.
Becker, R. (Ed.). (1997). Generationen und sozialer Wandel. Generationsdynamik, Generationenbeziehungen und Differenzierung von Generationen. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Becker, H. A., & Hermkens, P. L. J. (Eds.). (1993). Solidarity of generations; Demographic,
economic and social change, and its consequences (Vol. III). Amsterdam: Thesis Publishers.
Bourdieu, P. (1983). The field of cultural production. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1994). In other words. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1996). On the family as a realized category. Theory, Culture and Society, 13(3), 1926.
Bourdieu, P. (1998). Practical reason. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture.
London: Sage.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Bradley, H. (1996). Fractured identities: Changing patterns of inequality. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Buchner, P., & Brake, A. (Eds.). (2006). Bildungsort Familie. Transmission von Bildung
ur
und Kultur im Alltag von Mehrgenerationenfamilien. Wiesbaden: Verlag f
Sozialwissenschaften.
Buhler-Niederberger, D. (2005). Kindheit und die Ordnung der Verh
altnisse. Weinheim/Basel:
Juventa.
Camfield, L., Streuli, N., & Woodhead, M. (2010). Childrens well-being in developing countries.
A conceptual and methodological review. European Journal of Development Research, 22.3,
398416.

158

L. Alanen

Clark, D. A., & Gough, I. (2005). Capabilities, needs and well-being: Relating the universal and
the local. In L. Manderson (Ed.), Rethinking well-being (pp. 4568). Perth: API Network.
Connell, R. E. (1987). Gender and power. Society, the person and sexual politics. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Corker, M., & French, S. (1999). Disability discourse. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Corsten, M. (1999). The time of generations. Time & Society, 8(2), 249273.
Cox, R. (1996). Shaping childhood. Themes of uncertainty in the history of adult-child
relationships. London/New York: Routledge.
Dandurand, R.-B., & Ouellette, F.-R. (1995). Famille, Etat et structuration dun champ sociale.
Sociologie et Societes, 28(2), 103119.
Deer, C. (2008). Doxa. In M. Grenfell (Ed.), Pierre Bourdieu: Key concepts (pp. 119130).
Stocksfield: Acumen.
Donati, P. (2011). Relational sociology. A new paradigm for the social sciences. London:
Routledge.
Ecarius, J. (1998). Generation ein Grundbegriff. In J. Ecarius (Ed.), Was will die j
ungere mit der
alteren Generation? Generationsbeziehungen und Generationenverh
altnisse in der
Erziehungswissenschaft (pp. 711). Opladen: Leske & Budrich.
Emirbayer, M. (1997). Manifesto for a relational sociology. The American Journal of Sociology,
103(2), 281317.
Fegter, S., Machold, C., & Richter, M. (2010). Children and the good life: Theoretical challenges.
In Andersen, S. et al. (Ed.). Children and the good life. New challenges for research on
children (pp. 712). Dordrecht: Springer.
Finch, J. (1986). Age. In R. Burgess (Ed.), Key variables in social investigations (pp. 1230).
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Fitz, J., & Hood-Williams, J. (1982). The generation game: Playing by the rules. In D. Robbins
(Ed.), Rethinking social inequality (pp. 6595). Aldershot: Gower.
Fuhse, J., & Mutzel, S. (Eds.). (2010). Relationale Soziologie. Zur kulturellen Wende in der
Netzwerkforschung. Wiesbaden: Verlag f
ur Sozialwissenschaften.
Gasper, D. (2004). Human well-being: Concepts and conceptualizations. Discussion Paper No.
2004/06. Helsinki: United Nations University WIDER.
Gergen, K. (2009). Relational being. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Hauser, R. M., Brown, B. V., & Prosser, W. R. (Eds.). (1997). Indicators of childrens well-being.
New York: Russell Sage.
Hendrick, H. (1997). Constructions and reconstructions of British childhood: An interpretive
survey, 1800 to present. In A. James & A. Prout (Eds.), Constructing and reconstructing d
(2nd ed., pp. 3462). London: Falmer Press.
Hengst, H. (2000). Die Arbeit der Kinder und der Umbau der Arbeitsgesellschaft. In H. Hengst &
H. Zeiher (Eds.), Die Arbeit der Kinder. Kindsheitskonzept und Arbeitsteilung zwischen den
Generationen (pp. 7197). Weinheim/Basel: Juventa.
Honig, M.-S. (1996). Wem geh
ort das Kind? Kindheit als generationale Ordnung. In E. Liebau &
C. Wulf (Eds.), Generation. Versuche uber eine p
adagogisch-anthropologische
Grundbedingung (pp. 201221). Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag.
Honig, M.-S. (1999). Entwurf einer Theorie der Kindheit. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.
Hudson, J., & Lowe, S. (2004). Understanding the policy process. Bristol: The Policy Press.

