In capturing of a crafty agency: lessons from an ethnography with children about uses of the notion of bullying

Abstract:

This paper deals with theoretical, methodological and ethical questions raised when embracing children as subjects of research in an ethnography of the agency of the bullying concept in Brazilian contemporaneity. In order to situate these challenges in an empirical context, the paper delineates as a case study the connections that children today make between the agency of this concept and the attribution of pejorative nicknames among school peers.

Keywords:
Bullying; Agency; Education; Childhood; Ethnography