Starting young?: links between childhood and adult participation in culture and science: a literature review

A selective review of research literature on the extent of childhood exposure to and experience of culture and science and subsequent adult cultural or science participation

Images of the witch in nineteenth-century culture

This thesis examines the witch imagery used during the nineteenth century in children’s literature, realist and gothic fiction, poetry and art, and by practitioners and critics of mesmerism, spiritualism and alternative spirituality. The thesis is based on close readings of nineteenth-century texts and detailed analysis of artwork, but also takes a long view of nineteenth-century witch imagery in relation to that of preceding and succeeding periods. I explore the means by which the image of the witch was introduced as an overt or covert figure into the work of nineteenth-century writers and artists during a period when the majority of literate people no longer believed in the existence of witchcraft; and I investigate the relationship between the metaphorical witch and the areas of social dissonance which she is used to symbolise. I demonstrate that the diversity of nineteenth-century witch imagery is very wide, but that there is a tendency for positive images to increase as the century progresses. Thereby the limited iconography of malevolent witches and powerless victims of witch-hunts, promulgated by seventeenth-century witch-hunters and eighteenth-century rationalist philosophers respectively, were joined by wise-women, fairy godmothers, sorceresses, and mythical immortals, all of whom were defined, directly or indirectly, as witches. Nonetheless I also reveal that every image of the witch I examine has a dark shadow, despite or because of the empathy between witch and creator which is evident in many of the works I have studied. In the Introduction I acknowledge the validity of theories put forward by historians regarding the influence of societal changes on the decline of witchcraft belief, but I argue that those changes also created the need for metaphorical witchery to address the anxieties created by those changes. I contend that the complexity of social change occurring during and prior to the nineteenth century resulted in an increase in the diversification of witch imagery. I argue that the use of diverse images in various cultural forms was facilitated by the growth of liberal individualism which allowed each writer or artist to articulate specific concerns through discrete images of the witch which were no longer coloured solely by the dictates of superstition or rationalism. I look at the peculiar ability of the witch as a symbolic outcast from society to view that society from an external perspective and to use the voice of the exile to say the unsayable. I also use definitions garnered from a wide spectrum of sources from cultural history to folklore and neo-paganism to justify my broad definition of the word ‘witch’. In Chapter One I explore children’s literature, on the assumption that images absorbed during childhood would influence both the conscious and unconscious witch imagery produced by the adult imagination. I find the templates for familiar imagery in collections of folklore and, primarily, in translations of ‘traditional’ fairy tales sanitised for the nursery by collectors such as Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. I then examine fantasies created for Victorian children by authors such as Mary de Morgan, William Makepeace Thackeray, George MacDonald and Charles Kingsley, where the image of witch and fairy godmother is conflated in fiction which elevates the didactic fairy tale to a level which in some cases is imbued with a neo-platonic religiosity, thereby transforming the witch into a powerful portal to the divine. In contrast the canonical novelists whose work I examine in Chapter Two generally project witch imagery obliquely onto foolish, misguided, doomed or defiant women whose witchery is both allusionary and illusionary. I begin with the work of Sir Walter Scott whose bad or sad witches touch his novels with the supernatural while he denies their magic. Scott’s witch imagery, like that of Perrault and Grimm, is reflected in the witches who represent women’s exclusion from autonomy, education and/or the literary establishment in the works of Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot. Traditional fairy-tale imagery is particularly evident in Charles Dickens’ use of the witch to represent negative aspects in the development of society or the individual. In contrast Scott’s impulse to distance himself from the pre-urban world represented by his witches contrasts with Thomas Hardy’s mourning of the female earth spirits of Wessex, thereby linking fluctuating and evolving images of nature with images of the nineteenth-century witch. In Chapter Three I explore poetry and art through Romantic verse, Tennyson’s Camelot, Rossetti and Burne-Jones’ Pre-Raphaelite classicism, Rosamund Marriot Watson and Mary Coleridge’s shape-shifting, mirrored women, and Yeats’ Celtic Twilight: in doing so I find representations of the witch as the destructive seductress, the muse, the dark ‘other’ of the suppressed poet, the symbol of spellbinding amoral nature, and the embodiment of the Celtic soul. In the final chapter witch imagery is attached to actual practitioners of so-called ‘New Witchcraft’, yet they also become part of a story which seeks to equate neo/quasi science with the supernatural. I demonstrate a gender realignment of occult power as the submissive mesmerist’s tool evolves into the powerful mother/priestess. I note the interconnectedness of fiction and fact via the novels of authors such as Wilkie Collins and Edward Bulwer-Lytton; and identify the role of the campaigning godmother figure as a precursor of the radical feminist Wiccan. I believe that my thesis offers a uniquely comprehensive view of the use of metaphorical witch imagery in the nineteenth century

International Children's Rights Symposium : In Partnership: Policymakers, Practitioners, Academia and Young People

