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Reviews TQM implementation by the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) since the early 1980s. Outlines the benefits, to date, of TQM efforts as well as lessons learnt from applying for, and winning, the Presidential Award for Quality and Productivity Improvement. Outlines the challenges facing NAVAIR′s leadership ‐ cuts in defence spending and a reduced force level ‐ and concludes that TQM is the key to meeting these challenges.

The following chapter analyses the ways in which unequal patterns of time develop effectiveness in childhood and adolescence. Central is the focus of the taken-for-granted experiences in the phase of growing up, the developing ways of life and value attitudes. In this context, questions arise about the extent to which children and adolescents help to shape the time patterns that are relevant to them and how an “equitable distribution” of “temporal resources” could be promoted.

The category of ‘child’ is often presumed to be underpinned by ‘natural’ biological differences from the category of ‘adult’, and the category of ‘family’ is open to similar ‘naturalising’ and universalizing tendencies. Challenging this view has been a central tenet of the New Social Studies of Childhood, arguing instead that ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ are socially constructed, and highlighting children’s agency in shaping their social worlds. More complex frameworks have since emerged, whether concerning the need for a relational ontology of ‘child’, or for a recognition of the diversity of childhoods and families globally. Here we extend the debate to engage with the problematic of the very nature of ‘categories’ themselves, to explore how categorical thinking varies across, and is embedded within, linguistic, historical and philosophical processes and world views. Drawing on the examples of the categories of ‘child’ in China, and ‘family’ in Senegal, West Africa, we consider aspects of fluidity in their indigenous linguistic framing, and how their translation into European terms may fail to fully capture their meanings, which may ‘slip away’ in the process. Such ‘gaps’ between divergent linguistic framings include underlying world views, and assumptions about what it means to be human, raising issues of individuality, relationality and connectedness. Through this discussion we raise new questions concerning the processes of categorical thinking in relation to ‘child’ and ‘family’, calling for cautious consideration of what may be ‘unthought’ in these categories as they feature in much of contemporary childhood and family studies.

Childhood sociology as it has evolved from explicit critique of socialization sciences has developed two central concepts: “The child as (competent) actor” and the notion of “generational order.” It is above all the second concept that has not yet been fully dealt with within its sociological context. The term “generational order” is not just supposed to refer to ordered relations between (socially defined) age groups and their members, but also to a social order in general, as it is achieved by the ordered arrangement of age groups. From a historical perspective one can see that those efforts that aim at a disciplined society with small social control expenses do at the latest from the 19th century onwards concentrate on education and a well organized family and thus on a well ordered arrangement of age groups. It is an ordering process towards self-control, towards self-government as the most dense as well as discrete way of government. Until just some years ago such development appeared as an indispensable prerequisite of social order to those sociologists dealing with questions of childhood and growing up – at least as long as they assumed the perspective of socialization theory and sciences. Only the absence or deficiency of such a generational order had any chance to become an important scientific question.

The main purpose of the paper is to reveal how a modern play influences child and predict the possibility of what the following generation will look like, because children’s play is closely interconnected with future adult activity.

A literature review of the problem is presented along with the following empirical methods: the questionnaire survey of parents; visually narrative approach, the main sense of which is to combine the use of pictures, graphic representations, and so on with the comments of authors to them; interviews with children according to the cards with the images of the different types of games; and the method of involved observation and direct-vision method.

Dominant type of games, intergenerational relationships, relationships of children with other children, the role of imaginative play, computer games, and toys are the questions the answers on which the research helped to receive.

At the conclusion, it was also found out how familization, institutionalization, individuation, and commercialization are reflected in the play and games of children.

The research was conducted in Russia and the cultural specificity of the country was taken into account.

The paper brings the issue of play to the forefront in an effort to involve parents, educators, and administrative workers.

The results of the research can be interesting for the scientists and practical workers in different countries, since in the century of globalization it is possible to observe the spreading and interosculation of play and games culture.

All conclusions are based on the answers of the children who are 4–7 years old.

