Childhood prism research: an approach for enabling unique childhood studies contributions within the wider scholarly field

ABSTRACT This article outlines a childhood prism research program with a view to encouraging unique childhood research contributions to the wider scholarly field. It is argued that such a program must embrace both classical and emergent lines of thinking, and be underpinned by a unique childhood studies identity. Besides the fact that childhood offers a unique case for exploring many issues, its potential for making unique contributions is rooted in the generational order perspective. Thus, the suggested research program offers a rethinking of the field that detaches the generational order perspective, and the concepts of ‘generational order’ and ‘generationing’, from their specific theoretical origins and replaces them with a relational ontology and a flat epistemology, making use of the fact that childhood can constitute an extreme or paradigmatic case and can therefore potentially offer a diffractive sociological microscope on certain issues.