Practicing sensibility: The sociogenesis of smiles and laughter in early childhood

Résumé 0

‪Focusing on the practice of smiling and laughing, this article looks at the transformations of sensibility in early childhood. It is based on direct observation and audiovisual recording of children aged 4 to 15 months, cared for in a French daycare center. The notion of practice is used here in a strong sense: it targets individual activity which is not necessarily intentional action, but which also goes beyond pure reflex. The central hypothesis of the article is that, on the basis of generic bodily possibilities, sensibility is transformed according to the diversification of practical orientations characterizing it. Indeed, the quasi-reflexive smiles and laughter triggered by a simple exchange of glances are gradually replaced, first by smiles and laughter associated with the production of material incongruities, then by smiles and laughter associated with the emerging exercise of symbolic power – then, young children smile and laugh in the direction of others, to value what they have, what they do, and ultimately who they are. These transformations are not simply a matter of individual learning, isolated from collectivity and history. They are supported by interactions (particularly with adults) and institutions (including images and objects accessible to children). Moreover, they seem to be accompanied by progressively by social differentiation: not only because the most elaborate practices of sensibility depend (already) on unequal dispositions, but also because they are likely to generate new inequalities (in this case, between the children capable of valorizing themselves through laughter and smiling, and the others).‪