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Children and Social Change: Memoriesof Diverse ChildhoodsHannah Henry SmithVersion of record first published: 08 Aug 2012.

To cite this article: Hannah Henry Smith (2012): Children and Social Change: Memories of DiverseChildhoods, International Journal of Play, 1:2, 219-222

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2012.700439

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awarded freely and ungrudgingly, as a demonstration of our civilization’ (pp. 385 & 386). Howtrue this is!

I love the slogan of Play Wales, Better a broken bone than a broken spirit, attributed to LadyAllen of Hurtwood (http://www.playwales.org.uk/downloaddoc.asp?id=156&page=422&skin=0). Hughes’ Evolutionary Playwork reflects this wisdom: ‘Play, like life, is not safe, and if itis, it is not play’ He also writes, ‘A broken arm now might save a life later’ (p. 207). Weshould embrace this message, and we should all embrace Bob Hughes’s new book and thankhim for taking the time to write it. I am sure it will get everyone talking about the importanceof play, play, and more play. Can we ever play too much? I do not think so.

ReferencesBekoff, M. (2008). Animals at play: Rules of the game. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Bekoff, M., & Pierce, J. (2009). Wild justice: The moral lives of animals. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago

Press.Louv, R. (2008). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. New York:

Algonquin Books.Orr, D.W. (1993). Love it or lose it: The coming biophilia revolution. In S.R. Keller & S.E. Wilson (Eds.),

The biophilia hypothesis. Washington, DC: Island Press.Spinka, M., Newberry, R.C., & Bekoff, M. (2001). Mammalian play: Training for the unexpected. Quarterly

Review of Biology, 76, 141–168.

Marc BekoffEcology and Evolutionary Biology,

University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USAEmail: marcbekoff.com# 2012, Marc Bekoff

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2012.698459

Children and Social Change: Memories of Diverse Childhoods, by Dorothy Moss, London,Continuum, 2011, 218 pp., $140.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-8264-3531-6

This book is based on the personal narratives of 17 adult respondents. Using an oral historyapproach it examines their recollections of childhood activities, views, and experiences. Theseare dealt with as products of, and responses to, particular physical, social, political, and economicenvironments. Through these memories the book looks at social belonging and sense of self asvital aspects of childhood, often born out of complexity and contradiction.

Dorothy Moss is Principal Lecturer in Childhood Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University,UK. Her areas of professional and academic expertise include children and young people’ssocial and political engagement and constructions of social space and time as they impact onand are shaped by children. Particular topics of Moss’ attention have been gender, party politics,crime, social justice, and education. This is Moss’ second sole-authored book. Her 2006 book,Gender, Space and Time: Women and Higher Education, used critical realist and feministperspectives to examine women’s home life, community, workplace, and educational experiences.She has also contributed to a number of other books and journals.

Children and Social Change: Memories of Diverse Childhoods seeks to move away fromwhat the author considers the more familiar focus on ‘spaces in society where children aremost visible, positioned there through family, wider social relations and social events’. ThusMoss accompanies many of us engaged with

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a discursive space [that] has been established within which children are now seen as individuals,whose autonomy should be safeguarded and fostered, and whose being can no longer be simplynested into the family or the institution. (James, Jenks, & Prout, 1998, pp. 6–7)

Looking instead at ‘experiences not commonly associated with everyday childhood’, her chaptersdeal with migration, home life, employment, religion, state and civil society, war and conflict,consumption, and a range of particular types of ‘social play’.

Moss uses an oral history approach in the belief that these inside-out narratives enable deeperunderstandings of childhood experiences. She argues that encouraging children to recount trau-matic memories when unable to provide subsequent support should they need it would havebeen irresponsible. As a consequence, she presents data from interviews with adults. With child-hoods spanning 1950 to 1996, her respondents’ diverse backgrounds range from that of a workingclass lapsed Catholic family from northern England to Christian Evangelist immigrants from theCaribbean; from a landowning Pakistani Muslim family who came to England after Partition toNigerian royalty who moved to an English council estate and a poor white urban family thatemigrated to apartheid South Africa.

