The Child as a Social Actor in Historical Sources: Problems of Identification and Interpretation

Abstract

This chapter has two objectives. First, to provide an overview of some of the main developments, issues and approaches to be found in histories of childhood and in those of the much less widely researched topic, ‘children’. My second objective is to make a number of suggestions as to how we historians might proceed to incorporate children as social actors into our accounts, with all that this implies for the writing of history, since they are not usually treated in such a manner. I suspect that many readers will find aspects of the argument presented here to be provocative, if not downright muddle-headed. Nevertheless, I hope that the following pages will stimulate discussion and encourage sceptical colleagues to be more conscious of what, in my opinion, are often their ageist assumptions and sympathies.

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