The position of childhood in society at the intersection of discourses on rights, power and intergenerational relationship. Thirty years after the United Nation Convention on the Right of the Child

The 2018 World Congress of Sociology takes place on the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the declaration of the United Nation Convention on the Right of the Child (UNCRC). Such landmarking political act has been hailed as a victory for the children’s rights movement, but also heavily criticized from its early days. The UNCRC is criticized for overemphasizing children’s liberties and self-determination, undermining adults’ rights to protect and educate children; at the same time, from an opposite position, others criticize the UNCRC, and the moral crusades to save ‘the world’s children’, for consolidating disciplinary strategies, based on authoritarian types of knowledge that guide understandings of what is to be a child and what childhood should be like, in line with the Western liberal tradition originated in the eighteenth century. It is suggested that the ongoing sociological, pedagogical and political debate around the nature of children’s rights and intergenerational relationships lends itself as an example of the problematic coexistence of contrasting discourses on childhood and education. These discourses underpin, and are therefore revealed by, the language of legislation, policy-making, education, healthcare, social services. Diverging concepts of power, rights, justice concerning intergenerational and intercultural relations are expressed on the many languages on childhood. This session aims to empower further sociological debate, hosting contributions interested in the relationship between the position of childhood in society and the language that represents it. The session welcomes ethnomethodological/pragmatics/conversation analytical contributions around social practices involving children, as well as contributions investigating the discourse(s) on childhood in society.