Childhood in the South

Paper Summary:

This paper examines literature concerning the differences between the treatment and view of children in southern-based settings and the treatment and view of children in western, northern-based settings. The paper also discusses the methodology through which cultures justify and define the rights and "best interests" of children, and the ways in which the dynamics of child-adult relationships are identified and categorized.

Erica Burman: Appealing and Appalling Children,
Psychoanalytic Studies, 1999
Chris Jenks: Childhood 1996
Erica Burman: The Abnormal Distribution of Development:
Policies for Southern women and children; Gender Place & Culture:
A Journal of Feminist Geography 1995:
B. Rwezaura: The Concept of the Child's Best Interests
in the Changing Economic and Social Context of Sub-Saharan
Africa (in The Best Interests of the Child, Philip Alston)
Allison James: Childhood Identities: Self and Social Relationships
in the Experience of the Child 1993:
Michael Freeman: The Moral Status of Children: Essays on the
Rights of the Child 1997:
Martin Woodhead: "Psychology and the Cultural Construction of
Children's Needs" (in Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood:
Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood) 1997:
Abdullahi An-Na'Im: "Cultural Transformation and Normative
Consensus on the Best Interests of the Child" (in The Best
Interests of the Child) 1994:

From the Paper:

"Meantime, the world is changing rapidly for some children, notably in the north, though the ongoing - and often positive, forward-leaning - dynamics of market globalization, high-speed information and communication systems, and more; but for many millions of children in the south, the world stays pretty much the same. For those southern children, it is, unfortunately, all about survival. If enlightened leadership in the north and south can carefully construct better approaches through progressive and pragmatic models - not just degrees and "conventions" through the United Nations, but real, tangible formulae - for positive plans that improve futures for children universally, the world will be a safer, richer, more peaceful place in which to live and grow up."

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