PART A: Child labor has been an issue in the past and continues to be an issue today. Drawing on historical information in the seminar notes and course readings, explain how cultural traditions and early child saving reforms in Western Europe may have influenced the United State’s views about child labor.
PART B: Referring to the reading by Liebel on Children without Childhood, please address the following:
- What does the author says the term “postcolonialism” refers to and how does it give rise to the concept of “othering”?
- How does Liebel feel that the view of childhood differs among indigenous people in the global south, and what role does work play in a child’s life?
- Based on Liebel’s information, what do you think is the best path forward for working children in the global south?
Do not use quotations in your answers. Please make sure that your responses to the questions are entirely in your own words. When you provide content and examples to support your answers – follow these with simple APA style citations (for example, Shahar, 1992, p. 25 or Seminar Notes). Since you are only using course resources, you don’t need to include a reference page.
ChAD106 – Seminar 7
CHILD LABOR
Required Reading:
Giri, B. (2009). The bonded labour system in Nepal: Perspectives of Haliya and Kamaiya child
workers. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 44(6), 599-623.
Liebel, M. (2017). Children without childhood? Against the postcolonial capture of childhood in
the Global South. In A. Invernizzi, B. Liebel, & R. Budde (Eds.). “Children out of Place”
and Human Rights in Memory of Judith Ennew. (pp. 79-97). New York: Springer Press.
Module Learning Outcomes:
1. Identify the major global factors can influence the use of child labor
2. Compare and contrast the impact of those factors on developmental outcomes of
children from first world and developing nations.
3. Analyze how these global conditions reflect a concept of childhood in the specific
societies addressed
Discussion Topic:
In your own words, explain the distinction between “child work” and “child labor.” What type
of work do you think is acceptable for youth under 18 years old? Did you participate in work at
home or a jobs outside the home before you were legally an adult? How do you feel that work
helped (or hindered) your development.
Discuss how the view in developing countries might differ from your experience. Review the
reading by Liebel (Children without Childhood?). What does Liebel say about the role of
children’s work in the Global South, and children’s attitude towards it?
Leibel’s reading is a lengthy article, so skim the early portions and read the later parts in more
depth (particularly the sections on postcolonial childhood policies).
Your discussion posting should be at least 300 words (but you can write more if you feel that
you need to in order to answer the question). Post your response directly to the Discussion area
— don’t submit it as an attached file. Please see the schedule in the course syllabus for the due
date for this assignment.
Discussion postings will be scored for length, being posted on time, quality of the writing and
the use of thoughtful reflection. Remember that you will also need to submit your Discussion
area posting (but not your reply) to the corresponding folder in the Assignment area. This is
so your file can go through turnitin.com and so I can enter your grade.
Seminar Notes:
The Issue of Child Labor in History
Perhaps one of the most interesting areas to examine how care and concern for the innocence
of childhood played out can be seen in the area of child labor practices. What is of interest is
not that children worked during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the age at which they
entered the adult workforce, the type of work that they did, and the extent to which they were
protected from exploitation. A census conducted in Britain in 1851, for example, showed that
3.5% of children five to nine years of age were employed, a stunning number by our standards.
More unsettling is that 30% of children 10 – 14 were working. Clearly, very large percentage of
children 5-14 were gainfully employed in Britain and on the European continent. In the United
States, children made up about 10% of the workforce in the first decade of the 19th century
and grew to 40% of the workforce by the third decade. In the second half of the century,
reports continued to show significant increases in the numbers of employed children. For
example between 1870 and 1900 the size of the child work force increased by more than a
million children.
Child Work versus Child Labor
Until the early part of the 19th century when there was a migration of the population from
rural to urban areas, the vast majority of children lived in the countryside. At about the age of
six or seven, they typically began helping with farm tasks to the extent that their physical
development allowed, but they tended not to engage in adult-like work until sometime after
age ten or eleven at the youngest. That children should work at something, particularly in
America, was considered a virtue. Recall the Puritan views of the value of useful employment.
What’s important to note is that adult types of work in rural areas required physical strength of
a kind children simply do not have and that would have limited the types of tasks they were
able and expected to assume. Also the amount of work might vary with the season. For
instance work might be less after the planting or harvest seasons, and then children would have
more time for school.
So, what changed the shape of children’s work experiences during the first half of the century?
From our studies of European and American history, we are all familiar with the deplorable
conditions of child labor, something that was directly attributable to the arrival of the Industrial
Revolution. Think about the nature of factory work compared to farm work. On the farm,
families typically produced much of what they needed to survive and hoped to produce a
surplus to sell in order to purchase materials they could not produce themselves. What’s
important to note is that the family engaged in all of the economic elements of farm life tending the crops and animals, consuming/selling production. Farm work was an integrated set
of activities. Production in factories happened very differently. Think of it as a pipeline – raw
materials were gathered and fed into the factory so that goods could be produced in high
volume and moved out to markets. The jobs that supported the output of the factory were
compartmentalized and, for the most part, did not require particularly high levels of strength or
skill. One of the earlier observations made by factory owners was that the much of the work
that needed to be done to operate the factory did not require much physical strength. And,
that was the basis of so much interest in hiring children – physically they could do the work;
they were a very cheap labor force and readily available in the crowded cities; and their income
was crucial to families that had left rural homes and were trying to survive in cities.
The stories of what children were required to do during the 19th and early 20th centuries are
heartbreaking by almost any standards, modern or otherwise. Some industries, for example
textiles, employed more children than did other types of factories. Children as young as three
years of age worked in the mills because their size allowed them to crawl under machinery to
retrieve or adjust items. A German child named Norbert who began his working “career” at
seven recorded his experiences serving as a wool comber who worked 18-hour days. In the coal
mines of England, children were reported to have pulled coal wagons through narrow tunnels
for four to six miles each day. Consider this from an 1842 report of the Royal Commission on
child labor in the mines:
:” chained, belted, and harnessed like dogs in a go-cart, black, saturated with wet, and
more than half naked, crawling upon their hands and feet, and dragging their loads
behind them, they present an appearance indescribably disgusting and unnatural.”
Child labor took many forms. Lewis Hines, an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee
took these images of children working in mills, mines, and agricultural settings. You can see more of Hines
photographs (along with the stories of the child workers themselves) at “The History Place, Child Labor in America
– 1908-1912” – http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/index.html
One particularly grueling form of child labor was work as a chimney sweep. Because small size
was critical to being able to do the work, children as young as four were sold into service
cleaning flues and extinguishing chimney fires. The circumstances of their lives were
characterized by brutal treatment and work-related diseases. Do you remember that Oliver
Twist (the character from Charles Dickens’ novel) was sold to a chimney sweep? This fictional
character represented the experience of thousands of children. Recall Dickens’ Mr. Gamfield
who “bought’ Oliver said:
“Boys is wery obstinit, and wery lazy, gen’lmen, and there’s nothink like a good hot blaze
to make ’em come down with a run. It’s humane, too, gen’lmen, acause, even if they’ve
stuck in the chimbley, roastin’ their feet makes ’em struggle to hestricate theirselves.”
While child labor was an established practice long before the beginning of the 19th century,
what was different was the percentages of children doing adult jobs, the types of jobs that they
were expected to do, and the social climate. In addition, children of impoverished parents,
illegitimate children, and orphans were often left at the foundling homes and workhouses.
Many of these charitable institutions contracted to provide a child labor force to factories and
domestic service.
Initially, there was only limited social response to the dismal situation that constituted the life
of so many children throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. Although there had been
individual writers and commissions of various sorts preparing reports on child labor practices
beginning about the middle 1700s (e.g., London General Bill 1741; Thomas Paine, The Rights of
Man, 1791-1792), sustained efforts to bring about reform in Europe and in the United States
did not begin until about the 1870s and lasted for almost 50 years.
What Were the Issues and how was Change Accomplished?
1. Varying perspectives on the meaning of childhood and the value of child labor:
On both continents there were people who had been influenced by the writings of two
philosophers, Rousseau and Locke. These writers both wrote about the value of
childhood and the importance of childhood nurturance and education. What is
important to extract from their writings is the sense that childhood is a time of
innocence and that it is the role, in fact the obligation, of adult society to protect and
provide for children. Popular writers like Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, themselves influenced by these philosophers, expressed these themes in the
material they published. An 1843 poem, “The Cry of the Children,” by Browning in part
reads
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing towards the west But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of others,
In the country of the free.
Artists also depicted the plight of working children in sweatshops, factories and mills, and as street vendors. Their
goal was to demonstrate how different working conditions were from the ideal view of childhood held by many
Victorians.
There were the moralists who expressed concern about child labor practices. Moralists
worried about the lack of education, particularly religious education, among child
laborers. They believed that the corruption of children who worked (e.g., street venders,
domestic and factory workers) would eventually cause the general decline of society.
