ABSTRACT
The hallmark of this book1 is a sociology of childhood expressed through a series of illustrations of the ways in which a qualitative sociology enriches our understanding of childhood. Furthermore, this book is not only a qualitatively grounded sociology about children but one in which the voices of children and young people are directly heard pulled taut against the voices of adults. It is both a sociology of children and childhood, and a sociology for children and childhood. ‘Children and childhood’ is no accident. There is no homogeneous ‘childhood’, just as there is no undifferentiated qualitative method waiting to be applied to childhood. To assume so would be to run the risk of the sociological sadism against which Robert Merton warned, when the interests of the person are swallowed in the abstractions of the sociologist. There is a plurality of childhoods. But having said this we are equally opposed to disaggregating our understanding of childhood, such that the unique ‘child’ erases the common characteristics and rights of children.
