Sentiment, Middle Classes and a Culture of Childhood in Bengal

“The Internet Is Keeping Me from Dying from Boredom”: Understanding the Management and Social Construction of the Self Through Middle-Class Indian Children’s Engagement with Digital Technologies During the COVID-19 Lockdown

“…A clear finding from our study is that, during the COVID-19 national lockdown in 2020, Indian middle-class children have shown themselves to be reflexive users of digital technologies, as they navigated network failure issues, the demands of online classrooms, their own mental health and social relationships, and deployed the affordances of digital technologies to combat loneliness, nurture contact with friends, and explore educational and career resources. Through the deployment of the conceptual framework of the development of the self and social inequality, it is evident that such strategies, in the management and social construction of the self, play out within the discourse of pedagogized middle-class childhood in India, which is imbued with notions of academic success and failure (Kumar, 2016 ; Sen, 2014 ). Our study makes an important contribution in showing that media-rich, middle-class young people’s management and social construction of the self are an important area of focus.…”

“…Our findings demonstrate that children are reflexive users of digital technologies, as they navigate network failure issues, the demands of online classrooms, their own mental health and social relationships, and deploy the affordances of digital technologies to combat loneliness, nurture contact with friends, and explore educational and career resources. These strategies, in the management and social construction of the self, play out within the discourse of pedagogized middle-class childhood in India, which is imbued with notions of academic success and failure (Kumar 2016 ; Sen 2014 ). Media-rich middle-class young people’s management and social construction of the self, in the context of crisis and uncertainty, helps promote our understanding of the relationship between social structure, self-structure, and behavior choices, implications of this for child well-being, and reproduction of social inequality in society.…”

Re‐imaging everyday routines and educational aspirations under COVID‐19 lockdown: Narratives of urban middle‐class children in Punjab, India

“…However, in the relative anonymity of the Indian city, class stratification is particularly significant insofar as children's life chances, access to resources and everyday experiences are concerned (Banaji, 2017 ). Urban middle‐class children in India today live pedagogised and domesticated lives, circulating within designated ‘children's spaces’ of home, school and leisure (Sen, 2014 ; Sur, 2019 ). At the same time, more than 32 million children aged 6–13 years across India have never had any experience of formal education (Oxfam India, 2015 ) and do not live their daily lives in the institutional settings of education and organised leisure (Nieuwenhuys, 2003 ).…”

“…Drawing on interview narratives of 24 children (aged 16–17 years) living in a major city in the northern Indian state of Punjab, this article analyses the ways in which study participants made sense of the changes to their daily routines, combated the challenges posed by the COVID‐19 pandemic and negotiated a new order of everyday life by drawing on a range of classed and community‐based resources. Existing scholarship demonstrates how urban middle‐class homes in India are caught up in the macro‐level changes in economic and political structures, consumer cultures and inter‐community relations currently afoot in India (Banaji, 2017 ; Donner, 2006 ; Sen, 2014 ). Through a focus on urban middle‐class children's experiences of the pandemic, our study contributes to this literature by casting fresh light into the reproduction of social and economic inequality and the cultural politics of middle‐classness in contemporary India.…”

‘Producing’ childhood: The making of childhood and children in theatre

“…The impetus for TIE productions for children in various regions of India is pedagogic as they aim to impart lessons in history, morality, environmental issues etc. Even the more literary or political productions for children are yoked to an idea of childhood as a Bildungsmoratorium (Sen, 2013; Zinnecker, 2000) when a taste for the arts can be developed. Given the child-centric plots, the productions incorporate a physical imagination of childhood reflected in the running, whooping movements of actors.…”