Left in the Waiting Room of History
Provincializing the European Child
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18992145 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M Finn (0000-0003-3082-8186, Durham University, corresponding author), Cheryl Mcewan (0000-0002-6887-0788, Durham University) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 113-134 |
| Publication date | 2015-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Interventions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369801x.2013.858984 |
| OpenAlex | W1499637636 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 29 |
This essay highlights an important lacuna within critiques of infantilizing (neo) colonial European discourses: the failure to question whom or what was the ‘child’ against which non-Europeans were gauged. The premise is that the unacknowledged figure at the heart of these critiques is in fact the figure of the universalized European child. Not only is this paradoxical, it also opens the potential for taking these critiques further, and for shifting the analytical lens away from the racialized, infantilized Other in order to challenge the assumed universality of European notions of childhood against which the Other was, and sometimes remains, positioned. We develop this critique through a sympathetic engagement with broader postcolonial writings on the subject of infantilization and, specifically, with Dipesh Chakrabarty's Provincializing Europe (2000). The essay reveals the paradoxical presence of the figure of the European child within Chakrabarty's critique of Eurocentrism, arguing that this figure is present even as Chakrabarty seeks to provincialize Europe. The essay explores examples of the work that the figure of the universal European child continues to perform and concludes with some reflections on what it might mean to provincialize the European child, both for postcolonial theory and for the broader ethical issues this raises
Colonialism · Epistemology · Eurocentrism · Political science · Premise · Sociology · Anthropology · Children's Rights and Participation · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics
A History of Childhood
Constructing Childhood
Inner World
Black Skin, White Masks
Provincializing Europe
The Colonizer's Model of the World
Centuries of childhood
Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations
Colonial Childhoods
Unthinking Eurocentrism
Rethinking Development Geographies
On Unthinking Eurocentrism
Race and the Education of Desire
The Wretched of the Earth
Children's Geographies
Reflections of Primitivism
The Abnormal Distribution of Development
Challenging Adult Perspectives on Children's Geographies through Participatory Research Methods
Reconstructing Childhood
Sexual science. The Victorian construction of womanhood
Black Skins, White Masks
A Juvenile Periphery
Affective Economies
Prelude to Imperialism
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |