The Discursive Construction of Childhood and Youth in Aids Interventions in Lesotho's Education Sector

Beyond Global - Local Dichotomies

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4476578
AutoresN Ansell (0000-0002-6129-7413, Centre for Human Geography, Brunel University, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge UB8 3PH, England, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen28
Número5
Páginas791-810
Fecha de publicación2010-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1068/d8709
OpenAlexW2133872490
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas57

In southern Africa interventions to halt the spread of AIDS and address its social impacts are commonly targeted at young people, in many cases through the education sector. In Lesotho, education-sector responses to AIDS are the product of negotiation between a range of 'local' and 'global' actors. Although many interventions are put forward as government policy and implemented by teachers in schools, funding is often provided by bilateral and multilateral donors, and the international 'AIDS industry'-in the form of UN agencies and international NGOs-sets agendas and makes prescriptions. This paper analyses interviews conducted with policy makers and practitioners in Lesotho and a variety of documents, critically examining the discourses of childhood and youth that are mobilised in producing changes in education policy and practice to address AIDS. Focusing on bursary schemes, life-skills education, and rights-based approaches, the paper concludes that, although dominant 'global' discourses are readily identified, they are not simply imported wholesale from the West, but rather are transformed through the organisations and personnel involved in designing and implementing interventions. Nonetheless, the connections through which these discourses are made, and children are subjectified, are central to the power dynamics of neoliberal globalisation. Although the representations of childhood and youth produced through the interventions are hybrid products of local and global discourses, the power relations underlying them are such that they, often unintentionally, serve a neoliberal agenda by depicting young people as individuals in need of saving, of developing personal autonomy, or of exercising individual rights

Autonomy · Dichotomy · Economic growth · Economics · Globalization · Intervention (counseling · Negotiation · Political science · Psychological intervention · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Children's Rights and Participation · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Medicine · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare