The article deals with one of the key issues in the new social study of childhood. Scholars pay attention to the fact that biosocial dualism remains a leading principle in childhood studies, and childhood is examined through the lens of either culture or nature. As stated by many authors, biosocial dualism in childhood studies originated from the Modern Age, when nature and society were distinguished as two separate zones. Overcoming the dualities of Modernity is seen as one of the main tasks for contemporary childhood studies. In this paper, the author analyzes Thomas Hobbes’ conception of childhood. It is shown that the role of the child in modern thought was ambiguous. On the one hand, children—along with fools and madmen—are placed outside civil society, since all of them lack reason. On the other hand, children play a crucial role for maintaining social order. Three features of modern childhood are most important. First, children belong to a particular area of parental dominion which itself is neither natural nor civil. Second, they help transform the nature of power within this area. Third, childhood functions as a way of representing a political “outside zone”. This reconstruction demonstrates that modern childhood was not exceptionally natural and opposed to society, as Alan Prout and other theorists claim. On the contrary, childhood was crucial for the existence of the “mixed zone”. Moreover, it was highly significant for the defining boundaries of the political sphere. 

The legal and social problem of determining the age of majority has serious theoretical roots. The article reveals the causes and significance of the controversy surrounding modern parenting practices and the legal practices of child protection: on the one hand, the child is thought of as an object of protection and patronage; on the other, there is a trend towards the expansion of children’s rights. An analysis of the category of legal competence—on the basis of which the distinction between child and adult is made—shows that it can be boiled down to two historical interpretations of competence as the ability to act: the potentiality of actuality, proposed by Aristotle, or the actuality of potentiality, the ability to be a subject of self-determination, proposed by Kant. The legal procedure for the recognition of minors ignores these aspects, rendering the legal status of the child problematic. The category of the “order of recognition” makes it possible to single out an important but opaque category for the law: the connection between adults and children. Children are socially institutionalized not only as the young (puer), but also as daughters and sons (filius). The analysis of parenthood as a social order of recognition does not make it possible to unambiguously solve the problem of adulthood; grown-up children never cease to be children for their parents. However, a distinction between the orders of recognition is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, to avoid the need to solve the intended contradiction between the two interpretations of the possibility of acting for the child. Secondly, because of the commixture of the orders of recognition, it is possible to think of a child as a radical agent—in fact, a sovereign—since their autonomy may be due to a purely biological fact of birth. This raises the problem of regulating not the legal relations between adults and children, but the legal distinction between the orders of recognition.

The aim of the paper is to analyze the positions on children and education expressed in the writings of the 19th-century theistic evolutionists in the general context of the history of evolutionary thought. Theistic evolutionists considered evolution not as an exclusively natural process, but as a creative activity on the part of God. The author shows that theistic evolutionists in fact returned to the Puritan understanding of childhood, which assumes that a child is wicked from the very moment of his birth and that the principal end of education is to free him from this state and show him the way to moral life and civilization. However, most of the theistic evolutionists rejected the traditional doctrine of original sin. Thus, their conclusion about the depravity of children was based not on religious—but on scientific grounds. The understanding of childhood in theistic evolutionism, as well as in evolutionism in general, revolved around the theory of recapitulation. The theory states that an organism— in the course of its individual development — repeats the evolution of its ancestors. Theistic evolutionists concluded from this theory that a child lives in a state of savagery and barbarism during his first years, much like the whole human race used to do many thousand years ago. The author demonstrates that Robert Chambers, an early theistic evolutionist, was the first to look at the problem of child education from the point of view of recapitulation theory. Theistic evolutionists of the later period repeatedly reaffirmed that children were no more than little savages whose animal impulses need to be tamed and kept under control. The author points out that these ideas fit quite well with more general notions of childhood as these emerged in the Western civilization of the modern era. While the theistic evolutionists were not wholly original in their application of recapitulation theory to children, they made an important contribution to the development and popularization of this attitude. In particular, the theistic evolutionist Robert Chambers was the first who came to assess child development from the evolutionary point of view.

This paper argues that consumption patterns and lifestyles, which—in the Western-European and the US contexts—mark the boundaries of the uppermiddle class, demonstrate a much stronger affinity with the boundaries of the younger age cohorts in Russia. Using the results of a representative survey carried out between April and May 2017 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, we apply multiple correspondence analysis to demonstrate that the observed consumption patterns are best described by a two-dimensional structure, one axis of which describes the total level of (in)activity, while the other axis stands for the relative amount of cultural capital. Counter to what one might expect on the basis of international stratification and consumption studies, however, age—rather than occupation, education or income—is the strongest predictor of overall participation, explaining around 38% of the variance. Using the results of a series of regular cultural consumption surveys available since 2011, we argue that age should be interpreted as belonging to a certain generation—rather than a certain passing stage of a lifecycle—as generations retained the same level of activity across the time span of 12 years. In the last part of the article we interpret these differences as being the result of an exposure to Western status culture at different stages of one’s biography, making younger people the most receptive to its omnivorous affirmation of multi-faceted activity.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the role of intergenerational relations and intergenerational conflict in social transformation. The example of the Northern Caucasus is used for this research. The analysis is built on the separation of the two forms of intergenerational conflict: conflict based on the life cycle stages and conflict based on the generation gap. The latter is especially important for understanding the mechanisms of social transformation. The article demonstrates that a generation gap can either lead to the evolution of intergenerational relations-and the step-by-step emancipation of the youth-or generate acute intergenerational conflict. The conflict intervenes in the dynamic of intergenerational relations, mostly in the situation of rapid social transformation, ideological pluralism and the youth's protest potential. For the youth, radical ideologies act as pillars against existing norms and the superiority of elders that was implanted during the early process of socialization. In the Northern Caucasus, Islamic fundamentalism had played the role of such an ideology. It was the language and the way of legitimation of intergenerational conflict. It denied the undoubted value of relying on the ancestral experience and considered the authority of knowledge as more important than the authority of ages. This mechanism of intergenerational conflict questioned the very basis of traditional culture. On the one hand, it widened the possibilities for the youth's adaptation to the new conditions, contributed to the development of individualism and critical thinking. However, on the other hand, intergenerational conflict in such forms led to youth radicalization and the spread of violent practices.

The article examines the problem of dependence of values adjusted to the different age groups on the age and cohort factors. According to Schwartz and Inglehart, basic human values determine the behavior of people in various areas, including politics and economy. Consequently, the study of factors influencing the development of values in the age groups may be important for predicting their behavior in different life situations. The article criticizes the theories denying the role of the age factor in the formation of a person's value system, including Inglehart's claim that the age factor is significant only in developed countries. We have analyzed data from the 5th and 6th waves of the World Values Survey in order to examine the relationship between the age and values of respondents in all macro-regions of the world, including Western and Eastern Europe, the English-speaking countries, Latin America, Middle and Central Asia, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. We report that the values of age groups are changing in the process of aging according to a single pattern throughout the world. With age, people are more inclined to share the values of Conservation and Self-transcendence (in Schwartz's terms), while the values of Openness to Change and Self-enhancement gradually fade into the background. At the same time, there exist regional specifics due to cultural differences, which, however, do not change the overall picture.