From extractivist practices and the child-as-data to an ethics of reciprocity and mutuality in empirical childhood research

The increased datafication of childhood is quite evident. And so is a vision of the child-as-data—as a reservoir of information, an extractable resource for commercial and other use—in today’s hyper-technologized world where no aspect of life seems to be able to defy such use. What might not be as readily evident is how research—including the kind of empirical social research we engage with in childhood studies—is also to a significant extent implicated in extractive practices of knowledge production. To be fair, childhood studies is not exceptional in this sense and largely follows broader processes at work which encourage such extractivist practices in research. Moreover, and again to be fair, as a field childhood studies is also pushing back to some extent through its constant self-reflection, self-questioning and self-critique helping all of us, think beyond this extractivist logic of our times. Having said that, the problem of epistemic extractivism (with one of its most obvious manifestations being the view of the child-as-data) is quite real and, in my opinion, worth taking seriously.

At one level, we might say that this is largely a problem linked to the current system of knowledge production. This system is rooted primarily in the neoliberal university, the accompanying logic of an audit culture, and the institutional obsession with metrics all of which sustain the continuous, factory-like production of knowledge, most often in the form of high-impact journal articles which reflect value for both researchers and their institutions in the current reward system. However, it is not the mere overproduction of academic papers that feeds extractivism. It is also the extent to which such a logic produces and sustains a fast-paced scholarship—quick and efficient data collection, analysis and publication—which inevitably encourages an extractivist way of thinking and operating in research.

Generally speaking, this approach to research means that research projects are to be as efficient as possible, completed as quickly as possible, and result in as many “valued” outputs as possible. This encourages a model of research where the ethics and politics of knowledge production take back stage. Relations with those we study become instrumental though it is frequently assumed that the value of the knowledge produced can make up for any subsequent shortcomings in our relations with the people we study. Perhaps this is a bit of a caricature, keeping in mind that there are many childhood studies scholars who actively work against this extractivist logic. But it is nevertheless a useful point of departure for a more concerted critique of this orientation and for considering alternatives. There is no such thing as a ‘critical childhood studies’ without this ongoing reflective process which seeks to question our knowledge practices and entrenched ways of researching.

My main concern and underlying motivation for writing this editorial then, is the extent to which this extractivist logic of our times works insidiously to render us accomplices even when we profess to be critical and even when we wholeheartedly wish to do good through our research work. One way to deal with this issue is to dismiss it—not because we do not recognize it as a problem—but because it is the logic of the system and hence beyond any individual’s ability to change it. Alternatively, we could raise the issue as a matter of concern for the field and collectively consider ways of addressing it, recognizing of course, once again, that there is bound to be significant diversity in opinion about the extent of the problem and certainly disagreement about what can and should be done about it. In this editorial I discuss this issue primarily as a matter of concern for the field, starting with the underlying problem of extractivism.

From within an extractivist logic, land and people are primarily resources that can and should be exploited for profit. Extractivism has a long tradition in the context of colonialism (for example, in how the colonial powers extracted and shipped raw materials from the colonies to the colonial centers for sale or further processing or in how they exploited native labour, including children) but it is also flourishing today in the post-colonial world. Beyond its obvious manifestation as a logic and a naturalized mode of thinking, extractivism has become a pervasive, fundamentally exploitative practice which, quite often, implictly, if not explicitly, guides relations in all realms of life, research being no exception. The power inequalities inherent in racialized capitalism make extractivism possible and allow it to legitimize itself as a practice which renders monetary value to human life, as is often the case in social research. To work against extractivism is to make a larger move towards the historicizing and decolonizing of knowledge production, an issue that will likely preoccupy us much more as a field in the years to come (Abebe et al., 2022; Balagopalan, 2014; Cheney, 2019; Hanson and Nieuwenhuys, 2013; Liebel, 2020).

I am well aware of the dangers of expanding the notion of extractivism widely and divorcing it from its colonial context (and these critiques are extremely valuable as in the work of Tuck and Young, 2012). In that sense, it is important to keep reminding ourselves of the colonial grounding of the concept. At the same time, to discount what this logic does through its wider application and legitimation in exploitative human relations (and research can and does sometimes qualify as exploitative) is to be blinded by its insidious potential to proliferate. By this I mean its capacity to render different kinds of relations—and not just colonial/post-colonial ones—exploitable by rationalizing and legitimizing its grasping logic as the standard/normal way by which such relations develop and work and therefore beyond the need for serious rethinking or critique.

