ABSTRACT
Introduction Though the concept of childhood may loosely describe the early part of the life course, the experience of those we deem children is now recognized to vary considerably, both across time and in social space (James et al. 1998). However, although such a perspective would seem to have toppled developmental psychology from its conceptual prominence in being able to provide an account of the progress of children towards adulthood, the extent to which 'the social' is itself regarded as offering an adequate account of childhood diversity varies. For some, the biological progression from birth through infancy to adolescence still signals a fundamental base upon which the social world simply inscribes its differentiating marks; for others, by contrast, it is the process of socialization or enculturation which is deemed the more important signifier of the diverse paths which children will take as they grow up (Woodhead 1999). But although they may be recast in a number of different contemporary idioms, such polarizations of opinion are, in essence, simply rehearsing a rather older debate about the balance to be struck between 'nature' and 'nurture' in understanding the differences which do exist between children. And, precisely because of the long history of this debate, this dualism can still represent an unhappy tension to be overcome when both designing and executing a piece of research with children.
