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Governing the Global Child: Bio-politics and Liberal Subjectivities

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Geographies of Global Issues: Change and Threat

Part of the book series: Geographies of Children and Young People ((GCYP,volume 8))

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Abstract

This chapter shows how governmentality theory can illuminate the processes through which childhood is governed on a global scale. It attends to the intersection between liberalism, capitalism, and the governing of childhood through an analysis of how NGOs, international law, and academic disciplines produce and circulate specific ideas about the figure of the child. Locating the analysis in a historical perspective, it demonstrates that the division between contemporary child rights and historical child saving is far from complete. It argues that child rights and child saving exist contemporaneously and construct the child as an immanently liberal subject. This liberal subject and the particular kinds of freedom that it affords are the figures through which the inequalities of global capitalism are partially obscured. For this reason, the chapter concludes researchers and practitioners may wish to consider (and resist) the ways that they are incorporated into the governing of contemporary childhoods.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, 32 Tavistock Square, WC1H 9EZ, London, UK

    Karen Wells

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  1. Karen Wells
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Correspondence to Karen Wells .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Health, Sciences and Social Ca, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, United Kingdom

    Nicola Ansell

  2. Australian Centre for Cultural Environme, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia

    Natascha Klocker

  3. Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Tracey Skelton

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Wells, K. (2015). Governing the Global Child: Bio-politics and Liberal Subjectivities. In: Ansell, N., Klocker, N., Skelton, T. (eds) Geographies of Global Issues: Change and Threat. Geographies of Children and Young People, vol 8. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-95-8_26-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-95-8_26-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-4585-95-8

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