Introduction: Making Sense of Childhood in International Relations

Beier, J. Marshall

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-46063-1_1

Cited by 10 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Some areas of future research may involve a closer investigation of children as active participants in 'interpreting, negotiating, and resisting' militarism (Beier, 2020a: 13; see also Woodyer and Carter, 2020). Notably, the ability to envision the agentive role of children in conflict (Beier, 2020a;Lee-Koo, 2017;Watson, 2015) and grasp their centrality to processes of militarization creates new possibilities to resist these processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Militarization of childhood(s) in Donbas: ‘Growing together with the Republic’

Hoban¹

2021

Cooperation and Conflict

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This essay critically examines how the militarization of childhood(s) takes place in the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. The intensification of hostilities in Eastern Ukraine in mid-2014 has had a profound impact on local populations, particularly children. While no systematic recruitment and participation of children in conflict has been reported, childhood has become what Agathangelou and Killian would characterize as a ‘site for displacement and maneuvering for militarization.’ Drawing on feminist methodologies, I examine processes of the militarization of children’s everyday lives. This article investigates a range of ways in which authorities of proto-states in the Donbas region address children as participants and potential collaborators in the processes of militarization. In my analysis, I examine how war and preparation for it are simultaneously co-constituted by the geopolitical—legitimation of new proto-states—and everyday practices, such as engaging with school curricula, visiting museums, and (re)inventing historical narratives. Understanding of mechanisms that militarize childhood and how children become subjects and objects of militarization allows for a critical analysis that reveals spaces of everyday violence. This article, therefore, enhances our understanding about the intersections of childhood, militarism, and security.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Militarization of childhood(s) in Donbas: ‘Growing together with the Republic’

Hoban¹

2021

Cooperation and Conflict

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“…Are theories of nationalism biased against children? What would nationalism theory be like if it was also created with children in mind, rather than exclusively adults in mind (adults seen as mature, independent, complete -finished beings, while children as non-political, see Benwell and Hopkins 2018;Beier 2020)? Echoing Nick Lee (2013), we call to create immature social theory of nationalism to work against the adult bias of sociological and political theorizing.…”

Section: Childhood As Methods For Researching Everyday Nationalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Banal and everyday nationalisms in children’s mundane and institutional lives

Millei

Imre

2021

Children's Geographies

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Nationalism in many parts of the world takes new shapes merging with populist, far-right, nativist and green agendas illustrating how political evocations of the nation enjoy growing electoral success. One consequence among many is that previously 'settled' matters around racism, fascism and migration, are once again up for debate with elected officials and media personalities able to express any number of views without recourse to an apology (Wodak 2020). The provoked cynicism and anger infiltrates many spaces of children's everyday lives (Zembylas 2021a, 2021b) inclusive of the broad range of social media platforms, institutions they inhabit, and everyday interactions. The discursive and ideological structures of nationalism have received significant attention in childhood studies, however, today it is apparent that its affective dimensions and exclusionary pedagogical implications require renewed attention as political struggles are increasingly affectively and discursively expressed in institutional spaces, such as the family, preschool, school and so on (see e.g. Zembylas 2021a, 2021b).This special issue emerged from a continued interest in the intersections of childhood and nation, and nationalisms' growing prominence in national and international politics (e.g. Millei and Imre 2015;Millei 2014Millei , 2015. In offering a unique contribution to the exploration of nationalism as part of everyday life, this issue focuses on children and nationhood mostly in institutional settings. Many academic fields have developed an interest in researching everyday life and nationhood, such as political geography, nationalism studies, social psychology, education or political anthropology. A large number of studies explore 'banal' nationalism by drawing on Michael Billig's work (1995), and investigating how people mobilize elite (state) symbols, nationalist discourses, and sense-making in their social interactions. In another stream of research, attention is paid to 'everyday' forms of nationalism, on how people reinterpret elite discourses or create their own versions of nationhood enacted as everyday practices (Skey and Antonsich 2017;Skey 2011;Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008). Bringing together these bodies of work with a keen interest in children and childhood, scholars were invited to explore nationhood in children's everyday lives in this special issue.'Banal nationalism' (Billig 1995) focuses on national narratives, identities, and symbols of nationhood, as well as the social and psychological dynamics that underpin those. Research explores how institutional cultures are reproduced and discursive tropes create and shape the experience of everyday life. This is a more top-down approach of exploring quotidian forms of nationalism, according to Eleanor Knott (2016) (following Eric Hobsbawm's (1992) differentiation). Eric Hobsbawm (1992, p. 10) also highlights the importance of more bottom-up aspects of nationalism, including our understandings of the 'assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interests of ordinary people' tha...

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“…The very architecture of some new schools incorporates features first perfected in the design of frontline trenches of the First World War (Horton, 2019). Together with how resilience-building is increasingly valorized as individualized work (Beier, 2020), even the framing of survival in school shootings can reflect promotion of a militarized ethos (Turenne Sjolander, 2011). While none of these do the work of militarization by themselves, they nevertheless reaffirm key aspects of its enabling ontologies.…”

Section: Childhood(s) Militarism(s)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Children, childhoods, and everyday militarisms

Beier

Tabak

2020

Childhood

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Like childhood, thinking critically about militarism can entail a great deal of unlearning before coming to a more nuanced understanding of what lies beyond the signifier. Just as childhoods are multiple, overlapping, contingent, and bound up in many more aspects of our social worlds than is apparent if we look only for the child, so too militarism. The ways in which militarisms intersect childhoods and vice versa, therefore, call us to reflect not only on the conspicuous presence of militaries as institutions or on life in zones of conflict, but on the everyday lives of children everywhere in all their complexity and diversity.

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Introduction: Making Sense of Childhood in International Relations

Cited by 10 publications

References 34 publications

Militarization of childhood(s) in Donbas: ‘Growing together with the Republic’

Militarization of childhood(s) in Donbas: ‘Growing together with the Republic’

Banal and everyday nationalisms in children’s mundane and institutional lives

Children, childhoods, and everyday militarisms

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