Extractivist epistemologies and methodologies are, in many ways, the standard practice in much of social science research today: local knowledge is removed from its context, processed/analyzed/transformed and turned into scientific knowledge which is usually published in scholarly outlets (Santos, 2016: 27). As Alcoff explains:

Like extractivist capitalism, extractivist epistemologies attempt to extract epistemic elements from their original surroundings and in this way from their political, ethical, and institutional context of articulation. This makes it possible for knowledge-seeking institutions or individuals to avoid being held accountable to the ethical, political, and economic demands of indigenous groups or other local communities whose resources are being extracted; a one-time payment is sufficient to cover all obligations. (2022: 5)

Though extractivist approaches in social research may be part of a spectrum—with some being more extractivist, others being less—their underlying assumption is that an individual is a source of data—a bundle of information which can be collected, analyzed, made sense of, and authorized as scientific knowledge through their publication. It is in this sense that I suggest that a vision of the child-as-data captures this extractivist logic and how it manifests in childhood research: from being a relational being, the child becomes bits and pieces of analyzable data.

As Ingold reminds us “Though, literally, a datum is a thing given (from the Latin word ‘dare’, ‘to give’), in the vocabulary of science it has come to mean that which is there for the taking – a ‘fact’ that has already precipitated out from the ebb and flow of life in which it once was formed.” (2018: 25). In line with its extractivist logic, data is often metaphorically talked about as a natural resource, much like any other natural resource which can be extracted and used for economic profit or for personal gain. For instance, we talk about a ‘pool of data’ (a reference to the liquid element) or more recently to ‘data mining’, which however conceal to a great extent the power relations at work (e.g., who collects data from whom? For what purposes? For whose benefit? With what risks, for whom? etc) and justifies along the way, the legitimacy of ‘data collection’ as a process (Benjamin, 2021: 7). Far from being an ‘objective discovery’ Benjamin explains, data are not just sitting there waiting for the researcher to collect them; they are part of a productive process of labor extraction whereby the researcher extracts from research subjects through their labor bits and pieces of data that they can then use as they wish (2021: 8).

When driven by an imperative to ‘collect data’, we are often implicated in a form of extraction. We take a piece of information (data) out of its ongoing dynamic flow–out of its relational becomingness—but fail to reciprocate in any substantive and meaningful way, a move which essentially ends the possibility of a transformative relation for both the researcher and the research participants:

Collecting qualitative data is like opening up to people only to turn your back on them, attending to what they say for what it says about them. Generosity becomes a front for expropriation. (Ingold, 2018: 26)

Another manifestation of this is the common practice in qualitative research, for instance, of coding the data we collect (quite often with the use of dedicated software these days), which is fully rationalized in the name of generalization and the extraction of patterns (notice, once again, the use of the language here: extraction) that make it possible to generalize, to produce knowledge with larger significance. Yet, as Alcoff (2022: 6) points out, that which is extracted is not what was there before as it has now been cut off from its relationality; the extracted data are objectified as ‘facts’ and can be analysed from a distance while the fact that the data to be analyzed has been ‘made’ following a series of specific decisions and processes rather than merely ‘discovered’ is obscured. In a sense, however, data collection may be much more than a mere form of extraction from another person; it might also work as a form of refusal or erasure of another person whose personhood is taken out of their relational context of existence and quite often reduced to a category (Benjamin, 2021: 11) or, even worse, reduced to fragments of data.

Benjamin examines a number of alternatives (each with its own pros and cons) as ways of replacing the idea of ‘data collection’, such as the notion of ‘creating data’, ‘curating data’, or ‘compiling data’ all of which make more explicit the power relations at work and the process of co-creation (Benjamin, 2021: 20). ‘Compiling data’, for example, though not a very satisfactory solution to the problem of extraction, alludes to processes of selectivity, inclusions and exclusions and the performativity of data generation which allows for diverse, multiple renderings of compilations (Benjamin, 2021: 18).