This paper reports several findings of a survey on children aged 5–13¹ years focusing on their daily lives. The aim was to test the assumption, claimed in New Childhood Sociology, that children are a generational group so strictly dependent on adult society that they have little autonomy in their daily behaviour. Moreover, although they are a social group that is different from that of adults, they are so diversified internally that it seems more appropriate to speak of diversified childhoods (James, Jenks & Prout, 1998; James & Prout, 1990; Qvortrup, 1991; Hengst & Zeiher, 2004). Our first objective in this paper was therefore to improve the rather scarce knowledge of children's everyday lives in post-industrial Western societies and then to analyse to what extent these were connected with those of adults. Finally, we wished to detect the degree and patterns of differences in the children's lifestyles.

In this chapter, we discuss masculinity in relation to Swedish sports for children with refugee backgrounds. Specifically, we explore how the structure of sports shapes the distinct conditions for their athletic endeavours, including the traits associated with masculinity, which are perceived favourably in sports because they align with the physical and mental norms of male athletes, thereby reinforcing hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, we aim to show that perspectives valorising masculinity can frame children with refugee backgrounds as passive athletes who lack agency. Thus, we discuss two refinements of inclusivity in sports for children with refugee backgrounds in terms of (a) stereotyped notions of gender and refugees and (b) substantial links between desired masculinity and expectations of a perfect match with the Swedish sports system.

I will present an example of a shared decision-making process between adults and children: a case study of an intergenerational project built collaboratively between a group of artists, teachers, their current and former students, their families and the inhabitants of a pedestrian square in Lisbon's city centre.

The project began as weekly meetings that took place in the ruins of an abandoned house that only had walls and a cemented floor. The participants had to climb up the wall to enter it. Eventually, together they decided to renovate the ruins, paint them, garden in them and to research what had happened to that building. They began a newsletter with photos, drawings and texts that was compiled into a book, which was published and released in a public event.

The results were obtained by the triangulation of participatory observation data, interviews with the children and adults, written and filmed records. I will show how the project stimulated a learning process that was collective and active for all participants. As a consequence of the use of child-centred practice, the children saw their collaboration in the structuring of the meetings as a moment when the traditional school hierarchy was minimised and they felt their knowledge valued, with impact in their school performance.

Children in many societies are often seen as immature in issues and therefore should be dependent on adults for provision of basic needs participation. This gives the impression that it is only at adulthood that members of society can make contributions to personal, family and societal development. This is particularly so in African societies. Most African societies consider children as omo kekere (small people/children) and inexperienced people and therefore should be under watch and socialisation of adults who often compromise their rights particularly to participation even when the United Nations’ advocacy guaranteeing the right of children to participate in decision making and other issues concerning them exists. This chapter therefore examines the real experiences of children in a traditional but modernising setting of Ibadan, Nigeria. This is a very relevant research setting since traditional and modern socio-cultural values and forces moderate child rights. Hence, this chapter exposes ways and manners children are treated and, possibly, negotiate cultural systems in the contexts of families to exist within family rules and cultural ethos that define their belongingness and participation in decision making and associated issues. This chapter is placed within the policy framework of implementation of UN Child Rights Charter and Nigerian Child Rights Act which have been found to be largely ineffective in most African societies and Nigeria. This chapter benefits from many years of primary insights and scholarly engagements with children’s experiences and participation in families in Africa. Families with children within the ages of 5–10 in Ibadan were also systematically and extendedly observed. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 children in their family environments after getting informed consent of their parents. Findings show that culture, traditions and institutionalised gerontocracy remain negatively formidable and hold sway in perpetuating systemic child disempowerment and alienation in families. This chapter provides theoretical, professional and policy settings and environments of child rights and childhood in Nigeria with implications for Africa and globally.

One of the aspects that characterises neoliberal societies is the increasing attribution of individual responsibility. Citizens are required to commit themselves to adopting ‘appropriate’ lifestyles and to self-managing their health. Individual responsibility translates into a set of knowledge and techniques of self-governance, through which individuals learn and are expected to act in an increasingly autonomous way in order to prevent or mitigate health risks. This fostering of self-governance and individual responsibility affects both children and adults; in accordance with it, adults are required to transmit a sort of model of “pedagogy of responsibility” (Neyrand & Mekboul, 2014), through which children learn to acquire self-management of their health. This scenario becomes complicated if we take into consideration the two usual and contrasting representations of childhood in western societies: children as active subjects, or children as vulnerable subjects. Our work explores these contrasting representations through the narrations of adults and children of their experiences of Type 1 Diabetes.