Unsettling the global, moving beyond liberalism: Intimacies as a reading practice in childhood studies

Abstract

This article centres a transnational feminist framing that engages racial capitalism and colonialisms in the study of “the global” within childhood studies. We unsettle the dichotomies of North/South and rather theorize their imbrications. We argue for attending to the conjunctions racial capitalism and colonialisms to make visible different yet overlapping forms of extraction. We offer intimacies as a reading practice that intervenes in and opens up notions of the global within childhood and youth studies, making two provocations.

Doing and undoing gendered racism with racialized girls: A school‐based youth participatory action research study

“…As a whole, elite schools share a mission and reputations for producing national and global leaders (Gaztambide‐Fernández, 2009; Koh & Kenway, 2012)—a mission that, as I have shown elsewhere, is bound up with the production of whiteness (Angod, 2022a; Angod & Gaztambide‐Fernández, 2019; Desai & Angod, 2022; Gaztambide‐Fernández & Angod, 2019). In Canada (as elsewhere), excellence is coded as white (Ayling, 2015; Leonardo, 2009); to be excellent is to speak the languages of Western Europe in white, upper‐middle class accents and navigate Western European texts and pedagogical approaches with ease.…”