Critiques of extractivist methodologies alert us to what is otherwise taken for granted as mere methodological practice, namely, data collection, and invite us to consider other epistemological approaches which challenge this extractivist logic and the epistemic violence it helps sustain. By resisting the tendency to extract data from children’s worlds and lives through isolated, one-off engagements (e.g., through a series of interviews or even through a participatory workshop) and withdrawing to one’s base to analyse and make sense of such data, researchers are asked to deconstruct and reimagine research approaches in non-extractivist terms (Igwe et al., 2022), based on principles of respect, relevance, reciprocity, responsibility, relationships and relationality (see, among others, discussion, of these principles by Held, 2020). Such methodologies tend to be more creative and attuned to the absences which conventional methods often create, while also reflecting the knowledges which emerge in the context of children’s daily lives and struggles. Though such approaches are more typical of Indigenous, community-based, collaborative projects, their applicability is certainly much broader. The ethical principles which underpin them are what makes them non-extractivist, not the group in question. We could refer to this kind of research as “knowing-with rather than knowing-about” or “subject-subject knowledge” (Santos, 2018: 147) where it is the relation that yields knowledge, not the researcher who extracts it from what was collected as data.

But how could childhood research avoid epistemic violence and resist the tendency to extract data about children’s worlds and lives from local settings through the well-established practices of, for instance, taking a few interviews or even doing a participatory workshop and running away to analyze the data in order to extract some form of publishable meaning? Engaging with children relationally, in the local communities where they live and where their lives and daily struggles unfold and where meaning is constantly formed, constantly negotiated and generated as part of the flow of daily life–not in a one-off event of collecting data but through more extended, ongoing engagement–may offer us something quite different, a qualitatively different understanding which may circumvent, at least to some extent, the problem of extractivism.

An extractivist logic which sees the child-as-data, renders the child exploitable as an epistemic resource, a source of data, a reservoir of information which, if we devise and use ‘good’ or ‘smart’ methods we might be able to tap into, extract, and use to render a credible account of who this child is. Through this logic, the child becomes epistemologically transparent, methodologically decipherable. In many ways, such an approach does what it sets out to do quite well—it extracts that which can be made apparent with relative ease—but, more often than not, actively reproduces absences which are not by definition quickly and easily identifiable and transparent (see Santos, 2016). The use of extractivist epistemologies which see the child-as-data quite often obscure ways of being and living which are more relational and an aspect of the unfolding of daily life. To the extent that what is absented does matter—and quite often it matters because it is what characterizes children’s complex worlds and lives—it does confront us with the ethics of knowledge production and our own role, as researchers in this.

To counteract the logic of extractivism and its manifestation of a vision of the child-as-data, childhood studies scholars are addressing the epistemic violence of extractivism with epistemic plurality, aiming at disclosing such absences. In their discussion of three indigenous communities, two in Argentina and one in Indonesia, Amigó et al. (2022) highlight the everydayness of Indigenous children’s lives as they intersect the local, the regional, and the global, placing their analysis within a context of colonial oppression, structural violence, and capitalist modes of production. Their analysis of indigenous terms and indigenous ways of growing up and learning bring to light a new set of ontological realities based on indigenous cosmovisions which have been largely absented for epistemic reasons. As Fatyass et al. (2022) argue, to take this epistemological leap requires that we become more playful in research with children by experimenting and developing non-extractivist methodologies which reflect an underlying sense of relational epistemic humility; a kind of humility which recognizes the epistemic authority of the other as well as the limits of the adult researcher’s own understanding which motivates epistemic collaboration and more egalitarian and socially aware ways of knowing based on trust (Alcoff, 2022: 6–7). These scholars experiment methodologically with the visual, the sensory and the aesthetic to push the limits of representational meaning through knowledge practices which are based on co-creation and collaboration and which more conventional, extractivist methods—many of which are voiced-based—are unlikely to reveal.

