Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- 1 Disclosing Childhoods -- Introduction -- Disclosing Childhoods -- The Rest of the Book -- References -- 2 Towards a Decentering of 'The Child' -- Introduction -- Broader Engagements with Social Theory -- Poststructuralism -- Feminist Approaches -- Posthumanism, the Ontological Turn and Beyond -- How to Know in Childhood Studies -- The Limits of the Field -- Knowing Reflexively -- Knowing Diffractively -- Conclusion -- References -- 3 Knowledge Production in Childhood Studies -- Introduction -- The Emergence of Contemporary Childhood Studies -- Emerging Critiques of the Field: The Limits of Social Constructionism and Dualistic Thinking -- The Appeal of Relational Ontologies -- Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity in Childhood Studies -- Undisciplining Childhood Studies? -- Conclusion -- References -- 4 The Production of Children's Voices -- Introduction -- Voice Research in Childhood Studies -- From Interview Methods to Visual Methods -- Participant Observation and Peer Culture Research -- Institutional Contexts -- Rapport, Layers of Meaning and the Problem of Time -- The Non-normative and the Undomesticated in Children's Voices -- Silence as an Example of Undomesticated Voice -- The Interpretation of What Children Mean -- The Limits of Individual Voices -- Ways for Representing Children Reflexively -- Conclusion -- References -- 5 What Kind of Agency for Children? -- Introduction -- The Fixation with Children's Agency -- Emerging Fissures: Beyond Agency as Self-Possession -- Rethinking Agency with Relational Ontologies -- A New Materialist Reading of Children's Agency -- An Empirical Illustration -- Working Towards a Critical Understanding of Agency -- Scale-Making as a Knowledge Practice in Childhood Studies -- Conclusion -- References -- 6 Children's Participation in Research as a Knowledge Practice

Disclosing Childhoods offers a critical account of knowledge production in childhood studies. The book argues for the need to be reflexive about the knowledge practices of the field and to scrutinize the role of researchers in disclosing certain childhoods rather than others. A relational lens is used to critique the ongoing fixation of childhood studies with the unitary child-agent and to re-introduce the question of ontology in knowledge production. The author provides a critical account of childhood studies' trajectory, as well as exploring the key concepts of voice, agency and participation, illustrating the potential of a reflexive stance towards knowledge production. Drawing on poststructuralist and posthumanist thinking, each of these concepts is critiqued for its conceptual limits while productive avenues are offered to reconfigure their utility. Spyrou also addresses the ethics and politics of knowledge production and considers key emerging insights which can contribute towards the development of a more reflexive and critical childhood studies. Students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including childhood studies, anthropology, sociology and geography, will find this book of interest, as well as those interested in qualitative research methodology and social theory.

The so‐called 'ontological turn' in the social sciences has brought with it yet another layer of theoretical concerns, except that this time the interest is in ontology rather than epistemology. New materialist thinking which has emerged in recent years promises to rethink the task of social theory in ways that circumvent modernist dualisms. In this paper, I explore what this might entail for childhood studies. What might such an ontological shift which emphasises among others relationality, connectedness and materiality mean for the further development of childhood studies? How would a decentring of children and the field's overpowering concerns for studying children's perspectives/voices/standpoints help rethink childhood studies and its remit? How, in short, would a shift from the child as an independent unit of analysis and of childhood as a categorical identity to a new ontology of emerging phenomena which implicate children, adults and non‐human forces affect the field's direction in the future?

Purpose
– This paper aims to investigate the yield spread determinants for a sample of European markets in the light of the recent financial crisis. It utilises findings from two different strands in the literature: findings on bond spread determinants and findings on the effect of investor sentiment on equity returns.


Design/methodology/approach
– The explanatory variables in the regression models proxy not only for economic fundamentals (e.g. economic activity, default risk, liquidity risk, general market conditions) but also for investor sentiment. A vector autoregressive approach is employed.


Findings
– The results indicate that fundamental variables are significant for the determination of the level of yield spreads, as suggested by previous studies. Local and international investor sentiment, however, both current and past, is also a statistically significant determinant for both the level and monthly changes of yield, especially during the crisis period 2007-2011.


Research limitations/implications
– The implication of this finding is significant for all parties involved: government officials, private lenders, EU/ECB/IMF officials, and market participants.


Practical implications
– Focusing solely on quantitative economic performance indicators may not have the desirable effect of reducing borrowing rates and facilitating the return to economic stability. Perhaps, reassuring and/or sending strong qualitative signals to financial markets may be as important. Involved agents may have to address not only technical financial issues but also the perception that market participants have about the proposed solutions to the crisis and eventually affect market sentiment.