Their argument was that large proportions of the population — children — were
uneducated, morally unschooled individuals growing up to be adults who would be
capable of adding little meaningful, positive value to the society. In addition to their
concern about the moral life of the individual they addressed the worry that the social
structure of society would deteriorate.
There is little argument about the important economic value of child labor to urban
families. Unlike contemporary mothers who work to support their families, Victorian
families were far more likely to send their children in to the factories to earn additional
income to sustain the family life. Such families were dependent on daily wages. In the
absence of sick leave, workman’s compensation, and the like, the threat to family
stability was lessened if multiple members, children, also worked.
There was the view that working in itself, being useful, had high moral value. Certainly
the Puritans influence remaining from earlier centuries was clear that overindulgence of
children leading to idleness was not desirable but that usefulness was a virtue.
There was the reality that economic expansion required the resource that child labor
provided a cheap, pliable, and, to some extent expendable, labor force.
2. Social change
During the 50-year period from approximately 1870 – 1930 two trends simultaneously resulted
in major changes in the structure and form of child labor practices.
Social reformers motivated by humanitarian concerns gradually became more active
and more effective in achieving legislative reforms and public awareness of the
problem. Some of the many examples of legal reforms and social organizational
reforms:
o In France beginning in the 1820s the Societe Industrielle de Mulhouse called for
the passage of legislation to change child labor practices;
o 1836 Massachusetts passed a law requiring three months schooling for child
factory workers;
o Census reports in both the United States (1870) and in Great Britain (1851)
began reporting labor statistics separately for adults and children;
o The British Mines Act of 1842 banned females and children younger than 10
from working below ground;
o The Apprenticeship Law (1851, France) was passed outlining the obligations of
the master to the apprentice, including limiting the workday to ten hours for
children under 14;
o A national child labor committee was established in the United States in 1904;
o The American Socialist Party addressed the issues of child labor;
o The popular press on both continents began to take up the cause of child
laborers discussing the conditions of abuse and generally raising the
consciousness of the public. For example, a 1907 article in Hearst’s Cosmopolitan
told readers that child labor would soon join “bull baiting, witch-burning, and all
other execrated customs of the past.”;
o
o
o
England and France enacted laws protecting children in the workplace by the
mid 1880s;
In the United States by 1899 many states had passed laws that offered varying
degrees of protection to child workers; and
After more than 30 years of efforts to enact national regulation, in 1938
Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act which addressed national policy on
child labor practices.
There were fewer jobs for children. Changes in industrial and in other work settings
resulted in a decline in interest in hiring child laborers. For example, in the large stores
of New York, dozens of children had been employed as runners to carry boxes of cash
between sales people and cashiers. With the invention of the pneumatic tube and cash
registers, children were no longer needed for these tasks. The arrival in the United
States of large numbers of immigrants, willing to work for low wages, also displaced
child workers.
Child Labor – A Contemporary Problem
Do you think the following statements are true about child labor globally?
MYTH OR FACT?
Most children work in sweatshops producing cheap goods for export.
Child labor occurs only in the poorest of developing nations.
Child labor does not occur in nations having laws prohibiting the practice
Once poverty is eliminated, child labor practice will change drastically
Who Are the Child Laborers Today?
While there are various legal and regional definitions of what defines child labor, two institutions
capture the elements that appear fairly commonly in the literature. The International Labour
Organization defines child labor as work that:
is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and
interferes with their schooling by:
o depriving them of the opportunity to attend school;
o obliging them to leave school prematurely; or
o requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long
and heavy work.
By approaching the topic from the perspective of the age of the child, not the nature of the work,
UNICEF defines child labor somewhat differently:
Ages 5-11: At least one hour of economic work or 28 hours of domestic work per week.
Ages 12-14: At least 14 hours of economic work or 28 hours of domestic work per week.
Ages 15-17: At least 43 hours of economic or domestic work per week.
Precise data on the scope of the child labor problem today do not exist primarily because so
many of these children are invisible parts of the world economy. Nevertheless, to give you some
idea of the scope of it, reliable sources have suggested the following:
About 250 million of the world’s children under the age of 15 work.
More than 150 million children work under the worst of conditions, often as bonded
laborers. Such work includes the commercial sex trade; hazardous materials (e.g.,
fireworks, heavy metals, toxic chemicals); mining; and crime.
Child laborers are found in virtually all economic sectors (e.g., agriculture, service,
manufacturing, retail).
In sub-Saharan Africa about 41% of 5 – 11 year olds work, one third of all children. By
comparison, in Asia about 21% of this same age group work. (Note that the actual number
of children working in Asia is much higher than the absolute number working in Africa.)
Although not as large a problem as in the developing world, child labor is also prevalent in
industrialized nations. A couple of examples: It is estimated that in the US 300,000 –
800,000 children work in agriculture. Several years ago in Portugal about 47,000 children
were found to be working in shoe manufacturing rather than attending school.
To get a sense of who these largely invisible child labors might be and what some organizations
are doing to reduce child labor go https://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/drcongo-unicef-supports-efforts-help-child-labourers-return-school
As you think about the many aspects of contemporary child labor issues, consider the
photograph of the boy below. This is Basilio a 14-year-old who in 2004 had already been working
as a silver miner in Bolivia for four years. His story was the basis of the 2004 documentary film,
The Devil’s Miner, a film that you might want to see if you decide to explore the topic of child
labor in more detail.
Here are some other photographs of contemporary laborer in various parts of the world …
Selected References
Sommerville, J. (1990). The rise and fall of childhood. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
State of the world’s children 2006: Excluded and invisible. Retrieved June 22, 2012,
http://www.unicef.org/sowc06/fullreport/full_report.php
Zelizer, V. (1985). Pricing the priceless child. New York: Basic Books, Harper Collins.
Childm and Childhood in Western Society since 1500
images of perfect beauty, or as perfect repulsivenessl.f And it was
relatively easy to tap the pockets of the public by a sentimental
appeal on their behalf. Moreover, women played an increasingly
important role in philanthropy in the nineteenth century, and it
seemed both natural and politically safe that they should focus their
work on charity towards children. In England in 1893 it was estimated that there were 500,000 women working ‘continuously and
semi-professionally’ in philanthropy, and many of them were
involved in charities for ~ h i l d r e n . ~
In the philanthropic/missionary discourse we can often sense
shock at the distance between the actuality and ideals of childhood
as experienced within the middle and upper classes, and what they
observed within the mission field. They saw ‘children without childhood’. The essentially romantic rather than Christian view of
childhood as properly protected and dependent, and separate from
adulthood, which had become dominant in the first half of the
nineteenth century, provided a motivating reference point for any
philanthropist. ‘The ideal we place before us’, wrote an American
Progressive, Edward T. Devine, in 1910, ‘is a protected childhood’.
We can see this ideal in action in Florence Davenport-Hill’s response
to children in workhouses: ‘It is painful to set aside our ideal of a
childhood of innocence and bright playfulness, and to realise that
there are among us thousands of children familiar with shocking
vice. . .’; her remedy, of course, was to try to place these children
in an environment where ‘innocence and bright playfulness’ could
fl~urish.~
This view of childhood can be seen as a motivating influence in
many countries from about the 1830s. In their study of charity for
children in nineteenthcentury British North America Patricia Rooke
and R.L. Schnell argue that most of the ingredients of what we
think of as a modem concept of childhood were present before the
1880s. There were in place policies which emphasized the need
for protection and segregation of children and for making them
dependent. All that was lacking was delaying the responsibilities of
these children, for they were indeed expected to contribute to the
3. Quoted in D. J. Rothman, Thc Dircmq of thc A q l u n ~Social Omlcr and Dicmder in
thc Nnu Republic (Boston and Toronto, 1971), p. 213.
4. E K Prochaska, W
and Philanthropl in Ninctonth-Cenhcsy England (Oxford,
1980), pp. 30-2, 224-5.
5. Devine quoted in R A. Meckel, Saw the Babies: Amnitan Ptrblic H d t h R c j m and
thc Pnvmtion of Infant Mortnlib 1850-1929 (Baltimore and London, 1990), p. 103;
F. Davenport-Hill, C h i h of thc State, 2nd edn (London, 1889), p. 22.
Saving the Childra, c. 1 8 3 k . 1920
economy at an early age. If this was true of Canada, it was even
more the case for Britain which provided a number of models for
policies towards children taken over by the Canadian~.~
In trying to promote this view of childhood philanthropists aimed
to immerse children in ‘networks of good influence’.’ Put another
way, many working-class children came under some sort of surveillance or control by philanthropic organizations. Philanthropy had
opened up huge areas for public intervention into working-class life
– for, though its work rarely involved the state, it was emphatically
public rather than private.
