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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Technological University Dublin

2011

Childhood

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Producing Governable Subjects: Images Of Childhood Old And New, Karen Smith Jan 2011

Producing Governable Subjects: Images Of Childhood Old And New, Karen Smith

Articles

Conceptions of childhood in terms of ‘evil’ and ‘innocence’ transcend time and culture. These conflicting images are deployed by Chris Jenks as the Dionysian and Apollonian models of childhood to symbolize external and internal forms of control. Drawing on the literature on governmentality this paper revisits these models and introduces a third model, the ‘Athenian’ child, analogous and supplementary to those developed by Jenks. This model is necessary in order to take account of relatively recent strategies in the government of childhood, which, predicated on understandings of children in terms of competence and agency, operate via responsibility and reflexivity.


The Discursive Construction Of Irish Early Childhood Education And Care Policy: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Rachel Kiersey Jan 2011

The Discursive Construction Of Irish Early Childhood Education And Care Policy: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Rachel Kiersey

Doctoral

Conceptual distinctions between care and early childhood education have influenced and reinforced the construction of knowledge about the early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy area. Discursive constructions in policy texts permeate wider society and become embodied in the broad social domain as “truths”, establishing the status quo about how social issues are perceived. Close scrutiny of the knowledge constructed about key concepts within Irish ECEC policy texts between 1998 and 2008 can shed some light on the ideological perspectives shaping the truths about ECEC in Irish society. This research used a critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodology to investigate policy …