Originality/value
– The issue of the effect of investor sentiment on government yield spreads during a crisis has not been investigated before.

This edited collection brings together scholars whose work explores the entangled relationship between children and borders with richly-documented ethnographic studies from around the world. The book provides a penetrating account of how borders affect children's lives and how in turn children play a constitutive role in the social life of borders. Providing situated accounts which offer critical perspectives on children's engagements with borders, contributors explore both the institutional power of borders as well as children's ability to impact borders through their own activity and agency. They show how borders and the borderlands surrounding them are active zones of engagement where notions of identity, citizenship and belonging are negotiated in ways that empower or disempower children, offer them possibilities and hope or alternatively deprive them of both. With innovative cross-fertilization between Border Studies and Childhood Studies, this volume illustrates the value of bringing children and borders together.

PurposeThis study examines the impact of monetary policy on income inequality in Eurozone countries for the period between 2005 and 2017.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use regression analysis, panel vector autoregression (PVAR) analysis and impulse response functions, in order to examine the impact of monetary policy on income inequality in Eurozone countries.FindingsThis study examines the impact of monetary policy on income inequality in Eurozone countries for the period between 2005 and 2017. The results indicate that, on average, monetary policy tends to increase income inequality. A closer examination indicates that for Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands monetary policy has no impact on income inequality or a weak impact (France), while for Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy the impact is more pronounced. PVAR analysis and impulse response functions further indicate that female income inequality responds more significantly to monetary policy.Originality/valueIn contrast to previous studies the authors estimate separate models for males, females and the total population to evaluate whether gender is an important factor. Furthermore, the authors use two proxies for monetary policy: the shadow rate (SR) and the total assets (TAs) of the central bank.

This article focuses on examining and understanding the way motherhood and babyhood are constituted in the midst of cultural practice and particularly though consumption as a fundamental and constitutive element of modern-day definitions and understandings of motherhood and babyhood. More specifically, the article focuses on how middle-class first-time (to be) Greek Cypriot mothers acquire a sense of motherhood and simultaneously construct notions of babyhood as their pregnancies unfold; how the experience of pregnancy is lived and perceived by expectant mothers as a state of anxiety and a condition of risk; and, finally, how all these processes are mediated by consumption broadly conceived. Findings of this qualitative study show that the experience of pregnancy for these women was associated with feelings of acute anxiety for the amelioration of which they engaged in a variety of consumptive practices, especially medically related, which served to further institute consumption as a constitutive element of 'motherhood proper'.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a situated, theoretically informed account of national identity construction by exploring children's engagement with nationalism in the context of the classroom in divided Cyprus. The paper aims to illustrate how children enter and participate in the cultural world of nationalism in the classroom by accepting, resisting, and negotiating the ideological meanings they encounter there.Design/methodology/approachThe research on which the paper draws used an ethnographic approach. The paper draws primarily on teacher‐student exchanges during class lessons and, to a lesser extent, on interviews with children.FindingsThe paper suggests that the process of engagement between children, teachers, and nationalism often produces powerful senses of belonging which are, however, always limited and unstable both because of ideological contradictions and ambiguities and because of children's access to alternative knowledge.Research limitations/implicationsThough the ethnographic evidence suggests that nationalism in educational contexts produces powerful senses of belonging among children, more research is necessary to document the processes by which children consume nationalistic ideologies.Originality/valueThe paper is original because it offers a dynamic explanation of national identity construction through the application of practice theory to ethnographic data which takes into account both the powerful institutional constraints imposed on children at school as well as their agency and ability to impact their worlds.

Evidence suggests that stock markets in industrialized economies are increasingly integrated with the presence of common trends amongst national stock market indices. This implies that in the long run there is little gain from diversifying portfolios internationally. We investigate the existence of common trends in the increasingly important emerging equity markets of the Latin American and Asia‐Pacific regions. While we find evidence of common trends, we argue that this in itself does not rule out long‐run benefits to diversification. Examination of the composition of the common trends reveals that some countries do not enter that region's common trend and returns in some countries do not react to movements in the common trend, a result that generalizes to the inclusion of both the USA and the UK. Thus, even though common trends are detected, their impact is very limited and therefore emerging equity markets offer benefits in terms of diversification, even in the long run.

Collectively the papers in this ebook illuminate how children and young people's lives are impacted by ethnic and political divisions and their multi-faceted and, at times, contradictory responses to these. Central themes are: how are children implicated in nation building and how is childhood co-opted in politically divided societies for ideological purposes; how do children and young people partake in and respond to such processes; and how is their political engagement enabled and constrained by the social structures and realities they are confronted with in these societies?