Cultural Politics of Childhood and Youth

This work offers a comprehensive exploration of how childhood and youth are understood within contemporary social theory, emphasizing the major intellectual shifts that have transformed these fields over the past three decades. Moving beyond traditional developmental perspectives that portrayed children as passive recipients of socialization and youth as a brief transition to adulthood, the text draws on the “new social studies of childhood” and critical youth studies to argue that both childhood and youth are socially constructed categories. Rather than universal or biologically fixed stages, they are shaped by historical contexts, institutional arrangements, and unequal power relations.
Central to the analysis is the concept of cultural politics, which highlights how meanings, identities, and representations of children and young people are produced, circulated, and contested. The work demonstrates how media narratives, state policies, educational systems, and global market forces frame childhood and youth in contradictory ways—at times idealizing them as innocent and hopeful, and at other times depicting them as deviant, risky, or problematic. Such representations are shown to reflect broader ideologies of nationhood, gender, modernity, and economic productivity.
The text further underscores the importance of intersectionality, explaining how class, caste, race, gender, sexuality, disability, language, and nationality intersect to shape diverse and unequal experiences of growing up. It also examines the impact of globalization, neoliberal economic restructuring, migration, and digital technologies in reshaping young lives, generating both new opportunities and new vulnerabilities.
Importantly, the work foregrounds agency, emphasizing that children and youth actively negotiate, reinterpret, and sometimes resist structural constraints in everyday contexts. By integrating insights from sociology, education, psychology, and cultural studies, the volume advances an interdisciplinary, decolonial, and context-sensitive framework for understanding the complex realities of childhood and youth in contemporary societies.

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Cultural Politics of Childhood and Youth
Chandrabali Dutta
Hiralal Mazumdar Memorial College for Women, Kolkata, India

Part I: Subalternity, Marginality, and the Distribution of Vulnerability
Chapter 1 Cultural Politics of Subaltern Children as Located in the Indian Context
Mariam John Meynert
Independent Researcher, Sweden
Chapter 2 Silent Struggles: Unveiling the Complex Lives and Intersectional Challenges of Street Girl Children
Piyali Mitra
Hiralal Mazumdar Memorial College for Women, Kolkata, India
Chapter 3 “Care” Matters: Reflecting on Children Living with Disability
Moutan Roy
Haldia Government College, Purba Medinipur, India

Part II: Boundary-Making, Minority Formation, and Institutional Identity 73Chapter 4 The Cultural Politics of Everyday Intimacy: Adolescents Navigating Social Boundaries in Kolkata
Ananya Chatterjee
Government Girls’ General Degree College, Ekbalpore, Kolkata, India
Chapter 5 Minority Childhood in the City of Joy: Experiencing Anglo-Indian Upbringing
Suchismita Das
Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India
Chapter 6 Sexuality, Sign Language, and Deaf Culture: A Sociological Exploration in India
Anusuya Moitra
Muralidhar Girls’ College, Kolkata, India
Chapter 7 Kreyòl, French, and Identity: Examining the Cultural Hegemony of French in Secondary Education and Its Impact on Youth Identity Formation in Haiti
Lefranc Joseph
State University of Haiti / University of Ottawa

Part III: Cultural Production, Gender Formation, and Voice
Chapter 8 An Exploratory Study on the Role of Training in Art Forms on Gender Role Stress Levels of Male Adults
Arpita Mukherjee
Hiralal Mazumdar Memorial College for Women, Kolkata, India
Chapter 9 The Profile of Young Hip-Hop Rappers in Haiti
Sandy Larose
Laurentian University, CanadaChapter 10 Island Youte’: An Intersectional, Lyrical Analysis of Dancehall Music
Pranav Piyush Sharma
Independent Researcher, Canada
Chapter 11 Body Tattooing among College Girls in Kolkata: Intersectional Relations of Sexuality, Gender, and Body
Debolina Banerjee
Vivekananda College for Women, Behala, Kolkata, India

Part IV: Childhood, Representation, and Educational Contexts
Chapter 12 Is the Success of Montessori Education a Sign of Increased Expectations of Children?
Ghislain Leroy
Rennes 2 University, CREAD laboratory, France

Conclusion: Cultural Politics of Childhood and Youth
Chandrabali Dutta
Hiralal Mazumdar Memorial College for Women, Kolkata, India
Lefranc Joseph
State University of Haiti / University of Ottawa
About the Contributors
Index

Chandrabali Dutta is Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at Hiralal Mazumdar Memorial College for Women, Dakshineswar, Kolkata. She is an alumnus of Presidency College, Kolkata, and holds her Post-Graduation and PhD from the University of Calcutta. With over 18 years of teaching experience, she has taught undergraduate courses extensively and has also been associated with postgraduate teaching at the University of Calcutta, Jadavpur University, IISWBM, and Sister Nivedita University. Her academic interests include sociolinguistics, sociology of childhood, and sociology of gender. She has presented papers at numerous national and international conferences. Chandrabali is the author of a book on gender and language and the editor of three edited volumes, and has published several research articles in reputed national and international journals and edited collections. She has completed a Minor Research Project from the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), Eastern Regional Centre (ERC). She is an active member of the Indian Sociological Society (ISS) and the International Sociological Association (ISA), and serves as Secretary of the charitable organization Bandhu Foundation.

Lefranc Joseph is Professor of Sociology at the State University of Haiti, Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Ottawa, and Senior Researcher at CHARESSO. His research focuses on urban life, education, language, and society, with particular attention to Haiti and the Global South. He is the author of 'Sociologie de Port-au-Prince' (forthcoming; English edition: A Sociology of Port-au-Prince) and editor of 'Housing Vulnerability and Disaster Risk in the Global South' (IGI Global, 2026) and 'Urban Metabolism: The Social Life of Infrastructure in the Global South' (Vernon Press, forthcoming). His recent work includes “Street Leisure as Temporary Publicness: Toward a Spatial Theory of Social Cohesion in Urban Haiti” ('International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure,' 2026). He is the founder and senior editor of Haiti University Press and editor of 'Temporalités et Sociétés.'

Cultural politics, subaltern, childhood, Indian street children, agency, dissent and resistance, quiet encroachment, social inequalities, intersectionality, marginalization, discrimination, disability, caregiving, gender ideology, cultural capital, parental agency, India, friendship, youth, caste, gender, religion, adolescence, qualitative research, Anglo-Indians, minority, ethnic-racial socialization, postcolonial city, deafness, sexuality, Indian sign language, deaf culture, Kreyòl, French, language policy, youth identity, Haiti, decolonial education, cultural hegemony, male gender role stress, training in art forms, traditional gender role, gender stereotypes, rap, political rap, lifestyle, identity, commitment, music, vodou, dancehall, Caribbean, race, sexual orientation, tattoos, consumer culture, stigma, stereotypes, independence, children, Montessori, socialization, public and private schools, parents, family, childhood sociology