Philanthropists, however, were not the only people acting in the
public sphere with a concern for children. Sometimes a distinction
is drawn between a period of child rescue lasting from about the
middle of the nineteenth century for some thirty years, and a more
ambitious and far-reaching child-saving period from the 1880s
onwards. Linked to this is the view that child rescue was primarily
a task for philanthropists and voluntary agencies, and that in childsaving there was a more pronounced role for government and for
a growing body of professionals concerned with childhood. Certainly
in the period beginning in the 1880s there was a tipping of the
balance in action on behalf of children from philanthropy to
the state, and a growing involvement of professionals and experts
in the task of saving the children. By the end of the century it was
coming to be felt that only state action could secure a childhood
for all children, and states began to take over from philanthropy
the key role in so doing. In giving their impetus to ‘saving the
child’, states had a variety of motivations, besides those which could
be called child-oriented: concern about population levels; wony
about the level of ‘civilization’ of the masses; desire to breed a race
capable of competing in the twentieth century. ‘Saving the children’
involved moving them somewhere close to the centre of the political
agenda of the modem state.
6. P. T. Rooke and R L. Schnell, ‘Childhood and charity in nineteenthcentury
British North America’, Histoin S o c i o M d Hutoq XV (1982), pp. 157-79.
7. B. Finkelstein, ‘Casting neovork, of good influence: the reconsvuction of childhood in the United States, 1790-1870’, in J. M. Hawes and N. R Hiner (eds),
Amnican Childhood:A Rescmh Guide and Histmica1 Handbook (Westport, Conn. and
London, 1985). p p 11 1-52.
Saving the Children, c. 1830-c. 1920
Saving the Children,
C. 1830-C. 1920
pa
k
Governments and philanthropists, as we have seen, had for centuries
formulated and operated policies towards children. Why should the
period between 1830 and 1920 be marked out for separate treatment? The answer is that for a significant number of reformers the
purpose of a policy toward children was lifted clear of its old moorings: until the nineteenth century policies had been drawn up with
a concern either for the child’s soul or for the future manpower
needs of the state. Both of these concerns remained in place in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but they were joined by a
new one, a concern to save children for the enjoyment of childhood.
The ideology of childhood, whose emergence we traced in Chapter
3, now began to influence public action.
Philanthropy was centtal to this child-saving activity. Philanthre
pists opened and ran homes for orphans and other neglected
children, they organized schemes of emigration, they set up kindergartens and schools, they founded societies for the prevention of
cruelty to children, and they had numerous programmes for visiting
the poor. Although these things are not susceptible to measurement,
there can be little doubt that this was on a scale greater than in the
eighteenth century, and, outside some urban communities, than in
the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. It stands indeed in marked
contrast to that decline of charity observable at least in France in
the eighteenth century.
Who were these philanthropists and what impelled them to
action? They certainly differed from those moved to charitable
activity in earlier centuries who believed that the giving of gifts to
the poor was a vital contribution to their own salvation. And yet the
vast majority of them were Christian, normally quite explicitly so,
both in their own lives and in the organizations which they estab
lished. Denominational rivalry had a part to play in impelling them
to action, but no more than a part. Much more important was a
missionary zeal to reach out to people who, in the slums of the new
big cities of an industrializing world, seemed as heathen as the
‘savages’ of Afiica or Polynesia. Of course this missionary zeal had
its limits: a rank fear of ‘the dangerous classes’ sometimes surfaced
alarmingly; Shaftesbury in 1840 saw ‘the two great demons in morals
and politics, Socialism and Chartism, .. . stalking through the
land’, and urged as a preventative that the neglect of children be
ended.’ This kind of statement was perhaps as much a rhetorical
device to stir up the apathetic as a motivating force for the active
philanthropist, but the latter certainly had no desire to upset the
existing social order, but rather to re-enforce it. Philanthropists were
not utopians or revolutionaries, and they worked with the grain of
the economic, social and political structures of their times. It was
this which gave them power and leverage. From time to time, of
course, they exposed themselves to criticism: Henry Mayhew could
argue that the Ragged Schools of nineteenthcentury London contributed to rather than diminished the crime rate; more powerful
critics could raise questions over the policies and practices of philanthropists in transporting children to Canada; both Barnardos and
the British National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children were subject to serious criticisms of the scope and direction
of their a~tivities.~
But by and large philanthropic organizations
concerned with children received a favourable press, and were
accepted both in the communities in which they worked and in
society at large.
Children were not the only people to be on the receiving end
of nineteenthcentury philanthropy, but they featured largely in
philanthropic plans. ildren were thought to be unformed enough
to be saveable. They r presented the future. Their ‘plastic natures’,
thought the Boston Children’s Friend Society, ‘may be molded into
9
1. H. Cunningham, 7?te Children of the Poor: Rgnsentutionr of Childhood since the
Seuenfeenth Cmfutg (Oxford, 1991), p. 86.
2. The Morning Chnmicle Sumy of Labour and the Poor Thc Mehopolitun Dirtrid, Vol.
4 (Honham, 1981), pp. 34-78, 131-5% G. Wagner, Bamrdo (London, 1979),
pp. 86172; G. K Behlmer, Child Abuse and Moral Rtform in Englnnd, 187&1908
(Stanford, 1982). pp. 11960.
Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500
Saving the Children, c. 1830-c. 1920
a childhood for children? The answer may lie in a consideration of
the movement to enshrine ‘the rights of the child’.
Reformers and philanthropists were deeply imbued with the
romantic belief that childhood should be happy, the best time of
life, something to which one would look back later both with nostalgia and for inspiration. ‘A happy childhood’, wrote Kate Wiggin in
1892, ‘is an unspeakably precious memory. We look back upon it
and refresh our tired hearts with the vision when experience has
cast a shadow over the full joy of living’.” If these happy childhoods
were to be achieved, childhood had to be sharply separated from
adulthood, and its characteristics and needs had to be recognized.
Childhood and adulthood, in this thinking, became almost opposites
of one another. If adults were burdened with responsibilities,
children should be carefree. If adults worked, children should not
work. If adults had to live in towns, children were entitled to contact
with nature.
Philanthropists who had so wholeheartedly embraced the ideology
of childhood and who were confronted with the realities of actual
childhoods on city streets, began to formulate theories of the rights
which properly belonged to children. We have seen how the idea
of the rights of the child as against its parents or employers began
to be set out in the 1830s in England. Towards the end of the
century these rights came to be seen as more than rights to maintenance, education and protection, but as very specifically the rights to
childhood. ‘The rights of a child’, wrote Benjamin Waugh, ‘are its
birthrights. The Magna Carta of them, is a child’s nature. The
Author, is its Creator’. God and nature between them laid out a
plan for childhood which adults interfered with at their peril. A
child, wrote Kate Wiggin, has an ‘inalienable. . right to his childhood’.” These rights were precisely the opposite of the rights which
adults might claim to independence or freedom. As the Board of
Public Charities in Illinois put it, ‘Dependence is a child’s natural
c o n d i t i ~ n ‘In
.~~
1913 Alexander McKelway, a leader in the campaign
to restrict child labour in the United States, drew up a ‘Declaration
of Dependence by the Children of America in Mines and Factories
and Workshops Assembled’ in which the children ‘declare ourselves
to be helpless and dependent; that we are and of right ought to be
dependent, and that we hereby present the appeal of our helplessness that we may be protected in the enjoyment of the rights of
~ h i l d h o o d ‘ .Children’s
~~
rights therefore were the right to be protected, a theory which fitted well with the thrust of child-saving
efforts.
It required the jolt of the First World War and its aftermath to
bring to a head the disparate efforts of those thinking about drawing
up a declaration of children’s rights. The initiative lay with an
Englishwoman, Eglantyne Jebb, who had taken up the cause of
children in the defeated countries; as children, she argued, they
could hardly be blamed for and therefore should not suffer as a
consequence of defeat. The Save the Children Fund was the outcome. Rather than winding down the organization as the immediate
crisis passed, Jebb found herself confronted with a succession of
new situations where the children needed to be saved, and she was
moved to draw up a simple declaration of children’s rights which
was adopted by the League of Nations in 1924. These rights were
in fact duties of adults, it being formally recognized that ‘mankind
owes to the Child the best that it has to give’.75
In the thinking of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the rights of children were entirely consonant with an
increased role for the state in the lives of children. For it was the
state alone which could enforce those rights. If, as was claimed, a
first consequence of employing children was ‘that they cease almost
at once to be children’, then it was the state’s responsibility to
. ~home
~
and school were the
prevent that too-early e m p l ~ y m e n t If
only two proper environments for children, then the state must
ensure that children were indeed in homes which deserved the
name or in school. And all this protection of the newlydefined
children’s rights was in harmony with the larger purposes of the
state in securing the reproduction of a society capable of competing
in the harsh conditions of the twentieth century. In the phrasing of
the time, the interests of the child and the interests of the state
were one and the same. A child-centred policy was one from which
the state could only gain. Families might be the losers; as Donzelot
noted, the more that children’s rights are proclaimed, ‘the more
the strangle hold of a tutelary authority tightens around the poor
71. K D. Wiggin, Childm’s Ri&t.c A Book of N u m q Logic (London, n.d., c. 1892),
p. 31; cf. R Bray, ‘The children of the town’, in C. E G. Masteman (ed.), Thc
Heart of the Embin 11901: Briehton.’ 1972). n.