Moss’ qualitative analysis sets out to illuminate the similarities, continuities, and differencesin their accounts of childhood, their familial and social contexts, and their experiences of socialchange. Interestingly, she has chosen respondents with professional and academic commitmentsto children’s rights. She acknowledges this as bound to influence memories they chose to shareand their interpretations of them. One would expect, and the reader may wish to consider, thatthese respondents would have particularly sensitized perspectives. In her early and final chapters,Moss recognises the composite and selective nature of memory as filtered through adultperspectives, and highlights the strengths and possible issues with her method.

Moss draws on current ideas about constructions of social time, space, and memory to look atthe production of meaning in these areas and how children’s lives are ‘crafted in ways that relateto wider socio-political interests’. She notes particularly prize-winning social science ProfessorBarbara Adam’s (1990) work on time theory; and the work of French philosopher-sociologistHenri Lefebvre (1991) on the social production of space, and Maurice Halbwachs (1925/1992)on competing social memory frameworks.

Citing their work, Moss reiterates the profound impact of social memory on identity formationas passed on through families, communities, and broader social contexts, through acts such asrituals and moral instruction. In keeping with current practice, she sees children as socialagents, active in the creation of their childhoods, interpreting and affecting their surroundingsas well as being subject to them (James & Prout, 1997). Moss observes that for her respondents

threads of social memory suggested their socialposition, how they should behave, what they shouldbelieveand the significance of particular institutions and artefacts. (Lefebvre, 1991) As they moved through spaceand time from home and community and through changing environments, they made new connections,crossed boundaries and developed particular understandings, beliefs and allegiances of their own.

Moss’ study weaves her themes through the rich montage of her respondents’ childhood experi-ences as members of families, peer groups and communities, contending with the familiar and thenew, in the midst of specific socio-cultural, political, historical, and economic times, oftenincluding their international dimensions.

The book adds to the growing collection of approaches to understanding children and theirchildhoods by making some familiar but pertinent points. For example, that war, migration,race relations, social unrest and change, parental unemployment, attitudes to sexuality and soforth, are significant factors in ‘everyday childhoods’, intrinsic aspects of children’s experiencesthat shape how they understand, evaluate and respond to the world around them. Accordingly,

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these adult respondents recall their young selves trying to understand abstract concepts likeauthority, power, public and private, ethnicity, injustice, and the difficulties of negotiating whatwas expected of them. These are valuable areas of investigation. Unfortunately there is littletheoretical development here.

Of particular relevance to readers of this journal, the ‘Play, Parties, and Parades’ chapter looksat play in relation to exploration, experimentation, social relationships, and identity. The authorchooses not to engage with play theory or debate, limiting her discussion to one of ‘playfulactivities’, using play as ‘a lens to explore experiences of personal and social transition’. Manyaccounts are about feeling ‘happy’ and ‘free’ and of playful occasions permitting the ‘looseningor rules and limits on children’s behaviour and the generation of humorous and strange “out ofthe ordinary” connections’.

Her broad scope allows the chapter to move between descriptions of play, ritual, festivities,and performance. Interesting recollections here include children’s engagement with sport andoutdoor play and the effects of ethnicity and gender on their marginalization and exclusion.

Moss notes the times children and young people escape from adult supervision and control, tobe just amongst their peers. These are commonly recognized as important for children to developrelationships, resolve issues, test boundaries, explore new terrains, have fun, and generallyexpand their experiences and capabilities (Brown, 2003; Cole-Hamilton, Harrop, & Street,2001). Her speculation about their functions in relation to identity formation, had they beenthe subject of deeper analysis here, would have made for more interesting reading.

A strength running through the book is Moss’ engagement with the power of dominant nar-ratives. She returns a number of times to the challenges for children of finding a comfortable self-identity when life is more complex, contradictory, and multi-faceted than dominant narrativesallow. In this final empirical chapter, for example, two respondents of African and Indiandescent describe tensions they experienced during the 1981 celebrations of the marriagebetween Prince Charles and Lady Diana, the push and pull between the desire to be acceptedas part of the collective, accepted, validated majority and the need to be loyal to their parents’negative experience of British colonialism. Here Moss highlights a challenge common to manyand certainly pertinent in the contemporary world of multiple competing discourses aroundhistory, allegiance, and identity (Hall, 1997).

