Global Childhoods: Issues and Debates - Paperback

by Kate Cregan (Author), Denise Cuthbert (Author)

"An exciting and engagingly written book. The case studies are intriguing and the discussion of previous theories impeccable."
- Dr. Heather Montgomery, The Open University

"What is a child? Kate Cregan and Denise Cuthbert begin this path-breaking and compelling work with a deceptively simple question. From this seemingly straightforward formulation, they unravel, interrogate and engage with some of the most pressing issues related to children in the early 21st century... This book is an absolute must for scholars in all the fields of childhood studies."
- Professor Joy Damousi, University of Melbourne

Global Childhoods draws on the authors' interdisciplinary backgrounds and original research in the fields of embodiment, theorisations of childhood, children′s policy, child placement and adoption, and family formation. The book critically demonstrates how following from the modern construction of childhood which emerged unevenly from the late eighteenth century, the twentieth century saw the emergence of the conception of the normative global child, a figure finally enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The book offers a wide-ranging critical analysis of approaches to children and childhood across the social sciences. Through stimulating case studies which include the experiences of child soldiers, orphans, forced child migrants, and children and biomedicine, Cregan and Cuthbert critically test the notion of the 'global child' against the lived experiences of children around the globe.

Kate Cregan and Denise Cuthbert draw on and contributes to debates on children and the idea of the child in a wide range of disciplines: sociology, anthropology, education, children′s studies, cultural studies, history, psychology, law and development studies. In its historical coverage of the rise of the concepts of the child and the global child, its critical engagement with the theorisation of childhood, and its detailed case studies, the book is essential reading for the study of children and childhood.

Author Biography

Kate Cregan is the author of Sociology of the Body (2006), The Theatre of the Body (2009) and Key Concepts in Body and Society (2012). The majority of her writing and research is on understandings of embodiment across time, space and cultures, with particular reference to medical interpretations of the body, medical technologies and the representation of the body in images. She has two allied research interests, in ethics (human, social and research) and how the praxis of becoming a writer informs the process of becoming a researcher. She has extensive experience teaching and researching in the humanities and social sciences, including teaching ethics to medical students. Currently, she is co-ordinator and senior lecturer of the interdisciplinary Graduate Researchers in Print (GRiP) programs in the Faculty of Arts, Monash University and is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Graduate Research at RMIT University.

Denise Cuthbert has published extensively on children and children's issues in the fields of adoption, child removal and child placement. With Marian Quartly and Shurlee Swain, she is the co-author of The Market in Babies: Stories of Adoption in Australia (2013); and with Ceridwen Spark edited Other People's Children: Adoption in Australia (2009). Her research has investigated Indigenous child removal, intercountry adoption, adoption policy and practice, the management of children in disasters, and child abuse in Malaysia. It appears in leading journals including Social Policy and Society, International Social Welfare, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Journal of Historical Sociology and many others. Currently she is the Dean of the School of Graduate Research at RMIT University. Related to this role, she maintains an active research and publication program in higher education policy, pedagogy and practice.