Urszula Markowska-Manista

and a scholar of childhood, youth and children's rights studies for several decades, requires several layers of analysis.Having outlined the structure, I will attempt briefly to summarise and analyse the content and message of particular parts and the book as a whole.The book consists of a Preface and Acknowledgements, three theoretical and research related sections: Part i: How to understand childhoods in the postcolonial context; Part ii: Children under colonial and postcolonial rule; and Part iii: Children's rights and the decolonization of childhoods, as well as an Epilogue, References and Index.In the monograph, which he defines as his contribution to the decolonisation of childhood and children's rights studies, the author writes about the multiplicity of childhoods and children as actors, trying to show how power constellations affect children and formerly colonised countries and how they are perceived.The book is thus devoted to childhoods outside Europe in postcolonial context.Liebel uses the term "postcolonial" to present a critique of (selected) existing inequalities in the global structure of power and knowledge that continue as remnants of colonialism, with reference to the factual situation of children and their childhoods, as well as their situation as presented in literature.He applies the term "postcolonial" to outline postcolonial childhood (childhoods) that are still presented in an asymmetrical manner and discussed in a stereotypical way in many academic, social and cultural discourses that constitute a continuation of the colonial narration about "others".As Liebel emphasises in the Preface, the book is a conclusion of many years of research, conducted with children and on children in countries of Latin America and Africa.It is also a result of hundreds of hours spent behind the proverbial desk on correspondence with researchers from multiple countries in search of detailed information and analysis of literature on the subject in German, Spanish, English, French and sometimes Polish and Russian.The book is not a search for some "concrete" lost childhood or multiple lost childhoods.In the introduction, Liebel informs that the research presented has an exploratory character and defines the thematic field of his book as possibly the most precise 'appraisal of childhood that has emerged from the postcolonial constellation and continues to emerge' (3).The term "postcolonial constellation" is defined as an asymmetrical power relation in material, ideological

Art · Childhood studies · Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Decolonization · Developmental psychology · Dignity · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Children's Rights and Participation · Education and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Psychology