Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I How to Understand Childhoods in the Postcolonial Context
- Part II Children Under Colonial and Postcolonial Rule
- Part III Children’s Rights and the Decolonization of Childhoods
- Epilogue: Childhoods and Children’s Rights Beyond Postcolonial Paternalism
- References
- Index
2 - Colonialism and the Colonization of Childhoods
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I How to Understand Childhoods in the Postcolonial Context
- Part II Children Under Colonial and Postcolonial Rule
- Part III Children’s Rights and the Decolonization of Childhoods
- Epilogue: Childhoods and Children’s Rights Beyond Postcolonial Paternalism
- References
- Index
Summary
It is said that the Negro loves to jabber; in my own case, when I think of the word jabber I see a gay group of children calling and shouting for the sake of calling and shouting – children in the midst of play, to the degree to which play can be considered an initiation into life. The Negro loves to jabber, and from this theory, it is not a long road that leads to a new proposition: The Negro is just a child. The psychoanalysts have a fine start here, and the term orality is soon heard. (Frantz Fanon. Black Skin. White Masks, [1952]1986: 15– 16)
Although generalizations are of course dangerous, colonialism and colonialization basically mean organization, arrangement. The two words derive from the Latin word colĕre, meaning to cultivate or to design. Indeed, the historical colonial experience does not and obviously cannot reflect the peaceful connotations of these words. But it can be admitted that the colonists (those settling a region), as well as the colonialists (those exploiting a territory by dominating a local majority) have all tended to organize and transform non-European areas into fundamentally European constructs. (V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa, 1988: 1)
Introduction
In order to develop a concept of childhoods in postcolonial and decolonizing contexts, it is necessary to understand the connections between colonialization and childhood.
Childhood is understood here equally as a form of being a child and a discourse about this form of being (Alderson, 2013). Both dimensions should not be confused, but also should not be separated. The history of childhood is closely intertwined with changes in the modes of production and reproduction of societies, in the modern European era particularly with the development of the capitalist mode of production and the rise of the bourgeoisie to the ruling class. They have led to a spatial separation of the production and reproduction sphere and the localization of women and children in the small family, which is organized as a private space. In this context, new normative conceptions of a childhood have emerged, which were conceived beyond the production sphere as a ‘pedagogical province’ (Goethe), ‘family childhood’ and finally also as ‘school childhood’ (see Hendricks, 2011). To this extent, the history of childhood is always a history of the ideas and conceptions of childhood.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Decolonizing ChildhoodsFrom Exclusion to Dignity, pp. 33 - 52Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2020