The Social Life of Chores: Rethinking Work in Childhood was a postdoctoral research project by Barbara Turk Niskač funded by the Slovene Research Agency (Z6-1881) that ran from August 2019 to July 2021. The project explored conceptualizations of the daily work and play/leisure of primary school children in a rural and urban setting in Slovenia using semi-structured interviews with parents and grandparents, as well as participatory photography and photo elicitation interviews with children. Five grandparents (two men and three women), 23 parents (19 mothers and four fathers), and 26 children (12 girls and 14 boys) between the ages of five and fifteen participated in the study. In total, the elementary school children took 1068 pictures, each of them taking between 12 and 178 pictures. The study was a continuation of a doctoral dissertation entitled Playing at Work, Working at Play: Ethnographic Study of Learning in Early Childhood (2016), which examined the intersection of work and play among preschool children based on ethnographic fieldwork in two kindergartens in 2010, 2011, and 2013. It used participant observation and video ethnography in the kindergartens, semi-structured interviews with educators, parents, and grandparents, and participatory photography and photo elicitation interviews with children ages three to six, and selected parents and educators.
For the postdoctoral study, children were asked to take pictures of how they spent their days after school, including homework, extracurricular activities, hobbies, play, leisure and participation in daily work within the family. From 1068 pictures, Barbara selected 183 pictures to include in the Children’s Photography Archive. Since it was not originally intended for project photographs to be archived with the CPA, additional permissions from parents and children were sought and only pictures from participants who had additionally given consent for their pictures to be presented in the CPA were selected.
The aim of the project was twofold. First, it examined how children actively make meaning through their everyday engagement in work that take place in the family setting. Second, it examined how specific conceptualizations of work and play/leisure are related to different cultural contexts (urban vs. rural) and political and socioeconomic circumstances (from the predominant agricultural domestic economy in the first half of the 20th century to post-World War II socialist Yugoslavia to today’s post-socialist neoliberal economic system) and how these different conceptualizations manifest in children’s daily lives across generations.
The primary school children in this study viewed work as an activity that is an obligation, an activity that requires following someone’s instructions, and that is often boring. In this regard, school was often associated with work, although some children also viewed school work as fun and interesting. Play, on the other hand, was understood as an activity that one does out of inner motivation, an activity where one can do what one wants and have fun. However, the categories of work and play were not clear-cut. They classified activities subjectively, depending on how they felt about doing them. Thus, driving a tractor or harvesting potatoes could be perceived as play, while practicing the clarinet for music school could be perceived as work.
More info on the project can be found here: https://isn2.zrc-sazu.si/en/programi-in-projekti/the-social-life-of-chores-rethinking-work-in-childhood and here: https://antropologijaotrostva.zrc-sazu.si/en/anthropology-of-childhood-2/