Our growing Criminology list takes a critical stance and features boundary-pushing work with innovative, research-led publications.
A particular focus of the list are books that engage with our global social challenges, both on a local and international level. We aim to publish books in a wide range of formats that will have real impact and shape public discourse.
Criminology
To explain the existence of attitudes, discourses and lived experiences which indicate an openness and even an enthusiasm for dominant rights discourses as articulated in international laws such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, this chapter highlights the impact of the country’s historical legacy on the pluralistic nature of Ghanaian society generally and on the plurality of childhood experiences that are identifiable in particular. Specifically, it highlights the extent to which the multiple heritages underpinning Ghanaian society shape the plurality of existences or realities that can be identified in the country in the contemporary period, including in relation to understandings of childhood and its termination. It does this by focusing on marriage, kinship relations and puberty rites. While for some families the dynamics of their lifestyle are shaped by one heritage more than the others, many adopt worldviews, behaviours and practices that reflect a hybridity in how they perceive, understand and experience the world around them. This results in multiple childhood and children’s rights experiences or possibilities.
In order to understand the development of the systematic use of dominant children’s principles in policy and civil society discourses in Ghana, this chapter takes its departure point from 1979, a year that has come to be associated with the systematic deployment and expansion of not only the language of rights, but a culture of rights, at least within legal and policy discourses, in the country. Specifically, it explores the systematic emergence of dominant children’s rights discourses in legal and policy discourses in Ghana, as well as in broader public discourses. Given that the initial development of this framework coincided with a military take-over of the country that ushered in essentially 13 years of authoritarianism, with its attendant strategies of brutality and intimidation, this chapter additionally devotes attention to the factors that resulted in the development of a so-called culture of children’s rights, at least in relation to the policy and legal frameworks of the country, at a time of political repression and suppression.
As part of tracing how the dominant discourse of children’s rights, which emerged in Western Europe and North America by the end of the 19th century, became so closely intertwined with contemporary global children’s rights principles and discourses, this chapter provides an historical account of the evolution of children’s rights principles at the global level. It starts off with an analyses of the 1924 Declaration on the Rights of the Child and underscores the racial limits to these discourses at the time, mainly as a result of avoiding interference with the agendas of colonial forces. It then proceeds to discuss the 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The chapter devotes focused attention to this latter treaty, highlighting the various ways it has advanced discourses around children’s rights and realities, as well as the ways it has remained limited in transforming children’s lives both in terms of its underlying principles and its application.
Given its roots in developments that took place in Western Europe and North America from the 18th century onwards, much of the literature on children’s rights in Southern contexts have centred around exploring the dissonance between the concept of children’s rights and the principles underpinning social organization and understandings of childhood in diverse contexts in non-Western societies. However, as a result of the social transformations that have affected many societies in the South over several hundred years, some of which were closely intertwined with transformations taking place in Western Europe and North America, this chapter has two functions. First, it provides an account of the tensions between dominant children’s rights principles and contexts in the South, with a particular focus on exploring how concepts such as individualism and chronological age are at odds with key organizing principles in societies in sub-Saharan Africa. Second, it moves beyond narratives of dissonance and demonstrates the synergies that exist between attitudes to, and experiences of, children’s rights. To explain the factors that have resulted in this plurality, it examines a number of factors, including culture and its fluidity which have been significantly shaped by phenomena such as colonialism and formal education.
In order to highlight the variable ways dominant children’s rights discourses intersect with the realities of different groups of children, this volume focuses on Ghana, the first country to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In order to understand the plurality that this variability produces in this context it is first important to take a long historical view to child welfare and the emergence of children’s rights as a framework to guide policy interventions and public debates in this context. As a result, this chapter provides a historical overview which foregrounds approaches to child welfare in the country now known as Ghana in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods. Specifically, it illuminates the extent to which diverse actors in charge of child welfare in this context devised a range of strategies to protect children’s welfare or facilitate their development. However, at the same time it shows that at various stages of the country’s history, the search for securing the welfare of the kinship group/community or the state resulted in poorer or adverse welfare outcomes for, primarily, children.
This last substantive chapter builds on earlier chapters and considers the insights the Ghana example, focused on in this volume, offers to the broader study of children’s rights, not only in contexts in the South, but also more generally. Specifically, it considers the implications and significance of the existence of such diversities and pluralities in childhood understandings and experiences for how we study and discuss childhoods and children’s rights in contexts of the Global South. It demonstrates the need to move away from a one-dimensional narrative about the South that foregrounds experiences of predominately marginalized childhoods and their implications for the realization of children’s rights and, instead, emphasizes the need to adopt a holistic picture that considers a range of childhood lived experiences in a given context and what that means for how we study and discuss the realization of rights.
The introduction outlines the rationale underpinning this volume which can be attributed to both the personal and the academic. In particular, it reviews existing portrayals of childhoods in contexts in the South, examines the reasons behind this and illuminates the concerns this raises for both the study of childhoods and children’s rights in the Global South as well as the North. It calls for the need for a more holistic approach to the study of Southern childhoods and children’s rights realization and demonstrates how this volume, with its focus on Ghana, contributes to developing this approach. Finally it outlines the structure of the book, providing a breakdown of the focus of each chapter as well as summarizes the research studies from which data presented in the volume are based.
To explore the plurality of childhoods within the context of Ghana this chapter focuses on the work that children engage in both within and outside of the context of the family. Drawing on the phenomenon of work (both paid and unpaid), this chapter demonstrates that work is a key feature of childhood socialization in Ghana regardless of socioeconomic status. This is due to the value placed on interdependence, the mutuality of duty and reciprocity within social relationships in this society, including those that are intergenerational. Further, this focus on work in childhood can also be explained with reference to the gendered nature of Ghanaian society due to the importance of ensuring that children are socialized into the roles they will adopt as adult men and women. The importance of work notwithstanding, its intensity in the lives of children in this context varies depending on their social and economic positioning in Ghanaian society. Hence, the intensity of the work in which children in poorer families engage is substantively different from those from more affluent areas. Therefore, work can be utilized to distinguish the experiences of social groups and the childhoods individuals experience within these differing groups.
While the notion of children’s rights is now recognized as a meaningful concept, it has to be acknowledged that the concept has its roots in developments that took place in Western European and North American societies. Therefore, this chapter provides a historical account of the development of the modern concept of childhood which underpins dominant children’s rights. Specifically, it provides an overview of the transformations that took place in understandings of childhood and their position in society between the medieval period to the early 20th century in Western European society, with a focus on developments taking place in Britain in particular. It highlights the role of the formal education system in the process as well as the role of middle- and upper-class elites in attempts to universalize the emerging concept of modern childhood across all classes. It ends by highlighting the increasing role of government in child welfare discussions, which was instrumental in creating a shift from child saving to children’s rights.
Focusing on Ghana, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from European colonial rule and the first in the world to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, this book explores how dominant children’s rights principles interact with the lived realities of a range of children’s lives.
The author considers the changeability and inconsistencies of childhoods within this context and the factors that underpin these varied intersections, including cultural norms, British colonial legacy, the influence of Christianity, urbanization, and social, economic and political transformations.
Challenging one-dimensional portrayals of childhoods in the Global South, the author highlights the need for more holistic approaches to the study of children’s lives and children’s rights realization in Southern contexts.
