Research Catalog

Title

Children, rights and modernity in China : raising self-governing citizens / Orna Naftali.

Author

Naftali, Orna

Publication

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan 2014.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 173 pages; 23 cm.

Summary

A timely, original study of the emergence of a new type of thinking about children and their rights in contemporary urban China, which draws on diverse evidence from Chinese government, academic, media, and pedagogic publications, as well as on participant observation and interviews in two primary schools and among elite and middle class families in Shanghai, China. Drawing on rich, ethnographic data, this book debunks many popular and scholarly stereotypes about the predominance of Confucian ideas of parental authority in China or about the indifference to individual human rights in the political and public culture of the PRC. This book also recognizes the complexities and conflicts that exist in Chinese discourses about and practices toward children, as older ideas of filiality, neoliberal ideologies, and the new awareness of children's right to privacy, to expressing their views, and to protection against violence compete and collude in complicated, often contradictory ways.

Series Statement

Studies in childhood and youth

Subject

• Children > China > Social conditions
• Children's rights > China
• Age groups: children
• Anthropology
• Children > Social conditions
• Children's rights
• Globalization
• Human rights, civil rights
• Human rights
• Politics and Government

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-168) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• Machine generated contents note: Children's rights and the distinct form of Chinese modernity -- The emergence of the child-rights discourse in the modern era -- Childhood, rights, and citizenship in post-socialist urban China -- Social and generational habitus in the formation of Children's rights -- Research populations and research methods -- Outline of the book -- 1. Recasting Children as Autonomous Persons: Children as Future Citizens and Workers -- The legal discourse of Children's rights in China -- "Children are masters of their own lives" -- Creating a democratic family environment -- Children's empowerment and the quality of the nation -- Concluding remarks -- 2. Children's Right to Self-Ownership: Space, Privacy, and Punishment -- Children and privacy in Chinese modernity -- "Each person has his own piece of the sky"
• Children's right to bodily privacy and physical integrity -- "What right do you have to reproach him?" -- "We now have a law that protects us!" -- Discussion and conclusion -- 3. Constituting Rights as Needs: Psychology and the Rise of Middle-Class Childhood -- The psychological discourse of childhood in modern China -- Recognizing Children's developmental needs -- Learning should be fun -- Tending to students' emotional wellbeing -- Necessary reading for parents -- "You can barely call it a childhood" -- Concluding remarks -- 4. The Filial Child Revisited: Tradition Holds Its Ground in Modern Shanghai -- The attraction of tradition and the perils of freedom -- Respecting Children's rights or upholding filial piety? -- "The Loving Heart Passes On" -- Concluding remarks -- Conclusion -- Rights, intimacy, and belonging -- The political implications of China's child-rights discourse.

ISBN

• 1137346582 (cloth)
• 9781137346582 (cloth)

OCLC

878103822

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library