Global Childhoods beyond the North-South Divide

Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, Michael Bourdillon, Sylvia Meichsner, Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, Michael Bourdillon, Sylvia Meichsner

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319955421
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319955438
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Social Sciences

- Explores academic treatment of children's lives across the Global North and Global South

- Offers a unique selection of materials related to global childhoods, young people, families, and education.

- Provides avenues for further empirical and theoretical exploration.

© The Author(s) 2019

Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, Michael Bourdillon and Sylvia Meichsner (eds.)Global Childhoods beyond the North-South DividePalgrave Studies on Children and Developmenthttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95543-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Exploring Children’s Lives Beyond the Binary of the Global North and Global South

Afua Twum-Danso Imoh¹ , Michael Bourdillon² and Sylvia Meichsner¹

(1)

Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK

(2)

African Studies Centre Leiden, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe

Afua Twum-Danso Imoh (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Michael Bourdillon

Sylvia Meichsner

End Abstract

Binaries such as culture versus nature, structure versus agency, the Global North versus the Global South, childhood versus childhoods, and global versus local (James 2010) have long underpinned studies of childhood. In particular, the bulk of the literature in the multidisciplinary field of childhood studies, which has largely been produced in the Global North, regardless of geographical focus, has hitherto been divided between what is variably described as the First World, developed countries, the Minority World, or the Global North, on the one hand, and the part of the world alternatively referred to as the Third World, developing countries, the Majority World, or the Global South, on the other hand.

That such a binary can be useful in framing discussions around childhood due to significant differences that exist between these two world areas, best highlighted by contemporary anthropological studies, is not in dispute (e.g., Boyden 1997; Burr 2006; Montgomery 2002; essays in Bourdillon and Myers 2013; Spittler and Bourdillon 2012; Evers et al. 2011). Such studies have demonstrated in great detail the extent to which ideals, frameworks, and concepts developed in the Global North may be limited in their application in diverse contexts in the South. Failure to understand these important differences has important consequences. Most notably, it can result in failure to understand how children develop in different contexts, the development of practical interventions that offer little improvement to children’s lives, and impediments to children’s life chances (see, e.g., the essays in Bourdillon and Myers 2013).

However, too sharp a focus on differences encourages binary dichotomies between childhoods in the Global North and Global South. More generally, it encourages binary thinking in terms of “them” as opposed to “us”, which contributes to the “othering” of a particular population of children and, indeed, their families (see also Niewenhuys 2013; Twum-Danso Imoh 2016). For instance, while the term the “Global North” is typically used to refer to economically strong and politically dominant countries primarily in Western Europe and North America, the “Global South” is used in relation to countries that do not share these attributes and are mainly located in the southern hemisphere. This economic and political dominance of the group of countries labelled as the “Global North”, facilitated by the process of modernisation, has led to a situation whereby the norms, values, and practices of these countries tend to be promoted, and commonly perceived, as universally valid at the cost and dismissal of those of the South. Massey (2005, 71) puts it well when she states:

In these discourses of modernity there was one story which the “advanced” countries/peoples/cultures were leading. There was only one history. The real import of spatiality, the possibility of multiple narratives, was lost. The regulation of the world into a single trajectory, via the temporal convening of space, was, and still often is, a way of refusing to address the essential multiplicity of the spatial. It is the imposition of a single universal.

Hence, it must be recognised that notions such as the Global North and Global South are not simply technical terms used for ease of describing parts of the world. Rather, they are also accompanied by a built-in discourse that establishes and manifests hierarchies among countries. This discourse permeates all dimensions of social, economic, and political life in each world area, including perceptions of, and approaches to the study of, children and childhoods. This can result in depictions or portrayals of a society that are imprecise and inaccurate and ultimately feed stereotypes that miss nuances and, importantly, stifle understanding and knowledge.

While it is important to acknowledge differences, it is equally important to move beyond thinking in binaries for two reasons. The first reason is that a focus on differences between societies can obscure the ways in which many children have to combine, in their lives, concepts, ideals, and practices relating to childhood that come from different, and sometimes, conflicting sources, which are both local and global in their nature. This is due to global processes such as migration, the history of colonialism and its enduring legacy, and the spread of ideas and norms, which have led to diverse attitudes and reactions within contexts in the South depending on variables such as socio-economic status and education. Hence, children’s lives in diverse contexts are increasingly being affected by the same global processes as well as by local realities that are specific to their contexts (Katz 2004; Punch 2015, 2016; Punch and Tisdall 2012; see also Ansell 2009; Stephens 1995; Holloway and Valentine 2000; Andre and Hilgers 2015). This has led Holloway and Valentine (2000, 767) to assert the need to recognise that the global and local “are not conceived of in terms of universality and particularity” but as “intimately bound together”. This theme is well illustrated in a number of chapters of this volume (Balagopalan, Bourdillon, Basu, Cordeiro and colleagues, and Mfoafo-M’Carthy and Akesson).

We start with a chapter focusing on teaching global childhoods in a university in the USA by Sarada Balagopalan, who points to multiple childhoods in inegalitarian American society to show how this multiplicity can be used by instructors of childhood studies to challenge students to question their own assumptions about what is appropriate in childhood and thereby improve their self-awareness and critical thinking. This is followed by a chapter by Michael Bourdillon who asserts that although child labour is often considered to be a problem that afflicts contexts in the South while having been effectively overcome in the North, it is more useful to consider different perspectives on the utility and harmfulness of children’s work in both the North and South as relating to variables such as access to status and resources. In turn, Chandni Basu grapples with the legacy of British colonial rule in India, showing the extent to which this historical event has, through the institution of the school, standardised normative understandings of modern childhood. This, she claims, has resulted in the increasing criminalisation of boys from marginal social locations whose experiences of childhood in contemporary India do not fit the mould that has been articulated globally and reproduced by the “privileged” classes at the national level. Drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre, Cordeiro and colleagues use the concept of the “right to the city” as an exemplar from the Global North that has yet to be implemented there but has, instead, taken off as a concept in Brazil. While foregrounding the lived experiences of Brazilian children, the authors engage in broader debates about young people’s rights and address multiple childhoods and relations, which shed light on the global processes that affect children’s daily lives in this context. That migration facilitates the enmeshing of the global and the local to some degree is well demonstrated by Magnus Mfoafo-M’Carthy and Bree Akesson. Their chapter illustrates that although adults from a number of West African countries who have recently migrated to Canada often struggle to adjust their child-rearing practices, they also felt that their identification with cultures of both their home and adopted countries enabled them to bridge two world views that are traditionally recognised as being rigidly linked to either the Global North or the Global South.

This exploration of childhoods, caught between local and global structures and forces that influence the lives and realities of children (see Andre and Hilgers 2015), further highlights the importance of a relational perspective in understanding children’s lives across world areas. Specifically, it demonstrates the extent to which childhoods are cons...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Exploring Children’s Lives Beyond the Binary of the Global North and Global South
• Part I. Intersections Between the Global and the Local in Children’s Lives in the Context of Their Communities
• Part II. Exploring Dissonance and Synergy in Children’s Lives Across World Areas
• Back Matter