ABSTRACT
To address changes in early childhoods as digital technologies become increasingly widespread and entwined with everyday life, researchers are exploring new conceptual frameworks and methodologies. This chapter discusses recent ethnographic studies on digital early childhoods situated within sociomaterial frameworks. The chapter shows how a research focus on more-than-human intra-actions, rather than human interactions, can add to existing ethnographic ideals of understanding the world. Three themes, referring to ways researchers address sociomateriality methodologically and analytically, emerge from the analysis: Decentring the child, de-/recentring things and spaces, and de-/recentring the researcher. Furthermore, the chapter identifies critical paradoxes of, and challenges to, ethnographic studies on digital early childhoods situated within sociomaterial frameworks.