127
r.
72. waugh; Life ofOfBm~amin
~ a & i-296; Wiggin, Chiurn’s
p. 10.
73. Platt, Child SM, p. 135.
74. Trattner, Cma& for the C h i k i m frontispiece.
75. E M. Wilson, Rebel Daughter of a Counhy House: The Lifc ofEg(an5nc Jebb, Founder
of the Save the Children Fund (London, 1967). passim. quoting p. 224.
76. Bremner, Children and Youth in America, Vol. 2, p. 658.
.
—-‘.
w&,
Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500
family’.'” Child-saving aimed both to provide the child with what
was thought of as a childhood, and to ensure the future of society.
The two aims were thought to be entirely consonant with one
another.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Century of the Child
In 1900 the Swedish feminist Ellen Key published a book with the
title The Century of the Child The idea for it had come from a
drama, T h Lion5 Whelp, in which one character states that ‘The
next century will be the century of the child, just as much as this
century has been the woman’s century. When the child gets his
rights, morality will be perfected’. Key’s vision of the future was one
in which children would be conceived by parents who were physically fit and in a loving relationship, and would then grow up in
homes where mothers were ever-present. Women’s role was emphatically to bring up children; they should prepare themselves for
motherhood by a period of service ‘devoting themselves to the care
of children, hygiene, and sick nursing’. Such systems of care for
children as creches or kindergartens were very much second best,
and school itself should strive ‘to make itself unnecessary’. Success
in child-rearing lay in becoming ‘as a child oneself’, and then if
this happened, ‘the simplicity of the child’s character will be kept
by adults. So the old social order will be able to renew itself’. Key
was in no doubt that the future would be determined by the way
children were reared, and she blamed failures in child-rearing for
what she saw as three of the scars of the modem world, capitalism,
war and Christianity. Thus if the twentieth century was going to be
‘the century of the child’ it was going to be so not simply for the
sake of the child, but in addition for that of humanity as a whole.’
Key’s book was both a reflection of some of the common ideas
of her time, as in her emphasis on eugenics, and also an elabor77. Donzelot, Policing of Families, p. 103.
162
1. E. Key, Thc C h r ~ t yof rhc Child (1900; New York and London, 1909), passim,
quoting pp. 45, 109, 183, 257, 317.
See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306081304
Children Without Childhood? Against the Postcolonial Capture of Childhoods in
the Global South
Chapter · January 2017
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-33251-2_6
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Children without childhood? Against the postcolonial capture of childhoods in
the Global South
Manfred Liebel
(Published in ‘Children out of Place’ and Human Rights – In Memory of Judith Ennew. Edited
by Antonella Invernizzi, Manfred Liebel, Brian Milne and Rebecca Budde. Springer, 2017,
pp. 79-97)
Abstract
The phrase ‘children without childhood’ is used particularly with respect to so-called developing countries.
Eurocentric modes of thought related to colonial history are embodied in this term. In this chapter the way
in which children and childhoods that do not correspond with predominant European or Global Northern
understanding are examined in the light of postcolonial studies and theories. Suggestions for possible alternative approaches and conduct are made. Additionally, after providing an overview of the most important
postcolonial streams of thought, it is argued how postcolonial perspectives can be made productive for
childhood studies. Critiques of the ‘colonisation’ of childhood, which were articulated in the 1970s and
1980s, are followed by a debate on today’s childhood politics as they converted into practice in the frame
of so-called development policies. Special attention is placed on the treatment of indigenous and working
children.
Keywords
Childhood; colonialism; decolonisation; postcolonial studies; childhood politics; Eurocentrism; Global
South
‘Children without childhood’ – it would be difficult to find a call for help or donations from
UNICEF, the children’s relief organisation of the United Nations, which does not include this
phrase. It represents a singular understanding of children and childhood and views childhood as a
notion that directly corresponds with human nature. Applying this expression overlooks the fact
that childhood is a socially constructed phenomenon that changes over time and takes on different
forms with varying expectations and actions, depending on historical, societal and cultural contexts.
1
In the phrase ‘children without childhood’, a particular, historically specific form or image of
childhood is used as a scale to evaluate children’s lives that appears unconnected. Despite the best
intentions of that attempt, namely offering children the possibility of a better life, their life qualities
are devalued as underdeveloped or inadequate which Judith Ennew criticised on several occasions
when referring to the treatment of ‘street children’, ‘working children’, ‘orphans’ or children exposed to sexual exploitation (e.g. Ennew 1994; 1995; 1997; 2001; 2002; 2005; Ennew, Myers &
Plateau 2005). Children appear exclusively as needy victims who are made out to be the objects
of aid programmes, which allegedly possess superior knowledge as to what children need and what
is good for them. The message is endorsed by the understanding that these children need to be
saved.
Whilst for decades in the Global North, there was no elation about assuming one’s own position
of superiority, today relief efforts are clothed in language of rights. Rather than solely emphasising
children’s need, reference is usually made to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),
claiming that children have the right to be helped. This is ostensibly merely a departure from a
fundamentally paternalistic attitude, since in this case children’s rights are not understood as subjective rights, which children can demand and claim on their own. Rather than representing actual
change, this shift to using rights language has primarily served to legitimise relief organisations’
actions. Children themselves do not enter the picture as social subjects who possess agency (see
Liebel 2013: 43-59; Esser et al 2016).
The phrase ‘children without childhood’ is most often associated with so-called developing countries. Within this phrase, attitudes are embodied that are not only paternalistic, but are also infused
with colonial history. In this chapter, I shall expand on this idea by discussing a notion of children
and childhood other than the one predominantly understood in Europe and the Global North, in
the vein of post-colonial theory, then presenting suggestions for possible alternative approaches
and conduct. After giving an overview of the most important postcolonial streams of thought, I
shall present an argument about how postcolonial perspectives can be made productive within
childhood studies. Following critiques of the ‘colonisation’ of childhood, which were initially expressed in the 1970s and 1980s, I shall then discuss the debate around today’s childhood politics
as they are practiced in the frame of so-called development policies. Special attention will be drawn
to the treatment of indigenous and working children.
2
What are postcolonial theories?
Studies and theories1 regarded as ‘postcolonial’ examine the consequences of colonialism and
forms of postcolonial dependence and domination. They have the objective of presenting an alternative viewpoint from the perspective of postcolonial subjects. This line of thought is known under
various names: Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Philosophy of Liberation, Liberation Theory, Coloniality of Power, Coloniality of Knowledge, De-Coloniality/Decolonisation or Epistemology of the South.2 Until now, these theories have not extensively taken children and childhood
into consideration. However, they are used here in order to look at children within the framework
of their individual life contexts, thus steer in the direction of further potential for the use of these
theories, consequently placing them firmly in their historic and geopolitical contexts.
The term postcolonial refers to present geopolitical constellations in which former colonies existed, to former colonial states and it even has relevance for states which were never directly involved in colonialism, yet are influenced by the effects of colonial thought. The prefix ‘post’ points
out that there are long-term effects of colonialism which continue to be felt today that need to be
brought to light when seeking to understand the postcolonial present and its corresponding problems. These problems include poverty and authoritarianism as well as Eurocentric and racist attitudes, found in various aspects of politics and society in the Global South as well as the Global
North.
Beside rather minor differences in detail, the binding factor of various postcolonial ideas and theories is that they all question the supposed superiority and exemplary character of ‘western’ development concepts and strategies. They draw attention to the fact that supposed achievements of
the European modern age are the result of conquest, oppression and exploitation which have been
accompanied by racist attenuation and discrimination of people from different regions of the world
(and of different ‘skin colour’) which dominate in postcolonial taxonomies.3 The widespread claim
1
The authors and theories mentioned in this paper merely represent a small selection from a much larger body of texts
and studies. Young (2003) and Parry (2004) provide introductory literature on the subject.
2
A paradox in postcolonial theory construction is that the majority of these theories have been written or were initially
recognised in the colonial languages English, French and Spanish. Since in the meantime these colonial languages
have become official languages in most former colonies, and have even be called ‘world languages’, this can hardly
be avoided.
3
Based on experiences with German Fascism, this ‘dark side’ of modernity was already formulated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (2002) in their philosophical study Dialectic of the Enlightenment (see also Dhawan,
2014) in 1944.
