Making sense of violence with children

Abstract

Children´s voices, emotiones and actions have been marginalized by adult perspectives in understanding social problems and in the search for alternatives to adress them. This text presents a study aimed at understanding children's narratives about violence by taking an affective lens, fostering intergenerational dialogue and collaboration for the prevention of this problem. It draws on theoretical approaches from new childhood studies and sociocultural studies of emotions, highlighting children's agency and the importance of emotions in knowledge construction. The research was conducted in a public elementary school in Querétaro, Mexico, using a narrative method and participatory and play-based techniques that facilitate the collective creation of knowledge. From an affective perspective, the children's narratives about the people, spaces, and objects that are meaningful to them are explored, revealing the bonds and the diversity of relationships they weave with others.