Pub Date : 2024-08-13DOI: 10.1177/00027642241267936
Heba M. Khalil
This article investigates the role of legalism and legal processes in entrenching autocratic rule in post-revolution Egypt. In the aftermath of the spectacular street protests that swept Egypt, the movement for change was channeled into legal challenges handled by the legal system and judicial experts. This judicialization of politics ensured that an emerging autocrat could not only use the judiciary and the legal system to control the process of democratic transition but also reverse it. In examining the rise of autocratic rule in post-revolutionary Egypt, this article illustrates how the legal system, constitutionalism, law-making, and electoral politics became integral pawns in the consolidation of an illiberal agenda. Legalistic strategies, such as rewriting electoral laws, reforming judicial regulations, strengthening presidentialism, rewriting and amending the constitution, and other legislative reforms, enable the rise of autocratic legalism in the country. As the case of Egypt illustrates, autocratic legalism is a dangerous mode of entrenching autocratic rule that uses the legal system to reach power and then abuses the same legal processes to ensure no one can challenge the power capture. Although elections, parliaments, and judiciaries remain in place to maintain a façade of legality, they are increasingly captured by the executive within a context of growing policing, and restrictions on freedoms and rights.
{"title":"“This Country has Laws”: Legalism as a Tool of Entrenching Autocracy in Egypt","authors":"Heba M. Khalil","doi":"10.1177/00027642241267936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241267936","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the role of legalism and legal processes in entrenching autocratic rule in post-revolution Egypt. In the aftermath of the spectacular street protests that swept Egypt, the movement for change was channeled into legal challenges handled by the legal system and judicial experts. This judicialization of politics ensured that an emerging autocrat could not only use the judiciary and the legal system to control the process of democratic transition but also reverse it. In examining the rise of autocratic rule in post-revolutionary Egypt, this article illustrates how the legal system, constitutionalism, law-making, and electoral politics became integral pawns in the consolidation of an illiberal agenda. Legalistic strategies, such as rewriting electoral laws, reforming judicial regulations, strengthening presidentialism, rewriting and amending the constitution, and other legislative reforms, enable the rise of autocratic legalism in the country. As the case of Egypt illustrates, autocratic legalism is a dangerous mode of entrenching autocratic rule that uses the legal system to reach power and then abuses the same legal processes to ensure no one can challenge the power capture. Although elections, parliaments, and judiciaries remain in place to maintain a façade of legality, they are increasingly captured by the executive within a context of growing policing, and restrictions on freedoms and rights.","PeriodicalId":48360,"journal":{"name":"American Behavioral Scientist","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142227244","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-13DOI: 10.1177/00027642241268548
Joe Curnow, Lucy Delgado
This article examines how fossil fuel divestment organizers at the University of Toronto (UofT) attempted to be in right relation with Indigenous organizations and students on campus by integrating Indigenous knowledges around relationality and countering/contesting Eurowestern relational practices. By examining the dialog of a workshop where Fossil-Free UofT discussed their hopes, concerns, and strategies for practicing right relationality, we argue that while participants did important work to build relations rooted in decolonial approaches, they were limited by the perception that they constantly needed to attend to (and often capitulate to) whiteness. We argue that this tension limits the impact of moves to decolonize non-Indigenous spaces.
{"title":"Attempting Decoloniality in a Youth Climate Campaign: Learning to Be in Right Relation and the Incommensurability of Making Indigenous Knowledges Legible","authors":"Joe Curnow, Lucy Delgado","doi":"10.1177/00027642241268548","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268548","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how fossil fuel divestment organizers at the University of Toronto (UofT) attempted to be in right relation with Indigenous organizations and students on campus by integrating Indigenous knowledges around relationality and countering/contesting Eurowestern relational practices. By examining the dialog of a workshop where Fossil-Free UofT discussed their hopes, concerns, and strategies for practicing right relationality, we argue that while participants did important work to build relations rooted in decolonial approaches, they were limited by the perception that they constantly needed to attend to (and often capitulate to) whiteness. We argue that this tension limits the impact of moves to decolonize non-Indigenous spaces.","PeriodicalId":48360,"journal":{"name":"American Behavioral Scientist","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142227158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-13DOI: 10.1177/00027642241268541
Veena Meetoo, Rachel Rosen
This article explores how “race”, nation, and generation intersect to make and mark the category of “unaccompanied minor” in Britain, thereby shaping conditions of care for unaccompanied child migrants. Drawing on interviews with unaccompanied children and adult professionals, we trace how discourses of the unchildlike and unknowing child render unaccompanied children undeserving of support. We demonstrate how these discourses embedded in neo-colonial and generational logics breed inaction from adult professionals, often resulting in substandard or absent care. Our article contributes to conceptualizations of childhood in contexts of rising ethnonationalism, attending to how “race”, nation, and generation roost in the routine.
