CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

Childhood Representations, Postmodernity and Cultural Pedagogy

Organisers: Margarita Morgado

Morgado, Margarida (Escola Superior de Educação do Instituto Politécnico, Portugal) THE AGENCY OF CHILDREN IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
Agents may be defined as 'those people who make things happen' (Pope 2001). In cultural studies recent debates have located agency midway between being subjected by power and being able to resist those powers that subject us (see Stuart Hall and Lawrence Grossberg). A productive definition of agency is that which highlights how individuals or groups struggle to transform their existing social, economic or material forces that 'maintain dominant relations of power'. In the light of this debate I propose to discuss the possibilities of children's agency in the context of adult/child relations of power both in contemporary research and through the analysis of fictionalised agency positions of children in literature.

Hessel Silveira, Rosa Maria (Luterana University of Brazil, Brazil) and Fonseca Richthofen de Freitas, Letícia (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) THE CHILDHOOD BETWEEN THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL: THE CASE OF "GAÚCHAS" CHILDREN IN THE SOUTH OF BRAZIL
Childhood has been understood as a cultural construction socially shaped and so, it is subjected to the characteristic processes of post modernity: globalization, technologisation and mercantile system. Therefore ,there are some actions that remain in some spaces along these processes in order to build regional subjects, heirs of a local identity which was also invented. This is the case of a kind of children's education in the south of Brazil, made from school, family and ­ mainly ­ the Centers of "gaúchas" traditions, that intend to create "peões" and "prendas" who would reproduce the "rural traditions"- typical dances, folk music, singings, arts, regional costume, local custom ­ gauchescas. But this childhood isn't made separated from globalization and the "hibridização" is unavoidable. This paper intends to show some aspects of this "hibridização" in order to discuss how the process of cultural homogenization is never finished since the "hibridização" is only conpound of fragments from others cultures and it is never made from its totality, the result is the interlocution of these fragments, estabilishing what Canclini calls "hibrid cultures" in which the "gaúcha" childhood is constituted/built in its core.

Cancio Gama Leal, Manuel Augusto (University of Lisbon, Portugal) ORDERING THE "OTHER" IN THREE DIMENSIONALS TIMESPACES
This paper discusses the always problematic relations between teacher and students according to Lavie and Swedenburg's theory of boundaries (1996) and its rearticulation by Henry Giroux (2001). Three timespaces will be considered: the 'Here', i.e. the dominant/hegemonic culture, the 'culture' of the textbook and other oppressive forms and practices; secondly, the culture of those 'Out There', students looking for dialogue, negotiation and democracy in the classroom; last but not least, the third timespace, that hybrid power always written with an hyphen, as in self-help. As Giroux states, 'at stake here is the need to insist on modes of authority that are directive but not imperious, linking knowledge to power in the service of self-production, and encouraging students to go beyond the world they already know to expand their range of human possibilities'.