Young People's Encounters with Death: A Normal or Troubling Childhood Experience? by Jane Ribbens McCarthy a presentation from the BSA Sociology of Death, Dying and Bereavement Study Group Symposium on 15 November 2013.

1. Jane Ribbens McCarthy
British Sociological Association
15th November 2013

2. 
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how we understand – sometimes disruptive
and troubling – changes and challenges in
young lives, in the context of contemporary
childhoods in a mediatized and globalised
world
how far, and at what point, do we see
encounters with death as a ‘normal’
experience in the early years of life, and at
what point do such encounters become
troubling, and to whom?

3. 
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Change is inevitable and often challenging
Troubles are common in children’s family lives
Both cultural and material resources important
for understandings and responses
Troubles encompass varied issues: some may
be considered harmful but could also have
some positive implications
Power struggles around seeing continuities
across issues of (normal) change, and
demarcating some changes as different and
potentially harmful, and so requiring
interventions

4. 
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‘New’ childhood studies - emphasis on social
construction of childhood rather than e.g.
child development as biologically driven
universal
Historical development of Western
understandings of childhood in 18th-20th C
Raised expectations – UNCRC – children’s
needs as moral imperative
Varying images of children – needs/rights,
victims/threats – classed and raced

5. 
‘What is written about children is a way of
thinking about how to construct a new and
better society. The child is a vantage point
from which to offer critiques of society.
Today it is frequently stated that the child
symbolises purity and innocence, and the
nourishing of children is seen as a testament
to the value we place on these virtues’.
(Seaford, 2001, p457)

6. 
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Change rather than loss
Change is inevitable and troubling change is
common
Theoretical resources for understanding
troubles
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Carrithers on vicissitudes and expectations
Craib on disappointment
Kleinman on suffering
Janoff-Bulman on trauma
Expectations of ‘a proper childhood’ –
importance of meanings

7. 
Where and how to draw any boundaries?
Where do we locate difference and where do
we trace continuity? What is helpful?
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Bereavement as ‘normal’ part of life
experience of young people?
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Bereavement as form of loss or change like
other losses and changes?
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Bereavement that is experienced as source of
‘difference’?

9. 
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Sayers critical realist approach to why things
matter
Shweder anthropological approach to nonuniform universality
International law on Children’s Rights
Ethics of care
When to hold questions open, and when to reach
decisions for interventions?
When to see ‘childhood bereavement’ as a form
of disruptive (traumatic) trouble and when to see
it as a form of expectable change?