Re-turns and dis/continuities of feminist thought in childhood research : indebtedness and entanglements

This chapter aims to map some examples of key feminist philosophies, theories and research that have shaped understandings of childhood and gender in significant ways in the recent past. It attends to important shifts over time, but it does not argue for chronology or linearity; rather the aim is to illuminate how a rich tapestry of feminist thought has been activated and practised through research to generate important ruptures to established ways of thinking about children and gender. By reviewing what has come before, we identify how previous feminist scholarship leaves traces and, in many senses, shapes the exciting research that is being undertaken in the field of childhood studies by feminist researchers currently. We want to celebrate the important contributions that feminist philosophers and scholars have made to the field and to explore the possibilities that are opened for feminist new materialists to work with ideas about gender and childhood generatively but in ways that recognise their indebtedness to the past