@article{article_1856750, title={Being zoē: theorizing childhood through world cinema}, journal={ARTS: Artuklu Sanat ve Beşeri Bilimler Dergisi}, pages={131–150}, year={2026}, DOI={10.46372/arts.1856750}, url={https://izlik.org/JA88KB46WS}, author={Düzcan, Ebubekir}, keywords={world cinema, sociology of cinema, sociology of childhood, agamben}, abstract={This article examines the cinematic gaze on childhood in world cinema from a sociological perspective by bringing the being / becoming framework of the new sociology of childhood—developed primarily within the British sociology of childhood tradition—into dialogue with Agamben’s distinction between zoē (nature) and bios (discourse). While childhood in cinema is often positioned within developmental or nostalgic narratives, this article argues that certain films render childhood visible as a domain of experience that resists adult expectations and institutional arrangements. Drawing on examples from world cinema across diverse cultural and national contexts, childhood is conceptualized not as a culturally bounded figure but as a transnational cinematic form through which modern social orders are negotiated. To this end, the article employs the analytic pair being zoē and becoming bios in parallel, demonstrating how the cinematic child is situated both within and beyond prevailing social regulations. The child on screen is approached as a threshold figure whose openness, uncanniness, excess, and indeterminacy bring into view the points of tension within modern social orders. In doing so, the article proposes an original sociological theoretical framework for understanding representations of childhood in world cinema.}, number={15}