Jaeger, H. (1977). Generationen in der Geschichte: Uberlegungen

zu einer umstrittenen
Konzeption. Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 4, 429452.
James, A., & Prout, A. (Eds.). (1990). Constructing and reconstructing childhood: Contemporary
issues in the sociological study of childhood. London: Falmer Press.
Kertzer, D. I. (1983). Generation as a sociological problem. Annual Review of Sociology, 9,
125149.
Lahire, B. (2001). Champ, hors-champ, contrechamp. In B. Lahire (Ed.), Le travail sociologique
de Pierre Bourdieu. Dettes et critiques (pp. 2357). Paris: La Decouverte/Poche.
Lane, J. F. (2000). Pierre Bourdieu. A critical introduction. London/Sterling: Pluto Press.

Childhood and Intergenerationality

159

Lenoir, R. (1991). Politique familiale et construction sociale de la famille. Revue Francaise de

Science Politique, 41(6), 781807.
Lenoir, R. (1992). LEtat et la construction de la famille. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences
Sociales, 91(92), 2037.
Lenoir, R. (2003). Genealogie de la morale familiale. Paris: Seuil.
Lenoir, R. (2008). The family as a social institution: Struggles over legitimate representations of
reality. In J. Houtsonen & A. Antikainen (Eds.), Symbolic power in cultural contexts
(pp. 3142). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Liebau, E., & Wulf, C. (1996). Generation. Versuche uber eine p
adagosch-anthropologische
Grundbedingung. Weinheim: Deutscher Studien Verlag.
Lister, R. (2004). Poverty. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Manderson, L. (Ed.). (2005). Rethinking wellbeing. Perth: Curtin University of Technology,
Australia Research Institute.
Mannheim, K. (1952/1928). The problem of generations. Essays in the sociology of knowledge.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Marx, K. (1993). Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy. London: Penguin
Classics.
Maton, K. (2008). Habitus. In M. Grenfell (Ed.), Pierre Bourdieu: Key concepts (pp. 4965).
Stocksfield: Acumen.
Matthes, J. (1985). Karl Mannheims Das Problem der Generationen, neu gelesen. Zeitschrift f
ur
Soziologie, 14(5), 363372.
Mayall, B. (1996). Children, health and the social order. Buckingham: Open University Press.
McGillivray, M. (2007). Human well-being: Issues, concepts and measurements. In M.
McGillivray (Ed.), Human well-being. Concept and measurement (pp. 122). Houndsmill,
Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Mische, A. (2011). Relational sociology, culture, and agency. In J. Scott & P. J. Carrington (Eds.),
The Sage handbook of social network analysis (pp. 8098). Los Angeles: Sage.
Morrow, V., & Mayall, B. (2009). What is wrong with childrens well-being in the UK? Questions of
meaning and measurement. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 31(3), 217229.
Mutzel, S. & Fuhse, J. (2010). Einleitung: Zur relationalen Soziologie. Grundgedanken,
Entwicklungslinien und transatlantische Br
uckenschlage. In Fuhse, J. & M
utzel, S. (Hg.)
Relationale Soziologie Zur kulturellen Wende in der Netzwerkforschung (pp. 735). Wiesbaden: Verlag fur Sozialwissenschaften.
Nussbaum, M. (2005). Wellbeing, contracts and capabilities. In L. Manderson (Ed.), Rethinking
well-being (pp. 2744). Perth: API Network.
Oldman, D. (1994). Adult-child relations as class relations. In J. Qvortrup, M. Bardy, G. Sgritta, &
H. Wintersberger (Eds.), Childhood matters. Social theory, practice and politics (pp. 4358).
Avebury: Aldershot.
Olk, T., & Wintersberger, H. (2007). Welfare states and the generational order. In
H. Wintersberger, L. Alanen, T. Olk, & J. Qvortrup (Eds.), Childhood, generational order
and the welfare state: Exploring childrens social and economic welfare (pp. 5960). Odense:
University Press of Southern Denmark.
Ollman, B. (2003). Dance of the dialectic. Steps in Marxs method. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press.
Pilcher, J. (1994). Mannheims sociology of generations: An undervalued legacy. The British
Journal of Sociology, 45(3), 481495.
Pilcher, J. (1995). Age and generation in modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Porpora, D. V. (1998). Four concepts of social structure. In M. Archer, R. Bhaskar, A. Collier,
T. Lawson, & A. Norrie (Eds.), Critical realism. Essential reading (pp. 339355). London:
Routledge.
Porpora, D. V. (2002). Social structure: The future of a concept. In S. C. Chew & J. D. Knottnerus
(Eds.), Structure, culture, and history. Recent issues in social theory (pp. 4965). Lanham:
Rowman & Littlefield.

