Focal point: Roxana Waterson
socroxan@nus.edu.sg

Expanded knowledge of diverse and changing childhoods in the Asia-Pacific region.

• To explore the temporal dimensions of childhood in the Asia-Pacific region;
• To document changes and continuities within and between childhoods in the Asia-Pacific;
• To examine changing representations of children and childhood, especially those produced by children themselves;
• To gain a better understanding of the potentials of children as agents of social change;
• To trace how inter-generational relationships may be changing.

Given the enormous cultural diversity of the Asia-Pacific region, and the relative paucity of research about childhoods, even to map basic ethnographic knowledge about the diversity of Asia-Pacific childhoods is a demanding task. Our Symposium aims to make a major contribution in this direction. The focus will be comparative and historical, with a particular emphasis on the dynamics of change or continuity over time, contemporary social transformations, and how these are affecting children's lives and ideas about childhood. We want to identify what aspects, if any, may be specific to the Asia-Pacific context. The ultimate goal is to make an innovative contribution to the theorising of childhood, by breaking away from purely Euro-American models and research data.

Is globalisation empowering for children?
How is it changing children's lives?
Is it a homogenising or hybridising influence between 'East' and 'West'?
How is it affecting children's communication and lifestyles?

Parenting (including discipline; parental expectations of children, and of themselves as parents);
Grand-parenting;
Relationships between children and adults in general, including ideas about authority, respect, obedience, punishment, resistance, and approved forms of behaviour;
Childhood experiences (including siblings and peers; the changing definitions of, and balance between, ‘work', ‘learning' and ‘play'; changing experiences of drugs and sexuality);
Changing life chances;
Gender dynamics;
Changing value of childhood/children;
Biography and memory, personal narratives.

Topics include children's agency in the development and consumption of Japanese manga comics, and a session with filmmakers/photographers who have collaborated with children to make films reflective of their experiences and aspirations. We wish to explore the political potentials of children's uses of visual media, and the potentials for collaboration with children in ethnographic documentary film making, including ethical and methodological implications.

This symposium will be primarily academic-, rather than practitioner-based, with four to six papers per session. One session will focus on children's participation in films and their agency in media production.

• A book on re-imagining childhoods and the changing experiences of children in the Asia-Pacific Region. This book would comprise a collection of ten or so papers from the Symposium and is envisaged as a parallel volume to Minor Omissions: Children in Latin American History and Society (Tobias Hecht, ed.,) ;
• Depending on possible links with papers in other Symposia, other potential themes for collected volumes might include: a book on Children as Agents of Change; a book on Children's Representations of Childhood; a book on Childhood and Generations; a book on Children and Globalisation in the Asia-Pacific Region. (Not all of these may materialise, but would be possible provided that sufficient high-quality contributors on the different topics can be found).