Children & Society are running a special edition entitled
"Children’s and teenagers’ food practices in contexts of poverty and inequality"
with guest editors Wendy Wills (University of Hertfordshire) and Rebecca O’Connell (Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL).
The call for papers is now open.
Deadline for abstracts: 30th September 2016
Contemporary concern with food security and nutritional diets
indicates that food and eating are particularly important for children and
young people. Children’s and young people’s consumption of food is materialised
and made manifest in their physical, emotional and mental health, and
intersects with self-esteem and body image, both of which become more salient
as they mature. Furthermore, commensality plays a role in establishing and
cementing social networks, with food consumption playing a significant role in
children’s attempts to connect to, and reject, social relations with others (James,
1997). Food is also an important medium for children’s expression of identity
and control and a means of enacting agency and increasing their autonomy as
they grow older (O’Connell and Brannen, 2016). Children and young people also
make significant contributions to domestic food provisioning, including
producing, procuring and preparing food for themselves and their families
(Backett-Milburn, Wills et al., 2011).
Yet children’s and young people’s access to food (and other
resources) is limited by food availability, family income and their own access
to money. Qualitative studies of children’s perspectives of poverty show the
damaging effects on them of material disadvantage and social exclusion, as well
as the ways that resourceful and resilient young people manage and moderate the
effects of poverty (Ridge, 2011). However, not enough is known in the
contemporary context of austerity, nor at an international level, about how
children and young people negotiate food and eating in contexts of enduring
disadvantage. This special issue of Children & Society (2018) will address
this gap in knowledge.Incorporating international, multi-disciplinary papers the special
issue will draw together cutting edge research providing empirical and
theoretical insights about the lives of children and young people in relation
to their food practices and the different contexts and domains in which they
are enacted. Papers will examine the implications of poverty and inequality for
food access as well as the meanings and uses of food in children’s and young
people’s everyday lives, reflecting the symbolic and material nature of their
socio-economic position: at home, school, in community settings and the
commercial marketplace. Given contemporary concern with the quality of
children’s diets and with social inclusion, the special issue will make a
scholarly, practice and policy contribution in relation to theories of
childhood; children's everyday lives at home, school and in the community;
children's culture, rights and participation; and children's health and
well-being, in line with the scope of the journal.
Addressing the variability of children’s and young people’s food practices and the contexts in which they are enacted, abstracts of up to 300 words are invited for papers that address the topic of children’s and teenagers’ food practices in contexts of poverty and inequality, including but not limited to the following questions:
Addressing the variability of children’s and young people’s food practices and the contexts in which they are enacted, abstracts of up to 300 words are invited for papers that address the topic of children’s and teenagers’ food practices in contexts of poverty and inequality, including but not limited to the following questions:
- How do poverty and inequality mediate children’s and young people’s food practices?
- What is the relevance of social contexts and social policies and where is responsibility for children’s and young people’s food and eating seen to reside?
- Which conceptual approaches are helpful in seeking to understand children’s experiences?
- And what methodological and ethical issues need to be considered in researching and influencing young people’s food practices in the context of poverty and inequality?
Timetable for Children & Society Special Issue
Accepted authors notified - 31st October 2106
Full papers deadline - February 2017
Papers reviewed between February - September 2017
Revised manuscripts deadline - December 2017
Special Issue published - May 2018
Abstracts and queries should be sent to:Wendy Wills w.j.wills@herts.ac.uk or Rebecca O’Connell rebecca.oconnell@ucl.ac.uk
About
the guest editors...
Wendy
Wills is Professor of Food and Public Health at the University of Hertfordshire
where she works at the interface of social science and public health in
relation to food, eating, weight/obesity and health; inequalities and young
people are a particular concern and a focus of her research. She has previously
guest edited issues of Sociological Research Online and Critical Public Health, on the subject of food practices; both
these special issues drew on papers submitted to the British Sociological
Association ‘Food and Society’ conference in 2010, which Wendy convened.
Dr
Rebecca O'Connell is a Senior Research Officer at the Thomas Coram Research
Unit, UCL Institute of Education. She is a Social Anthropologist whose research
interests focus on children’s and families’ food practices, poverty and
inequality, work-life issues, and research methodology. Rebecca is currently
Principal Investigator on a European Research Council funded study of Families and Food in Hard Times in the UK, Portugal and Norway. She is also
co-convenor of the British Sociological Association Food Study Group.
