Local Childhoods in Global Times is out now!
Edited by Anette Hellman and Susanne Garvis
This book reflects on early childhood before and leading up to COVID-19. The editors were able to create a historical snapshot of early childhood pre-COVID from several countries. The pandemic has demanded major changes of learning, agency, voice and lived experience for children around the world. In some countries there are children in lockdown, without access to learning, who have ceased to be recognized as a child. In other countries life has continued with social distancing and masks in educational spaces.
Each chapter presents a different focus on early childhood, showing the diversity and complexity across multiple countries. With contributors from across the globe, there are examples of local childhoods from different national contexts including America, Australia, Finland, Hong-Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Norway and Sweden. Issues emerge around multi-language development, nationalism and multiculturalism. Across the chapters, concepts around cultural theories of everyday life also show the ways in which practices of and in relation to children function to produce childhood as an artefact, fiction and instrument.
