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The Production of Children’s Voices

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Disclosing Childhoods

Part of the book series: Studies in Childhood and Youth ((SCY))

Abstract

This chapter critiques the preoccupation with children’s voices in childhood studies and the unexamined assumptions about the authenticity and truth that children’s voices represent. Using poststructuralist insights, the chapter reflects on the interactional contexts in which children’s voices emerge, the institutional contexts in which they are embedded, and the discursive contexts which inform them in order to critically assess questions of representation. Using Bakhtin’s dialogical approach, and turning to the performative, multi-layered character of voice and to its non-normative elements like silence, the chapter suggests that more sensitive and ethical accounts of children’s subjectivities may be provided through a relational, decentered lens.

Significant parts of this chapter were originally published in the following two articles:

Spyrou , Spyros, The Limits of Children’s Voices : From Authenticity to Critical , Reflexive Representation (Childhood, Volume 18, Number 2) pp. 151–165. Copyright © [2011] (Spyros Spyrou). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568210387834.

Spyrou , Spyros, Researching Children’s Silences: Exploring the Fullness of Voice in Childhood Research (Childhood, Volume 23, Number 1) pp. 7–21. Copyright © [2016] (Spyros Spyrou). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568215571618.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, European University Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Spyros Spyrou

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  1. Spyros Spyrou
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Correspondence to Spyros Spyrou .

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Spyrou, S. (2018). The Production of Children’s Voices. In: Disclosing Childhoods. Studies in Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47904-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47904-4_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-47903-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-47904-4

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