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How are values (of children) made?

I am interested in the making of values as a social practice. How do things come to be considered important, precious, priceless or worth our concerns? In the Global North, including Sweden, children themselves, what they do and produce are often constructed by various institutions to be all of the above. Rather than subscribing to the seemingly self-evident values of children, I ask how they come into being, are produced and sustained, negotiated and dismissed.

To explore the making of values in my doctoral thesis I take a deep dive into an empirical case: a charitable campaign organised as a partnership between a business and a children’s charitable organisation. The campaign, marketed as an enterprise where children give to other children, encourages many questions about children’s charity today. Who gives what and to whom? How charitable causes come into being as societal concerns? What makes this case a particularly interesting matter for interrogating values is that it allows to study values that are commonly considered to be in opposition to or in conflict with one another. For-profit and non-profit; creativity and mass-produced commodities; money and morals – what roles do these entities play in the ways of valuing children?

I approach these questions analytically by drawing on and from the interdisciplinary Child Studies, and Valuation Studies that shares many sensibilities with Science and Technology Studies (STS). The combination of these two fields allows to unsettle the taken-for-granted values and norms, and contribute to understanding of how children are valued in practice.

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CV in short

  • 2016 PhD Student, Department of Child Studies, Linköping University

  • 2016
    Master in Child Studies (2 years), Department of Child Studies, Linköping University

  • 2013
    Master in philology, “Theory, history of literature and comparative literature”, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla academy, Kyiv, Ukraine

  • 2011
    Bachelor in philology (linguistics and literature), National University of Kyiv-Mohyla academy, Kyiv, Ukraine

Publications

Hrechaniuk, Y. (2016). ”Mediation of children’s voices in published letters to Ukrainian soldiers: The case of Листи на війну. Діти пишуть солдатам / Letters on the War. Children Write to Soldiers”. Master’s thesis in Child Studies, Linköping University, Department of Child Studies.

Hrechaniuk, Y. (2015). ”Narrating trauma: Reflections of collective traumas in recent Ukrainian picturebooks”. Master’s thesis in Child Studies, Linköping University, Department of Child Studies.

Presentations

”Who’s afraid of the uncreative child? – Exploring ideas around children’s creativity”,  2 november 2017, Visualiseringscenter, Norrköping

"The Yellow Brick Road to El Dorado: Mapping the Land of Oz”
The Child and the Book: Time, Space and Memory in Literature for Children and Young Adults, 10-12 april 2014, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens.

Conferences

Nordisk forskarkonferens 2016: Med bilden i fokus, 29-31 augusti 2016, Svenska barnboksinstitutet, Stockholm.

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