Table of Contents

KEY IDEAS AND THEORETICAL APPROACHES IN THE STUDY OF CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD
KNOWING CHILDREN: THEORY AND METHOD IN THE STUDY OF CHILDHOOD
WHAT IS A CHILD?: MAKING MEANING OF CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD
GLOBAL CHILDHOODS: CHILDREN AS OBJECTS OF NATIONAL AND GLOBAL CONCERN
THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE NORMATIVE GLOBAL CHILD
PART TWO: CASE STUDIES IN THE MEANING OF CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD
THE HABITUS OF CHILDHOOD: HOME, SCHOOL, WORK
CHILDREN AND DISASTER: ‘CHILD SOLDIERS’ AND ORPHANS
THE CHILD AND THE NATION: CASE STUDIES IN THE PERSECUTION AND FORCED REMOVAL OF CHILDREN BY THE STATE
THE VALUE OF CHILDREN
FUTURE CHILDREN: IDENTITY AND PERFECTIBILITY

About the Author

Kate Cregan is the author of Global Childhoods: Issues and Debates (SAGE, 2014), Key Concepts in Body and Society (SAGE, 2012), Sociology of the Body: Mapping the Abstraction of Embodiment (SAGE, 2006) and The Theatre of the Body: Staging Death and Embodying Life in Early Modern London (Brepols, 2009).

The majority of her writing and research is based around understandings of the embodiment across time, space and culture-with particular reference to medical interpretations of the body, medical technologies and the representation in images of the body. Two of her allied interests are ethics (human, social and research) and writing pedagogies, in particular how becoming a writer informs the process of becoming a researcher. She has extensive experience teaching and researching in the humanities and social sciences and recently has co-ordinated the teaching of ethics to medical students across the five years of a medical degree. Currently, she is a senior lecturer in sociology in the School of Political and Social Inquiry, and she runs the interdisciplinary Graduate Researchers in Print writing program in the Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne. 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.

Reviews

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... One of the many spectacular achievements of this book is the way in which Kate and Denise weave together the disciplinary approaches into a highly sophisticated inter-disciplinary approach to the question of the child, childhood and global perspectives... This book is an absolute must for scholars in all the field of childhood studies. -- Professor Joy Damousi This is an exciting and engagingly written book. The case studies are intriguing and the discussion of previous theories impeccable. -- Heather Montgomery This clear-sighted study of the history and present state of child-directed knowledge and practice should be compulsory reading for professionals working with children. Lawyers, doctors, psychologists, social workers, teachers - not to mention lawmakers and bureaucrats - will benefit by the challenge it offers. -- Marian Quartly Using diverse examples and applied case studies from across the globe, the authors demonstrate the relationships between contemporary understandings of childhood and historical, social, political and geographic factors. Rich in theory and extensively researched, it is a provocative, engaging and accessible contribution to the field. -- Andrew Singleton The book provides a concrete impression of the diverse and disputed facets of the globalization process and its impacts on contemporary childhoods. The authors identify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as a Western-based controversially discussed driver of global norms for a "good childhood", and highlight how children's rights can be dealt with in a critical, contextualized and culture-sensitive manner. There is no similar publication in German so far. -- Dr Manfred Liebel