A new reading of Piaget in childhood sociology

Abstract

Returning to Piaget’s original writings reveals that sociologists of childhood still largely ignore the social dimension in his theory of developmental stages. Superficial reading and distorted integration may have been an effect of the disciplinary competition that surrounded the emergence of the sociology of childhood. After reviewing the sociological misunderstandings and reproduced clichés about Piaget’s conception of development, we restore some of his fundamental contributions to the sociology of childhood and, inspired by this, we propose an alternative vision of agency through the concept of agentivity.