In this book the emergence of schools in urban Sweden between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century provides the framework for a history of children and of childhood. It is a study through the lens of the changes in early modern education, spatial aspect of the life of children and systems of governance in the early modern Swedish state. Educational systems defined the spatial aspects of childhood-where children were supposed to grow up, in the home, the school, the streets and alleys, or the place of work-over a period of about two hundred years. Schools and education represent both a mental and a physical space; an abstract place for children as well as a local and concrete place for them, which stood out against the alternative spatial aspects of the life of children. It is also a study of how different cultural systems influence the definitions of childhood and schools, in the context of church and home instruction, poor relief, policing, surveillance, and the question of why children went to schools. It examines the role of the school as childcare and as a provider of food, shelter and welfare, and as governance.

This open access edited volume investigates children and youth's deep entanglement in today's major global, national, and local transformations and processes: wherein they are not mere spectators and objects of transformations but instead actively shape them through various social, economic, and political representations. International contributions illuminate the problems that arise when children's rights and participation become a site of contestation and power over who represents whom, what, when, and where. The authors do not provide simple solutions, instead offering an understanding of the fundamental nature of these problems as founded in the application of rights and the nature of representation in modern society. Together, the authors emphasize that child representation must take into account the local and spatial context of how representations of children are discussed, as well as possible discrepancies between local, regional, national, and global processes.

In this book the emergence of schools in urban Sweden between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century provides the framework for a history of children and of childhood. It is a study through the lens of the changes in early modern education, spatial aspect of the life of children and systems of governance in the early modern Swedish state. Educational systems defined the spatial aspects of childhood-where children were supposed to grow up, in the home, the school, the streets and alleys, or the place of work-over a period of about two hundred years. Schools and education represent both a mental and a physical space; an abstract place for children as well as a local and concrete place for them, which stood out against the alternative spatial aspects of the life of children. It is also a study of how different cultural systems influence the definitions of childhood and schools, in the context of church and home instruction, poor relief, policing, surveillance, and the question of why children went to schools. It examines the role of the school as childcare and as a provider of food, shelter and welfare, and as governance.

Children's work is a controversial subject both in the sciences of sociology and history. It does not accord well with the modern idea of a good childhood -- that children actually work. Children ought to spend their time playing and attending school. The historians' interest has focused on industrial child labour -- its emergence and its disappearance. But relatively few children worked in industry. Far more children were employed in agriculture and retail trade, if they did not help at home or at the neighbour's. Sometimes they received pay -- other times not -- and they often worked on the edge of the law. The articles in this book examine children's work from the mid-1800's and until the 1990's, because children's work is not a closed chapter in history. But the character and social function of the children's work have been changed over time. This anthology is the result of an inter-Nordic research project about children's work in the Nordic countries involving all the five Nordic countries.