Anne Trine Kjørholt

Why Children? Why Now?

Abstract In asking the questions why children? why now? we want to set stage for a discussion on the import of the global contexts of children and young people. There is significant discussion in the academic literature on this topic, and yet we feel that this discussion either does not go far enough in highlighting the role of young people in local and global processes or it is suffused with platitudes about children purported as our future. What we do here is something different. We want to challenge, in a very direct way, conventional wisdoms on both economic-development and child-development by bringing these concepts together and highlighting the ways they no longer enable appropriate understandings of our world and the place of young people in it. There is a tired inevitability to the progressive rhetoric of academics and policy makers, from local community activists to elected representatives of the United Nations, that requires energizing with new ways of knowing. This paper sets the stage for a new way of knowing couched in post-developmental, post-structural theories that are sensitive to the global lives of young people and that open up those lives to the political in new ways.

Social Actors and Victims of Exploitation Working children in the cash economy of Ethiopia's South

This article explores the role of children in household livelihoods among the Gedeo ethnic community in Ethiopia. Three themes are discussed — reproductive activities, entrepreneurial work in marketplaces and sociospatial mobility — in the context of recent theoretical debates over childrens agency and social competence. With shifts in rural livelihoods, children have developed new agentic and entrepreneurial skills in domestic work, trade and migration. This agency is negotiated in everyday life, but it is also structurally highly circumscribed. Situating childrens work within post-rural economic development offers insight into the ways in which regional and global political economy shape their local livelihoods.

Childhood as a Symbolic Space: Searching for Authentic Voices in the Era of Globalisation

Abstract The aim of this article is to discuss the close interplay between global discourses on children as citizens, notions of (a good) childhood at the national and local levels, and discourses on nationality and democracy. This dynamic relationship highlights on the one hand the significance of children as central social actors, and on the other hand how social constructions of children and childhood are closely intertwined with economic, cultural and political transformations in society. The discussion is empirically grounded in the analysis of participatory projects in two Nordic countries, initiated in the early 1990s, ‘Try Yourself’ in Norway, and ‘Children as Fellow Citizens’ in Denmark, in both of which the constitution of children as autonomous, authentic social actors is central. The main argument I present is that, to an increasing degree, childhood is constructed as a symbolic space reproducing symbolic values related to democracy, national identity, autonomy and authenticity. In this way, children are constituted as social participants, actively contributing to reproducing culture and national identities in new ways.

Childhood and Social Investments

There is, and has always been, a correspondence between the prevailing economy and the way people think – perhaps most tersely expressed by Marx in The German Ideology: ‘The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.’ This is a remarkable fact, but it is not a new one. Nevertheless it remains a controversial insight, which is likely to arouse debate and conflict, not least during periods of economic transition.

Introduction: Children, Food and Identity in Everyday Life

The relationship between children and food is currently high on the political agendas of many countries particularly in relation to matters such as school meals, childhood obesity and children’s exposure to marketing (media discourses) of various kinds. Within these discourses, however, ideas of risk predominate as the main way in which children’s relationship with food is constructed and as such this constitutes a largely problematic ‘child’ identity. It is against such a background, therefore, that this volume seeks to explore the significance of a range of food practices for childhood identities in the context of children’s everyday lives in different cultural settings.

The place of children among the Guji of southern Ethiopia: school, work and play

This article explores everyday life among Guji children in southern Ethiopia and the place of children in an intergenerational social order. Based on data generated through ethnographic fieldwork among the Guji, we show that work, school and play are significant and intertwined social practices. Local knowledge and skills of importance for sustainable livelihood are acquired through childrens participation in these different social practices. Oral tradition represents a key element of local knowledge and social practices in everyday life. However, political and social changes, such as settlement policies and the introduction of schools, affect the dynamic interconnectedness of these practices, as well as relations between different generations. These changes also have implications for local knowledge and local livelihoods.

“Vi ere en nasjon vi med?” “We are a nation, we?”: Children’s Rights in Norway — Research, Policies and Practices

The poem above was written by Henrik Wergeland, one of the best-known Norwegian poets, in 1814, the year Norway got its own constitution. In 2014 Norway celebrated 200 years as an autonomous nation, free from Denmark. As the text in the poem reveals, children were included as citizens in the new nation. For 200 years, on every National Day in Norway (17 May), thousands of schoolchildren all over the country have been marching in the national parade, often dressed in traditional national costumes, marking their local identity, swinging their Norwegian flags. The children’s parade illustrates the central place of children in the building of the new nation, as important social actors. Moreover, it reflects the symbolic value of children, closely connecting them to overarching national values, such as democracy, freedom and equality.