ABSTRACT
Jurgen Zinnecker was excited by Martha Muchow unconventional research methods and by her conceptual courage in taking children’s perspectives seriously. By republishing Muchow’s study, he shared her access to the children’s world, which she did not regard merely as a condition shaped by adults. The “new social studies of childhood” arose about twenty-five years ago as an interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach. The perspective of children as actors, which implied accepting them as interpreting and creative subjects, enriched the further development of socialization theory and research. The sociology of childhood worked at the micro as well as at the macro level to recognize an understanding of childhood and children’s lives. A serious grasp of childhood agency led some researchers to new ethical considerations in their research on children and childhood. Training children to collect data independently and letting them interpret their findings changes the role of the adult researcher from expert to tutor and minimizes the distance between the generations.
