How do childhood and children’s rights mean what they mean? Innovating the debate around the social semantics of childhood and children’s rights through an interdisciplinary approach
Article
Farini, F. and Scollan, A. 2024. How do childhood and children’s rights mean what they mean? Innovating the debate around the social semantics of childhood and children’s rights through an interdisciplinary approach. Children & Society. https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12865
Type | Article |
---|---|
Title | How do childhood and children’s rights mean what they mean? Innovating the debate around the social semantics of childhood and children’s rights through an interdisciplinary approach |
Authors | Farini, F. and Scollan, A. |
Abstract | This article discusses children’s rights as social semantics, approaching them as a form of self-description of a paradoxical relationship that has emerged from the late 20th century within several social systems, a relationship between generational order and children’s position as holders of human rights. Charles Taylor’s theory on the evolution of the semantics of human value is combined with a wide interdisciplinary array of contributions from Childhood Studies, Social Work, Pedagogy, Studies on Constitutionalism to propose an innovative social ontology of children’s rights. Although the UNCRC has been the object of critical scrutiny since the early 1990s, the authors are not aware of any previous attempt to approach children’s rights as social semantics in an attempt to illuminate the dynamic and paradoxical coupling within discourses on childhood between a fundamental social process, the reproduction of generational order, and a fundamental social institution, human rights as codified in western modernity. The authors argue that, whilst describing a paradoxical coexistence between intergenerational order and human rights, the semantics of children’s rights maintains its unity as a cultural form because another semantic distinction, between human rights and personal rights continue to generate social meaning. It is hoped that the scholarly debate will benefit from the contribution of this article to enrich the debate around the social ontology of childhood and children’s rights. |
Keywords | UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child); Children’s Self-Determination; Generational Order; Social Semantics; Citizenship Studies |
Sustainable Development Goals | 4 Quality education |
16 Peace, justice and strong institutions | |
Middlesex University Theme | Sustainability |
Research Group | Centre for Education Research and Scholarship (CERS) |
Publisher | Wiley |
Journal | Children & Society |
ISSN | 0951-0605 |
Electronic | 1099-0860 |
Publication dates | |
Online | 23 May 2024 |
Publication process dates | |
Submitted | 30 Nov 2023 |
Accepted | 17 Apr 2024 |
Deposited | 04 Jun 2024 |
Output status | Published |
Publisher's version | License File Access Level Open |
Copyright Statement | © 2024 The Authors. Children & Society published by National Children's Bureau and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12865 |
Language | English |
https://repository.mdx.ac.uk/item/148z20
Download files
Publisher's version
Farini_et_al_2024_How_do_childhood_and_children_s_rights_mean_what_they_mean_Innovati.pdf | ||
License: CC BY 4.0 | ||
File access level: Open |
24
total views11
total downloads0
views this month0
downloads this month