Key text 1

Deconstructing Childhood and Childhood ‘Innocence’

The new sociology of childhood field highlights how childhood is discursively and socially constructed and critiques modernist, universal, biologically fixed understandings of childhood, primarily perpetuated within developmental psychology. Within social construction perspectives, the notion of childhood is viewed as culturally inscribed on the physical bodies of children. That is, what it means to be a child differs across social, cultural, political, economic and historical contexts and that it is important to view child development across these differences (James and Prout 1990; Gittins 1998; James, Jenks, and Prout 1998). The more traditional explanations of childhood, those perpetuating white, Western, middle-class values, fail to recognise the instability, multiplicity and fluidity of childhood across a broad range of socio-cultural, gendered, sexualised, classed, racialised and historical contexts.

Hegemonic discourses of childhood artificially construct mutually exclusive worlds* the world of the adult and the world of the child*in which adult􏰀child relationships are defined and binarised, signifying hierarchical relations of power (James and Prout 1990; Cannella 1997; Gittins 1998; Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence 1999; Robinson 2002). In this binary, children are socially constructed as innocent, immature, dependent, and the powerless ‘other’ in relation to the independent, mature, powerful, critically thinking and ‘knowing’ adult (Robinson 2002). This relationship is perpetuated through what are generally upheld as logical and natural differences between adults and children and operates to exclude children from the ‘adult’s world’ (Gittins 1998). Berry Mayall, a theorist of the sociology of childhood, points out that children’s ‘lives are lived through childhoods constructed for them by adult understandings of childhood and what children are and should be’ (1996, 1). We argue that what adults consider appropriate knowledge for children*what children should know*often in the name of protecting childhood innocence, is a critical component of this construction.

Within hegemonic discourses of childhood, ‘innocence’ is a deeply entrenched value considered inherent in the child. However, as we have argued for the recognition of childhood as a discursive and material socio-cultural construction, we also view childhoodDECONSTRUCTING CHILDHOOD ‘INNOCENCE’ 345

innocence as a similar construction. James Kincaid (1992) in his critique of childhood innocence argues that innocence is not a characteristic that pre-exists in the child, but rather is a cultural myth that is ‘inculcated’ and ‘enforced’ upon children and generally viewed by adults as in need of protection. We argue that childhood ‘innocence’ is a part of the construction of childhood more broadly, and is a critical political site at which the adult􏰀child power relationship, and the mutually exclusive ‘world of adults’ and the ‘world of the child’ is maintained. Consequently, certain knowledge becomes adults’ knowledge from which children are excluded. Such knowledge, Robinson (2005a) argues, can be viewed as difficult knowledge (Britzman 1998) sites in which many adults experience great discomfort in dealing with their own understandings, values, prejudices and fears; they are points at which the discursive locations of subjects can become challenged and troubled. The discomfort often associated with these locations is intensified when considered in the context of children, their perceived inherent innocence and their learning, influencing what becomes constituted as appropriate knowledge to communicate with children (Robinson 2002, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c; Silin 1995).

Henry Jenkins points out that ‘childhood innocence presumes that children exist in a space beyond, above, outside the political; we imagine them to be noncombatants whom we protect from the harsh realities of the adult world’ (1998, 2). Drawing on the work of Carey Bazalgette and David Buckingham (1995), Jenkins highlights the way in which children are viewed as ‘asocial or perhaps, pre-social’, resulting in an emphasis on their ‘inadequacies’, ‘immaturity’, and ‘irrationality’ (1998, 2). Jenkins goes on to point out that because ‘developmental psychology focuses on defining and encouraging ‘‘normative’’ development, it does not provide us with the tools for critiquing the cultural power invested in childhood innocence’ (1998, 2). This is a critical point because developmental psychology is foundational to the hegemonic discourse of childhood, constituting possibilities of thinking about the child, thus preventing different readings. ‘Cultural power’ in childhood innocence operates to maintain adult􏰀child power relations, distinctions in what is constituted adult knowledge and appropriate children’s knowledge, but it also acts as a convenient excuse for adults not to address difficult knowledge with children.

‘SHE’S KICKIN’ ASS, THAT’S WHAT SHE’S DOING!’ Deconstructing Childhood ‘Innocence’ in Media Representations

Kerry H. Robinson and Cristyn Davies