Abstract
As this issue of Global Studies of Childhood goes to press, the world is embroiled in divisive political debates, public dissent on an unprecedented scale, and violent conflicts with global repercussions. Pivoting on axes of power and vulnerability, controvertible truths and assured uncertainties, the bitter struggles over national, institutional, family and individual identities that pervade our news and social media feeds in this historical moment, also seep into the most familiar corners of everyday life. These are struggles that reveal deep fissures in familiar narratives and storylines long understood as enduring, albeit contested, ways of being, knowing and doing in civil societies. Some of these fissures are no doubt necessary and long overdue, exposing the complicity of national and cultural narratives in overlooking, whitewashing and relentlessly perpetuating inequalities and injustices. They highlight how who one is, and who one might become, is situated within constellations of historical, geopolitical and cultural discourses that operate differentially on lives, futures and identities as participants in social life. These are in turn dependent in no small measure on the possibilities and foreclosures at play in what Zygmunt Bauman (2016) has referred to as a crisis of humanity from which ‘there is no exit … other than solidarity of humans’ (p. 19).
In light of these concerns, it seems fitting that the first issue of 2017 features articles concerned with the ways that politics, cultural identities and social practices intersect, impacting on children and their capacity to act with agency, and on the ways that categories of childhood are understood and operationalised in multiple ways by adults. The lead article by Flavia Cangià is interested in the relationship between childhood and political action, and explores these intersections through research on the ways that children in Japan experience nationalism and inter-ethnic relations. These are timely concerns, and Cangià carefully unpacks the ways that discourses of national identity in government initiatives and programs for children and parents are designed to promote constructs of national identity that are reliant on notions of racial homogeneity and the perpetuation of traditional culture. These discourses are juxtaposed with the ways that ethnic minority Buraku children are positioned as activist participants for whom educational and social activities are organized around agentive notions of childhood that also see cultural identities as negotiated rather than fixed. Cangià’s findings offer interesting insights into the ways that political projects and institutional agendas are implicated in notions of childhood upon which children’s identities and agency as political actors in no small measure depends.
Angel Chan and Paul Spoonley take up similar questions concerning the ways that identity politics feature in the construction of childhood among Chinese immigrant families in New Zealand. Chan and Spoonley’s study reminds us of the fluid and varied nature of social identities, and of the complexities that immigrant parents navigate when raising children in new places and cultures. Parents in their study aspired for their children to understand the cultures of their parents, while also developing a sense of belonging in their adopted country. The study shows how placing undue emphasis on notions of a single unified collective identity is implicated in the creation of exclusions and tensions, and the authors argue that intentional action, intervention and dialogue is required if understandings of ‘heterogeneous expectations of each other, and developing respectful relationships, inclusive practices and cohesiveness’ (Chan & Spoonley, this volume) are to be realised.
Hae Min Yu’s paper takes up similar questions in a study of ethnic community experiences of Korean immigrant families with young children living in the United States. Yu’s research critiques notions of homogeneous cultural identities as implicated in the reproduction of stereotypes, which parents in her study strongly resisted and problematized, in contrast to their children’s more positive inclination toward identity categories of Korean or Korean American. For Yu, immigrant parents play an important role in querying norms of identity in the interest of supporting children in their development of positive cultural identities that enable them to navigate their experiences as the second generation in migrant families.
Daniel Gebretsedik’s article takes up questions of childhood, agency and place through a study of street working children in Southern Ethiopia. Gebretsedik challenges discourses that construct children’s endeavours to earn income through activities such as shoe shining and begging as inappropriate or a violation of children’s rights. He argues, on the basis of observation and interview with 24 children who work on the streets of Dilla, that these income generating activities are seen by the children as a way of learning skills, exercising agency, and taking responsibility for supporting themselves and their families in difficult circumstances. While this is a contested position, it provides a reminder that understanding complex issues merits consideration of multiple perspectives.
The paper by Barbara Chancellor and Brendon Hyman also interrogates everyday beliefs about children and childhood, querying ways that the management and supervision of children in Australian primary school playgrounds is shaped by moral geographies. Their article draws on two studies concerned with the design and uses of play spaces, equipment and environments, to show how the teachers’ judgements and assessments of children’s play are informed by notions of risk and safety, hygiene and cleanliness, convenience and inconvenience. Through these notions and the values adults invest in them, adults supervising everyday activities in children’s playgrounds ascribe moral judgements that in turn constrain and circumscribe children’s play. Chancellor and Hyndman argue that better understanding these moral geographies can enable schools to develop greater awareness of the broader implications that approaches to playground supervision may have for children’s wellbeing.
The final article by Martin Blok Johansen is concerned with institutional, literary and research discourses through which construct children and young people within binary discursive frameworks. Drawing on case studies from schooling, popular literary texts for children and young people, as well as examples from research literature, Johansen contends that the language and logics of these specific discursive frameworks tend to construct children positively, and young people negatively. He refers to positive terms used in reference to children as happy, competent and innocent as a ‘surplus discourse’, in contrast to the ‘deficit discourse’ that typically describes young people as problematic, irresponsible and distressed. As is the case with other articles in this issue, Johansen’s paper invites critical reflection on how everyday language and practices can give rise to categorizations and cultural narratives that exclude and marginalise.
As I noted in a recent GSCH editorial just prior to the 2016 US elections, ‘questions about entitlements to be and belong are intricately connected to the ways in which childhood is represented, understood and managed’ (Saltmarsh, 2016). Contributors to this issue similarly raise questions about the complex interplay of family, language and culture that features in collective understandings about being and belonging, and about the ways that these understandings shape what is possible for children and childhood in the context of broader debates and world events.