Isto não é uma criança! Teorias e métodos para o estudo de bebês nas distintas abordagens da sociologia da infância de língua inglesa

Abstract

This research aimed to discuss the theoretical and methodological foundations of Sociology of Childhood, trying to answer some methodological challenges that arise for research with babies, from a dialogue with English speakers scholars. This is a qualitative theoretical and bibliographic research, which some contributions of the genealogy as proposed by Foucault. From the analysis of the scientific production of Alison James, Chris Jenks, Alan Prout, Jens Qvortrup, Leena Alanen and William Corsaro, we question the value of concepts and methodologies proposed for the study of children (such as the concepts of childhood, generation, and peer cultures) in case of the studies of babies. We emphasize the necessity of constituting theoretically the baby inside Childhood Studies, as an independent analytical category. We already emphasize that babies should not be studied adopting the same concepts used for the study of children and even using the same methodologies. We put in a dialogue the ideas of Foucault, Deleuze and Simondon, presents the work of Jenks (2005) and Prout (2005), and using some concepts from these scholars, we defend the idea that there is a difference between babies and children that cannot be ignored. From the ideas of these authors, we argue that "babies" are beings immersed in the pre-individual condition. Are becomings, difference, pure potentiality not individuated; while children are individuals who have an identity (of age, gender, cultural belonging, ethnic-racial, etc..) that babies don t have. In terms of methodology, we point out that this singular condition of babies cannot be studied from any methodology. This way, we highlight the cartography proposed by Deleuze, the schizoanalysis , used by Guattari, the Transgressive Method of Bataille and the methodology of Actor-Network Theory , as some apparently promising methodologies for the study of babies.