{"title":"The Formative Intersections of “Race”, Nation, and Generation: Learning from “Care” in the Lives of Unaccompanied Child Migrants in England","authors":"Veena Meetoo, Rachel Rosen","doi":"10.1177/00027642241268541","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268541","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how “race”, nation, and generation intersect to make and mark the category of “unaccompanied minor” in Britain, thereby shaping conditions of care for unaccompanied child migrants. Drawing on interviews with unaccompanied children and adult professionals, we trace how discourses of the unchildlike and unknowing child render unaccompanied children undeserving of support. We demonstrate how these discourses embedded in neo-colonial and generational logics breed inaction from adult professionals, often resulting in substandard or absent care. Our article contributes to conceptualizations of childhood in contexts of rising ethnonationalism, attending to how “race”, nation, and generation roost in the routine.","PeriodicalId":48360,"journal":{"name":"American Behavioral Scientist","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142227162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-12DOI: 10.1177/00027642241267911
Pamela Neumann
Although anti-feminist discourses and practices are often associated with “right-wing” governments, self-proclaimed “leftist” regimes can also be organized around patriarchal ideas. In this article, I analyze how the Ortega-Murillo regime in Nicaragua has employed gendered ideologies to consolidate and legitimate its political power. While the Ortega-Murillo regime initially used elite pact-making to gain control of Nicaragua’s legal institutions, their latter strategies, which included alliances with religious conservatives, threats and intimidation, and legal mechanisms, were mainly focused on restructuring and pacifying civil society. Within this process, targeting feminist ideas and feminist organizations has been a central component of their autocratic toolkit.
{"title":"Gendered Ideologies and Authoritarianism in Nicaragua","authors":"Pamela Neumann","doi":"10.1177/00027642241267911","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241267911","url":null,"abstract":"Although anti-feminist discourses and practices are often associated with “right-wing” governments, self-proclaimed “leftist” regimes can also be organized around patriarchal ideas. In this article, I analyze how the Ortega-Murillo regime in Nicaragua has employed gendered ideologies to consolidate and legitimate its political power. While the Ortega-Murillo regime initially used elite pact-making to gain control of Nicaragua’s legal institutions, their latter strategies, which included alliances with religious conservatives, threats and intimidation, and legal mechanisms, were mainly focused on restructuring and pacifying civil society. Within this process, targeting feminist ideas and feminist organizations has been a central component of their autocratic toolkit.","PeriodicalId":48360,"journal":{"name":"American Behavioral Scientist","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141946916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-07DOI: 10.1177/00027642241268572
Fernanda Odilla, Clarissa Veloso
This article explores the advantages and constraints affecting anti-corruption grassroots initiatives that employ the “naming and shaming” strategy. It questions why activists choose such a confrontational approach while examining the cases of two Brazilian anti-corruption bottom-up initiatives. Both fight corruption by deploying bots to assist in auditing congressional members’ expenses, and then use social media to expose their suspicious findings. Findings, based on a qualitative analysis, show that publicly exposing those who misuse public money was a tactic adopted only when the expected response from law enforcement and anti-corruption authorities fell short. This study suggests that having a participatory accountability system is insufficient and considered disappointing if no inquiries and sanctions follow civic action. As an unforeseen effect, the digital exposure of officeholders garnered media attention and expanded the initiatives’ support base. Nevertheless, activists acknowledge the risks associated with their belligerent activities and the challenges of financing, maintaining engagement, and expanding the scope of their actions, despite the high expectations that digital technologies would reduce costs and support collective action.
