*REMINDER-Deadline: 31 January 2020*

*CfP: Parenting and the State: State intervention in the age of the family*

http://www.krtk.mta.hu/our-news/?year=2020&month=05&day=14
<http://www.krtk.mta.hu/our-news/?year=2020&month=05&day=14&fbclid=IwAR2-YVTpxEIy6yFXKsgOi2l46S_6VLB_oluV2gQ0l7ptGsXPu82927MxHbY>

Centre for Economic and Regional Studies
Budapest, 14-15 May 2020

Deadline for application: 31 January 2020

We are inviting abstract submissions for a two-day workshop, which will
discuss current instances, forms and results of state interference into
parenting.

Organizers:

Alexandra Szőke  (Centre for Economic and Regional Studies)
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Cecília Kovai  (Centre for Economic and Regional Studies)
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We are able to offer subsidies to cover travel and accommodation costs (up
to 300 Euro). Please indicate if you would like to avail this option.


http://www.krtk.mta.hu/our-news/?year=2020&month=05&day=14


*Theme of the workshop*
During the past decades childhood and child raising have become
increasingly debated public issues, with the appearance of an unprecedented
array of experts seeking to give advice and interfere into what most people
consider their private affairs. In many instances it has also led to
intensified state intercessions, such as Family Intervention Projects,
restrictions on home or alternative education, or pregnancy policing.
States can influence parenting practices and norms through various
channels: (1) *policies and regulations* (family support schemes,
regulations on education, health care policies, etc.), (2) *institutions*
(such as school, medical services, child protection), and (3) the *everyday
practices of state officials* or civil servants (teachers, welfare workers,
medical practitioners, nurses/health care visitors) as they interact with
parents. These state practices are highly normative, seeking to determine
the “best” ways of child-rearing, which reflects dominant social (often
middle class and ‘white’) values. Delineating “good” parental practices
from “bad” ones have important consequences for families of particular
ethnic or social backgrounds in terms of social acceptance and belonging,
thus strengthening lines of exclusion, marginalization and deservedness.

Undoubtedly, interest in children, and thereby influencing parental
practices, have been a concern of nation-states from their very birth as a
crucial aspect of ensuring the “proper” upbringing of the next generation
of “good” citizens. However, the content, form, aims and consequences of
such interference are culturally and historically specific and are strongly
informed by broader political, economic and social processes. The workshop
thus seeks to discuss novel forms of such interventions that are
specifically linked to recent, globally relevant processes.

Whereas public discourse is usually remorse about the constant weakening of
the family as an institution, there has been a rising political interest in
“the family” amongst right-wing political forces in many countries. Whilst
in rhetoric this is often linked to worries about population change or
decline in religious “traditional” values, it often materializes in
measures that promotes particular (mainstream middle class) family ideals
while stigmatizing others, and gives ways to increased monitoring and
interventions into the lives of marginalized poor families especially. This
goes hand in hand with crucial cultural transformations of child-rearing in
the 2000s, with a new parenting culture becoming globally significant,
although in different degrees and forms. Increased risk consciousness, the
scientification of parenting and a shift of focus from children to parents’
behavior  have led to the “responsibilization” of parents. The latter are
increasingly conceived as incompetent (regardless of socio-economic
status), therefore in need of expert advise and assistance in even the most
minute aspects of child rearing, such as feeding, sleep and play. Such
parental determinism and the omnipotence of medical and psychological
knowledge from which it emerges dovetails with the individualization of
social problems under neoliberal governance. Parents and parenting are held
solely responsible for social ills, while the scientific language closes
off any discussion of structural social problems. Thus constructs of “good”
and “bad” parents are utilized to legitimate both increased surveillance
into family life and the retrenchment of welfare, often under the aegis of
social investment and early prevention programmes.


These processes, amongst others, lead to the ongoing:


   - reconfiguration of the roles of different institutions in the
   up-bringing of the next generation of citizens
   - transformation of relationships of various institutions with parents
   (of different ethnic and social background)
   - novel collisions or cooperations between the newly appearing experts
   and more long-established professionals (usually civil servants)
   - renegotiation of responsibilities, rights and duties of both the state
   and citizens.

The workshop seeks to establish the novel instances, character and results
of such state interference into parenting, which are linked to the above
global political, economic and social tendencies.


We are looking for contributions which discuss:

(a) policies, discourses, or everyday interactions and practices through
which different states seek to influence parenting

(b) analyze the socio-political consequences of such interference

(c) examine the ways parents negotiate their child raising practices,
rights and responsibilities vis-a-vis these state practices.

We invite abstract submissions that address these themes from different
disciplinary perspectives in the social sciences (with a particular
preference for ethnographically grounded research) and with regard to
particular institutional settings and the contexts in which they are
embedded.


*Application details:*


Interested participants should send to the organizers:

-          their abstract (max. 300 words)

-          name

-          paper title

-          short bio-note



*Deadline: 31 January 2020. *


We are able to offer subsidies to cover travel and accommodation costs (up
to 300 Euro). Please indicate if you would like to avail this option.


best wishes,

Alexandra Szőke and Cecília Kovai

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