Editorial: Child-Animal Relations and Care as Critique

Abstract

Childhood scholars have for some time worked toward the idea that instead of being situated in their own micro worlds, waiting rooms, or margins, children should be viewed and accounted for as full participants of society. This special issue aligns with this aspiration, while broadening the notion of what counts as society. It asks how to live and care in a society that does not consist of adult human individuals only, but instead counts children and other-than-human animals in the realm of the social and the societal. By inviting authors to think about child-animal relations and care, we wish to shed light on the ways in which other animals are relevant for human children’s lives, and vice versa, and to argue for the importance of these relations for society in the conflicting times we live in now.