3
that the emergence and development of modernity was an autonomous European endeavour is
purposefully scrutinised.4 With this in mind, the view stemming from modernisation theory, purporting that non-western societies merely represent the prehistory of western modernity, and the
west represents the model for the development of ‘traditional’ societies, is also brought into question.5
Critique of this understanding of modernity particularly relates to the idea that lies beneath rationality and the claim of being ‘truth’ which follows is somehow the only possible way that human
life can proceed and improve. Critique is expressed that this way of seeing the world and categorising societies and modes of life as developed or underdeveloped is based on abstract characteristics and hierarchies, like the distinction between body and soul, emotion and rationality or nature
and culture (Prout 2005, 83-111). Ecuadorian economist Alberto Acosta (2013: 38) spells out one
of the most meaningful distinctions when he writes that:
Europe consolidated a vision in order to make its aspiration for expansion possible, which, metaphorically speaking, divorced humankind from nature. Without taking humans into account, nature
was defined as a fixed component of this vision, and fact that humans are an integral part of nature
was ignored. Hence, the path was opened for the control, exploitation and manipulation of nature.
It also opened the path for the occupation and exploitation of world regions which were considered
‘bare earth’, their members classified as ‘wild’ who were often not even recognised as human
beings. Today, this exploitation continues in the form of an unequal world order where although
former colonies have become formally independent states, their dependence has simply taken on
new, less obvious forms, or the (usually ‘white’) former colonial elites continue to oppress and
discriminate against the population.6 Since the mid-20th century the magic word, development, has
served the purpose of maintaining this status.
Postcolonial approaches oppose unrelenting worldwide asymmetrical power structures. On the one
hand they are concerned with material facets and on the other with intellectual aspects, without
completely isolating one from the other. The material aspects focus on unequal economic and
Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000) pleaded for the ‘provincialisation of Europe’ for this reason.
The term ‘west’ refers not to the geographical, but rather, the geopolitical understanding of the word. The same may
be said for the terms ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’.
6
In the first case this means ‘exploitation colonies’ (usually Africa, South and Central America or parts of Asia), in
the second they are ‘settlement colonies’ (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the United States of America) (see
Osterhammel 2005).
4
5
4
political relationships and how these affect the lives of people in the Global South. The intellectual
aspects can be seen through the dominance of particular ways of thinking and forms of knowledge
which minimise or overshadow an already existent wealth of knowledge in the Global South in
the form of ‘epistemological violence’ (Santos 2008; Grosfoguel 2007). In other words, postcolonial approaches claim to point out independent and unbending alternatives with respect to
knowledge and practical life that are based on the memory of colonialism and the experiences of
postcolonial subjects. These suggested alternatives are neither limited to the revitalisation of cultural traditions nor the evocation of alleged origins. Instead they proceed in the hope of demonstrating a ‘trans-modern’ and ‘intercultural’ perspective. This perspective attempts to reach beyond
the segregating and absolutist thought pattern of western modernity without negating it (Dussel
1980).
The book Orientalism, first published in 1978 by Palestinian literary scholar Edward W. Said
(1978; 1985) is considered one of the essential works of postcolonial theory. In his text Said explains how through the creation of an entire academic discipline called Orientalism, Europeans
created a world of the ‘other’ whereby this ‘Orient’ becomes the projection screen for the west’s
own fears, desires and feelings of superiority. The image generated has little to do with the real
life worlds of the people living in these regions, however it served European colonial powers well
and today provides the US ‘imperium’7 with the means of validating its own superiority and legitimising continual political and military interventions. ‘Othering’ is a postcolonial concept introduced by Said which gained meaning in this context. It implies that people and ways of life which
appear to be different to the ‘normal’, prevalent lifestyle become exoticised and are therefore ostracised. They are thus made the object of measures seeking normalisation and control.8
As a follow-up to Edward Said’s Orientalism critique, the Argentinean literary scholar Walter
Mignolo introduced the term ‘postoccidentalism’ from the South American perspective which re-
7 Imperium is the Latin word that broadly speaking translates as the ‘power to command’. In Rome different kinds of
power or authority were defined using different terms or words. Imperium normally referred to the ability of an individual such as an emperor, in the modern world a dictator or even an elected head of state such as a president, to
command the military. Here it carries overtones of the USA’s military presence worldwide and undertones of the
‘imperative’ they assume as the world’s self-anointed leading nation, hence ‘US imperialism’ is often seen.
8
Here, Said refers to ideas and concepts of French philosopher Michel Foucault (for example, see Foucault
[1969]2002). An earlier conception of othering dates back to the French writer Simone de Beauvoir ([1949]1997),
and was systemised in the framework of Postcolonial Studies by Gayatri Spivak (1985; see Jensen 2011).
5
fers to the fact that the Spanish kingdom once named their ‘American’ colonies Indias Occidentales (Mignolo, 2000; 2005). In a project which Mignolo called ‘decolonial’, an effort is made
to break down discursive forms of postcolonial dependence. Hegemonic, Eurocentric and modernist thought patterns are to be replaced, using a critical approach which takes ‘colonial wounds’
(e.g. the manifold harmful and destructive effects of colonialism) seriously and from this point on
imagines a different, horizontal and diverse world.9
Yet, in which way are such critical approaches expressed in the form of postcolonial theories,
connected to social movements and how can they become a force for movement and change? With
her renowned question, “Can the subaltern speak?” in the 1980s, Indian social scientist Gayatri
Spivak appealed against the widespread assumption that the life condition and thoughts of postcolonial subjects were brought to light by simply listening to them (Spivak, 1988).10 In doing so,
her aim was not to doubt that these subjects could express themselves. Instead she wanted to emphasise that for the subaltern11, as a result of being subject to existing power structures, it is not
immediately possible to make diverse concerns visible or heard. Under the given circumstances,
Spivak argues, subalterns can neither successfully be heard nor exercise influence as complex
people (Spivak 1990).
The problem of the internalisation of power structures by oppressed subjects themselves had already been mentioned at the beginning of the 20th Century by Afro-American writer and sociologist, W.E.B. Du Bois ([1903]1996). In his work he referred to the lasting effects of racism in the
USA following the abolition of slavery. To illustrate the exclusion of black people from the world
of white people, Du Bois imagined a picture of an ‘enormous veil’ which black people were not
permitted to step in front of. He considered the formation of a ‘double consciousness’, the feeling
of ‘only ever seeing oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s own soul on a worldscale, left merely with mockery and pity’ (Du Bois 1996: 194).
9
In Latin America today many similar theories and projects have come about whose authors cannot all be individually
mentioned in this chapter.
10
Spivak borrows the term ‘subaltern’ from Marxist Italian political activist and philosopher Antonio Gramsci (see
Forgacs 2000), who uses it to identify population groups who are subject of the hegemony of a ruling class or elite.
Gramsci sought a term which could expand the ideas associated with the working class into other population groups
thus make the machinery of dominance visible which were not solely based on economic exploitation and politicalmilitary violence but also based on cultural dominance.
11 Spivak uses subaltern to describe a person holding a subordinate or inferior position, it should not be confused with
its use to describe a lower ranking army officer.
6
Half a century later Frantz Fanon, a medical practitioner from Martinique, who was active in the
Algerian struggle for liberation in the 1950s and 60s, similarly described the psychological effect
of everyday racism. In his first book, Black Skins, White Masks (2008) published in 1952, he explored daily life in the French-Caribbean colonies and living conditions of black immigrants in
France.12 He characterised the basic situation of black people in the French colonial world as alienated, as blacks being trapped in their own blackness. This especially became an issue because
whites generally saw themselves superior to blacks and thus based all of their interactions and
aspirations on that idea. This, in turn, led to the internalisation of the individual’s own inferiority.
The associated ‘division’ of consciousness resulted in blacks constantly fighting against their own
image and behaving differently toward white people than toward other black people. Based on his
own experiences, Fanon spoke of one’s self-representation as an object, the feeling of defenselessness and frustration, the feeling of being taken apart and paranoid, walled-in and loathed. This led
to feelings of shame and self-contempt. Blacks and whites alike could only work against this alienation by refusing to allow themselves to be locked in the ‘substantialised tower of the past’.
Although Fanon’s prognosis was related to colonial contexts, it nevertheless proved itself relevant
for addressing postcolonial self-images and relationships and has been referred to time and again,
for example in Paul Gilroy’s equally influential text, The Black Atlantic (1993). Gilroy sees the
image of the Black Atlantic, which he uses to symbolise the transatlantic slave trade and its aftermath, characterised by moments of movement, resettlement, repression and helplessness. He characterises the identities that arise in this environment, accordingly, as fluid and in movement, as
opposed to fixed and rigid, he calls them routes, rather than roots. A widespread category in postcolonial theories includes a rejection of closed, rigid concepts of personal and collective identities
that emphasise blending and cultural impurity. Feelings of inner-conflict and alienation, which
play an important role in Du Bois and Fanon’s works, at times become inferior to the emphasis on
the potential of cultural hybridisation. This is especially true for the works of Indian literary scholar
Homi K. Bhabha.