This is a report of an international symposium on children’s rights that took place in June 2017. It was organised by the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland (CELCIS), at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland. The event brought together an unprecedented gathering of participants who share a commitment to shaping the world through promoting children’s rights. Participants included those who had worked on the development of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children (UN Guidelines), as well as those currently working on the realisation of children’s rights in Scotland, the UK and internationally. The purpose of the event was to reflect deeply on the progress and successes in realising children’s rights thus far, to clarify what must be our focus to address the challenges ahead, and to share these reflections and deliberations with others to ‘sense check’ our thinking, spurring us on to further progress for children

Heroes and Heroines or Just Like Us? Young People’s Views on Childhood in Children’s Books

Childhood is socially constructed and holds profound meaning for contemporary society. Although children are increasingly seen as social agents, the dominant view is that children are unable to make substantial contributions to society due to their immaturity and minority status. Childhood theorists have countered this by emphasising the importance of seeking children’s views, an approach which underpins this study. Children’s books provide ideological sources for constructing and understanding childhood. They have a cultural role in representing childhood to children and adults and are widely perceived to be a resource for children’s education and socialisation. In addition, children’s books are written, produced and their use is mediated by adults. This study aims to find out if books provide a space for children in a predominantly adult constructed world by exploring what young people think about the ways in which childhood is represented in children’s books. The research was undertaken with young people aged 10 to 14 years, concentrating on the lower and higher end of the age group, and took place in schools. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used with 158 young people taking part in a questionnaire survey and 43 participating in interviews. The study found that young people were active co-constructors, rather than passive recipients, of representations of childhood in children’s books. Young people demonstrated that they were skilled text handlers who acknowledged the influence of other media on their engagement with books although there were marked differences in their reading interests depending on age and gender. Young people were interested in fiction which portrayed assertive and competent depictions of childhood which they could relate to their own experience as well as enjoying reading about young characters with powers and skills which were extraordinary. Young people did not view childhood or the depiction of childhood negatively, accepting it as a state of being rather than one of becoming, hence contributing to their own understandings of childhood

No Time to Lose : a Manifesto for Children and Young People Looked After Away From Home

Children and young people who are looked after away from home face real challenges as they grow up. They have often experienced abuse, neglect and the impact of poverty on their families and are amongst the most vulnerable children in Scotland. The manifesto proposes that the debate be energised by development of a National Strategy for children and young people who are looked after away from home

Moving Forward : Implementing The United Nations Guidelines For The Alternative Care Of Children

The subject of constant and serious concern expressed by the Committee on the Rights of the Child over its two decades of work to monitor and promote the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This concern is not only evident from the Committee’s findings when reviewing individual States’ compliance with the treaty’s provisions, but was also manifested clearly and in global terms when it decided to devote its annual Day of General Discussion to that issue in 2005. The Committee’s preoccupations are based on a variety of factors. These include: • the large number of children coming into alternative care in many countries, too often essentially due to their family’s material poverty, the conditions under which that care is provided, and the low priority that may be afforded to responding appropriately to these children who, lacking the primary protection normally assured by parents, are particularly vulnerable. The reasons for which children find themselves in alternative care are wide-ranging, and addressing these diverse situations – preventively or reactively – similarly requires a panoply of measures to be in place. While the Convention sets out basic State obligations in that regard, it does not provide significant guidance on meeting them. This is why, from the very outset of the initiative in 2004, the Committee gave whole-hearted support to the idea of developing the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children that would gain the approval of the international community at the highest level. The acceptance of the Guidelines by the UN General Assembly in 2009 signalled all governments’ general agreement that the ‘orientations for policy and practice’ they set out are both well-founded and desirable. Since that time, the Committee has been making full use of the principles and objectives established in the Guidelines when examining the reports of States Parties to the Convention and in formulating its observations and recommendations to them. As with all internationally agreed standards and principles, however, the real test lies in determining how they can be made a reality throughout the world for those that they target – in this case, children who are without, or are at risk of losing, parental care. Identifying those measures means, first of all, understanding the implications of the ‘policy orientations’ proposed in the Guidelines, and then devising the most effective and ‘do-able’ ways of meeting their requirements. Importantly, moreover, the Guidelines are by no means addressed to States alone: they are to be taken into account by everyone, at every level, who is involved in some manner with issues and programmes concerning alternative care provision for children. This is where the Moving Forward handbook steps in. As its title suggests, it seeks precisely to assist all concerned to advance along the road to implementation, by explaining the key thrusts of the Guidelines, outlining the kind of policy responses required, and describing ‘promising’ examples of efforts already made to apply them in diverse communities, countries, regions and cultures. I congratulate all the organisations and individuals that have contributed to bringing the Moving Forward project to fruition. This handbook is clearly an important tool for informing and inspiring practitioners, organisations and governments across the globe who are seeking to provide the best possible rights-based solutions and care for their children