Читать книгу Childhood in a Global Perspective - Karen Wells - Страница 6

This book is about children and childhood in a global context. In it I connect children’s experiences to changing ideas about and practices of childhood, drawing on research about children’s lives across the globe. I show how concepts of childhood shape children’s lives and how children, in turn, shape concepts of childhood. These concepts or ideas about what children should and should not do, of where children are safe and where they are at risk, and of where childhood begins and where it ends have been the central theme of the new social studies of childhood since its inception three decades ago (Jenks 1996; James and Prout 1990; James et al. 1998). These studies have been important in advancing our understanding of how childhood is shaped by cultural and social practices and processes. However, Childhood Studies has continued to focus on national contexts and has been dominated by accounts of North American and European childhoods. In an increasingly globalized world, a focus on national contexts has to be supplemented by an understanding of how local practices are impacted on by global processes and that where people live affects how they live. It is the task of this book to show that where children live affects what kinds of childhood they have and to explore how global flows and structures, including flows of capital, the activities of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and structures of international law, are reshaping childhood.