It is important of course to acknowledge that a non-extractivist logic to childhood research would sit quite well within a transformative paradigm to research (see Romm, 2018). Silver (2019) has outlined what a transformative childhood studies may give us once we move past the extractivist logic to childhood research to emphasize instead the collaborative partnerships which are possible when working with children, not as an isolated group but as members of intergenerational communities. The move to a kind of non-extractivist logic in childhood research might mean we move from collecting data as our primary task to transforming the communities in which children live through a commitment to solidarity and justice which can also help transform us and our knowledge practices as researchers. In practical terms, this might mean that we experiment and work with things like poetry and performance or that we simply engage in community discussions and dialogues, none of which might constitute extractable resources that benefit us as researchers but are, nevertheless, deeply meaningful and important for the children we work with, their families and communities—a movement of sorts from fieldwork to praxis (Silver, 2019: 6).

This kind of work which fundamentally challenges the logic of the child-as-data—the child as an extractable resource—highlights the role of relationality in research and the ever-present threat of disconnect which extractivist epistemologies encourage. It also highlights the role of respect for that which is epistemologically and perhaps ontologically different in the child demanding that we, as researchers, facilitate her disclosure (Spyrou, 2018). Most of all, however, it places reciprocity and mutuality center stage, as an integral, necessary, and fundamental aspect of all ethical research with children.

Liboiron (2021) argues for the need to get out of a consumptive mode in research where texts and others are seen as resources—extracted and relocated for the researcher’s benefit, oftentimes in the powerhouses of the Global North— and move towards an ethics of reciprocity, to move in other words from extraction to exchange and to “radicalize relationships between researcher, research, and wider communities” (Liboiron, 2021: 94–95, 97, 105). This research mode establishes more ethical means of practicing research, retaining a heightened sense of responsibility for the kind of knowledge that is produced and its potential effects on children’s lives. It is a kind of reciprocity which infuses all aspects of the research process from the identification of research problems and needs, to the generation and analysis of data and the sharing of findings, while also making sure that the children and their communities benefit from the whole process and its outcomes (Trainor and Bouchard, 2013). Its alternative, to get (or better ‘to grasp’) as a researcher without reciprocating, without giving something back (and not just anything but something which the children and the community find valuable) is to engage in extractivism.

Moving past a vision of the child-as-data and an extractivist logic necessitates a radical re-visioning of our role as researchers and of our interlocutors, the children, as researched. For childhood studies, this re-visioning has already begun through ongoing discussions about co-inquiry, co-creation and co-production. Irrespective of how we conceptualize this move, it is fundamentally about children entering and shaping the research conversation—the process of producing knowledge—and its outcome, the knowledge that results from it. It is an open-ended process of ‘knowing-with’ as Santos (2018) has suggested, where each party stands to learn from each other. What comes out of this is knowledge which is co-generated and co-generationally produced through a collaborative, organic and generative process which sees generational difference as a strength and a complement rather than a hindrance or a problem of unequal power relations. It is an approach where both adult(s) and children participate in an unfolding conversation—not necessarily oral—which is ethically-guided and can lead to transformed understandings of the world: it is, in other words, neither child-centred, nor adult-centered, but relation-centered (Romm, 2020).

However, this kind of reciprocity is not a mere transactional affair. It is not that we, as adult researchers, have to be aware of the need to give and not just get; it is also about engaging with children in this give and take which cannot and should not be reduced to an exchange. And here is where mutuality as a moral stance and praxis becomes critical. In the encounter between adult co-producer and child co-producer, mutuality rests on respect, empathy, care and even solidarity (when the adult researcher is politically-motivated and aligned with children’s struggles for justice), values and qualities which transform the research relationship from a grasping of sorts—from an extractivist act—to a meaningful process of learning about, and transforming the world together while continuing to be acutely aware of the power hierarchies between adult and child within racialized capitalism.

Mutuality in childhood research necessitates that knowledge is co-produced through caring relationships between adult researchers and children based on a sense of connectedness, power sharing, and reciprocity where the researcher prioritizes relationships and a deeper engagement, rather than data collection and research outputs. In practice this might mean that for the sake of mutuality and respect for children’s rights and integrity the researcher would have to turn off the recorder at times or to refrain from sharing certain kinds of research knowledge with wider audiences (see Merinyo and Willemsen, 2021). Where mutuality is practiced and where it guides research relationships, it produces a different kind of knowledge and a deeper understanding which result from the unfolding of an ongoing relationship which goes beyond the information and insights that any set of data may reveal to the researcher. Mutuality produces a kind of scholarship which is slow because it prioritizes an ethics of care rather than efficiency and productivity. In that sense, it needs to be meaningful, understandable, appropriate, and beneficial to all parties implicated in the research process.

