Editorial Approaching the Poetics and Politics of Child Culture(s) in the Nordic Context: Voices from the BIN conference 2026

Building on the BIN (Børnekultur forskning i Norden) conference of 2025, the BUKS Journal
of Child and Youth Cultures hereby presents the special issue: The Poetics and Politics of Child
Culture(s). This issue highlights the aesthetic, practical, economic, and ideological possibilities
and challenges facing child and youth cultures today, where »child and youth culture« refers
to culture by, for, and among children and young people in the broadest sense. The conceptual
framework for this issue is built on two pillars that are often pitted against each other yet remain
deeply intertwined. Poetics serves as a collective term for the promises and opportunities
created through culture, pointing to the material, artistic, sensuous, and semiotic side of form—
the how of things. Politics, on the other hand, gestures at the why of things, referring to the
conditioning and discursive nature of representation and cultural exchange that often hinders
the full potential of child culture