{"title":"Citizens and Their Bots That Sniff Corruption: Using Digital Technology to Monitor and Expose Politicians Who Misuse Public Money","authors":"Fernanda Odilla, Clarissa Veloso","doi":"10.1177/00027642241268572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268572","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the advantages and constraints affecting anti-corruption grassroots initiatives that employ the “naming and shaming” strategy. It questions why activists choose such a confrontational approach while examining the cases of two Brazilian anti-corruption bottom-up initiatives. Both fight corruption by deploying bots to assist in auditing congressional members’ expenses, and then use social media to expose their suspicious findings. Findings, based on a qualitative analysis, show that publicly exposing those who misuse public money was a tactic adopted only when the expected response from law enforcement and anti-corruption authorities fell short. This study suggests that having a participatory accountability system is insufficient and considered disappointing if no inquiries and sanctions follow civic action. As an unforeseen effect, the digital exposure of officeholders garnered media attention and expanded the initiatives’ support base. Nevertheless, activists acknowledge the risks associated with their belligerent activities and the challenges of financing, maintaining engagement, and expanding the scope of their actions, despite the high expectations that digital technologies would reduce costs and support collective action.","PeriodicalId":48360,"journal":{"name":"American Behavioral Scientist","volume":"107 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141946917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-07DOI: 10.1177/00027642241268596
Tanu Biswas, Liola Nike Mattheis
What do the school strikes for climate teach (adults)? Beyond being apt responses to democratic exclusions, children’s and young people’s strikes also have educative potential (including for adults) through counterweighing formal education, as the authors previously argued. This paper continues to explore the educational import of children and young people’s climate contentions as part of a more explicit decolonial agenda. In a first step, the paper sketches the altered conditions under which children stage school strikes/occupations and highlights increasing global connections drawn also by strikes in the North. Next, departing from a reading of Socrates’s canonical defense of obedience to the law, it offers a reading of the political economy and developmentalism of neoliberal, Anthropocene schooling as part of a modern oikos that depends on children’s work in their roles as “pupils.” Finally, children’s and young people’s activism is approached as resistance to colonially shaped epistemic injustice.
{"title":"Developing Disobedience: A Decolonial Childist Perspective on School Strikes for Climate Justice","authors":"Tanu Biswas, Liola Nike Mattheis","doi":"10.1177/00027642241268596","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268596","url":null,"abstract":"What do the school strikes for climate teach (adults)? Beyond being apt responses to democratic exclusions, children’s and young people’s strikes also have educative potential (including for adults) through counterweighing formal education, as the authors previously argued. This paper continues to explore the educational import of children and young people’s climate contentions as part of a more explicit decolonial agenda. In a first step, the paper sketches the altered conditions under which children stage school strikes/occupations and highlights increasing global connections drawn also by strikes in the North. Next, departing from a reading of Socrates’s canonical defense of obedience to the law, it offers a reading of the political economy and developmentalism of neoliberal, Anthropocene schooling as part of a modern oikos that depends on children’s work in their roles as “pupils.” Finally, children’s and young people’s activism is approached as resistance to colonially shaped epistemic injustice.","PeriodicalId":48360,"journal":{"name":"American Behavioral Scientist","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141969564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-06DOI: 10.1177/00027642241268553
Catriona Ellis
This article considers how museums of childhood in Britain were imagined as racialized spaces, designed to simultaneously project both a notion of universal childhood and of racial hierarchies. The legacies of this work matter for efforts today to decolonize museums. The case study is the ethnographic doll collections of Edward Lovett (1852–1933), an amateur folklorist best known for his collection of home-made dolls. The ways in which these dolls were collected, described, cataloged, and displayed reveals the racialized assumptions of British imperialism in the early 20th century, including the infantilization of other cultures and the widely held belief in evolutionary biology. These doll collections are still displayed for children, and this article considers how contemporary museums negotiate the conflicting impetuses to decolonize museums, to teach today’s young people about the prejudices of their ancestors, and to engage with the widely accepted idea that all childhoods are defined by play.
