Chapter 1. Ethics, epistemologies, and relational ontologies in researching children’s cultures

Abstract

This chapter argues for a new materialist and posthumanist understanding of children’s cultures as formed by naturalcultural assemblages destabilizing anthropocentric notions of childhood, adulthood, agency, age, creativity, and text. The chapter provides an overview of recent developments in childhood studies – in particular around the decentering of the child (Spyrou 2017, Diaz-Diaz & Semenec 2020) and the “after childhood” approach (Kraftl 2020) – to propose that they may enable new methodological openings in textual and empirical work with texts and media (co-)created for/by/with young audiences.