In his book The Location of Culture (1994), Bhabha argues against understanding culture as a
cohesive entity, therefore with cultural borders that are something pre-existing or given. Instead
Here, the terms ‘black’ and ‘white’ are not used to label skin colour, but instead describe a superior and subordinate
relationship, a visible reference point to racism.
12
7
he sees in them as fields for negotiating differences. In the act of interpretive appropriation, he
claims, displacements, thus ambivalence, are produced. Bhabha speaks of an ‘intervention of the
Third Space of enunciation, which makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent
process, destroys this mirror of representation in which cultural knowledge is customarily revealed
as an integrated, open, expanding code’ (Bhabha, 1994: 37). Here, he sees the formation of a new
type of ‘international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of
cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity’ (op. cit.: 38; author’s italics).
He understands hybridity as an unintended consequence of colonial power which yields the capacity for action and the potential for subversion. Thus, ‘the display of hybridity – its peculiar “replication” – terrorises authority with the ruse of recognition, its mimicry, its mockery’ (op. cit.: 115;
italics original). Bhabha’s understanding of hybridity is not simply to be understood in terms of
cultural intermixture; instead he explicitly refers to a hierarchical and asymmetrical power constellation. Nevertheless, the question arises, in how far Bhabha’s invoked practices of mimicry and
hybridity can succeed in damaging or even overriding postcolonial power constellations. Bhabha
is justifiably criticised for his limited understanding of cultural artefacts in terms of human relationships, leaving out the material and structural aspects of postcolonial inequality and class related
power relations, such as the anti-colonial resistance, which is articulated time and again through
uprisings and liberation movements (see e.g. Young 2003; Parry 2004).
Anti-colonial liberation movements and contemporary social movements fighting against capitalist globalisation and the accompanying destruction of human livelihood, similarly the liberation
pedagogy practiced especially in the Global South (see e.g. Freire [1968]2000), emphasise that
postcolonial critique is not limited to a few intellectual voices. It has also been incorporated into
pedagogical thought and approaches that are essentially understood as postcolonial (see Rizvi
2007; Coloma 2009; Andreotti 2011; Bristol 2012). These movements also refer to the fact that
besides certain remaining ‘postcolonial dilemmas’13 some previously neglected subject areas also
deserve closer consideration. This includes where to locate and how to study the life of children
and constructions of childhood in postcolonial contexts.
13
For example, Chakrabarty describes one such dilemma that postcolonial thought cannot exist without referring to
categories such as justice and freedom which emerged with the European Enlightenment that are also tied to European
expansion and colonial rule. This similarly applies to the recourse to universally understood categories of international
human rights law.
8
Why postcolonial perspectives?
Until most recently the field of childhood studies14 was for the most part based on children and
childhoods in the Global North. To an extent that is oriented explicitly towards modernisation
theories in that childhood is measured and evaluated according to degrees of modernisation and,
to another extent, it is concerned with critically examining childhood constructions which perceive
children as objects of adults’ actions in modern, bourgeois society (e.g. James & Prout 1997).
Within these critiques reference is sometimes made to children in the Global South (Payne 2012;
Milanich 2013). To examine the way of life, the social position of children and constructions of
childhood through a postcolonial lens is not sufficient for simply shifting in the direction of studying children and childhoods in the Global South. In my view, the question must also be raised
how children’s ways of life and constructions of childhood are interwoven with postcolonial power
relations and how this impacts on the lives of children.
Dutch anthropologist Olga Nieuwenhuys (2013: 4) explains the necessity of postcolonial perspectives in childhood studies with three arguments: Firstly, ‘the dominance of the North over the
South is inextricably linked to Northern childhood(s) representations against which Southern
childhood(s) are measured and found wanting’. Secondly, the normative dominance of northern
childhood(s) translates ‘in an overproduction of knowledge based in disciplinary strongholds that
resist critique of their Eurocentrism’. Postcolonialism could help subvert this process. Thirdly, ‘the
analysis of children’s agency, finally, while playing a seminal role in addressing the two first limitations, runs up against a lack of imagination about its wider social, political and ethical implications and risks missing its radical edge’. In a broad sense the postcolonial approach challenges
otherwise unquestioned Eurocentric thought patterns and can contribute to opening the intellectual
arena for all those who are considered subaltern or subordinate.
Describing colonised people as possessing a lower rank to those coming from superior European
civilisation shows, according to Nieuwenhuys, ‘remarkable parallels with theories of child development that were emerging at the same time in Europe’ (op. cit.: 5). Postcolonial theories not only
reject constructs such as ‘modern childhood’ or ‘children’s rights’, instead they question the supposed exceptionality or absolutism of these terms by contextualising them. They bring attention to
14
I refer here especially to works published in the English language that were mainly written by researchers from
Europe, North America or Australia. Academic research into childhood in other regions of the world also orients itself,
as far as terminology is concerned, to these works and corresponding theories.
9
the fact that since the beginning of colonisation, the colonial world was an integral part of and
even a prerequisite for modernisation. The dominant perception of the child in Europe needing to
be protected and provided for required the exploitation of the colonies. In rejecting the idea of
modern childhood as a purely western discovery or experience, the postcolonial perspective is able
to inspire a generally positive tone which, in place of an ‘us versus them’ attitude, opens the path
for a conceptualisation of childhood(s) as the unstable and uncertain result of an intercultural encounter.
From Nieuwenhuys’ perspective, postcolonial approaches invite us to constantly re-invent concepts of childhood and pay attention to unexpected and uncertain insights which can arise from
those encounters. Here it is important to ‘put children’s perspectives and experiences, including
their artistic, literary and material culture, at the centre of analysis’ (op. cit.: 6). This could additionally ‘offer a wealth of new information and support endeavours to take children seriously and
stand by their side’ (ibid.). Thereby, children’s creativity and awareness with respect to social
inequality and their resistance, which is widely overlooked, can receive due attention again.
Some of Nieuwenhuys’ arguments can be found in a work by US early childhood educationalists
Laura Cannella and Radhika Viruru (2004) published more than a decade ago which has received
little attention in field of childhood studies. The authors do not limit themselves to challenging
childhood studies, but they also make an effort to transfer fundamental ideas from postcolonial
studies to the examination of childhood.
The starting point of Cannella and Viruru’s ideas is that from a postcolonial perspective western
dominated models of childhood reproduce hierarchies and separations for which European enlightenment and modernisation and the accompanying demand for universality can be blamed. These
models of childhood, they claim, are concurrent products of the same ideologies that have served
as justification for colonial expansion and conquest. This can especially be seen in the parallel
application of the idea of the development from a lower to a higher grade of perfection. Childhood,
like non-European geographical regions and populations, is classified at the lowest rung of the
scale and colonised people are compared to children, both of whom are yet to be developed. Colonisation, they go so far as to say, was even carried out in the name of children whose souls were
seen in need to salvation and whose parents were obliged to raise them ‘correctly’ in terms of the
modern concept of childhood (Cannella & Viruru 2004: 4).
10
Similar to the relationship between colonial rulers and the colonised, according to Cannella and
Viruru, a strict separation between adults and children is established and the relationship between
them becomes institutionalised as a power structure based on the force and privilege of the stronger
party. This is already expressed, in that the term child is associated with the state of incompletion,
on dependence and subordination thus means ‘a kind of epistemic violence that limits human possibilities’ (op. cit.: 2). This power structure can also been understood, in that the ability to speak
(in the widely recognised form of ‘speech’) and read written texts, is the only form of communication recognised in which important ideas can be expressed. Based on their experiences with very
young ‘speechless’ children, Cannella and Viruru at least attempt, ‘a glimpse of the possibilities
that the unspoken might offer, that the previously unthought might generate’ (op. cit.: 8).15 Their
(and others’) interest is quintessentially the question: ‘What gives some people the right to determine who other people are (determinations like the fundamental nature of childhood) and to decide
what is right for others?’ (op. cit.: 7; authors’ italics)
Modern childhood, seen as separated from and opposite to adulthood, which in its institutionalised
form isolates children into special factions, is identified by the authors as a ‘colonizing construct’
(op. cit.: 85). Thereby, ‘binary thinking’, a pioneering concept of modernity, is reproduced which
can only distinguish between good and evil, superior and inferior, right and wrong or civilised and
savage (op. cit.: 88). This division puts adults in a privileged position since their knowledge is
considered superior to that of the child; children may even be denied knowledge under the pretence
of protection (ibid.). This child-adult dichotomy prolongs colonial power as it is transferred to an
entire population group which is in turn labelled as deficient, needy, slow, lazy or underdeveloped
(op. cit.: 89). The categories of progress and development, the authors argue, have served the purpose of devaluing certain population groups and securing one’s own superiority over people from
other cultures. The idea of ‘childish development’ is transferred to adults of other cultures, thereby
arguably ‘infantilising’ them.