{"title":"Imagining Other Childhoods: Dolls and the Museum of Childhood as an Imperial Space","authors":"Catriona Ellis","doi":"10.1177/00027642241268553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268553","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers how museums of childhood in Britain were imagined as racialized spaces, designed to simultaneously project both a notion of universal childhood and of racial hierarchies. The legacies of this work matter for efforts today to decolonize museums. The case study is the ethnographic doll collections of Edward Lovett (1852–1933), an amateur folklorist best known for his collection of home-made dolls. The ways in which these dolls were collected, described, cataloged, and displayed reveals the racialized assumptions of British imperialism in the early 20th century, including the infantilization of other cultures and the widely held belief in evolutionary biology. These doll collections are still displayed for children, and this article considers how contemporary museums negotiate the conflicting impetuses to decolonize museums, to teach today’s young people about the prejudices of their ancestors, and to engage with the widely accepted idea that all childhoods are defined by play.","PeriodicalId":48360,"journal":{"name":"American Behavioral Scientist","volume":"77 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141946876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-06DOI: 10.1177/00027642241268329
Marco Garrido
The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte often gets lumped together with the former U.S. president Donald Trump on the basis of their autocratic practices. However, there are crucial differences in their respective situations and the reception of their autocratic practices on the ground. Consequently, if we understand Duterte only through Trump or with reference to the category of “emerging autocrat” then we end up misunderstanding the situation in the Philippines. This article is about the limits and pitfalls of thin comparison and the necessity of thicker ones. It advocates understanding practices embedded in the social structures and processes that make them meaningful. I proceed as follows: I present the case of Rodrigo Duterte and review the grounds for lumping him along with Trump as an emerging autocrat. I then pursue a thicker comparison of Duterte and Trump, putting their support in economic, social, political, and historical context and highlighting substantial differences in their respective situations. Finally, I argue that thin comparisons are especially susceptible to interpretive biases in general and highlight three such biases—toward contemporaneity, continuity, and centrality—using the case of Duterte to illustrate.
{"title":"Rodrigo Duterte as “the Trump of Asia”? The Limits and Pitfalls of Thin Comparison","authors":"Marco Garrido","doi":"10.1177/00027642241268329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268329","url":null,"abstract":"The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte often gets lumped together with the former U.S. president Donald Trump on the basis of their autocratic practices. However, there are crucial differences in their respective situations and the reception of their autocratic practices on the ground. Consequently, if we understand Duterte only through Trump or with reference to the category of “emerging autocrat” then we end up misunderstanding the situation in the Philippines. This article is about the limits and pitfalls of thin comparison and the necessity of thicker ones. It advocates understanding practices embedded in the social structures and processes that make them meaningful. I proceed as follows: I present the case of Rodrigo Duterte and review the grounds for lumping him along with Trump as an emerging autocrat. I then pursue a thicker comparison of Duterte and Trump, putting their support in economic, social, political, and historical context and highlighting substantial differences in their respective situations. Finally, I argue that thin comparisons are especially susceptible to interpretive biases in general and highlight three such biases—toward contemporaneity, continuity, and centrality—using the case of Duterte to illustrate.","PeriodicalId":48360,"journal":{"name":"American Behavioral Scientist","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141946918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-06DOI: 10.1177/00027642241267937
Yulia Prozorova
Contemporary autocracies often maintain a connection with democracy. They do not entirely dismantle the democratic structures established within unfinished modernization projects. Instead, they emerge as “electoral autocracies” and manipulate the concept of democracy offering alternative interpretations and meanings to further their illiberal agenda. The paper delves into the revision of democracy and how the democratic imaginary is utilized in the context of emerging autocracy in post-Soviet Russia. While the post-Soviet Russian autocracy adjusted democratic institutions for its own objectives, it also intended to appropriate the concept of democracy at the semantic and symbolic levels. The rise of Putin’s autocracy is characterized by the radicalization of cultural-civilizational particularism endorsing anti-democratic illiberal arguments. Through this adaptable hermeneutic framework, the Russian authorities tend to relativize the concept of democracy, criticizing, and dismissing the relevance of liberal democracy. Simultaneously, they articulate a distinct “sovereign” version of democracy and claim that non-liberal regimes are legitimate forms of political modernity. The autocratic political discourse on democracy is intrinsically non-democratic, as the lack of intellectual autonomy, control, and closure of discourse constrain the scope of meaning. The resulting heteronomous conception of democracy presents a static and ahistorical society predestined to (re)produce a single pro-authoritarian cultural-political pattern.