160

L. Alanen

Preuss-Lausitz, U., et al. (1983). Kriegskinder, Konsumkinder, Krisenkinder. Zur Sozialisationsgeschichte seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz.
Prout, A., & James, A. (1990). A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? Provenance,
promise and problems. In A. James & A. Prout (Eds.), Constructing and reconstructing
childhood: Contemporary issues in the sociological study of childhood (pp. 734). London:
The Falmer Press.
Qvortrup, J. (1985). Placing children in the division of labour. In P. Close & R. Collins (Eds.),
Family and economy in modern society (pp. 129145). London: Macmillan.
Qvortrup, J. (1987). The sociology of childhood. Introduction. International Journal of Sociology,
17(3), 337.
Qvortrup, J. (1993). Children at risk or childhood at risk. A plea for a politics of childhood. In P.-L.
Heilio, E. Lauronen, & M. Bardy, (Eds.) Politics of childhood and children at risk. Eurosocial
Report 45/1993 (pp. 1930). Vienna: European Centre.
Qvortrup, J. (1995). From useful to useful: The historical continuity in childrens constructive
participation. In A.-M. Ambert, (Ed.) Sociological studies of children (Vol. 7, pp. 4976).
Greenwich/London: JAI Press.
Qvortrup, J. (2000). Macro-analysis of childhood. In P. Christensen & A. James (Eds.), Research
with children: Perspectives and practices (pp. 7797). London: Falmer Press.
Qvortrup, J., Bardy, M., Sgritta, G., & Wintersberger, H. (Eds.). (1994). Childhood matters. Social
theory, practice and politics. Aldershot: Avebury.
Reed-Danahay, D. (2004). Locating Bourdieu. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ryder, N. B. (1965). The cohort as a concept in the study of social change. American Sociological
Review, 30, 843861.
Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence. Societies as complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Sayer, A. (1992). Method in social science. London: Routledge.
Stetsenko, A. (2008). From relational ontology to transformative activist stance on development
and learning: Expanding Vygotskys (CHAT) project. Cultural Studies of Science Education,
3(2), 471491.
Swartz, D. (1997). Culture & power. The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press.
Thorne, B. (1987). Re-visioning women and social change: Where are the children? Gender and
Society, 1(1), 85109.
Turner, B. S. (1999). Classical sociology. London: Sage.
Uhlmann, A. J. (2006). Family, gender and kinship in Australia. The social and cultural logic of
practice and subjectivity. London: Ashgate.
Vautier, C. (2008). La longue marche de la sociologie relationnelle. Nouvelles Perspectives en
Sciences Sociales. Revue international de systemique complexe et detudes relationnelles,
4(1), 77106.
Wacquant, L. (1992). Toward a social praxeology: The structure and logic of Bourdieus sociology. In P. Bourdieu & L. Wacquant (Eds.), An invitation to reflexive sociology (pp. 759).
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Wan, P. Y.-Z. (2011). Reframing the social. Emergentist systemism and social theory. Farnham:
Ashgate.
konomische Verhaltnisse zwischen Generationen Ein Beitrag zur
Wintersberger, H. (1998). O
konomie der Kindheit. Zeitschrift f
O
ur Soziologie der Erziehung und Sozialisation, 18(1),
824.
Wintersberger, H. (2005). Work, welfare and the generational order: Towards a political economy
of childhood. In J. Qvortrup (Ed.), Studies in modern childhood (pp. 201220). Basingstoke/
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.