ABSTRACT
The purpose of the author's research in London was to gain children’s perspectives on their everyday lives, with a particular focus on how they engage with the future. In this chapter, the author provides an account of his encounter with Alex, a ten-year-old boy living in Greater London. If childhood is an age-based social structural category, adults cannot, in view of their age and related physical development, ‘become’ children. Yet it seems that the category of ‘adult’ is perhaps not as monolithic and the boundaries defined by age not as clear-cut as researchers often seem to make out. Although recent sociological writings discuss adulthood as an uncertain and blurry category, the label of ‘adult’ still seems to have hegemony from an adult viewpoint, and especially when used in the context of ‘child’. Yet for children, although frequently reminded by adults that they are children, the category of ‘child’ is not necessarily always foremost in mind in relations with others.