{"title":"Democracy Revised: Democratic Imaginary and Emerging Autocracy in Post-Soviet Russia","authors":"Yulia Prozorova","doi":"10.1177/00027642241267937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241267937","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary autocracies often maintain a connection with democracy. They do not entirely dismantle the democratic structures established within unfinished modernization projects. Instead, they emerge as “electoral autocracies” and manipulate the concept of democracy offering alternative interpretations and meanings to further their illiberal agenda. The paper delves into the revision of democracy and how the democratic imaginary is utilized in the context of emerging autocracy in post-Soviet Russia. While the post-Soviet Russian autocracy adjusted democratic institutions for its own objectives, it also intended to appropriate the concept of democracy at the semantic and symbolic levels. The rise of Putin’s autocracy is characterized by the radicalization of cultural-civilizational particularism endorsing anti-democratic illiberal arguments. Through this adaptable hermeneutic framework, the Russian authorities tend to relativize the concept of democracy, criticizing, and dismissing the relevance of liberal democracy. Simultaneously, they articulate a distinct “sovereign” version of democracy and claim that non-liberal regimes are legitimate forms of political modernity. The autocratic political discourse on democracy is intrinsically non-democratic, as the lack of intellectual autonomy, control, and closure of discourse constrain the scope of meaning. The resulting heteronomous conception of democracy presents a static and ahistorical society predestined to (re)produce a single pro-authoritarian cultural-political pattern.","PeriodicalId":48360,"journal":{"name":"American Behavioral Scientist","volume":"88 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141946919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-06DOI: 10.1177/00027642241268546
Freeden Blume Oeur, Donna Varga
Over the past two decades, pressing questions around childhood, age, difference, and power have traversed the multidisciplinary study of childhood, and have come to overlap increasingly with writings on colonialism. While children remain relatively under-analyzed across this scholarship, children and notions of childhood are always implicated in colonialism and its vestiges. Moreover, legacies of colonialism shape the images of children who dominate headlines today, from cruel policies which separate migrant children from their families at the United States—Mexico border, to Israel’s continued assault on Gaza and the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children, to young climate activists who have mobilized around the globe. Our special issue explores questions around colonialism and childhood, and specifically their processes of racialization; and argues for a general practice of decolonizing the study of childhood. The authors—representing several disciplines and regions—have contributed essays which cover two broad themes. The first three articles speak to histories of colonialism and their entwinement with childhood, and the challenges actors face in attempting to reckon with those histories. The next three articles take up discussions concerning childhood as a colonialist racialized concept, and pose questions about who is deserving of care and whose care should be recognized as good for children. Our queries recognize the important work already being done by childhood studies scholars, invite newer researchers to the field to consider childist concerns, and welcome all to imagine futures beyond our present crises.
{"title":"Colonialism, Racism, and Childhoods: Introduction","authors":"Freeden Blume Oeur, Donna Varga","doi":"10.1177/00027642241268546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268546","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past two decades, pressing questions around childhood, age, difference, and power have traversed the multidisciplinary study of childhood, and have come to overlap increasingly with writings on colonialism. While children remain relatively under-analyzed across this scholarship, children and notions of childhood are always implicated in colonialism and its vestiges. Moreover, legacies of colonialism shape the images of children who dominate headlines today, from cruel policies which separate migrant children from their families at the United States—Mexico border, to Israel’s continued assault on Gaza and the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children, to young climate activists who have mobilized around the globe. Our special issue explores questions around colonialism and childhood, and specifically their processes of racialization; and argues for a general practice of decolonizing the study of childhood. The authors—representing several disciplines and regions—have contributed essays which cover two broad themes. The first three articles speak to histories of colonialism and their entwinement with childhood, and the challenges actors face in attempting to reckon with those histories. The next three articles take up discussions concerning childhood as a colonialist racialized concept, and pose questions about who is deserving of care and whose care should be recognized as good for children. Our queries recognize the important work already being done by childhood studies scholars, invite newer researchers to the field to consider childist concerns, and welcome all to imagine futures beyond our present crises.","PeriodicalId":48360,"journal":{"name":"American Behavioral Scientist","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141969643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}