Spaces of experience, experimentation and power

In Part III I look at some of the major sites within which and through which children and young people live, experience, experiment and are constructed. My intention is to understand how particular significant problem spaces have been formed, but to do so in the context of understanding the assemblage of languages, practices, technologies and objects through which children’s agency is constructed, mobilised and dispersed. I consider, in particular, the spaces that have, in the present but also historically, attracted intellectual ideas, governmental strategy and economic capital. These spaces are key focal points for sociological writing. In particular, I consider ideas about family, school, crime, health, consumer culture and play, children’s work and children’s human rights. These seem to me to be key sites for thinking through what the sociology of children and childhood (but also surrounding disciplines and sociological fields) has to offer an understanding of children’s agency inasmuch as that agency is understood as a complex arrangement.