Prosecuting a scapegoat for the state will not lead to justice for the shootings on Bloody Sunday

A former British paratrooper involved with the shooting dead of 14 unarmed demonstrators on ‘Bloody Sunday’ (in Derry, in 1972), was arrested in November last year. Maurice Punch argues that this is a graphic example of a scapegoat masking the sins of the state. It does not properly address the issues of The Troubles to put one individual in the dock, when elites are not made accountable for their actions

Generational Power Relations in Rural Bolivia

First paragraph: It can be argued that childhood is a relational concept which forms part of the generational order and that generational processes shape the nature of child–adult relations (Alanen 2001; Mayall 2002). When the social positions of ‘children’ and ‘adults’ are ‘constituted, reproduced and transformed through relational activity’ (Mayall 2002: 40), this can be referred to as practices of ‘generationing’ (Alanen 2001). Thus, as Alanen (2001: 21) argues, childhood and adulthood are connected and interdependent. However, children’s structural position in society means that generally they have less power than adults. Thus, adults’ generational location enables them to wield more power over children and this is an example of Lukes’s (2005) relational definition of power as one social group exercises ‘power over’ another

We Should Promote Harm Reduction to Combat the Opioid Overdose Crisis

Over 70,000 people in the U.S. died from drug overdoses last year, and the U.S. continues to struggle with how to address this crisis. This issue brief explains the concept of harm reduction, describes various types of programs that fall under the harm reduction model, and discusses the promises these approaches hold for helping to combat the current opioid crisis

Negotiating the Birth Order: Children's Experiences

This paper explores the ways in which children perceive the relative opportunities and constraints of their birth order position within their families by comparing and contrasting the views of oldest, middle and youngest siblings. It shows that birth order and age can be experienced at times as a constraint on sibling behaviour and at other times as a resource that can be utilised in a dynamic and creative manner. Thus, although birth order is important in shaping children’s experiences of sibship, relative benefits have to be actively maintained and limitations of each position in the sibling order are not passively accepted and are often contested. The paper argues that birth order and age are not fixed hierarchies but can be subverted, contested, resisted and negotiated through children’s everyday experiences of family life. It is based on a qualitative study of 30 families with three children between the ages of 5 and 17. In-depth individual and group interviews were conducted with 90 children from this sample of 30 families of mixed socio-economic backgrounds in central Scotland

Negotiating Autonomy: Childhoods in Rural Bolivia

First paragraph: This chapter, based on my empirical study of children’s lives in rural Bolivia, exemplifies ways in which children as active agents can negotiate relative autonomy within the structural constraints of childhood in relation to more powerful, adult, social actors (see Harden and Scott 1998). The structures of adult society limit children’s opportunities for asserting their autonomy. Children live in a world in which the parameters tend to be set by adults, especially in relation to children’s use of time and space (Ennew 1994). Therefore it is important to see how they negotiate their position within the constraints of that bounded world. It is necessary to explore children’s competencies and strengths, as well as their constraints and limits, and their strategies for negotiating with adult society

Household Division of Labour: Generation, Gender, Age, Birth Order and Sibling Composition

The paper discusses the somewhat limited literature on children’s participation in household work and then presents empirical evidence from rural households in Bolivia which shows that the division of household labour is worked out according to generation, gender, age, birth order and sibling composition. It argues that whilst adult household labour is highly determined by gender roles, children’s labour often cuts across gender stereotypes and does not merely mirror the adult division of labour in rural households. The nature of generation-specific tasks are explored by presenting a detailed age-based division of labour in three different areas of unpaid household work: agriculture, animal-care and domestic work. The final part of the paper explores the ways in which birth order and sibling composition influence the distribution of children’s household work. Whilst the paper is based on a case study of a rural community in a low-income country, it highlights important factors such as birth order and sibling composition which have frequently been overlooked or ignored in household divisions of labour in both the Majority and Minority World

Childhoods in the Majority World: Miniature Adults or Tribal Children?

Drawing on ethnographic data from rural Bolivia and applying the theoretical approaches of the minority group child and the tribal child (James et al. 1998), this paper shows that majority world children integrate work, play and school, moving back and forth between child and adult-centred worlds. It argues that majority world children have largely been perceived in relation to their work, and that the overlapping arenas of their everyday lives tend to be ignored. A more holistic perspective which considers how they may combine work and school with play could be more appropriate for understanding children’s childhoods

Cross-world and Cross-disciplinary Dialogue: A More Integrated, Global Approach to Childhood Studies

This article, by drawing on examples from sociology, anthropology and geography, argues that childhood studies is generally a multi-disciplinary field rather than inter-disciplinary. It emphasises that childhood studies could benefit from greater dialogue between its sub-disciplines as well as with those outside academia. While advances have been made, there is a persistent gap/tension between the discourse of childhood studies and arenas of practice and policy. More effective dialogue could also enhance learning across the Majority and Minority Worlds. While recognising the limitations and challenges of cross-world dialogue, the article suggests some areas of commonalities and differences between childhoods in the Majority and Minority World as avenues for further empirical and theoretical exploration. The increasingly blurred boundaries across different world areas and across subfields highlight the need for more inter-disciplinary, cross-world dialogue which also bridges the divide between academia and practice