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Governing Childhood Into the 21st Century: Biopolitical Technologies of Childhood Management and Education PDF

254 Pages·2010·2.27 MB·English
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G C   21 C 99778800223300661133221188__0011__pprreevviiiiii..iinndddd ii 33//55//22001100 22::5555::1111 PPMM CRITICAL CULTURAL STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD Series Editors: Marianne N. Bloch, Gaile Sloan Cannella, and Beth Blue Swadener This series will focus on reframings of theory, research, policy, and pedagogies in childhood. A critical cultural study of childhood is one that offers a “prism” of possibilities for writing about power and its relationship to the cultural constructions of childhood, family, and education in broad societal, local, and global contexts. Books in the series will open up new spaces for dialogue and reconceptualization based on critical theoretical and methodological framings, including critical pedagogy, advocacy and social justice perspectives, cultural, historical and comparative studies of childhood, post-structural, postcolonial, and/or feminist studies of childhood, family, and education. The intent of the series is to examine the relations between power, language, and what is taken as normal/abnormal, good and natural, to understand the construction of the “other,” difference and inclusions/exclusions that are embedded in cur- rent notions of childhood, family, educational reforms, policies, and the practices of schooling. Critical Cultural Studies of Childhood will open up dialogue about new possibilities for action and research. Single authored as well as edited volumes focusing on critical studies of childhood from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives are included in the series. A particular focus is in a re-imagining as well as critical reflection on policy and practice in early childhood, pri- mary, and elementary education. It is the series intent to open up new spaces for reconceptual- izing theories and traditions of research, policies, cultural reasonings and practices at all of these levels, in the USA, as well as comparatively. The Child in the World/The World in the Child: Education and the Configuration of a Universal, Modern, and Globalized Childhood Edited by Marianne N. Bloch, Devorah Kennedy, Theodora Lightfoot, and Dar Weyenberg; Foreword by Thomas S. Popkewitz Beyond Pedagogies of Exclusion in Diverse Childhood Contexts: Transnational Challenges Edited by Soula Mitakidou, Evangelia Tressou, Beth Blue Swadener, and Carl A. Grant “Race” and Early Childhood Education: An International Approach to Identity, Politics, and Pedagogy Edited by Glenda Mac Naughton and Karina Davis Governing Childhood into the 21st Century: Biopolitical Technologies of Childhood Management and Education By Majia Holmer Nadesan Developmentalism in Early Childhood and Middle Grades Education: Critical Conversations on Readiness and Responsiveness Edited by Kyunghwa Lee and Mark D. Vagle 99778800223300661133221188__0011__pprreevviiiiii..iinndddd iiii 33//55//22001100 22::5555::1111 PPMM G C   21 C Biopolitical Technologies of Childhood Management and Education Majia Holmer Nadesan 99778800223300661133221188__0011__pprreevviiiiii..iinndddd iiiiii 33//55//22001100 22::5555::1122 PPMM GOVERNING CHILDHOOD INTO THE 21ST CENTURY Copyright © Majia Holmer Nadesan, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above compa- nies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–61321–8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. 99778800223300661133221188__0011__pprreevviiiiii..iinndddd iivv 33//55//22001100 22::5555::1122 PPMM This book is dedicated to my husband, Alexander Govind Nadesan, and to children everywhere. 99778800223300661133221188__0011__pprreevviiiiii..iinndddd vv 33//55//22001100 22::5555::1122 PPMM This page intentionally left blank C 1 Introduction to Biopolitics, Risk, and Childhood 1 2 A Genealogy of Family Life and Childhood Governance 19 3 Risk, Biopolitics, and Bioeconomics 63 4 B iopolitical Sorting: Comparing Neoliberal and Social Welfare Problem-Solution Frames 111 5 Biopower, Security, and Development 153 6 Children and the Twenty-First Century: Risky Economies 179 Notes 201 Works Cited 205 Index 241 99778800223300661133221188__0011__pprreevviiiiii..iinndddd vviiii 33//55//22001100 22::5555::1122 PPMM This page intentionally left blank C H A P T E R 1 Introduction to Biopolitics, Risk, and Childhood Across time, children in Western cultures have been understood as threatening beings aligned with satanic influences, as miniature adults, as fragile creatures of God, as delinquents, and as vulnerable, at-risk beings. In exploring these historically specific formulations of childhood, academic and cultural observ- ers have drawn attention to the complex ways in which social identities are forged in time through institutional positionings, technologies of government, risk-communication systems, and everyday practices. Analyses of childhood reveal that symbolic formulations and preferred and denigrated strategies of raising children point to changing socioeconomic p roblematics and strategies of government. Childhood is not a natural space but rather is carved out by culturally and historically specific technologies of government. This project continues efforts to understand the social and h istorical constitution of childhood and children using governmentality as a framework of analysis. Governmentality addresses how society’s pressing problems, expert authorities, explanations, and technologies are organized in relation to partic- ular kinds of problem-solution frames (see Rose Governing xi). Governmental analysis derives from the work of Michel Foucault ( 1926–1984), but with a diverse and interdisciplinary group of scholars appropriating the framework to study those logics of government and problem-solution frames that shape the conduct of everyday practices, it has since proliferated in forms and appli- cations. Foucault-inspired governmental analyses of childhood have been pioneered by Philippe Ariès, Jacques Donzelot, Nikolas Rose, and Michael Peters, among others, and have more recently informed studies of the sociol- ogy of childhood, education, and childhood and popular culture.1 This book extends this disparate governmental scholarship on childhood by focusing on how childhood has been shaped by biopolitical strategies of risk management. The concept of “risk” increasingly dominates popular discourse, public policy, and marketplace problem-solution frames. Richard Ericson and Aaron Doyle define risk as “threats or dangers attributed to persons, technologies, or nature” (2). Accordingly, Ulrich Beck asserts: “Being at risk is the way of being and ruling in the world of modernity; being 99778800223300661133221188__0022__cchh0011..iinndddd 11 22//2266//22001100 1122::5588::0088 PPMM

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Neoliberal logics of government shaping childhood today produce market-based frameworks for understanding childhood risks. In this timely work, Nadesan argues that these frameworks encourage affluent parents to pursue individualized technologies of the self to reduce risks posed to their children’
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