Like colonised people worldwide, children are obliged to see themselves through the eyes of those
who have control over them and are not allowed to reject the hierarchies of surveillance, of judgment or of intervention in their lives. Even at a time when discussions about children’s rights are
15
Here, it should be remembered that Jean-Jacques Rousseau ([1762]1979) who is considered father of the modern
concept of childhood referred to the alleged speechless utterances of children as a ‘universal language’ which at least
all children are capable of understanding.
11
becoming more commonplace this hierarchical relationship is rarely questioned. Cannella and Viruru argue that the subordination of children remains so steadfast because it is substantiated and
objectified by ‘the scientific construction of the adult/child dichotomy’ (op. cit.: 109).
Colonisation of childhood?
Despite what Olga Nieuwenhuys’ remonstration may have led one to believe, postcolonial perspectives are not entirely new in the field of childhood studies. In the early 1970s studies emerged
that critically addressed western constructions of childhood along with their historical and geographical limitations. These were inevitably influenced by the worldwide youth rebellion against
authoritarian attitudes and structures as well as the anti-imperialist protest movement against the
Vietnam War that was for the most part driven by young people who were gaining momentum in
the USA at the time.16 In a work first published in French, Swiss anthropologist and psychoanalyst,
Gérard Mendel claims, (Mendel 1971: 7):
All forms of human exploitation, whether religious or economic in nature – exploitation of colonial
peoples, of women, of children – have taken advantage of the phenomenon rooted in the dependent,
biological and psychological relationship of infant child to adult. Hence, the destruction of our
society, which occurs before our eyes, day by day in a chain of cultural Hiroshimas, goes much
deeper than it appears and incorporates various aspects of all societies worldwide.
At the same time, similar ideas were also being formulated in several other countries within the
framework of ‘anti-authoritarian’ and ‘anti-pedagogical’ movements. They criticised the ‘infantilisation’ and oppression of children and fought for their liberation and equal rights.17 In German
language literature one work by Austrian educationalist Peter Gstettner, Die Eroberung des Kindes
durch die Wissenschaft. Aus der Geschichte der Disziplinierung (1981) is particularly noteworthy.
In this nearly forgotten text – similar to Canella and Viruru almost 20 years later – Gstettner makes
reference to the history of colonialism and, exemplified in the newly emerging pedagogical and
psychological sciences looking at childhood, he demonstrates a close connection with the ‘ethnology’ arising from colonisation. His hypothesis is ‘that the academic conquest of unknown territories precedes the conquest of the childish soul’ (op. cit.: 15). He demonstrates this particularly
16
The emerging postcolonial view of childhood was also influenced by the work of French historian, Philippe Ariès
(1962), in which the supposed timelessness and universality of the ‘infantilised’ western bourgeois image of childhood
was questioned.
17
Here, the works of US authors Shulamith Firestone (1970), Richard Farson (1974) and John Holt (1974) may be
referred to.
12
examining the history of developmental psychology also in the conceptualisation of childhood
(and youth) in corresponding scholarship as a whole (op. cit.: 8 and 85):
All dominant models of human “development” today include territorial associations: populations
and individual people alike are thought of in terms of political regions, as territories to be conquered, occupied, researched and proselytized. Thus, having a look at anthropology, called previously [in German] “Völkerkunde”, can inform us as to why academics consider “savages” to be
primitive, “primitives” to be naïve, the “naïve” to be childish, and children, to be naïve, primitive
and savage. […]
From the outset, childhood and youth studies have focused their research interest on the idea that
it must be possible to analytically grasp lost “naturalness” and, in a scholarly manor, to reconstruct
it as the “natural state” of the child (as well as the “savage”). That’s why educational child and
youth psychology is connected in a causal relationship with anthropological fields of research,
which, despite their different “research subjects”, exhibit the same analytical interests – namely to
separate the influences of civilisation and culture from inherited predispositions; to separate “developed” from “undeveloped”.
At the time that Gérard Mendel and Peter Gstettner were putting together academic ideas on the
colonisation and conquest of children, they did not yet refer to postcolonial theories since these
came into being in subsequent years. Thus they can be given great credit for drawing parallels and
drawing attention to the relationship between colonisation and ideologies stemming from the emergence of disciplines examining childhood. In the meantime, these ideologies, especially in the socalled new childhood studies have undergone a critical ‘deconstruction’ in which their dominion
legitimising function has been brought out in the open (e.g. James, Jenks & Prout 1998; Prout
2005). However, today references to colonial history and its postcolonial repercussions still remain
underexposed.18 In the next section I shall explain how Eurocentric constructions of childhood
continue to heavily influence contemporary policies that are intended to improve the lives of children in the Global South.
18
In English language childhood studies literature many authors focus on childhoods as they relate to globalisation
and postcolonial power structures (e.g. Burman 1994; 1996; 2012; Katz 2004; Burr 2006; Well, 2009; Wells et al
2014). In Latin America several works have been published which explicitly deal with postcolonial influences on
‘indigenous childhoods’ or ‘Latin American childhoods’ and therein refer to postcolonial theories (e.g. Rengifo Vásquez 2005; Schibotto 2015). One issue of the Peru-based periodical NATs, which focuses especially on working children, was concerned solely with this topic (Colonialidad en los saberes y prácticas desde y con los NATs, 2015).
13
Postcolonial childhood policies
The universality of the model of childhood arising within European bourgeois society is especially
noteworthy in the practice of governments, non-governmental organisations and UN agencies
which, mainly in the form of ‘development policy’, devote themselves to improving the lives of
children in so-called developing countries. My particular focus here is how this model of childhood, in the case of indigenous and working children19, defines developmental policies and leads
to making vulnerable and being indifferent to the lived out childhoods of these children.
In the countries of the Global South working is often a part of children’s lives.20 Children work in
various circumstances for different reasons. Children’s work often serves the purpose of providing
subsistence for their families and it is done under conditions which negatively impact their lives
and future perspectives. Nevertheless, nearly all working children have a constructive attitude towards their work. They are generally proud to be doing something that is meaningful for others
and are proud to contribute to families and take responsibility for themselves. When working children have the opportunity of exchanging their experiences with other children and when they get
the impression that their work is valued by the adults in their surroundings it takes on a different
meaning for them. They usually differentiate between work as a necessary and useful activity and
work in exploitative conditions (see Liebel, 2004).
These attitudes contradict the western model of childhood which of necessity views childhood as
a state of being protected and provided for that rules out the notion of shared responsibility. Instead
they resemble childhood models found in non-western cultures, especially in indigenous communities. Here it is considered self-evident that children participate in tasks that are essential for their
community from an early age. Their life is not separated from the community but is integrated
therein. Yet children are not simply considered ‘small adults’ but they are instead acknowledged
In this context ‘indigenous’ refers to people in colonised territories who were made subject of colonial systems. In
my use of the term, slaves who were brought to the Americas and Caribbean are included. In postcolonial states
descendents of these people usually remain socially marginalised and exposed to racism. However, as a result of
colonial and postcolonial hybridism, there is now no clear distinction between these people and the rest of the population. Working children often, but not always, have an indigenous background. Here I explicitly use the term ‘working
children’ rather than the more common term ‘child labour’, to describe the children as subjects (for more on the term
‘working children’, see Liebel 2004).
20
The indigenous languages I know do not refer to the term ‘work’, instead there are words for specific activities
which are meaningful in life and for the community. Here, the term work refers to any activity which contributes to
sustaining life regardless of the societal form in which it occurs.
19
14
and valued for their unique abilities. The dichotomy between children and adults and strict separation between the two life spheres are foreign concepts in these communities. In order to illustrate
this point I refer to two studies. The first is an expert report which was complied for a conference
of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Latin America (Suárez Morales 2010: 118; my
translation):
Regulations exist in the law of all indigenous peoples about the kinds of activities in which children
and youth are allowed to participate. These regulations define which tasks are appropriate and even
obligatory for children and youth. Participation in them is a prerequisite to finding a place in the
social structure of a community. Although some of these activities would be considered dangerous
from a western point of view, they are fundamental for children and young peoples’ self-esteem,
reputation and status as active members in the social, economic, political and cultural life of their
communities. Participation in fishing or hunting activities, using tools such as machetes or knives,
spending extended periods of time in difficult to access forest or mountain regions, crossing rivers
or using mid-sized boats in coastal areas are all activities are associated with serious risk. However,
in the daily lives of indigenous children they are tasks which are critical and unavoidable for survival, and self-esteem, as well as for acknowledgement in and membership of a community.
The work of indigenous children that takes place in families and communities generally makes up
part of the socialisation process, survival and of the continuity of inherited culture. The traditional
production systems of indigenous communities are integrated in so-called ‘user value economies’
which are marked by strong ties with solidarity and reciprocity that serve the subsistence of the
families in the community.
