Allison James is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth at the University of Sheffield, UK and is also Professor II at the Norwegian Centre for Child Research in Trondheim, Norway. As one of the pioneers of the new social studies of childhood she has carried out extensive empirical and theoretical research into children's culture. Her previous publications include Constructing Childhood (with A. L. James), European Childhoods (with A. L. James) and Children, Food and Identity in Everyday Life (with A. Khørholt and V. Tingstad).

• 1. Personal Lives 2. Key Concepts, New Understandings? 3. Family Lives 4. Interacting Lives 5. Embodied, Emotional Lives 6. Institutional Lives 7. Biographical Lives 8. Afterword: Towards a Child Centred Perspective on Socialization