The follow-up to "What's Wrong With Kids These Days" — this one, especially, will probably make no sense if you weren't in my class. Sorry! (Hopefully I'll record audio for it one day.)

1. THE
POLITICAL
ECONOMY
OF CHILDHOOD

2. “who owns children?”
children’s legal & political rights
children’s work
children as consumers
“the universal childhood”

8. topic six:
cultural &
structural
approaches to
childhood

10. ‘childhood’ as a
cultural form

11. kids are rude
immoral
lazy & greedy
stupid
at-risk

12. ‘childhood’ as a
structural form

13. a political economy
approach to childhood

14. power political
public policy
relations laws
economic
production,
distribution, and
consumption

15. cultural political/
economic
adapted from jason hart

16. cultural political/
economic
values, attitudes, patterns political/economic
of behavior – and the forces that produce
effect these have on and reproduce the
children’s lives material conditions of
children’s lives
human relations and
interactions institutions and their
workings
local, micro-level
national/global or
macro-level
adapted from jason hart

17. Why are there low rates of enrollment and
participation in schooling in some countries?
cultural reasons structural reasons
(e.g. political economic)
adapted from jason hart

18. “We cling to a fantasy that once upon a
time childhood and youth were years of
carefree adventure…The notion of a
long childhood, devoted to education
and free from adult responsibilities, is a
very recent invention, and one that
became a reality for a majority of
children only after World War II.”
– Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft

20. why do we need a
political-economic
focus on children’s lives?

21. who owns children?

22. children’s legal rights
children’s work
children as consumers

23. children’s legal rights
children’s work
children as consumers

24. parents society

25. parents society
children are dependent future members of
society and polity
parents bear economic
responsibility for intervention on labor
children’s physical needs and education issues
autonomy over house funding for social
and household programs depends on
economic
interpretations

26. children’s legal rights
children’s work
children as consumers

28. children’s work

29. FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE
END OF CHILD FACTORY WORK:
development of universal,
compulsory education
technological advances in machinery
unionization of labour, which led to
higher wages – enough for a
“breadwinner”to support a family

30. Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images

31. FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE
CONTINUATION OF CHILD
FACTORY WORK IN THE SOUTH:
lack of technological advance due to
role of ‘global South’ in the global
economy (i.e. source of cheap labour)
effect of free trade rules that prevent
growth of indigenous industries in
‘global South’

32. FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE
CONTINUATION OF CHILD
FACTORY WORK IN THE SOUTH:
lack of social mobility for poor children
who remain in school
banning or constraint of trade unions
acceptance of child factory work

33. combatting...
child labour
or
poverty?

34. children’s legal rights
children’s work
children as consumers

35. the construction of the
child consumer

38. “These experiences have the advantage
also of creating in the child a sense of
personal, as well as family, pride in
ownership, and eventually teaching him
that his personality can be expressed
through things.”
– White House, 1931

43. is there such a thing as a
universal childhood?

44. Children of
the World
Industrialized Peripheral
Countries Countries
(United States, Europe) (Latin America, Asia)
Working Class Middle Class
Working Class Middle Class
Peasants Industrialists
Daily Reality BASIS FOR Daily Reality Emulates
Universal
Common UNIVERSAL Common (American)
(Mis-)perceptions CHILDHOOD (Mis-)perceptions Childhood

46. contexts of
children’s daily lives
family
community
school
work
media

47. universal
childhood?

48. Childhood is socially constructed as
a consequence of children’s and adult’s
political-economic activities across
different historical periods and
cultural variables – yielding a range
and variety of “childhoods”, rather
than a universal phenomenon.

49. A universal culture of
capitalism and consumerism.

50. “The world seen from the point of
view of the consumer is very
different from the world as seen
from the perspective of worker,
capitalist, or people of other
cultures around the world.”
– Richard Robbins
Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism

51. “who owns children?”
children’s legal & political rights
children’s work
children as consumers
“the universal childhood”