The other study was carried out by British sociologist Samantha Punch in a Bolivian rural community. The study examined which of the tasks carried out by children are recognised and how
responsibility is shared and divided up between children and adults (Punch 2001: 8-9 and 20):
Bolivian children in rural areas carry out many jobs without question or hesitation, often readily
accepting a task and taking pride in their contribution to the household. In addition, some household tasks, such as daily water and firewood collection, are such a regular part of their daily routine
that they accept responsibility without having to be told to do them. Water collection is a childspecific task, usually carried out by young children as it is a relatively ‘easy’ job which children
as young as three or four years old can start doing. They may begin by only carrying very small
quantities of water (in small jugs at first), but by the time they are six or seven years old they can
usually manage two 5-litre containers in one trip. Since children are assigned this job from very
15
early age and it has to be carried out at least once or twice every day, children know there is no
point of trying to avoid doing something, which is very clearly their responsibility. […]. Their
sense of satisfaction for self-initiated task-completion often appeared to be greater than when they
were asked to do something.
So, children in rural Bolivia are not only expected to work and are given many responsibilities
but they are also aware of the importance of their contribution and often fulfil their duties with
pride. Parents encourage them to learn new skills by giving them opportunities to acquire competencies and be responsible. […] Children are encouraged to be independent: to get on with their
jobs, to combine work and school, and to travel large distances within the community unaccompanied. […] Furthermore, parents teach their children to try to be relatively tough […] and to be
able to look after themselves and younger siblings when parents are away from the household.
[…]
This study of rural Bolivia shows that the transition from childhood to adulthood is not a simple
linear progression from dependence and incompetence to independence and competence. […] The
notion of interdependence is a more appropriate way to understand relations between children and
adults, and between children.
In other her publications which also focus on rural Bolivia and migration between Bolivia and
Argentina, Samantha Punch shows that work and play, like work and education are not entirely
separate and exclusive spheres in the lives of children. Additionally, she describes the development
of a ‘children’s culture’, not based on the strict separation between children’s and adults’ lives but
instead on a division of responsibilities (Punch, 2003; 2004; 2007).
By citing these examples my intention was not to glorify rural childhoods in the Global South,
instead to make it clear that childhoods can be structured very differently to the predefined western
model of childhood. One must bear in mind that the life of children living in urban settings involves
different conditions and challenges to those in rural areas. In urban settings children are directly
affected by capitalism and globalisation. The dominant ‘exchange value economy’ requires children whose parents and relatives lack necessary financial means to adopt individualised survival
techniques. However, it may also be observed that children who are employed in those settings
become involved in relationships that similarly enable them to become self-sufficient and are characterised by interdependency, not unlike the aforementioned examples of rural childhoods. Since
in the majority of cases this concerns children whose families or grandparents emigrated from rural
16
areas into the city, we can assume that their views are influenced by experiences and memories of
earlier generations. I am led to deduce that in the outlook and way of life of working children, precolonial and postcolonial influences merge.
The western model of childhood at first glance appears to bring with it a sense of relief and promise
of a better future for these children. Being spared from the most precarious forms of work, given
protection and provision as well as the opportunity to learn in a school environment appears to
provide a way out for these children. Yet this promise is deceiving, since it completely overlooks
the actual living conditions and self-images of the children. They simply do not want to take on
new dependencies which devalue their way of life and damn them to submissiveness, which in the
best-case scenario, allows them ‘participation’ which has no real impact on their life. In this context another report is a valuable reference; it was written for the aforementioned conference of the
ILO (García Hierro 2010: 45; my translation):
The extremely protective attitude towards children and young people in economically developed
societies forms a cultural image, which is neither transferrable nor positively valued by many families in the Americas. In the case of indigenous cultures the hard work of the child, and even more
so, the young person is seen as a paramount virtue in the socialisation process. It provides children
and youth with recognition and gives them a high level of self-esteem. The elimination of every
type of activity that does not prohibit education and the positive development of children and youth
could present financial difficulties for many families, if it is not explicitly clear what is at hand. For
many cultures, the concept of childhood and adolescence, introduced by the well-meaning western
societies is negative and dysfunctional from a social point of view, and incompatible with their
ambitions.
This is a critique of policy which draws attention to the implementation of compulsory school
attendance as a universal remedy for indigenous and working children. The author calls such policies ‘excessive because they interfere with culturally appropriate education initiatives that do not
necessarily prioritise school as a formal structure’ (ibid.).21 Insisting on this formal structure which
separates children from their lifestyles and roots resembles the intent of mission schools in the
21
A further comment by Suárez Morales included in the aforementioned expert report should also be noted here:
“Western models of education are generally insensitive towards the diversity and the various needs of children and
youth from indigenous populations. One of the factors contributing to children’s work in indigenous communities is
in fact the unsuitability of state education policy, which ultimately leads to indigenous children’s demotivation and
exclusion.“
17
former colonies and the school system that grew out of that. It implies the colonisation of childhoods which are considered dysfunctional for further capitalist globalisation and opposed to the
transformation of young people into economically exploitable ‘human capital’. Ultimately, childhoods which value children as social subjects should be eliminated, whose lives as a part of a
community are meaningful and deserve respect in the here and now. In their place would de childhoods which measure children just by their future potential but failing to give them a say in their
own lives.
This perspective reminds of the ILO programme which envisages the complete elimination of
‘child labour’ by the year 2020 (see ILO, 2013). This effort ignores and generalises on the exceedingly different conditions in which children work in the form of a catalogue of measures dictated
from the top down. In addition, local experiences and perspectives, especially those of indigenous
and working children, are disregarded and written off as being culturally underdeveloped or ‘immature’. As long as the unequal world order and exploitation in postcolonial countries persists that
programme cannot realistically be implemented. At present it supports the discourse on the humanisation of capitalism as well as the ideological enhancement of the ‘progressive nature’ of the
western world and the alleged backwardness and barbaric nature of indigenous civilisations. It
contributes to the maintenance of the western world’s illusion of superiority and the perception of
inferiority of the people in the ‘rest of the world’ (Hall, 1994), arguably, with the additional ramification of robbing indigenous and working children of their self-confidence and agency.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have attempted to show that the model of childhood that emerged with the emergence of European bourgeois society is used today to devalue and make alternative forms of childhood that have existed for centuries in the Global South invisible. Beyond mere ideological instrumentalism this movement has been translated into programmes which aim to extinguish those
forms of childhood completely. Such childhoods, illustrated using the example of indigenous and
working children, are not a homogenous entity. They do, however, have in common that children
are not isolated from the ‘world of adults’ but instead share responsibilities with them. Under the
pressure of capitalist globalisation with its subsequent forced exploitation and poverty, for many
children participation often takes on onerous and harmful forms. But as long as these childhoods
18
that do not correspond to the western model are not completely destroyed a foundation survives
that strengthens children’s self-confidence and encourages them to show their agency.
One result of this support is that children grow up with a sense of being valuable and needed. In
their daily lives they are required to help take on tasks necessary for their subsistence and that of
their community and generally receive recognition in exchange. Although their childhood is not
free of burdens, children usually have the freedom to occupy themselves and play under to their
own terms and in their interest. Their future is not threatened by working but instead by an education system which is not in harmony with their living circumstances thus discriminating against
and excluding them. Most attempts from outside and above to modify the lives of these children
in the direction of the western model of childhood only result in additional strain and marginalisation. An example thereof is the policy of the ILO which takes a stand against all forms of children’s
work (including those necessary for survival) and imposing associated measures on governments
(see ILO 2013). The protection that children should receive in exchange, instead results in discrimination and even criminalisation since children are pushed into grey zone where their rights
are not upheld.
Methods must be found to strengthen the social position of children in society, in order to work
against the pressure and marginalisation they face. Advocating for one’s own rights, for example
those embedded in the CRC, can be helpful if the children can utilise these rights in their particular
circumstances (see Liebel 2012). It is likewise important that children find the opportunity to join
forces and form organisations where they can discuss their mutual interests and provide support
for each another. When this occurs, as in the case of working children’s movements, it may be
observed that children take a stand for their interests and rights with confidence and that they attach
great importance to playing an active role in their associations and communities. The forms of
participation practiced by these children often go beyond the sort of participation allowed to children in the Global North.
For these children who organise themselves it is not about conserving traditions, instead it is gaining experiences and knowledge which grow out of international interdependence and postcolonial
settings. Their movements exemplify a perspective of liberation from below which reaches beyond
the emancipation from a predetermined generational relationship. Within these movements a concrete ‘externalised’ corporeality is articulated (Dussel 1980). One could argue that the protest
19
movements of the children in the Global South are marked by the creativity of a renewed, not only
de-colonised, but also unique, novel culture that is based on equitable, intercultural dialogue and
mutual recognition.
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Said…