TY - JOUR
T1 - Thinking through memories of childhood in (post)socialist spaces
T2 - ordinary lives in extraordinary times
AU - Millei, Zsuzsa
AU - Silova, Iveta
AU - Gannon, Susanne
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - In the history of modernity, childhood represents societies’ hopes and desires for the future. An offspring of modernity, the socialist project had a unique preoccupation with children and childhood for the social (re)making of societies. However, research on both sides of the Iron Curtain has explored children’s lives in socialist societies by focusing on the organised efforts of state socialisation, largely overlooking how childhoods were actually experienced. In this article, first, we delve into the utility of memory stories for exploring childhoods and children’s everyday lives in a variety of socialist spaces. Second, we explicate how memory stories about everyday life can serve as data for cultural-political analysis. We aim to show how ‘thinking through’ memory stories enables us to learn about childhood and children’s lives and to gain access to historical socio-political discourses and practices. We conclude with the relevance of our discussion for engagements with current global problems.
AB - In the history of modernity, childhood represents societies’ hopes and desires for the future. An offspring of modernity, the socialist project had a unique preoccupation with children and childhood for the social (re)making of societies. However, research on both sides of the Iron Curtain has explored children’s lives in socialist societies by focusing on the organised efforts of state socialisation, largely overlooking how childhoods were actually experienced. In this article, first, we delve into the utility of memory stories for exploring childhoods and children’s everyday lives in a variety of socialist spaces. Second, we explicate how memory stories about everyday life can serve as data for cultural-political analysis. We aim to show how ‘thinking through’ memory stories enables us to learn about childhood and children’s lives and to gain access to historical socio-political discourses and practices. We conclude with the relevance of our discussion for engagements with current global problems.
KW - Memory stories
KW - becoming
KW - collective biography
KW - knowledge production
KW - socialism
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U2 - 10.1080/14733285.2019.1648759
DO - 10.1080/14733285.2019.1648759
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85070304454
SN - 1473-3285
VL - 20
SP - 324
EP - 337
JO - Children's Geographies
JF - Children's Geographies
IS - 3
ER -