Changing Childhoods: Local and Global (Wiley & OU Childhood) - Softcover

This book is the last of four which form part of the Open University course, U212, Childhood. Together they provide an undergraduate-level introduction to the interdisciplinary field of childhood and youth studies, and a framework for analysing contemporary policy and practice in, for instance, education, health and social work.

Childhood is now a global issue, forcing a reconsideration of conventional approaches to study. Childhood is also a very personal issue for each and every one of us – scholars, policy-makers, parents and children.

The books encourage the reader’s active involvement, especially through the use of activities. They include children’s and parents’ voices as well as academic discussion of childhood in diverse societies and points in history. Selected short readings accompany the chapters to present additional perspectives.

Changing Childhoods: local and global looks at the obstacles that many children face which make childhood both a local experience and a global concern. Topics include the effects of poverty and other adversities, including violence, on children’s health and well-being. Different approaches to intervening in children’s lives are discussed, with particular attention to their rights, especially to participation and the ways they can become engaged with social issues, including issues surrounding their status as children.

The other titles in the series are:

1 Understanding Childhood: an interdisciplinary approach

2 Childhoods in Context

3 Children’s Cultural Worlds

 

‘Changing Childhoods offers a vivid, up-to-date survey of the state of the world’s children at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Children are presented in all the complexity of their contradictory social roles: as innocent victims and as bullies; as soldiers and as survivors of famines, wars and forced migrations; as high-achieving school children and as oppositional "street kids". A wonderful resource for students, teachers, child activists, and scholars alike.’

Professor Nancy Scheper-Hughes, University of California at Berkeley, USA

‘The book gives significant emphasis to the contextual nature of childhood risk and to children’s courage, resilience and coping. By revealing the startling complexities of childhood adversity and some of the personal, family, community and institutional responses, the volume provides students with a very comprehensive and rich source of learning in this important new field of research and intervention.’

Dr Jo Boyden, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, England

‘The challenge for governments and agencies concerned with the effects of poverty, ill-health and violence on children is how to make a real difference to their lives. Changing Childhoods addresses comprehensively the complexity and multidisciplinary nature of this challenge. The authors draw on a rich tapestry of academic, historical and case-study resources, including about interventions to improve children’s rights and well-being. This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with the health or social development of children.’

Professor Anthony Costello, Institute of Child Health, University College London, England

Heather Montgomery is a lecturer in Childhood Studies at The Open University. She is an anthropologist who has conducted fieldwork in Thailand among young prostitutes and is the author of Modern Babylon? Prostituting Children in Thailand (Berghahn, 2001). She has held post-doctoral positions in the USA, Norway and Oxford and is the author of several articles on children’s rights, child abuse and the anthropology of childhood. Other publications include ‘Imposing rights? A Case study of child prostitution in Thailand’ in Culture and Rights (edited by Cowan, Dembour and Wilson, Cambridge University Press, 2001) and ‘Abandonment and child prostitution in a Thai slum community’ in Abandoned Children (edited by Panter-Brick and Smith, Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Rachel Burr is a lecturer in Childhood Studies at The Open University. She has worked as a social worker and trainer in England, Ireland and Vietnam. Between 1996 and 1998 she lived in Vietnam where she did child-focused research for a doctorate in anthropology. Her research interests are in child-focused human rights, the role of child-focused international aid agencies, and children of the streets and orphanages in Vietnam (she is currently investigating the effect of HIV/AIDS on the lives of those children). She has taught anthropology in the US. Her recent publications include ‘Global and local approaches to children’s rights in Vietnam’, Childhood, 9 (1), and ‘Ethics of doing anthropological fieldwork’, Anthropology Matters, 3. She is currently working on a book on children and their rights in Vietnam, to be published by Rutgers University Press in 2004.

Martin Woodhead is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Childhood, Development and learning at The Open University. He has contributed to courses in child development and education, and has carried out research in child development, early education, sociology of childhood, child labour and children’s rights. He has been a Fulbright scholar in the USA and a consultant to international organizations including the Council of Europe, save the Children and OECD. He is co-editor of the journal Children & Society. His publications include In Search of the Rainbow: Pathways to Quality in Large-scale Programmes for Young Disadvantage Children (Bernard van Leer Foundation, 1996), and the three-volume series Child Development in Families, Schools and Society (Routledge in association with The Open University, 1998, edited by Faulkner and Littleton). Martin chaired the course team for the Open University course U212 Childhood, for which this book is a core text.