The British Journal of Sociology
Volume 57 No 4 December 2006
pages 577-595
Abstract
The paper presents some key findings of qualitative research with older primary school children in Wales on their attachments to places and cultures. There is discussion of children's perspectives on the global, national and local arenas. We argue both that there are continuities with adult perspectives and that the children's views on place and identity need to be understood in the context of the social location of middle childhood. The study shows children making relatively little use of culturally-filled categories of local, national and global place-identifications. The differences they articulate are largely framed in terms of divisions between groups of people rather than in the characteristics of place, and generally related back to the self.
Keywords: Children, middle childhood, national identity, locality, globalization, Wales
Jonathan Scourfield, Bella Dicks, Sally Holland, Mark Drakeford
Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, and
Andrew Davies
Wavehill Consulting