Children’s privacy in families in Turkey: Power, control and surveillance over ‘minors

Children are often considered at the bottom of the social hierarchy in many cultures. They are often addressed as vulnerable minors and dependants in dichotomy with adulthood. In contemporary Turkey as well, children's social position tends to be defined through the power relations with adults. This research deals with children's physical, emotional and intellectual spaces, in other words, children's privacy within the unequal relations between family components in Turkey. The new sociology of childhood approach challenges societal positioning of children as passive recipients of family socialization and recognizes children as social actors with agency who influence the social conditions as well as being influenced by them. Employing this approach, the research aims to understand how family members consider children's privacy at home. In order to comprehend how children's privacy is constructed around their daily life practices, two everyday domestic life spheres are observed: Children's media uses and their uses of domestic spaces. In this qualitative research, in-depth interviews are conducted with 24 families with 11-12-year-old children in Eskisehir, Turkey. Interviews with children are made individually while with parents as a couple. Each interview data is supported with extensive ethnographic notes. Participatory action techniques are adapted throughout interviews with children, such as playing online games together, looking at posts from their favourite Instagram/Youtube accounts. In this paper, preliminary findings of the ongoing fieldwork will be presented. Novelty of the research is that the delicate social matter of privacy will be analysed through children's voices in Turkey where privacy has Islamic connotations.