Southern theories and decolonial childhood studies

Abstract

This special issue contributes insights into ongoing debates on the politics and ethics of knowledge production in “global” childhood studies by decentering dominant, northern-centric models of childhood and using southern epistemologies. We contest the ways in which most of the world’s children have their experiences and contexts interpreted through the theoretical canons, vernaculars and institutions of northern academia. Drawing on studies that deploy indigenous, decolonial and postcolonial perspectives on the study of childhood and children in different temporal moments and spatial contexts of Africa, Latin America and South Asia, authors of papers aim to push the boundaries for ways of knowing children and doing childhood studies through cross-disciplinary, generative south-north and south-south encounters. The special issue critically engages with questions of epistemic plurality and bottom-up theorization of research with globally southern children, to both rectify the onto-epistemological imbalance in childhood studies and reinscribe indigenous knowledge systems that have received limited attention in this field thus far.

“Just Standing Still”: A Qualitative Study on Adolescents’ Experiences of School Closures Due to Emerging COVID-19 in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau

“…This research takes notice of childhood and youth studies which seek to allow children and youth to express themselves to understand the myriad of interrelationships that daily reinforce their social practice [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]. Childhood and youth studies are undergoing a theoretical and conceptual revision, creating fertile ground for critical thinking aiming at decolonising respective fields of study [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. Conceptualisations of child and youth agency flourish with increased emphasis on interdependency and relational aspects [ 21 , 28 ], and concepts like waithood and stuckness reflect how underprivileged children and youth deal with their challenges [ 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ].…”

Olfactoscapes in Malawi: Exploring the smells children like and are exposed to in semi-urban classrooms

“…Recently, childhood scholars have gravitated towards the accounts of theoretical ethicists who bring to fore the issues around decoloniality of childhoods, sustainability research, climate justice and childism (e.g. Abebe et al, 2022; Biswas, 2020). These emerging critical perspectives offer a fruitful framework for conducting studies aimed at gaining fresh insights and pioneering new approaches, which align with the aspirations of our focus on Malawian children’s olfactory literacies.…”

“…The dominance of the visual sense in early childhood classrooms has been spread with colonial viewpoints, whereby ‘in the West the dominant group has conventionally been associated with the supposedly “higher” senses of sight and hearing, while subordinate groups (women, workers, non-Westerners) have been associated with the so-called lower senses of smell, taste and touch’ (Howes, 2006: 164-165). We wanted to address the deficit discourse tendency of past research with an empirical study and connect to Abebe et al (2022) emphasis on bottom-up approaches to knowledge and commitment for paying close attention to the unique local context.…”

Research ethics in childhood research

“…There is now considerable excellent work internationally that is evidencing closer attention to some of these issues. This includes decolonising, participatory approaches that seek to go beyond ‘rescuing’, ‘developing’ or ‘empowering’ to recognising children’s agency and resilience and building upon this in a contextually-relevant way (Abebe and Ofosu-Kusi, 2016; Abebe et al, 2022; Beazley and Ball, 2017; Brear and Tsotetsi, 2021; De Castro, 2020; Ipe, 2019; Jiménez, 2021; Moletsane, et al, 2021). Closer attention is also being paid to some of the explicitly relational issues across North-South contexts – such as the use of interpreters and training of local research assistants, aimed at reducing community burden and attending more closely to social justice issues.…”

“…Decolonizing childhood studies, as I understand it, involves not only radically shifting the terms of engagement to challenge the supremacy and centrality of minority-world epistemologies and theories (Adebe et al, 2022) or analyzing the coloniality of power as it shapes the contours of childhood and children’s lives (Araneda-Urrutia, 2022). It also requires unpacking our own colonial entanglements and critically assessing where we stand in the world, who we are standing with, and how our work is enabling or challenging inequality and dominant power relations.…”