Children and the Politics of CultureThe bodies and minds of children--and the very space of children--are under assault. This is the message we receive from daily news headlines about violence, sexual abuse, exploitation, and neglect of children, and from a proliferation of books in recent years representing the domain of contemporary childhood as threatened, invaded, polluted, and "stolen" by adults. Through a series of essays that explore the global dimensions of children at risk, an international group of researchers and policymakers discuss the notion of children's rights, and in particular the claim that every child has a right to a cultural identity. Explorations of children's situations in Japan, Korea, Singapore, South Africa, England, Norway, the United States, Brazil, and Germany reveal how children's everyday lives and futures are often the stakes in contemporary battles that adults wage over definitions of cultural identity and state cultural policies. Throughout this volume, the authors address the complex and often ambiguous implications of the concept of rights. For example, it may be used to defend indigenous children from radically assimilationist or even genocidal state policies; but it may also be used to legitimate racist institutions. A substantive introduction by the editor examines global political economic frameworks for the cultural debates affecting children and traces intriguing, sometimes surprising, threads throughout the papers. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Norma Field, Marilyn Ivy, Mary John, Hae-joang Cho, Saya Shiraishi, Vivienne Wee, Pamela Reynolds, Kathleen Hall, Ruth Mandel, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, and Njabulo Ndebele. |
From inside the book
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... article in the International Herald Tribune , Marc Fisher comments on a bill proposed to the German parliament barring German parents from " spanking , boxing ears , withholding af- fection , constant nagging or threatening children ...
... , nor by challenges to reigning notions of culture , the privileged realm of the symbolic . In a review article on anthropological approaches to national and transnational cultures , Robert Foster argues that what is at INTRODUCTION 21.
... article entitled " Invoking Culture : The Messy Side of Cultural Politics " ( 1992 ) , Virginia Dominguez argues that we should be asking much more contextually specific questions about what is being accom- plished socially ...
... Article 29 asserts the child's right to education furthering " the development of the child's personality , talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential . " Just as the Convention relies on a naturalized and ...
... Article 28 affirms the child's right to free ed- ucation , with a view to eliminating " ignorance and illiteracy throughout the world and facilitating access to scientific and technical knowledge and modern teaching methods " —an ...
Contents
The Child as Laborer and Consumer The Disappearance of Childhood in Contemporary Japan | 51 |
Have You Seen Me? Recovering the Inner Child in Late TwentiethCentury America | 79 |
Childrens Rights in a FreeMarket Culture | 105 |
CHILDREN CULTURAL IDENTITY AND THE STATE | 139 |
Children in the Examination War in South Korea A Cultural Analysis | 141 |
Childrens Stories and the State in New Order Indonesia | 169 |
Children Population Policy and the State in Singapore | 184 |
Youth and the Politics of Culture in South Africa | 218 |
SecondGeneration Noncitizens Children of the Turkish Migrant Diaspora in Germany | 265 |
Children Politics and Culture The Case of Brazilian Indians | 282 |
The Cultural Fallout of Chernobyl Radiation in Norwegian Sami Regions Implications for Children | 292 |
THE RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION OF CHILDHOOD? | 319 |
Recovering Childhood Children in South African National Reconstruction | 321 |
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child | 335 |
About the Contributors | 353 |
357 | |
CHILDREN AND THE POLITICS OF MINORITY CULTURAL IDENTITY | 241 |
Theres a Time to Act English and a Time to Act Indian The Politics of Identity among BritishSikh Teenagers | 243 |