The article deals with the concept of agency as it was developed within Childhood Studies. This had happened primarily in distinction from an understanding of childhood based on ideas of socialization. The following argument is based on a critical analysis of the prevailing understanding of agency within Childhood Studies and advocates an alternative approach. On the basis of relational social theories a social definition of both, childhood and children's agency within different social contexts, can be achieved. At first it will be deployed systematically as well as empirically that the social is composed of human and non-human actors at the same time. Secondly identities are produced and stabilized in relation to these different actors. Thirdly it will be shown that children, like all other social actors, have different identities in changing social networks. In a relational understanding like this, agency has to be reconstructed beyond classic dualities of person and society, children and adults or action and structure.
