ABSTRACT
Background One can find out about something in a number of different ways. However, in any kind of social research, knowing what questions to ask and the ways in which it is best to ask them, as well as knowing which questions not to ask and how not to ask them, is recognized as one of the keys to a successful research outcome. Indeed, acknowledgement of these and other issues of communication is now the cornerstone of reflexive research practice within many, if not all, social science disciplines. It is a central issue, for example, in the continuing debate within social anthropology about forms of selfpresentation and other-representation throughout the research process (Marcus and Fischer 1986; Hastrup 1995). In other disciplines similar questions are being raised, fronted in particular by concerns generated through feminist approaches to research (Caplan 1988). Within the social study of childhood a comparable questioning has taken place (Alanen 1988), generated by the concern that children's voices have traditionally been 'muted' within the social sciences (Hardman 1973). However, as Christensen (1994: 4) argues, 'changing the position of children in the social and cultural sciences requires a re-examination of the conceptual frameworks that influence children's representation'. This book enters into these debates through exploring the methodologies of representation adopted by those conducting research within what has come to be called the new social studies of childhood.
