4In the 1980s, in Germany, the theses of Habermas were also taken up in social pedagogy and social work in order to question their legitimizing role. For example, an expert conference focused on the question of ‘understanding or colonizing?’ (Müller and Otto, 1984). It was also an occasion for the reflection of professional ethics in social pedagogy (Martin, 2001).
5It should also be pointed out that French sociologist and educationalist Émile Durkheim, one of the fathers of positivist sociology, saw in children ‘primitives’ and ‘savages’ who endanger the social order of modern society. They must therefore be educated strictly ‘morally’ from an early age, especially through school (Durkheim, 1934). With regard to children, the influential US-American sociologist Talcott Parsons spoke of an imminent ‘invasion of the barbarians’ (Parsons, 1951).
6Here, it should be remembered that Jean-Jacques Rousseau ([1762]1979), who is considered to be the father of the modern conception of childhood, referred to the alleged speechless utterances of children as a ‘universal language’, which all children are capable of understanding.
7Here, Scholz refers to the book of the Swedish women and children’s rights activist Ellen Key, which was first published in 1900 and later published in many languages (Key, 1909).
8The uncritical notion of the ‘evil black man’, which has been reproduced and reproduced in many popular texts – such as the song of the Ten Little Negroes – resonates with this critically-intended designation.
9This is also reflected in the refusal of many young people who, according to the legal definition of the UNCRC, are still regarded as children until the age of 18 to consider the ‘children’s rights’ relevant to themselves.
Postcolonial theories from the Global South
The peculiar object of postcolonial studies is not a natural entity, like an elephant, or even a social subject regarded as sharing the cultural world of the observer, but one formed as a colonial object, an inferior and alien ‘Other’ to be studied by a superior and central ‘Self’. Since the ‘elephant’ can speak, the problem is not just to represent it but to create conditions that would enable it to represent itself. (Fernando Coronil, ‘Elephants in the Americas? Latin American Postcolonial Studies and Global Decolonization’, 2008: 413)
Introduction
In order to gain an idea of ‘postcolonial childhoods’, it is commonplace to resort to thought currents, studies and theories, which, after the end of the colonial rule, deal with its aftermath and the continuing forms of dependence and oppression, and claim alternatives from the perspective of colonial and postcolonial subjects. They are known by multiple names: Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Philosophy of Liberation, Ethnophilosophy, Sage Philosophy, Coloniality of Power, Coloniality of Knowledge, De-Coloniality/Decolonization, Epistemology of the South, Southern Theory or Ubuntu, and shall be subsumed here under the term postcolonial theory. Until now, these theories have not extensively taken children and childhoods into consideration. Nevertheless, they can be used and are taken up in this book in order to better understand children in their respective living contexts and their potentials for action, and to place childhoods more precisely in their historical and geopolitical contexts. In this chapter, I will first outline the basic ideas of postcolonial theory and then present some of the most important contributions from Africa and Latin America.
Basic ideas of postcolonial theory
The term postcolonial refers to present geopolitical constellations in which former colonies existed and to former colonial states themselves. It even has relevance for states that were never directly involved in colonialism, yet are influenced by the effects of colonial thought and imagination. The cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1992), from the Caribbean, proposes a two dimensional understanding of the term postcolonial. The first, temporary dimension means the time after the formation of the nation states from the colonies, which could thus be regarded as overcoming enduring state of affairs. The second dimension is the critique of a theoretical system, which can also persist in nation states. It is important to note that ‘there are long-term effects of colonialism, which still have an effect today, and which must be addressed if one wants to understand the postcolonial present and its corresponding problems’ (Kerner, 2012: 9). These problems include poverty and authoritarianism, as well as Eurocentric and racist mentalities, which are found in various facets of politics and society – in the Global South as well as in the Global North.
Aside from rather minor differences in detail, the binding factor of various postcolonial ideas and theories is that they all question the supposed superiority and exemplary character of ‘Western’ development concepts and strategies. They bring attention to the fact that the supposed achievements of the European modern age are the result of conquest, oppression and exploitation, which have been accompanied by racist devaluation and discrimination of people from different geographical parts of the world (and a different skin colour), which proceed in postcolonial constellations.1 The widespread claim that the emergence and development of modernity was an autonomous European endeavour is firmly scrutinized.2 With this in mind, the view stemming from modernization theory, purporting that non-Western societies represent merely the prehistory of Western modernity – and the West represents the model for the development of ‘traditional’ societies – is also questioned.3
The critique on this understanding of modernity relates particularly to the idea that its underlying rationality, and the claim to ‘truth’ which follows, is somehow the only possible way that human life can proceed and improve. The critique is made that this way of seeing the world – and categorizing societies and modes of life as developed or underdeveloped – is based on abstract distinctions and hierarchies, like the distinction between body and soul, emotion and rationality, or nature and culture (see Prout, 2005: 83–111). Ecuadorian economist Alberto Acosta (2013: 38) speaks to one of the most momentous distinctions, when he writes:
Europe consolidated a vision in order to make its aspiration for expansion possible, which, metaphorically speaking, divorced humankind from nature. Without taking humans into account, nature was defined as a fixed component of this vision, and the fact that humans are an integral part of nature was ignored. Hence, the path was opened to controlling, exploiting and manipulation of nature.
It also opened the path for the occupation and exploitation of world regions, which were considered ‘bare nature’, their members classified as ‘wild’, often not even recognized as human beings. Today, this exploitation continues in an unequal world order, where, although former colonies have become formally independent states, their dependence has simply taken on new, less obvious forms, or the (usually