ABSTRACT

In one of the earliest expositions of the approach, Prout called for an interdisciplinary study of childhood that examined the crucial role played by material artefacts in the construction of contemporary childhood. Childhood is to be regarded as a collection of diverse, emergent assemblages constructed from heterogeneous materials. These materials are biological, social, cultural, technological and so on. However, they are not seen as pure materials but are themselves hybrids produced through time. Nonetheless, scholarship inspired by new materialist and post-humanist theorising has grown fast. Its key premises overlap with Prout’s work. Empirically, there exist probably thousands of studies now that witness the presence, mutual articulation and entanglement of non-human actants with/in children’s lives. It is important to recognise at this juncture that neither non-representational, nor new materialist, nor post-humanist theories have been immune from critique.