Militarism in the lifeworlds of children

Bringing together original research by scholars of all career stages and spanning five continents, this edited collection reveals the complexity of childhoods’ myriad intersections with militarism both within and beyond zones of conflict. Exploring the oft times subtle ways militarism circulates in the quotidian of children’s lifeworlds, these important new contributions highlight children’s agency and the important everyday work they perform in the making of social meaning through which militarism is variously propagated, reproduced, interpreted, subverted, and resisted. In all this complexity, children simultaneously navigate and negotiate militarism across the similarly complex contexts of the social worlds they inhabit and in which they are always important political subjects. In storytelling or the material cultures of play as much as through direct experiences of war or military recruitment, contributors show how militarism is a pervasive and productive force in the lifeworlds of all children. In the rich diversity of these encounters we glimpse something of children’s indispensability to militarism and its mundane circulations through the social worlds we share.