Textures of global change: eroding ecologies of childhood in New York and Sudan

Abstract

This paper explores systematic disruptions of social reproduction, the ways children do not receive the knowledge and skills necessary for the world in which they will come of age, in two sites deeply affected by global economic restructuring and en vironmental change, rural Sudan and New York City. The paper calls for rethinking of debates about the nature of global change, from a perspective that emphasizes children's conditions, experiences, understandings and futures. A notion of diverse and interconnected ecologies of childhood, as both constellations of ideas and sets of material circumstances that frame locally specific and globally inflected relations between children and the environment, allows us to begin to theorize various "ero sions" of children's worlds, as well as to develop a child-focused perspective of sus tainable development.