Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood

Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood PDF

Author: Kerry H. Robinson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1136304169

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Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood provides a critical examination of the way we regulate children’s access to certain knowledge and explores how this regulation contributes to the construction of childhood, to children’s vulnerability and to the constitution of the ‘good’ future citizen in developed countries. Through this controversial analysis, Kerry H. Robinson critically engages with the relationships between childhood, sexuality, innocence, moral panic, censorship and notions of citizenship. This book highlights how the strict regulation of children’s knowledge, often in the name of protection or in the child’s best interest, can ironically, increase children’s prejudice around difference, increase their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse, and undermine their abilities to become competent adolescents and adults. Within her work Robinson draws upon empirical research to: provide an overview of the regulation and governance of children’s access to ‘difficult knowledge’, particularly knowledge of sexuality explore and develop Foucault’s work on the relationship between childhood and sexuality identify the impact of these discourses on adults’ understanding of childhood, and the tension that exists between their own perceptions of sexual knowledge, and the perceptions of children reconceptualise children’s education around sexuality. Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood is essential reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking courses in education, particularly with a focus on early childhood or primary teaching, as well as in other disciplines such as sociology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies.

Innocence, Knowledge, and the Construction of Childhood

Innocence, Knowledge, and the Construction of Childhood PDF

Author: Kerry H. Robinson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0415609674

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This book provides a critical examination of the discourses that underpin the regulation of children’s access to certain knowledge – understood as ‘difficult knowledge’ – and highlights the way this regulation contributes to the construction of childhood, to children’s vulnerability, to broader social relationships (including adult-child relations of power), and to the constitution of the ‘good’ future citizen in developed countries. Through this analysis, the author critically engages with the relationships between childhood, innocence, moral panic, censorship and notions of citizenship. She argues that the regulation of children’s access to particular knowledge largely stems from the social construction of childhood innocenceand the socio-cultural-political values that constitute and define childhood. This book explores how and why the strict regulation of children’s knowledge, often in the name of protectionor in the child’s best interest, can ironically, increase children’s prejudice around difference, increase their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse, impact on their health and well being, and undermine their competence as children, as well as their abilities to become competent adolescents and adults.

Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood

Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood PDF

Author: Crystal Lynn Webster

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2021-04-27

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1469663244

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For all that is known about the depth and breadth of African American history, we still understand surprisingly little about the lives of African American children, particularly those affected by northern emancipation. But hidden in institutional records, school primers and penmanship books, biographical sketches, and unpublished documents is a rich archive that reveals the social and affective worlds of northern Black children. Drawing evidence from the urban centers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, Crystal Webster's innovative research yields a powerful new history of African American childhood before the Civil War. Webster argues that young African Americans were frequently left outside the nineteenth century's emerging constructions of both race and childhood. They were marginalized in the development of schooling, ignored in debates over child labor, and presumed to lack the inherent innocence ascribed to white children. But Webster shows that Black children nevertheless carved out physical and social space for play, for learning, and for their own aspirations. Reading her sources against the grain, Webster reveals a complex reality for antebellum Black children. Lacking societal status, they nevertheless found meaningful agency as historical actors, making the most of the limited freedoms and possibilities they enjoyed.

Pictures of Innocence

Pictures of Innocence PDF

Author: Anne Higonnet

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780500018415

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The ideal of childhood innocence is perhaps the most cherished concept of modern Western culture, all the more so because it seems to be under siege. Pictures have always been crucial to that ideal, and now they promise to transform it.Pictures of Innocence begins by tracing the visual history of ideal childhood: the pictorial invention of childhood innocence in eighteenth-century portraits, its diffusion in nineteenth-century popular paintings and illustration, and its culmination in today's best-selling and most widely practiced forms of photography. It deals with pictures of many sorts, ranging from eighteenth-century portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds to greeting cards by Anne Geddes, from the controversial photographs of Lewis Carroll to those of Sally Mann.The book then turns to the crisis in the ideal of childhood innocence. Ever since its invention, photography has unsettled the certainties of ideal childhood, not only by revealing its inherent tensions, but also by showing how the uses and interpretations of photography can eroticize children. These increasingly acute difficulties have recently provoked a dramatic reaction in the form of sweeping child pornography laws.At an intersection between the history of ideas, art, popular culture, censorship, and law, Pictures of Innocence shows how we are in the midst of a radical redefinition of childhood itself, a turbulent change in fundamental cultural values inaugurated by images.

Racial Innocence

Racial Innocence PDF

Author: Robin Bernstein

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2011-12-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0814789781

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2013 Book Award Winner from the International Research Society in Children's Literature 2012 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education 2012 Winner of the Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize presented by the New England American Studies Association 2012 Runner-Up, John Hope Franklin Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association 2012 Honorable Mention, Distinguished Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series Beginning in the mid nineteenth century in America, childhood became synonymous with innocence—a reversal of the previously-dominant Calvinist belief that children were depraved, sinful creatures. As the idea of childhood innocence took hold, it became racialized: popular culture constructed white children as innocent and vulnerable while excluding black youth from these qualities. Actors, writers, and visual artists then began pairing white children with African American adults and children, thus transferring the quality of innocence to a variety of racial-political projects—a dynamic that Robin Bernstein calls “racial innocence.” This phenomenon informed racial formation from the mid nineteenth century through the early twentieth. Racial Innocence takes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which Bernstein analyzes as “scriptive things” that invite or prompt historically-located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation. Integrating performance studies with literary and visual analysis, Bernstein offers singular readings of theatrical productions from blackface minstrelsy to Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; literary works by Joel Chandler Harris, Harriet Wilson, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; material culture including Topsy pincushions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva handkerchiefs, and Raggedy Ann dolls; and visual texts ranging from fine portraiture to advertisements for lard substitute. Throughout, Bernstein shows how “innocence” gradually became the exclusive province of white children—until the Civil Rights Movement succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself. Check out the author's blog for the book here.

