{"title":"“Miss, our clothes are clean:” contesting liminality in Lebanese kindergarten classrooms","authors":"Thea Renda Abu El-Haj, Samira Chatila","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2022-0041","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Across the world, optimistic educational policy discourses promote early childhood education as a key strategy for combating poverty and for building bright futures for the most vulnerable members of society. Viewed from the ground up, this picture of early childhood education as a path to bright futures for all children is often belied by political and economic entrenchments. This article draws on a four-year ethnographic study of multiple classrooms in one Lebanese public kindergarten school that serves the most vulnerable children in Lebanon – Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian children who face daily the insecurities of poverty, displacement, and political violence. Drawing on anthropological theory that illustrates how social identities forged at the level of historical timescales are constructed and contested at the microlevel of everyday life, we pay particular attention to spatio-temporal liminal contexts within which children renounce productions of their own, their peers’, and their families’ marginality.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2023 1","pages":"19 - 40"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0041","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract Across the world, optimistic educational policy discourses promote early childhood education as a key strategy for combating poverty and for building bright futures for the most vulnerable members of society. Viewed from the ground up, this picture of early childhood education as a path to bright futures for all children is often belied by political and economic entrenchments. This article draws on a four-year ethnographic study of multiple classrooms in one Lebanese public kindergarten school that serves the most vulnerable children in Lebanon – Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian children who face daily the insecurities of poverty, displacement, and political violence. Drawing on anthropological theory that illustrates how social identities forged at the level of historical timescales are constructed and contested at the microlevel of everyday life, we pay particular attention to spatio-temporal liminal contexts within which children renounce productions of their own, their peers’, and their families’ marginality.
期刊介绍:
The International Journal of the Sociology of Language (IJSL) is dedicated to the development of the sociology of language as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches – theoretical and empirical – supplement and complement each other, contributing thereby to the growth of language-related knowledge, applications, values and sensitivities. Five of the journal''s annual issues are topically focused, all of the articles in such issues being commissioned in advance, after acceptance of proposals. One annual issue is reserved for single articles on the sociology of language. Selected issues throughout the year also feature a contribution on small languages and small language communities.