À quelle discipline appartiennent les enfants ? Which discipline do children belong to?

L'enfance et les enfants appartiennent depuis longtemps au paysage des sciences humaines et sociales, mais ils ont été investis à des degrés et selon des modalités qui varient selon les disciplines. Historiquement, les premières à s'y être intéressées et à avoir marqué leur emprunte sur toutes les autres relèvent de diverses approches psychologiques. Cependant, progressivement, un nombre croissant de disciplines – anthropologie, histoire, sociologie et, plus récemment science politique ou encore géographie – ont revendiqué la pertinence de leur approche spécifique en ce domaine. Finalement, à quelle discipline appartiennent les enfants ? Qu'en ont fait, au fil du temps, les différentes disciplines qui s'y sont intéressées ? Qu'ont fait, en retour, les enfants aux disciplines qui les ont étudiés ? Pourquoi cet objet semble-t-il, de nos jours, appeler à une collaboration interdisciplinaire voire à un effacement des frontières disciplinaires ? Quels sont les bénéfices et les périls de ces redéfinitions, quand elles existent, du fonctionnement de la recherche ? Comment, finalement, les enfants circulent-ils entre, parmi et au-delà des disciplines ?This two-day workshop aims to engage contributors in a reflexive and critical debate concerning the constitution of children and childhood as a full-fledged topic within the domain of social sciences. We are especially interested in examining the historical processes through which children have been inscribed within specific disciplines. We also aim to question what appear to be new, non-or pluri-disciplinary approaches to research on childhood. Indeed, although children and childhood have continuously played a role in social sciences, the extent and ways in which they have been considered vary significantly between disciplines. Psychologists, psychoanalysts and educational specialists were the first to engage with children. Still today, they exercise a significant influence on the way the topic is dealt with. In recent decades, an increasing number of disciplines, including anthropology, history, sociology and, more recently, political sciences and geography, have progressively come to claim the legitimacy of their specific approach to studying children. Which disciplines do children belong to? How have children been dealt with by the disciplines which have taken interest in them? How have these disciplines themselves been transformed by the study of children and childhood? Why has this “object”, of late, seemed to call either for an interdisciplinary collaboration, or for a dissolution of disciplinary boundaries