In one of his recent books titled ‘Anthropology: Why it matters?’, Ingold (2018) summarizes some of his earlier arguments about the value and utility of anthropology as a discipline, responding to ‘why it matters’ with a somewhat unorthodox answer. Anthropology, he says, is not about knowledge production, it is not about the interpretation or explanation of other people’s ways though that may be part of what anthropologists do. Its purpose is not ethnographic, in other words, but educational—anthropologists, that is, are in the business of studying with others, not studying others, and that necessitates that these Others are brought into the conversation so that both they and the anthropologist can converse and learn from one another, get educated about life and its possibilities, and be mutually transformed along the way. We could replace ‘anthropology’ with ‘childhood studies’ and the response could be the same and equally intriguing. It would suggest that we are not primarily into the business of ‘data collection’ and offering explanations about children’s worlds and lives (though that is part of what we do as childhood researchers) but rather that we are primarily in a conversation with children trying to get educated about life and its possibilities. This would push us, inadvertently, away from a vision of the child-as-data and more towards a non-extractivist mode of thinking about and doing empirical childhood research.

This move to non-extractivist epistemologies and ways of doing research is more attuned to what we might call today ‘critical childhood studies’ and with research which is more justice-oriented and politically motivated, where there is, in other words, an ongoing effort to reflect on and rethink how research relations and power inequalities link with the production of knowledge. Nevertheless, there might be many other areas of research and spaces of inquiry (e.g., in the context of children’s rights-focused research or participatory approaches to research) where non-extractivist approaches would be well-suited and help produce knowledge differently.

But let us be mindful to other ways of doing childhood research. What I describe here applies more to empirical research which directly involves children in the research process. It might apply less or not at all to other kinds of research such as, for instance, historical research on children/childhood, macro-oriented structural approaches to studying childhood or socio-legal studies research where data about children and childhood is collected from archives, books, legal texts, or statistical records. Likewise, it might apply less to other kinds of scientific knowledge, beyond empirical knowledge, which childhood studies also produces as might be the case of theoretical knowledge (though even in these cases it might be fruitful to consider what is extracted from where and for what purposes).

Extractivist approaches to empirical research follow an instrumentalist logic, a logic which is pervasive in all realms of life and largely shapes how children and childhood are seen and treated from the way childhood policy is designed and applied to the way notions of children as human capital are evoked and used as means for enhancing economic growth. In that sense, it is not surprising that extractivism is also pervasive in research and is part of the underlying instrumentalizing logic of knowledge production. Recognizing this logic—even when it comes with a certain sense of discomfort—is far easier than working against it. Yet, it is, in my opinion, not impossible to push against this logic if we feel, as a field, compelled to move forward in new, more creative, more daring ways that challenge conventional ways of producing knowledge.

The neoliberal academy we operate in, prevailing funding mechanisms, entrenched research traditions and orientations and methodological conventions may significantly constrain the ability to push back but they are also the very reason and motivation for doing so. Turning to indigenous methodologies, generating knowledge collaboratively and sharing that knowledge in the spirit of reciprocity and mutuality (Smith, 2012)—and the list here is by no means exhaustive—all constitute an ethical commitment by the field to resist extractivism and to work alongside other fields and practices in addressing the problem of extractivism productively. This is a conversation that childhood studies will need to engage in more systematically and to capitalize on its ongoing commitment to producing ethical knowledge.

Needless to say, we do not need to romanticize particular ways of knowing including the ones I have been talking about in this editorial. The production of ethical knowledge is always a struggle, always full of contradictions and always without guarantees. To suggest therefore that a non (or less)-extractivist logic of doing childhood research is possible is not to suggest that it is the only kind of research which is proper and right. It is rather to suggest that what we produce, how we produce it, with whom we produce it, and for what purposes needs to be an ongoing and open conversation for childhood studies as a field and one we should participate in as a matter of concern.