Kidworld

Kidworld contributes to an emerging field of childhood studies that challenges disciplinary boundaries, in such fields as early childhood education and developmental psychology, which are limited in their beliefs and relationships with younger human beings. One role of childhood studies is to recognize the historical-, political-, and even power-oriented contexts that construct childhood, giving voice to issues that have been previously ignored and disqualified. The authors of Kidworld employ their own diverse, global perspectives to reveal the existence of and problems with globalization and marketing of the universal, modernist child. Such questions as the following are addressed: How are market-driven motives influencing the lives of (poor) children? How does the political climate of a nation affect children's cultural, linguistic, and educational rights? Can more just representation for children be accomplished? Contents: Gaile S. Cannella: Global Perspectives, Cultural Studies, and the Construction of Postmodern Childhood Studies--Sue Books: Making Poverty Pay: Children and the 1996 Welfare Law--Sumana Kasturi: Constructing Childhood in a Corporate World: Cultural Studies, Childhood, and Disney--Dominic Scott: What Are Beanie Babies Teaching Our Children?--Joe L. Kincheloe: The Complex Politics of McDonald's and the New Childhood: Colonizing Kidworld--Janice A. Jipson/Nicholas Paley: A Toy Story: The Object(s) of American Childhood--Mee-Ryoung Shon: Korean Early Childhood Education: Colonization and Resistance--Radhika Viruru: Postcolonial Ethnography: An Indian Perspective on Voice and Young Children--Susan Grieshaber: A National System of Childcare Accreditation: QualityAssurance or a Technique of Normalization?--Lourdes Diaz Soto/Rene Quesada Inces: Children's Linguistic/Cultural Human Rights--Gaile S. Cannella/Radhika Viruru: (Euro-American Constructions of) Education of Children (and Adults) Around the World: A Postcolonial Critique.