Cover not available

In:Children's Cultures after Childhood
Edited by Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Macarena García-González
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 16] 2023
► pp. 102–121

Get fulltext
PDF logo with download linkDownload Chapter PDF

Chapter 7
Dynamics of age and power in a children’s literature research assemblage

 | University of Antwerp
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 8 August 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.16.07dut
Abstract
The link between age and power in children’s literature has been explored through various lenses in recent years, with some scholars emphasizing the adult’s power and others focusing on the child’s power. To add to the current debate, this chapter analyses empirical qualitative data from readers’ reflections on their own age and the age of characters in the Dutch children’s book Iep!, written by Joke van Leeuwen. The chapter aims to adopt a “post-age” (Haynes & Murris 2017) perspective, with the participants’ individual experiences of Iep! becoming entwined and changed through encounters with human beings and matter.
Article outline
  • New materialism and power
  • Age and power in children’s literature
  • Shaping the interviews
  • Negotiations of age and power in the research assemblage
  • Age, characters, and power
  • Closing thoughts and future potential
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (29)
References
Primary sources
Van Leeuwen, Joke. 1996. Iep! Querido.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Secondary sources
Alldred, Pam & Fox, Nick J. 2018. Teenagers, Sexualities-Education Assemblages and Sexual Citizenship: A New Materialist Analysis. In Re/Assembling the Pregnant and Parenting Teenager: Narratives from the Field, Annelies Kamp & Majella McSharry (eds), 219–42. Berna: Peter Lang AG.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 2000. Emerging Adulthood: A Theory of Development from the Late teens through the Twenties. American Psychologist 55 (5): 469–80. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berndtson, Arthur. 1970. The Meaning of Power. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 31 (1): 73–84. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bernstein, Robin. 2009. Dances with Things. Social Text 27 (4): 67–94. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. “You Do It!”: Going-to-Bed Books and the Scripts of Children’s Literature. PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 135 (5): 877–94. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blatterer, Harry. 2009. Coming of Age in Times of Uncertainty. 1st ed. Berghahn Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1976. The History of Sexuality. Translated from French by Robert Hurley. 1st ed. Vol. 1: An Introduction. 4 vols. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fox, Nick J. & Alldred, Pam. 2015. New Materialist Social Inquiry: Designs, Methods and the Research-Assemblage. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 18 (4): 399–414. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Sociology and the New Materialism: Theory, Research, Action. Los Angeles: SAGE. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García-González, Macarena & Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna. 2020. New Materialist Openings to Children’s Literature Studies. International Research in Children’s Literature 13 (1): 45–60. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Green, Leslie. 1998. Power. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Taylor and Francis. [online] <[URL]> (6 February 2023).
Green, Lorraine. 2010. Understanding the Life Course: Sociological and Psychological Perspectives. 1st ed. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gubar, Marah. 2016. The Hermeneutics of Recuperation: What a Kinship-Model Approach to Children’s Agency Could Do for Children’s Literature and Childhood Studies. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 8 (1): 291–310. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kraftl, Peter. 2020. After Childhood: Re-Thinking Environment, Materiality and Media in Children’s Lives. Oxon: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kraftl, Peter, Semenec, Paulina & Diaz-Diaz, Claudia. 2020. Interview with Peter Kraftl. In Posthumanist and New Materialist Methodologies: Research After the Child, 167–79. Springer Nature. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Law, John (ed). 1991. A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology, and Domination [Sociological Review Monograph 38]. London New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Magnusson, Eva & Marecek, Jeanne. 2015. Doing Interview-Based Qualitative Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Malone, Karen. 2016. Posthumanist Approaches to Theorizing Children’s Human-Nature Relations. In Space, Place, and Environment, Karen Nairn & Peter Kraftl (eds), 185–206. Singapore: Springer Singapore. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nikolajeva, Maria. 2010. Power, Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for Young Readers. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nilan, Pam. 2015. Youth Culture in/beyond Indonesia: Hybridity or Assemblage? In A Critical Youth Studies for the 21st Century [Youth in a Globalizing World, volume 2], Peter Kelly & Annelies Kamp (eds), 267–83. Leiden; Boston: Brill. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nodelman, Perry. 2008. The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rampaul, Giselle. 2011. The West Indian Child as Subject/Object: Interrogating Notions of Power in “Annie John”. Journal of Caribbean Literatures 7 (1): 153–60.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rudd, David. 2005. Theorising and Theories: How Does Children’s Literature Exist? In Understanding Children’s Literature. Peter Hunt (ed.), 15–29. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spyrou, Spyros, Rosen, Rachel & Cook, Daniel Thomas (eds). 2019. Reimagining Childhood Studies. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
St. Pierre, Elizabeth A., Jackson, Alecia Y. & Mazzei, Lisa A. 2016. New Empiricisms and New Materialisms: Conditions for New Inquiry. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 16 (2): 99–110. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Russumanno, Paolo
2024. Childhood Entanglements, Artifacts, and Inheritances. Journal of Childhood Studies ► pp. 85 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 7 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue