In Part III of the book, I ask about the importance of children’s rights and social movements for the decolonization of childhoods and portray some efforts into this direction. In Chapter 7, I address the question of how to deal with human rights in general and children’s rights in particular in terms of global social inequality and postcolonial power relations. In Chapter 8, I discuss various forms of paternalism and ask how they could be overcome in the field of rights-based children’s protection and participation. In Chapter 9, I show how child-led movements in the Global South can be understood as a form of citizenship from below that could pave the way for a childhood that emancipates itself from illegitimate dependencies and subjugations. The examples given are not only valid for the Global South, but own special characteristics caused by postcolonial inequality and oppression.
The book is an interim analysis of my studies on childhoods in the postcolonial context, mainly those of the Global South. They have a largely exploratory character. In further studies, it will be beneficial to deal with the concrete agency of children and young people of the Global South even more intensively than in this volume, and to get to the roots of its manifestations, conditions and impacts. At the end of the book, I formulate some questions and outline possible perspectives for further research and better child policies in favour of excluded and marginalized children and their liberation from postcolonial dominance.
How to understand childhoods in the postcolonial context
Childhoods from postcolonial perspectives
As I walked down our street, under the persistence of the yellow sun, with everything naked, the children bare, the old men with exhausted veins pumping on dried-up foreheads, I was frightened by the feeling that was no escape from the hard things of this world. Everywhere there was the crudity of wounds, the stark huts, the rusted zinc abodes, the rubbish in the streets, children in rags, the little girls naked on the sand playing with crushed tin-cans, the little boy jumping about uncircumcised, making machine-gun noises, the air vibrating with poisonous heat and evaporating water from the filthy gutters. The sun bared the reality of our lives and everything was so harsh it was a mystery that we could understand and care for one another or for anything at all. (Azaro, the little boy from the spirit world, in the novel The Famished Road by the Nigerian author Ben Okri, 1993, pp 160–1)
Introduction
Dutch anthropologist Olga Nieuwenhuys (2013: 4) explains the necessity of postcolonial perspective in childhood studies with three arguments: first, ‘the dominance of the North over the South is inextricably linked to Northern childhood(s) representations against which Southern childhood(s) are measured and found wanting’. Second, the normative dominance of Northern childhood(s) translates ‘in an overproduction of knowledge based in disciplinary strongholds that resist critique of their Eurocentrism’. Postcolonial thoughts could help subvert this process. Third, ‘the analysis of children’s agency, finally, while playing a seminal role in addressing the two first limitations, runs up against a lack of imagination about its wider social, political and ethical implications and risks missing its radical edge’. In a general sense, the postcolonial approach challenges otherwise unquestioned Eurocentric thought patterns, and can contribute to opening the intellectual arena for all those who are considered subaltern, or subordinate.1
Describing colonized people as possessing a lower rank than those coming from ‘higher’, European civilization shows, according to Nieuwenhuys, ‘remarkable parallels with theories of child development that were emerging at the same time in Europe’ (Nieuwenhuys, 2013: 5). Postcolonial thoughts do not reject constructs such as ‘modern childhood’ or ‘children’s rights’, they rather question the supposed exceptionality or absolutism of these terms, by contextualizing them. They bring attention to the fact that, since the beginning of colonization, the colonial world was an integral part of, and even a prerequisite for modernization. The dominant perception of the child in Europe, as needing to be protected and supplied for, required the exploitation of the colonies. In rejecting the idea of modern childhood as a purely Western discovery or experience, the postcolonial perspective is able to inspire a generally positive tone, which, in place of an ‘us versus them’ attitude, opens the path for a conceptualization of childhood(s) as the unstable and uncertain result of an intercultural encounter.
From Nieuwenhuys’ perspective, postcolonial approaches invite us to constantly re-invent concepts of childhood and to pay attention to the unexpected and uncertain insights which can arise from such encounters. Here it is important to ‘put children’s perspectives and experiences, including their artistic, literary and material culture, at the centre of analysis’ (Nieuwenhuys, 2013: 6). This approach could in sum ‘offer a wealth of new information and support endeavours to take children seriously and stand by their side’ (Nieuwenhuys, 2013: 6). Thereby, children’s creativity and sensibility with respect to social inequality, and their resistant practice, which is widely overlooked, can receive due attention again.
Another author I would like to pick up on is Kristen Cheney. Starting from a critique of international development politics in which she sees a ‘colonization of childhood’ at work, she argues ‘for a decolonization of childhood research and practice – both in the conventional sense of confronting Western civilizing constructions of childhood and as a means to challenge the patriarchal underpinnings of the politics of knowledge production about children’ (Cheney, 2018: 91–2; italics in original). According to her, a vitally inclusive co-production of knowledge with children that aims to resist or even rupture the status quo of adults as the primary holders of knowledge is necessary:
In keeping with other decolonization movements, including decolonial feminism, childhood studies could strive not only to decolonize the curriculum by diversifying its contents but also to actively question broader structures of research, policy, and practice to make space for epistemic diversity that will in turn help children’s knowledge to be seen as more legitimate in the eyes of researchers, policymakers, and development practitioners. (Cheney, 2018: 100)
Based on the considerations of Olga Nieuwenhuys and Kristen Cheney, in this and subsequent chapters I will use postcolonial and decolonial thoughts for the study of the life and agency forms of children, principally those of the Global South.
First, I will follow some of the debates conducted in social childhood research, such as the question of whether a ‘global childhood’ has developed during the process of globalization. Then I will explain what I mean by postcolonial constellation and postcolonial childhoods, and illustrate it with some empirical data. Finally, I will look at which kinds of agency in children and young people of the Global South are to be found and how they are to be understood.
Limitations of the Eurocentric childhood pattern
The childhood pattern that prevails in the world today, emerging in modern Europe, confers on children a certain degree of autonomy, but on the condition that they are restricted to activities that have no significant current relevance for the formation of society. These are, on the one hand, activities which are imagined as not being purposive and have no direct