Dear Steve
You raise some important issues in your last e-mail. But it's important
not to get caught up in old and rather un-useful debates. Let me make a
couple (maybe more) comments.
1) It's not clear why, compared to the amount of investemt already spent
on children by parents and on being a 'good'parent by parents, the
resource issue is really an issue.
2) The assertion that children are citizens is made too easily. It is a
statement of intent rather than of an actually existing state in the
world. Children are clearly, and in so many ways, not citizens. The
question of how to move from intent to actualisation is difficult both
theoretically and politically. (Although having said this this,
there is a whole issue of how rights (and citizenship) are
formulated and constructed (i.e. discursive claims to rights, etc)
which would clearly problematise the 'assertion/reality' opposition
deployed above!)
In this sense, I think that Sonia's question regarding how to ascribe
children's and adults' rights and responsibilities in the positive
is correct. In thinking through this issue, children's rights and
freedoms are not posed in the abstract, but are made more
contingent. It also implies thinking about questions of organisation
and, dare I say it, governance.
The issues raised by recent initiatives concerning Internet content
regulation and child protection are too serious to ignore. But I think they
need to be handled with care. Strategically, there are too many moves
that can be made which would remain invisible if we were to stay with the
old rather hackneyed narrative of 'yet another moral panic'!
Best
David
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Dr David Oswell
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Human Sciences and the Centre for Research into Innovation, Culture and Technology
Brunel University
Uxbridge
Middlesex UB8 3PH
Tel: 01895 203126
Fax: 01895 203155
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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