ABSTRACT
I take for granted that children are competent social actors. That is, I do not question children’s competencies-social, or cultural-nor do I explore them empirically in order to challenge and expand existing views on the range of activities and environments in which children are involved in modern societies. Such work is being done particularly well in ethnographies of childhood and I want to start from the vision opened by such work that there are hardly any limits to the extent and the kinds of children’s participation in ongoing social life, including the shaping of childhood itself. The kinds of competent participation that we may empirically find in researching children’s social worlds are, however, constrained by the social practices surrounding this participation. Therefore, rather than focusing directly on children’s competencies, my aim is to explore the structuring of childhood in modern societies, in order to see how possibilities for and limitations on such competencies are contained in observed and experienced childhoods.
