Childhood innocence: essence, education, and performativity

Duschinsky, Robbie

doi:10.1080/0950236x.2012.751441

Cited by 21 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…This observation matches that Kristeva (2004: 155), whose elaborations on and debates with Douglas I have considered elsewhere, who notes that her 'investigation into abjection... picks up on a certain vacuum' (Duschinsky 2013a).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 64%

Recognizing Secular Defilement: Douglas, Durkheim and Housework

Duschinsky¹

2014

History and Anthropology

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Mary Douglas is generally regarded as a faithful disciple of Durkheim. Yet her classic work Purity and Danger is best understood as premised upon a fundamental disagreement with Durkheim, who she accused of conflating purity with 'the sacred' and impurity with 'the profane'. Key to this disagreement was the theoretical status of the 'busy scrubbings' of everyday housework. This disagreement has had a substantial legacy since, in turning her attention to purity and impurity in their specificity, Douglas bequeathed anthropology and sociology a theory of purity and impurity that has remained an important, perhaps even dominant, paradigm. This paradigm has been identified as an exemplar of synchronic analysis. Yet this paradigm itself is the product of a specific historical and intellectual context, little recognised today. Attending to this context holds opens possibilities, which have otherwise tended to be neglected, for theorising purity and impurity in their specificity.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 64%

Recognizing Secular Defilement: Douglas, Durkheim and Housework

Duschinsky¹

2014

History and Anthropology

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“…I do not intend this as a claim valid for all cultures and times. As I have discussed elsewhere (eg Duschinsky and Lampitt, 2012), Western assumptions about essence as a state of internal homogeneity underpinning existent phenomena are shaped by a particular cultural heritage. Purity and impurity, as appeals to self-identity, appear in discourses as diverse as those on the body, sexuality, political corruption, nationalism, waste and rubbish – wherever a qualitatively homogenous essence is taken to underpin existence.…”

Section: Self-identity: Tracking Impuritymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, the ‘identities’ in question do not contain any heterogeneous, foreign or inferior elements; all of their constitutive elements are ‘the same’ in some relevant sense. Secondly, the phenomena in question are understood not to have deviated from their essence, whether their conceptual or ontological ground (Duschinsky and Lampitt, 2012). In the Logic (1975: §121), Hegel picks out these two aspects.…”

Section: Self-identity: Tracking Impuritymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Greater conceptual precision, facilitated by Goodnow's critique, reveals the pattern: pure phenomena are those that correspond perfectly to an imputed, qualitatively homogeneous essence. Childhood innocence is understood as a period of utter identity with natural essence, before the conflictual impulses that characterize later forms of subjectivity (see Duschinsky, 2012). And since the Enlightenment, there has been a tendency for scientific knowledge to be constructed as capable of determination solely by the singular essence of reality rather than by any contingent socio-political or physical factors.…”

Section: Self-identity: Tracking Impuritymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Abjection and Self-Identity: Towards a Revised Account of Purity and Impurity

Duschinsky

2013

The Sociological Review

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“…On the contrary, it is concern for the human rights of all children that drives this inquiry. As Duschinsky (2013) notes, “Discourses of childhood innocence seem to have an unimpeachable moral status. Yet scrutiny of these discourses indicates that they may in fact be regarded as a potentially exclusionary form of social practice, linked to little-acknowledged and problematic social effects” (p. 764).…”

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confidence: 99%

Interrogating innocence: “Childhood” as exclusionary social practice

Garlen

2018

Childhood

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Within the contemporary US context, the construct of childhood innocence is a powerful social myth that structures children’s social relations and culture and informs their rights and status in society. In this article, I interrogate the construct of childhood innocence to examine how it operates as an exclusionary form of social practice. By examining the emotional investments and social tensions that have shaped concepts of childhood, which define who is entitled to innocence and what it means to “belong” with/in childhood, I reveal how the doctrine of innocence has operated to maintain White supremacy. I explore the implications of a construct of childhood that works against the agency and dignity of most children by perpetuating silence about social injustices to illustrate the need for a reconceptualization of childhood that acknowledges and prioritizes the human rights of all children.

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Childhood innocence: essence, education, and performativity

Cited by 21 publications

References 15 publications

Recognizing Secular Defilement: Douglas, Durkheim and Housework

Recognizing Secular Defilement: Douglas, Durkheim and Housework

Abjection and Self-Identity: Towards a Revised Account of Purity and Impurity

Interrogating innocence: “Childhood” as exclusionary social practice

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