Children and Social Change: Memories of Diverse Childhoods does contribute a valuable andinteresting range of personal narratives. Clearly, despite the differences amongst her respondents’childhoods, their experiences have thematic commonalities.

Given the theoretical works Moss intends to use, it is unfortunate that her central and concludingchapters do little to meaningfully implement or develop these, and references are often made withminimal elaboration or substantiation. With theory sparse, much of the central text reads as solelydescriptive, and as the book progresses, the underlying lack of development of her theoreticalgrounding becomes increasingly frustrating. As she intended, Moss makes some advances in ourunderstanding of the similarities, continuities, and differences between her respondents’ accounts.Unfortunately, fascinating as these accounts are, the book fails to show analytical energy andfocus or to propose a coherent argument illuminating ‘children’s experiences of social change’.

The book can help those beginning to work with children from diverse backgrounds to betterunderstand the various influences shaping their experiences and behaviour. It may also providean introduction for undergraduates interested in an oral history approach to children and theirchildhoods and a brief first-hand account of some key topics in this field.

Notes on contributorHannah Henry Smith is currently Senior Research Executive for the London-based social research agencyDefine Research and Insight. She has wide experience engaging diverse children and young people in

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informal learning programs – both as a teacher and guide, and as an evaluation and advisory consultant.Hannah is particularly interested in children’s rights, the tensions between policy and practice, and in sup-porting organizations working with young people. Her Ph.D. examined social constructions of childhood andchildren’s empowerment in after school programs.

ReferencesAdam, B. (1990). Time and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity PressBrown, F. (2003). Playwork: Theory and practice. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.Cole-Hamilton, I., Harrop, A., & Street, C. (2001). The value of children’s play and play provision: A sys-

tematic review of the literature. London, UK: National Children’s Bureau.Halbwachs, M. (1925/1992). On Collective Memory. Introduced by L. Coser (Ed.), Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.Hall, S. (1997). The spectacle of the other. In S. Hall (Ed.), Cultural representations and signifying practices.

London, UK: Sage.James, A., Jenks, C., & Prout, A. (1998). Theorizing childhood. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.James, A., & Prout, A. (1997). Constructing and reconstructing childhood. London & New York:

RoutledgeFalmer.Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hannah Henry SmithEmail: HannahHenrySmith@gmail.com

# 2012, Hannah Henry Smithhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2012.700439

Playing with plants in the Nature Isle, by Arlington James, Forestry, Roseau, Dominica, Parksand Wildlife Division, 2011. Email: forestry@dominica.gov.dm

I had a free-range childhood growing up in a large village in Southern England in the 1970s. Hereare the ways I can recall playing with plants (I am not particularly proud of some of them, buthistory demands full disclosure):

. conkers (see later);

. throwing barley darts;

. chasing other children with stinging nettles;

. rubbing itching powder made from rosehips down other children’s necks; and

. making loud rasping noises by holding grass leaves between my thumbs and blowing.

Of these, by far my most popular game was conkers. This needs an explanation for non-UKreaders. It involves collecting the nuts from Horse Chestnut trees, which are smooth, shiny,roundish, walnut-sized and in truth rather beautiful. You skewer a hole through one, tie it ontothe end of a bootlace, and then try to strike – and smash to smithereens – your opponent’ssimilarly prepared conker.

Conkers appear in the autumn, and in my village, as in villages across the UK, the start ofthe conker season was the cue for a frenzy of activity. Locations would be scouted out, treesidentified, sticks gathered and plastic bags filled.

I am dwelling on conkers for two reasons. The first is because, perhaps surprisingly, the gamepersists today. A survey I was involved in last year (Gill, 2011a) found that 38% of children aged5 to 11 knew the rules of the game – a decent minority, though much lower than the 69% ofparents. The second is because, here in the UK, the pursuit has become a potent symbol of the

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