Legal System and the Social Construction of Childhood

In 1924 the League of Nations promulgated the first inter guinea pig agreement setting out the principles, which should inform the universal treatment of pincerren. The underlying image of the child contained in the Declaration of Geneva was thoroughly imbued with a modernist innovation of childhood. In particular children were seen as incomplete, non-social, weak and dependent. The Declaration, therefore, placed its emphasis on the duties of larges towards children.The UN Convention of the Rights of the minor (UNCRC), agreed in 1989, took this a stage further by making its preps leg ally binding on national governments that ratify it. By 2003 this included all governments of the adult male except the US. The UNCRC, however, surpasses the modernist notion of children as a cultural other. It raises childrens social participation as a goal alongside justification and provision.Childrens participation has become an worldwide rallying point for child advocacy. It is seen as ca pable of transcending differences in the social, cultural and sparing conditions of childrens lives around the world (Davie, Upton and Varma, 1996 Flekkoy and Kaufman, 1997 Franklin, 1995 Hart, 1992 Lansdown, 1995).From one point of view the UNCRC represents a benign attempt to bring enlightenment and humane standards to all children. It has been employ in this way and it is on these grounds that it draws enthusiastic support and even evokes a authentic amount of zealotry. It has also been characterized as high in rhetoric just low in intensity. In this sense it is a highly suitable instrument through which declarations of lofty principle can be made but about which little needs to be done in practice.However, it is also the case that the childrens rights lobby is, for good or ill, on the forefront of the global spread of norms about childhood. As Boyden (1997197) notes, these efforts need their precursors in the civilizing mission of colonialism As the 20th century has progr essed, then, highly selective, stereo-typical perceptions of childhood of the innocent child victim on the one hand and the young deviant on the other have been exported from the industrial world to the conspiracy It has been the explicit goal of childrens rights specialists to crystallize in international law a universal system of rights for the child based on these norms.The effects of this, she argues, atomic number 18 not always positive. Rights is a concept which is ultimately tied(p) up with cultural values. Their successful implementation depends upon the existence of a compatible framework of meaning and an theme of social and economic supports. The right to protection, for example, may translate well into practice when agencies, such as the police, are reliable upholders of law. When they are reliably corrupt it can be a recipe for oppression.Furthermore, some aspects of the concept of childhood contained in the UNCRC might also depend for their realization upon a le vel of economic wealthiness that many countries do not possess. As we have seen, for some countries international economic policy has conduct to deepening poverty, ill-health and inequality at the same time that social policy is urging the adoption of the rights of children.Perhaps, though, this is to underrating the subtle bringes that the UNCRC is enmeshed within. The different ways in which it (or part of it, Article 12) can be construe illustrate well how cultural globalization creates both diversity and homogeneity. It is, as Lee (1999) has pointed out, a register that has effectivity however beca example it is ambiguous. It is framed in such a way that its general principles are precondition a great deal of space for local interpretation. In fact, such was the level of disagreement among those who drafted it that this was the only way to make it acceptable to a wide range of countries with different cultural traditions about childhood.As Lee (2001a 95-6) comments If the Convention had been intended to clarify childrens position, it would indeed crumple under this burden, but the Convention operates in a rather different way. Having generated childhood ambiguity, it then lays the responsibility for managing that ambiguity on the legislatures and the policy-makers of the states that have ratified it.The representation of childhood found in the UNCRC has become more complex and ambiguous than the earlier Declaration. The protection and provision articles of the Convention still emphasize childrens need of adult support but, at the same time, especially through Article 12 of the Convention, children are pictured as social actors, not outside but inside society, not passive recipients but active participants.Role of the Legal System in regularisation childrenHowever, the contradictory effects of globalization do not all flow in the direction of self-expression and rights. From another(prenominal) point of view the twentieth century has witnessed incre ased levels of institutional control over children. The introduction of supreme schooling and childrens formal exclusion from paid work signaled a historical tendency towards childrens increasing mixed bag in specifically designated, separate settings, supervised by professionals and structured according to age and ability.Nsman (1994) has called this process the institutionalization of childhood. Throughout the twentieth century schooling has gradually been extended both upwards (for example in incremental steps towards an older leaving-age for compulsory schooling) and downwards in the growing emphasis on pre-school education and nursery provision (Moss et al., 2000.)Even leisure time is often framed in this way for many children because activities such as sport or music increasingly take place within some kind of institutional setting. It can be seen in the provision of after-school and holiday clubs that organize and regulate childrens activities under an adult gaze, channelin g them into forms considered developmentally healthy and productive. Such phenomena have been noted across European societies.German sociologists, for example, have used the terms domestication to describe the progressive removal of children from the streets and other public spaces and their relocation in special, protected spaces. They use the term insularization to describe the decreased levels of childrens autonomous mobility around cities and the creation of special islands of childhood to and from which they are transported (Zeiher, 2001, 2002). in spite of appearance these institutions, but with significant variations according to national policy, it is possible to discern a struggle to tighten the polity of children and to shape more firmly the outcomes of their activities. Schooling is a good example of this.In the last decades of the twentieth century the rather instrumental schooling regimes of the Tiger Economies of Southeast Asia were held up as the model for producing economic efficiency and were widely influential in changing educational systems in Europe. I have argued elsewhere that this phenomenon represents a refocusing of modernitys drive to control the future through children (Prout, 2000a).This tightening of control over children derives from a declining faith in other mechanisms of economic control, combined with increasing competitive pressures from the world economy. The intensification of global contestation and the intricate networking of national economies erode the states capacity to control its own economic activity. In such circumstances, moldable children as the future labor force is seen as an increasingly important option. This, after all, is exactly what add on side economics is about but, as far as children are concerned, it often leads to attempts to regulate and order what they learn and how they learn it.ReferencesBoyden, J 1997, Childhood and the Policy Makers, in James, A and Prout, A (eds), Constructing and Reconst ructing Childhood contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood (2nd edn), Falmer Press, London.Davie, R, Upton, G and Varma, V (eds) 1996, The Voice of the Child, Falmer Press, London.Flekkoy, GD and Kaufman, NH 1997, The foundericipation Rights of the Child Rights and Responsibilities in Family and Society, Jessica Kingsley, London.Franklin, B 1995, Handbook of Childrens Rights Comparative Policy and Practice, Routledge, London.Hart, R 1992, Childrens Participation From Tokenism to Citizenship, Innocenti Essays, Florence.Lansdown, G 1995, Taking Part Childrens Participation in Decision Making, Institute for Public Policy Research, London.Lee, N 1999, The Challenge of Childhood The distribution of Childhoods Ambiguity in Adult Institutions, Childhood, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 455-74.Lee, N 2001a, Childhood and Society Growing Up in an Age of Uncertainty, Open University Press, Buckingham.Moss, P, Dillon, J and Statham, J 2000, The Child in Need and The Rich Child Discourse s, Constructions and Practices, unfavorable Social Policy, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 233-54.Nsman, E 1994, Individualisation and Institutionalisation of Children, in Qvortrup, J., Bardy, M., Sgritta, G. and Wintersberger, H. 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