Childhood and Bio-politics: Life, Voice, Resource

Abstract

In the previous chapter I traced connections between the present agendas of childhood studies and a late twentieth-century wave of economic, cultural and legislative globalisation. I argued that the contemporary focus on the cultural diversity of childhoods and on the question of children’s self-representation emerged in response to those broader social and economic developments. I then highlighted some more recent developments in the life sciences and in understandings of climate change. These developments suggest to me that a strategic reframing of the basic questions of childhood studies would allow the field to grow and adapt in response to these changes in turn.