Table Of ContentThe ‘Poor Child’
The ‘poor child’ at the centre of development activity is often measured against
and reformed towards an idealised and globalised child subject. This book exam-
ines why such normative discourses of childhood are in need of radical revision
and explores how development research and practice can work to ‘unsettle’ the
global child. It engages the cultural politics of childhood – a politics of equality,
identity and representation – as a methodological and theoretical orientation to
rethink the relationships between education, development, and poverty in chil-
dren’s lives.
This book brings multiple disciplinary perspectives, including cultural studies,
sociology, and film studies, into conversation with development studies and
development education in order to provide new ways of approaching and con-
ceptualising the ‘poor child’. The researchers draw on a range of methodological
frames – such as poststructuralist discourse analysis, arts based research, ethno-
graphic studies and textual analysis – to unpack the hidden assumptions about
children within development discourses. Chapters in this book reveal the diverse
ways in which the notion of childhood is understood and enacted in a range of
national settings, including Kenya, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom.
They explore the complex constitution of children’s lives through cultural, pol-
icy, and educational practices. The volume’s focus on children’s experiences and
voices shows how children themselves are challenging the representation and
material conditions of their lives.
The ‘Poor Child’ will be of particular interest to postgraduate students and
scholars working in the fields of childhood studies, international and comparative
education, and development studies.
Lucy Hopkins is a lecturer in children and family studies at Edith Cowan
University, Western Australia.
Arathi Sriprakash is a lecturer in sociology of education at the University of
Cambridge, UK.
Education, Poverty and International
Development Series
Series Editors
Madeleine Arnot and Christopher Colclough
Centre for Education and International Development,
University of Cambridge, UK
This series of research-based monographs and edited collections contributes
to global debates about how to achieve education for all. A major set of ques-
tions faced by national governments and education providers concerns how the
contributions made by education to reducing global poverty, encouraging
greater social stability and equity, and ensuring the development of individual
capability and wellbeing can be strengthened. Focusing on the contributions
that research can make to these global agendas, this series aims to provide
new knowledge and new perspectives on the relationships between educa-
tion, poverty and international development. It offers alternative theoretical
and methodological frameworks for the study of developing-country educa-
tion systems, in the context of national cultures and ambitious global
agendas. It aims to identify the key policy challenges associated with address-
ing social inequalities, uneven social and economic development, and the
opportunities to promote democratic and effective educational change.
The series brings together researchers from the fields of anthropology,
economics, development studies, educational studies, politics, international
relations and sociology. It includes work by some of the most distinguished
writers in the fields of education and development, along with new authors
working on important empirical projects. The series contributes significant
insights on the linkages between education, economy and society, based on
interdisciplinary, international and national studies.
Selected volumes will include critical syntheses of existing research and policy,
work using innovative research methodologies, and in-depth evaluations of
major policy developments. Some studies will address topics relevant to poverty
alleviation, national and international policy-making and aid, while others will be
anthropological or sociological investigations of how education functions within
local communities, for households living in poverty or for particular socially
marginalised groups. In particular, the series will feature sharp, critical studies
that are intended to have a strategic influence on the thinking of academics and
policy-makers.
Published titles:
Education Outcomes and Poverty Livelihoods and Learning
A reassessment Education For All and the
Edited by Christopher Colclough marginalisation of mobile
pastoralists
Teacher Education and the Caroline Dyer
Challenge of Development
A global analysis
Gender Violence in Poverty
Edited by Bob Moon
Contexts
The educational challenge
Education Quality and Social
Edited by Jenny Parkes
Justice in the Global South
Challenges for policy, practice
The ‘Poor Child’
and research
The cultural politics of
Edited by Leon Tikly and
education, development
Angeline Barrett
and childhood
Edited by Lucy Hopkins and
Learner-centred Education in
Arathi Sriprakash
International Perspective
Whose pedagogy for whose
development? Forthcoming titles:
Michele Schweisfurth
Gender, Education and
Professional Education, Capabilities Poverty
and the Public Good The politics of policy
The role of universities in promoting implementation
human development Edited by Elaine Unterhalter,
Melanie Walker and Monica McLean Jenni Karlsson and Amy North
The ‘Poor Child’
The cultural politics of education,
development and childhood
Edited by Lucy Hopkins and
Arathi Sriprakash
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 L. Hopkins and A. Sriprakash
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The ‘Poor Child’ : the cultural politics of education, development and
childhood / edited by Lucy Hopkins and Arathi Sriprakash
pages cm. — (Education, poverty and international development)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Students with social disabilities. 2. Poor children—Education. 3. Poor
children—Social conditions. 4. Educational sociology. I. Hopkins, Lucy.
II. Sriprakash, Arathi.
LC4065.P66 2015
371.826′94—dc23
2015005692
ISBN: 978-0-415-74129-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-81533-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
List of illustrations ix
Notes on contributors x
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
1 Unsettling the global child: Rethinking child subjectivity
in education and international development 3
LUCY HOPKINS AND ARATHI SRIPRAKASH
PART I
Cultural representations of childhood and poverty 21
2 ‘It shouldn’t happen here’: Cultural and relational
dynamics structured around the ‘poor child’ 23
ERICA BURMAN
3 ‘Black kid burden’: Cultural representations of Indigenous
childhood and poverty in Australian cinema 43
KRISTINA GOTTSCHALL
PART II
Contextualising the ‘poor child’: Children’s voices as
modes of resistance 63
4 Child labour, schooling and the reconstruction of
childhood: A case study from Kenya 65
ANGELA GITHITHO MURIITHI
5 Victims of what? Misunderstandings of anti-trafficking
child protection policies in Benin 84
SIMONA MORGANTI
viii Contents
6 The construction of resilience: Voices of poor children
in Mexico 102
LUZ MARÍA STELLA MORENO MEDRANO
PART III
Questioning the project of schooling and the politics
of development 125
7 Policy constructions of childhoods: Impacts of multi-level
education and development policy processes in Southeast
Asia and the South Pacific 127
ALEXANDRA MCCORMICK
8 Modernity and multiple childhoods: Interrogating the
education of the rural poor in global India 151
ARATHI SRIPRAKASH
9 Picturing education, poverty and childhood from the
perspectives of yak herder children in Bhutan 168
LUCY HOPKINS
Conclusion 191
10 Revisioning ‘development’: Towards a relational
understanding of the ‘poor child’ 193
ARATHI SRIPRAKASH AND LUCY HOPKINS
Index 205
Illustrations
Figures
1.1 Advertising a preschool and childcare centre in Bangalore, India 4
6.1 Risk factors among participants associated with income,
housing and parents’ lack of educational opportunities in Jalisco,
Mexico 107
6.2 Protective factors among participants associated with family,
community, friends and school in Jalisco, Mexico 108
6.3 Developmental assets among participants associated with personal
characteristics and adaptation skills in Jalisco, Mexico 109
9.1 Competition drawings of education and poverty 172
9.2 Tshering’s view of what teachers think about yak herding 179
9.3 Tshering’s depiction of what he thinks about yak herding 180
9.4 Tshering’s view of what parents think about education: the story
of the ‘bad boy’ 181
9.5 Tshering’s view of what teachers think about education 184
9.6 Tshering’s view of what parents think about yak herding and
education 185
9.7 Tshering’s depiction of what he thinks about education 186
Tables
4.1 Reconstructed understandings of childhood in Kiratu 79
6.1 Demographic information about the participants 110
7.1 Partial overview of a genre chain for Education for All (EFA) 131
7.2 EFANAP acknowledgement and inclusion of CSOs/NGOs
against Dakar goals 136
7.3 Mechanisms for education policy deliberation 139
