Childhoods in Contexts is a three-credit course and will be offered in the first semester of the programme. The course will enable students to critically engage with multiple perspectives on children, childhoods and the diverse contexts (both Indian and global) in which children live. The course will bring focus on children in the early years and their experiences of growing up in families and communities. Students will be familiarised with the varied child rearing and socialisation practices that will help them reflect on the specific factors that constitute diversity in contexts and how the interplay of these factors lead to multiple and often unequal childhoods. 

Besides families and community, children’s identities are also shaped by modern institutions such as state, market and education/​care settings. The course will focus on the role and influence of these structures in shaping and influencing children’s lives. The course further discusses the children’s voice/​agency in their everyday lives. Their participation in everyday experiences needs to be examined through various theoretical concepts and empirical studies to understand how children, as agents, engage with the social roles and responsibilities and actively engage in processes of meaning
making. The complexities and ambiguities related to children’s agency will be framed through a relational lens to explore how children navigate, negotiate and even transform situations in their everyday living.