Key Concepts in Childhood Studies

Key Concepts in Childhood Studies PDF

Author: Allison James

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2012-07-25

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 1446289672

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"Arranged alphabetically, core ideas about ′Agency′ and ′Development′ through to ′Socialisation′ and ′Youth′ are explained in straightforward language, with a concise introduction to key theoretical debates, as well as up to date references." - Martin Woodhead, The Open University "A challenging text that is recommended for all levels of the BA in Childhood Studies programme. The short, focussed chapters provide students with a comprehensive overview of a topic which they can then research in further depth." - Sharron Galley, Centre for Childhood Studies, Stockport College "This book gives a fantastic first look at many key concepts which are new to students in a way that is easily approachable and understandable. A great place to start further studies." - Kathryn Peckham, Chichester University This book has already proved itself as a market leader in Childhood Studies. All of the strengths of the First Edition have been retained. The book is comprehensive and judged with the needs of students in mind. It is a model of clarity and precision and has been acknowledged as such in reviews and course feedback. The new edition thoroughly revises old entries and adds new ones. The book is the most accessible, relevant student introduction to this expanding, interdisciplinary field. It is an indispensable teaching text and an ideal prompt for researchers.

Childhood

Childhood PDF

Author: Chris Jenks

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-28

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1000142841

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In this book Chris Jenks looks at what the ways in which we construct our image of childhood can tell us about ourselves. After a general discussion of the social construction of childhood, the book is structured around three examples of the way the image of the child is played out in society: the history of childhood from medieval times through the enlightenment 'discovery' of childhood to the present the mythology and reality of child abuse and society's response to it the 'death' of childhood in cases such as the James Bulger murder in which the child itself becomes the perpetrator of evil. Part of the highly successful Key Ideas series, this book gives students a concise, provocative insight into some of the controlling concepts of our culture.

Youth Sexualities

Youth Sexualities PDF

Author: Susan Talburt

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781440850394

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These volumes offer an in-depth analysis of youth sexualities as they shape and are shaped by public feelings and by American social, cultural, and political contexts. The idea of youth sexuality makes many adults anxious, but sexuality is a very real part of youth and is the subject of many important social issues. Society now increasingly, sometimes grudgingly, recognizes youth as sexual actors; this collection examines contradictory public feelings related to youth sexualities, including perennial and new topics such as sex education, sexting, teen mothers, masculinities, sexualization, popular culture, the increasing visibility of LGBTQ youth, and the digital world. The contributors examine the back-and-forth of adult and institutional concerns, policies, and practices as they both govern and are influenced by youths' sexual subjectivities, identities, actions, and activism. The first volume historicizes "official knowledge" and cultural constructions of youth sexualities; offers examples of the "framing" of youth through research, film, the media, and transnational NGOs; and foregrounds youths' experiences of sexuality in everyday life. The second volume considers adult and youth activism. Through first-person and analytical accounts, the book offers multiple perspectives of ways in which adult professionals, such as youth workers and researchers, can work side-by-side with youth rather than "above" or "in front of" them. Focuses on a range of youth sexualities and experiences Offers an innovative analysis of the role of public feelings to show how adults monitor youth sexualities and how youth actively respond Provides researchers, policymakers, activists, NGO workers, educators, and communities new lenses through which to understand youth sexualities Shows how activists work to include and address youth perspectives on difficult or unpopular topics Incorporates the contributors' expertise in disciplines ranging from women's, gender, and sexuality studies to educational and cultural studies to communication, rhetoric, anthropology, and sociology Connects research in youth sexualities to the increasingly influential "affective turn" perspective of critical theory

Childhood Sexuality and AIDS Education

Childhood Sexuality and AIDS Education PDF

Author: Deevia Bhana

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-08-27

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 1317526813

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Primary schoolchildren are frequently shielded from education on sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases in an effort to protect their innocence. In countries like South Africa, where AIDS is particularly widespread, it is especially important to address prevention with younger boys and girls as active social agents with the capacity to engage with AIDS as gendered and sexual beings. This volume addresses the question of children’s understanding of AIDS, not simply in terms of their dependence but as active participants in the interpretation of their social worlds. The volume draws on an interview and ethnographic based study of young children in two socially diverse South African primary schools, as well as interviews conducted with teachers and mothers of young children. It shows how adults sustain the production of childhood sexual innocence, and the importance of scaling up programs in AIDS intervention, gender and sexuality. It makes significant contributions to the global debate around childhood sexualities, gender and AIDS education.