Childhoods from postcolonial perspectives

Abstract

This chapter follows some of the debates conducted in social childhood studies, such as the question of whether a ‘global childhood’ has developed during the processes of globalization and discusses the scope and limitations of Eurocentric childhood patterns. It explains what postcolonial constellations and postcolonial childhoods mean and illustrates these concepts with some empirical data. Finally, the chapter looks at the manifestations of children’s agency in the Global South and how agency can be conceptualized.

Indigenous epistemologies of childhood in contexts of inequality: Three case studies from the “Global South”

“…Therefore, dominant understandings and governance of “childhood” have gone hand-in-hand with the colonial domination exercised by Western nations (Ashcroft, 2001; Cregan and Cuthbert, 2014). Although studies of children and childhoods are almost non-existent in postcolonial theories (Liebel, 2020), and postcolonial theories have not been fully accounted for in childhood studies (Nieuwenhuys, 2013), there is recent important scholarly work (e.g. Liebel, 2020) that is exploring how theoretical perspectives that emerged in the “Global South” can shed light on an “other thinking” (Mignolo, 2012) around childhood realities in the “Global South.” This scholarship has carried forward the same criticisms made by the post-colonial theories mentioned above, and has reinforced the sociohistorical variable as an imperative to appraising childhoods in diverse contexts.…”

“…As a response against the epistemicide mentioned above, this article aspired to explore the epistemic plurality (Liebel, 2020) in the ways indigenous cultures appraise child development, but also in the “native pedagogies” (Tassinari, 2007) that give children the tools they need to navigate their environments. Agency in these children is manifested by active appropriation, as they learn by exploration, observation and inference (De León Pasquel, 2005).…”

“This changes things”: Children, targeting, and the making of precision

“…Childhood is a coding that does important meaning-making work in this regard, but it too is constituted in the intersectionality ( Crenshaw, 1989 ) of identity codings that include, among other things, race and gender. Colonial relations of power, shot through with raced, gendered, and other ascriptions, locate some children outside of the norms of childhood and consequently beyond presumptive political innocence and the relative protections it might confer ( Liebel, 2020 ).…”

What might a decolonial perspective on child protection look like? Lessons from Kenya

“…Hegemonic narratives of deficient southern childhoods abound but calls to decolonise childhood studies in general (Balagopalan, 2019; Cheney, 2018; De Castro, 2020; Hanson et al, 2018; Twum-Danso Imoh, 2016) and child protection more specifically (Fay, 2019; Liebel, 2020) challenge and attempt to reframe these narratives. Southern theories (decolonial and postcolonial) enable a critical examination of the impact of historical processes like colonisation, globalisation and modernisation in producing and reproducing problematic narratives of the Global South.…”