From Children's Song to Expressive Practices: Old and New Directions in the Ethnomusicological Study of Children

Abstract

n the past century, the scholarly study of children's song and their musical play has been an important site for staging theories about nature and culture, reproduction and transformation, coherence and eclecticism. These theories have sometimes been merely implicit in research methodology or mode of presentation, but they are nevertheless crucial factors in understanding diverse perspectives on children which implicate real political, economic, and social configurations at particular historical moments.