Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Davidson College

Box 7139 Davidson, NC 28035
Office: Preyer 212
Phone- 704-894-2141
Email: jetaft@davidson.edu

Education:
B.A. - Macalester College
Ph. D - University of California - Santa Barbara

Professor Taft's CV

New Book by Professor Taft

Jessica Taft has been awarded a research grant from the American Sociological Association's Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline. The project is entitled "Social Movements and the Meaning of Childhood: Intergenerational Collaboration in the Peruvian Working Children's Movement." A summary of the project is here:

Public and scholarly interest in children's political participation has grown significantly in the past twenty years. At the same time, sociologists of childhood have argued that the meaning of childhood varies significantly. However, there is little research on children's participation and the meaning of childhood within social movements. This research project responds to this theoretically significant gap by exploring the interactions between children and adults in the Peruvian movement of working children, a movement that seeks to create collaborative political relationships across age differences. Through document analysis, participant observation, and in-depth interviewing, this project will examine organizational and cultural discourses about childhood, institutional structures that facilitate and/or limit cross-age partnership, and how these cultural and structural forms shape participants' lived experiences of childhood, adulthood, and the relationship between children and adults. Organizations in the working children's movement navigate a dynamic tension between widespread discourses of children as passive objects of socialization and localized discourses of children as competent and capable citizens. By looking at how childhood is constructed and experienced within organizations that take a strong position in favor of children's political capacity, this project engages with important questions regarding the durability and fluidity of the meaning of childhood.