Fall 2026 Call for Papers

Theme: Between Wisdom and Ignorance: Children, Expertise, and the Co-Production of Culture 

For more than forty years, anthropologists and other interdisciplinary childhood scholars have challenged earlier paradigms that cast children as incompetent or incomplete adults, instead centering children as capable social actors. Yet, as Sobo (2015) observes, centering children’s voices can reproduce a limiting binary, positioning children as either fully autonomous and culturally separate from adults or entirely dependent upon them. This autonomy–dependence framing obscures the relational, negotiated, and power-laden processes through which children and adults mutually produce knowledge, meaning, and social life. The Fall 2026 NEOS issue, Between Wisdom and Ignorance: Children, Expertise, and the Co-Production of Culture, invites submissions of anthropological and interdisciplinary research that examine the productive tension between ignorance and knowledge shaping children’s lives. We encourage scholars to interrogate how a binary that casts children as either ignorant of the world or fully capable of creating, dismantling, and disrupting culture obscures the interdependence between children and adults and the ways this interdependence shapes both children’s and adults’ lives.

The autonomy–dependence binary is especially visible in institutional and policy contexts, where adults’ ignorance of children’s roles, rights, and capabilities can construct young people as incapable or deny them rights afforded to others. In migration contexts, young people often serve as linguistic and cultural brokers for their families, yet their expertise may go unrecognized (Garca-Snchez, 2018). Similarly, despite global recognition of children’s rights frameworks, including those articulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, local interpretations of children’s capabilities and roles may position young people as incapable decision-makers, limiting their participation in matters that affect their lives. More recently, scholars and policymakers have examined the diverse ways that cultures, nations, and political systems attempt to include children’s voices in policy processes, with varying degrees of depth, authenticity, and success (Lundy 2018, Twum-Danso Imoh & Okyere 2020).

The tension between knowledge and ignorance extends to the process of conducting research with children, where interdependence between children and adults becomes especially visible as scholars navigate distinctive ethical and methodological considerations. Research with young people requires negotiating access through adult gatekeepers while also recognizing children as knowledgeable participants whose perspectives may challenge adult interpretations (Okyere 2018). These dynamics raise critical questions: Who claims the authority to know, represent, or speak for children in research? How are particular concerns related to children’s wellbeing granted legitimacy while others remain unacknowledged or underserved? This issue seeks contributions that move beyond celebrating children’s voices to examine how expertise, authority, and legitimacy are unevenly recognized, granted, or denied to young people, including within the research process itself. We invite submissions that engage with the following themes:

Methodological Exploration:

• What diverse methods have researchers employed to center children’s voices, including participatory approaches and digital methodologies, and what do these methods reveal about the ways adults and children influence one another?
• In what ways do researchers incorporate children’s voices in their work to illuminate processes of knowledge co-production?
• How do children and adults collaboratively produce knowledge, cultural practices, and social norms in everyday settings such as schools, households, peer groups, and community institutions?
• What ethical considerations do childhood researchers contend with that differ from those involved in research with adults?
• How are ethical oversight processes shaped by prevailing paradigms of childhood?
• In what ways do scholars working across diverse contexts engage with, reinforce, or challenge dominant paradigms that shape the recognition of children’s authority within their own lives?
• How do participatory, child-centered, and other epistemic approaches to research reconfigure traditional hierarchies of knowledge production?

Theoretical Exploration:

• In what ways does the paradigm of children as inherently vulnerable reposition adults into particular roles of authority and vulnerability, and how does this dynamic shape power relations between children and adults?
• How can a four-field approach help scholars examine the interdependent relationships between children and adults?
• How do universalizing models of childhood intersect with, obscure, or conflict with culturally specific understandings of children’s knowledge, authority, and social roles?
• When and how are children’s contributions to family decision-making, community life, or institutional practices, such as schooling or social services, misrecognized or overlooked by adults, and with what consequences?

This list is not exhaustive. We invite authors to explore other topics that relate to this issue’s theme. NEOS is an open-access publication of the Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group (ACYIG) of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). We publish research on childhood and youth from scholars working across the four fields of anthropology, as well as from those interdisciplinary fields in conversation with anthropological theories and methods. We invite original research articles (4,000 words max, excluding references) that address this issue’s theme. NEOS also welcomes submissions on scholarship and applied research that uplifts racial, economic, and social justice and the dismantling of systemic oppression for a dedicated standing column on anti-racism and equity in child and youth studies.

Articles published in NEOS undergo a double-anonymous peer-review process. The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2026 (end of the day). Rolling submissions prior to July 1 are also welcome. While not required, authors are encouraged to submit a brief message about their intent to submit to the Co-Editors by June 1, 2026. The NEOS Editorial Team may be reached at acyig.editor@gmail.com. Visit our website for further information on NEOS, as well as submission guidelines and instructions. You may access the submission portal for the Spring  2026 issue here.

References  

Sobo, Elisa (EJ). “Anthropological Contributions and Challenges to the Study of Children and Childhoods.” Reviews in Anthropology 44, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 43–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2015.1004926.

García-Sánchez, Inmaculada M. “Children as Interactional Brokers of Care.” Annual Review of Anthropology 47, no. 1 (October 21, 2018): 167–84. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102317-050050.

Lundy, Laura. “In Defence of Tokenism? Implementing Children’s Right to Participate in Collective Decision-Making.” Childhood 25, no. 3 (May 26, 2018): 340–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568218777292.

Okyere, Samuel. “‘Like the Stranger at a Funeral Who Cries More than the Bereaved’: Ethical Dilemmas in Ethnographic Research with Children.” Qualitative Research 18, no. 6 (November 30, 2017): 623–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794117743464.

Twum-Danso Imoh, Afua, and Samuel Okyere. “Towards a More Holistic Understanding of Child Participation: Foregrounding the Experiences of Children in Ghana and Nigeria.” Children and Youth Services Review 112 (May 2020): 104927. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.104927.