Publisher's Synopsis
This Nordic child is often considered competent: as a family member, a pupil, a consumer or a citizen. Looking more in-depth, one finds that the idea of the competent child is intimately linked to the modern project and to ideas of children as rational "beings"; children in their own right. This book is the result of an intense debate within the NordBarn research network, funded by the Nordic Research Academy for five years. The contributors are researchers from Denmark, Finland Iceland, Norway and Sweden, representing several discipline, such as pedagogics, social work, ethnology and media studies. The book consists of four parts focusing on child policies and child participation, school and day care, market and consumption, and finally an attempt to rethink the concept of becoming-child in the new millennium.