The aim of this study is to examine the everyday life of day-care institutions and the culture of peer relationships that develop there. Interdisciplinary studies of childhood perceive it as a social construct separable from biological immaturity, and they describe a distinct toddler style of socialisation with peers. In this paradigm, participation in cultural routines is central to understanding child socialisation. Based on ethnographic observations in two facilities and interviews with teachers and parents, we explore relationships between peers, social routines, and the creation of collectivity. We focus on the perspective of adults and their perception of the children's collective and on the meanings of children's interactions. The analyses reveal that as well as socialising in hierarchical relationships with adults they also actively participate in cultural reproduction through the interpretation of meanings. What constitutes 'play' when socialising with adults becomes 'something real' when it occurs between physical and cognitive equals. Interaction with peers in a day-care facility allows a child to experience a collective 'WE', through which they are then able to to control adults. However, the creation of collectivity depends on their being conditions in place that are suitable for small children and toddlers.
The authors analyse the discourse of Green Ways (GW), a company using multi-level marketing where women comprise the majority of distributors. The article shows that however multi-level marketing is advertised as a highly flexible form of employment suitable for those who want to combine family life with work, it is rather a way of marketing than an employment opportunity. A significant role in this business is played by women on parental leave who earn self-esteem based in the neoliberal values of self-reliance and entrepreneurial success, rather than FINANCIAL income. The analysis links their ways of describing the character and benefits of selling GW products with the ideology presented in GW manuals for distributors. Using Bourdieu’s theory, the authors point out how GW constructs the symbolic oppositional binary in line with the neoliberal notion of an efficient individual.
In 2010 sex education became a surprising target of criticism in the secular Czech Republic. The voices of social conservatives were raised and were answered by the Minister of Education, who launched a reform of educational curricula to exclude sex education. This article analyses the discursive strategies employed by conservative opponents of sex education and highlights the interpretive repertoires of sexuality and gender. The authors argue that Czech conservatives deploy both a moral panic strategy and a discursive strategy of empowerment that uses positive sanctions to support ‘good sex’, defined exclusively as marital, procreative heterosex. This interpretive repertoire of ‘good and healthy sexuality’ is universally intelligible and thus has the potential to resonate not only with social conservatives but throughout society. When combined with other socially conservative agendas it has the capacity to regiment the public space and diminish the role of public institutions.
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