'Time-Out' in the Land of Apu, 2014
Childhoods, Bildungsmoratorium and the Middle Classes of Urban West Bengal

Within Childhood Research starkly different theoretical and empirical concerns characterize the global south-north divide. Hia Sen attempts to bridge the gap in Childhood Research which usually addresses childhoods differently according to their 'developing/developed', 'western/non-western' contexts, and finds its middle ground in the context of the urban middle classes in contemporary West Bengal. The author documents areas such as leisure practices and everyday lives of school children in India for three cohorts, where it is possible to have a comparative perspective of childhoods given the existing rich ethnographic and historical research on childhoods in other cultural contexts.

Childhoods and Social Inequalities.- Sentiment, Middle Classes, and a Culture of Childhood in Bengal.- Talking to Children, and Talking about Childhoods.- The Bhadralok Culture and the Ethos of Education in Bengal.- Leisure Culture and Space.- Class, Gender, and Generation in Children’s Culture.

Dr. Hia Sen studied sociology in Kolkata and New Delhi and completed her doctoral thesis at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She is an Assistant Professor of sociology at Presidency University, Kolkata, India.

Publication in the field of social sciences.?

Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras