Global Studies of Childhood
ISSN 2043-6106

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

Editorial

doi:10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.1

This first edition of Global Studies of Childhood represents the initial steps in our goal to provide a context for dissemination of research about the multiplicity of ideas, images, issues and concerns regarding childhoods internationally. Childhood studies has been an established field of multidisciplinary study for some time. It focuses on enquiries and investigations into the everyday lifeworlds of children, giving space to their voices and interrogations about all aspect of their lives. The discourse of childhood that is promoted in the journal is one in which children are understood as agentive social subjects whose views and experiences merit serious attention from the research community, rather than being viewed as ‘less capable or as yet undeveloped’ others, in comparison to adults. We understand children’s lives and circumstances, and the discourses through which the category of childhood is continually re/produced, regulated, contested and reconfigured, as constituting an important range of sites for research inquiry, professional preparation and political activism.

Our journal enters into dialogue with the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies from the vantage point of scholars – from the editorial team, to contributors and readers – whose research and professional work with children are circumscribed by the unprecedented mobility that has accompanied globalization. Globalization, global cities, global studies and various other derivative terms all highlight a remarkable phenomenon of the late twentieth century and now the twenty-first century, which has been largely facilitated by the advances in new technologies that now permeate every aspect of our lives. The impact of globalization on the lives of children has been immense, changing local economies, relationships, practices and cultures. For some, the effects of global change have brought advantages not previously imagined – new industries that bring economic viability to formerly isolated or struggling communities, technologically facilitated access to educational opportunities, and social networking that enables contact with family, friends and culture long after mobile families are relocated to places far from ‘home’. For others, global flows of capital, knowledge and people take place at the expense of their lives, families, communities and local environments. The exploitative nature of global capitalism is no respecter of children, and it is important to acknowledge that for many children around the world, educational opportunities, economically viable futures and, indeed, survival are all threatened by circumstances of poverty, sexual exploitation, geopolitical unrest, and the intensification of environmental degradation that have all in various ways been associated with globalization.

In bringing together Global Studies of Childhood it is our hope that this new journal will be a place for research and discussion about issues that pertain to children in a world context, in which the impact of global imperatives on the lives of children has yet to be fully understood. We note too that Childhood as a ‘universal’ term is being replaced by the multifaceted Childhoods, denoting the complexity of lives that are simultaneously and continuously influenced by local, community, national and international factors. Issues around what constitutes Childhoods in rapidly changing social landscapes are fundamental to discussions, as are ways in which we need to ensure that all children have basic human rights and are protected from exploitation. In canvassing and promoting quality research into such issues, the journal will help us to better understand the lives of children and extend our notions about the ways in which Global Studies of Childhood can make a contribution to educational and social theory in strategic and significant ways.

We hope that this journal will bring together researchers, academics and students from a variety of disciplines to consider the ways in which childhood has been shaped and re-shaped by the processes inherent to globalization. Global studies will provide a context for discussion of major issues of importance, but more significantly will constitute a site where those interested in new ways of thinking about Childhood and the range of issues and concerns around the lives of children can ‘meet’ and voice their findings, concerns, opinions and empirical findings to add to the body of work that has been produced in various locations. Our aim is that the journal will be relevant to a variety of social disciplines and university programmes across the arts, education and social sciences.

This meeting of the disciplines might, for example, bring together those interested in human rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) to consider the exploitation of children in workshops, the ways in which education services need to support children, or children’s access to basic services such as water, food and sanitation. The journal will provide a discussion forum for ideas and empirical examples of the ways in which globalization and the associated conditions are experienced by children in multiple locations. It will canvass issues regarding how we might create contexts for equal participation, and this will involve recognizing what is privileged in certain scenarios and devalued in others. Additionally, if one of the goals of education and schooling is to produce citizens of the twenty-first century who will make a contribution to society, we need to be asking how society is constituted and reformulated, as nation states and local communities vie with global spaces for workers and markets.

The articles and colloquia in this first edition are authored by academics from six countries, spanning four continents, and they illustrate the diversity that is characteristic of the field. In the first article, Alan Prout returns to the origins of the sociology of childhood which occurred within the context of modernist sociology. He then explores three oppositions inherent to modernist sociology (agency and structure, nature and culture, being and becoming) that need to be considered/reconciled in order to progress thinking in contemporary times. In the article he discusses why this is necessary and how greater attention needs to be paid to ‘the interdisciplinarity and the hybridity of childhood; being symmetrical about how childhoods are constructed; attending to the networks, flows and mediations of its production, and the co-construction of generational relations’.

Karen Wells adopts Foucault’s analysis of bio-politics to interrogate the notions of child-saving and child-rights in the context of the racial governing of childhood. She traces the origins of the modern idea of childhood and notes how its development coincided with shifts in governance from sovereignty to the politics of life (bio-politics). Her article explores the ways in which this shift has been manifested in new sites of resistance which represent new kinds of rights that need to be understood.

Sue Saltmarsh, writing from the Australian context, considers how the education landscape is implicated in producing social imaginaries of homogeneous and exclusionary childhoods. Through a detailed analysis of an advertisement promoting the consultation process surrounding the proposed national curriculum, she shows how the visual and other elements of the advertisement reproduce and reiterate sexist and racist rationalities of education as a primarily aspirational activity.

Hillevi Lenz Taguchi examines two increasingly popular pedagogic approaches in education: the learning study approach and Reggio Emilia. She argues that they reproduce dominant binaries associated with modern liberal humanist education, and the article illustrates how a relational materialist approach offers an alternative interpretation that has the potential to attend to the interdependencies, responsibilities and potentialities that characterize global childhoods.

Claudia Mitchell addresses gender violence in Sub-Saharan Africa and considers the ways in which participatory visual work can develop girl history/girl method and lead to a better understanding of the issues inherent in the problems experienced by girls. Her article revisits data from a project undertaken with girls in South Africa, whose visual text about the issue of rape brings into focus the complexities that come into play for girls who speak up about their experiences of sexual assault.

Mark Vicars discusses the interconnections between arts-based pedagogies, multimodality, popular culture, learning and identity work within the semiotic domains of communities of play. He describes his work with two immigrant boys over a period of seven weeks and encourages readers to think about how arts-based pedagogies can have a positive effect on engagement, participation and achievement in learning in contemporary schools for disengaged youth.

We also have two colloquia in this edition. We are hoping that in each edition colloquia will afford the opportunity for scholars to succinctly raise issues that are relevant to their own interests and contexts. In turn, this might stimulate discussion of the issues from a variety of perspectives from international academics or professionals who have similar or contrasting examples.

Annie Hau-nung Chan explores the ways in which the creation of a sex offenders’ register in Hong Kong has generated a false sense of control and security for parents and children in the city. She contends that the register has overridden the interests of specific social groups and processes, while in fact not necessarily reducing risks faced by children.

Rajani Konantambigi raises with us some of the concerns of childhood that exist in contemporary India. She explains the context and geopolitical issues as they relate to children in the subcontinent and discusses how the issues are manifested in the everyday lives of children and their parents.

We are also pleased to include book reviews that pertain to global childhoods, affording readers the opportunity to engage with the material and ideas in a book in depth. In this edition, Kerry Moakes reviews Governing Childhood into the 21st Century: biopolitical technologies of childhood management and education, by Majia Holmer Nadesan.

We appreciate the work that authors have contributed to the success of this first issue, and look forward to future contributions to this exciting area of scholarly research.

Nicola Yelland & Sue Saltmarsh
Co-editors, Global Studies of Childhood

Taking a Step Away from Modernity: reconsidering the new sociology of childhood

ALAN PROUT Institute of Education, University of Warwick, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.4

This article explores the conditions under which the sociology of childhood was created, suggests some of the problems encountered in this effort and points to some possible remedies. It is argued that the construction of a sociology of childhood entailed a double task. First, space had to be created for childhood within sociological discourse. Second, the increasing complexity and ambiguity of childhood as a contemporary, destabilized phenomenon had to be confronted. It is argued that, whilst a space for childhood has been created, this was accomplished largely in terms of modernist sociology, a discourse that was increasingly unable to deal adequately with the destabilized world of late modernity. An important aspect of this problem is apparent in the reproduction within the sociology of childhood of the dichotomized oppositions that characterize modernist sociology. Three of these oppositions (agency and structure, nature and culture, being and becoming) are explored. It is suggested that moving the sociology of childhood beyond the grip of such modernist thinking entails developing a strategy for ‘including the excluded middle’. Inter alia this may necessitate greater attention to the interdisciplinarity and the hybridity of childhood; being symmetrical about how childhoods are constructed; attending to the networks, flows and mediations of its production, and the co-construction of generational relations.

The Politics of Life: governing childhood

KAREN WELLS Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.15

This article uses Foucault’s analysis of bio-politics to explore continuities between child-saving and child rights and the connection of both to the racial governing of childhood. It shows how the birth of the modern idea of childhood coincided with shifts in governance from sovereignty to bio-politics, or a politics of life. This shift was the ground on which new practices of philanthropic concern acted on the child to produce new ideas about the child’s special capacities and vulnerabilities. These novel practices of governance generated new forms of resistance and new sites of struggle. One strand of these new forms of resistance was the assertion of rights to health, welfare and life. It is in the context of struggles over these new kinds of rights, rather than an older conception of political rights, that the shift to the figure of the rights-bearing child should be understood. The shift from sovereignty to bio-politics was also central to the production of sex/sexuality and race as the truth of the modern subject, and the child appeared as a key figure in these new discursive constructions.

Bus Ride to the Future: cultural imaginaries of Australian childhood in the education landscape

SUE SALTMARSH Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, NSW, Australia

doi:10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.26

In Australia, as in many other parts of the world, representations of childhood are ubiquitous in what Nikolas Rose refers to as ‘the public habitat of images’. In the education landscape – a term used here to refer to the extensive range of policy-related, pedagogic and promotional sites associated with educational provision, participation and purchase – depictions of children feature prominently, and function as an important means by which dominant discourses of childhood are produced, circulated and maintained. In this article, I analyse images and text from a recent Australian government advertising campaign regarding the proposed national curriculum, in order to explore how familiar images, activities and ideals associated with schooling are implicated in cultural imaginaries of Australian childhood. I consider how notions of order, accomplishment and aspiration function to inscribe and reiterate gendered and racialised discourses through which imagined futures of individual and national prosperity are installed as normative ideals.

Investigating Learning, Participation and Becoming in Early Childhood Practices with a Relational Materialist Approach

HILLEVI LENZ TAGUCHI Department of Education, Stockholm University, Sweden

doi:10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.36

Schooling is a significant feature of social experience for children in many countries around the world. However, despite the massive technological, social, economic, environmental and political changes that have occurred during the past few decades, pedagogic approaches in many educational systems appear to have changed relatively little over time. There has been much criticism of traditional schooling practices which have remained constant and unchanging in these times of unprecedented changes. Scholars of education have posed questions about the relevance of long-standing practices to children who live in global economies in the twenty-first century, querying why such practices continue to be replicated without due consideration of the diversity of cultural and social conditions that exist in these new situations, and asking whether alternative pedagogic models and schooling practices might be more relevant to the lives of millennial children living globalized lives. In this article I both welcome and critique two increasingly popular pedagogic approaches – the learning study approach and the Reggio Emilia approach – that have been taken up in schools and classrooms in a range of countries, arguing that these two approaches reproduce dominant binaries associated with modern liberal humanist education. Finally, I consider how a relational materialist approach might offer an alternative approach that attends more seriously to the interdependencies, responsibilities and potentialities that characterize global childhoods.

What’s Participation Got to Do with It? Visual Methodologies in ‘Girl-Method’ to Address Gender-Based Violence in the Time of AIDS

CLAUDIA MITCHELL McGill University, Montreal, Canada

doi:10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.51

This article uses a retrospective approach to looking at participatory visual work with girls, in relation to addressing gender violence in and around schools in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on a variety of work focusing on the visual, including Jo Spence’s innovative work from the 1990s (‘What can a woman do with a camera?’), this article seeks to extend and elaborate the idea of feminist visual methodologies in order to uncover the critical issue of girls’ safety and security. Participatory work with girls, the article argues, as part of what is referred to here as ‘girl-method’, can be an effective way to reveal the perspectives of girls. At the same time, the use of the visual (and in particular, visual artefacts such as photos, videos, drawings, and digital archiving) invites researchers and communities (including the girls themselves) to re-visit the data and in so doing to explore it further. The article concludes with a call for new and longer-term increased levels of participation when it comes to working with girls, by highlighting the use of the participatory digital archive as a feminist visual tool.

Artful Practices: identities at work in play

MARK VICARS School of Education, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

doi:10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.60

This article considers the connectivity between arts-based pedagogies, multimodality, popular culture, learning and identity work within the semiotic domains of communities of play. Drawing on the artful practices of two Year 5 boys of Vietnamese and Sudanese cultural heritage, it reflects on how cultural artefacts were put to work in identity play during a seven-week drawing class in an urban Australian primary classroom. The article proposes how the technology of play in childhood is increasingly situated and connected to artefacts of identity. The troublesome presence of play challenges the axiomatic, regulatory norms of pedagogical practices in educational domains, and by drawing on the production of multimodal texts as a narrativizing practice the author endeavours to understand how arts-based pedagogies that utilize young people’s cultural capital can create teachable moments and have a positive effect on engagement, participation and achievement in learning.

A Culture of Protection: the establishment of a sex offenders’ register in Hong Kong

ANNIE HAU-NUNG CHAN Lingnan University, Hong Kong

doi:10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.72

Child sex abuse is an issue that raises much social concern, and in some societies a sex offenders’ register is used as a key measure to combat this problem. Drawing heavily upon a discourse of child protection, the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong has recently suggested that such a mechanism should be implemented in Hong Kong. This article examines how the protection of children has in this case overridden the interests of other social groups and processes, whilst not necessarily reducing risks faced by children. What this proposal would achieve, however, is a false sense of control and security for both parents and policy makers. An effective response to child sexual abuse must include community education and rehabilitation provision for offenders, and must avoid over-reliance on ‘protection-oriented’ measures such as a sex offenders’ register.

Concerns of Childhood in India

RAJANI M. KONANTAMBIGI Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India

doi:10.2304/gsch.2011.1.1.79

This article points out some concerns that pertain to facilitating the development of children in context and the geopolitical issues that surround children as the State , community and parental agencies strive to care and rear children. State schemes like the Integrated Child Development Services and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan suffer from the ills of managing country-wide programmes – poor infrastructure support facilities and personnel, lack of adequate monitoring mechanisms, inability to connect to the local realities including beliefs and aspirations of the people and the inability to get the various government departments together to move in tandem; not to forget the rampant corruption in the systems. Rays of hope are the NGOs, some of them at the national level that have made some inroads in the sectors of child protection, health and education. There is the rural/urban divide in the sectors of health, nutrition and education where private entry does not necessarily mean that they are child and parent friendly, they could be inadequate, exploitative and hostile to children and parents, without the knowledge of the latter. This is especially so of the private education sector. With the onslaught of the media, parents struggle to socialise the children as best as they can.

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