Child Rights, Legal Theory and Social Advocacy

Maria Grahn-Farley

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009366922
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Arguing for a pro-democratic approach in authoritarian times, this book challenges the focus on age in identifying children in child rights. It argues that, even for the purposes of a benevolent rights regime, adopting a monist construction of child identity artificially separates the law from reality, potentially foreclosing children's democratic deliberative agency in self-identification. An essential feature of other human rights regimes is the scope for a claimant to argue one's identity, or foundationally 'I am a human being;' but such a contention is foreclosed when identification as a child is decided uniquely by reference to age. Drawing on Critical Race Theory's narrative method and inspired by W.E.B. DuBois' identity construction, Professor Grahn-Farley advocates a new theoretical understanding of the child and of child rights, cognisant of social interaction and democratic participation. This book will appeal to researchers in child and human rights, and to sociologists, legal theorists and activists.__This title is part of the Flip it Open programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Imprints page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Child and Human Rights: The Birth of the Child Rights Regime
• 2 The Monist Construction of the Child: Without Mind or Body
• 3 The Complex Intersectionality of the Child
• 4 Heard but Unable to Speak
• 5 The Child in the Child Rights Movement
• 6 The Child in the Exception
• 7 The Monist Pull of Universalization
• 8 The Monist Child-Rights Identity and Universal Positivism
• Bibliography
• Index