ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an initial exploration of the theoretical benefit to be derived from reframing questions of childhood socialization in terms of a cultural politics of childhood identities. It aims to map out the dynamics of the relationship between structure and agency which lie at the heart of such a cultural politics of childhood by considering children’s understandings and experiences of just one aspect of socialization process: the ways in which English children learn of and about their relative powerlessness vis-à-vis adults. The discursive properties of Western conceptions of child and childhood have been well remarked. Although adults are categorized by children into a homogeneous group with respect to the power that they can potentially wield, children nonetheless recognize that, in practice, there is a differentiated hierarchy of authority among the adults. Children’s responses to their ascribed powerlessness thus take different forms and analysis reveals how the generalized dependency of children becomes subtly transformed through locality of the local context.
