Race, Class, Parenting and Children´s Leisure - Hádegisfyrirlestur

Dr Utsa Mukherjee, will give the talk Race, Class, Parenting and Children´s Leisure in K-206 in the School of Education in Stakkahlíð at 12-13 October 10th.

All welcome!

Dr. Utsa Mukherjee is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Equality & Diversity at the Department of Education, Brunel University London.

Abstract:

The talk will be based on his monograph Race, Class, Parenting and Children’s Leisure, which focuses on the leisure lives of middle-class British Indian children and the parenting ideologies that underpin them. In this book, he asks what it means to be middle-class and Indian in contemporary Britain, and how these subject positions mould the leisure geographies of children and their families. Through the joint lens of race and class, I illuminate the pivotal role played by children’s leisure activities in the reproduction of social identities and inequalities in contemporary Britain.

Children’s leisure lives are changing, with increasing dominance of organised activities and screen-based leisure. These shifts have reconfigured parenting practices, too. However, our current understandings of these processes in the UK are race-blind and based mostly on the experiences of white middle-class families. Drawing on an innovative study of middle-class British Indian families, in this book I bring children’s and parents’ voices to the forefront and bridge childhood studies, family studies and leisure studies to theorise children’s leisure from a fresh perspective.

Bio:

Dr. Utsa Mukherjee (he/him) is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Equality & Diversity at the Department of Education, Brunel University London. He is a Trustee of the Academy of Social Sciences, an Associate Editor of Journal of Family Studies and the Book Review Editor of Children & Society and Sociological Forum. His research interests lie in childhood, youth and family studies with a key focus on social justice and equity.