Childhood, Youth, and Violence

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this course, we will examine the particular social, cultural, and political positions occupied by children and youth in contexts of violence, which constitutes direct violence, structural violence, and cultural violence. We will examine how their identities are molded by and mold their experiences of violence, and the practices in which they engage to survive. Children have inhabited a position in popular imagination as unmitigated victims of violence—as refugees, child laborers, kidnapped child soldiers—while “youth” have contrarily been portrayed as the willing perpetrators of violence: its rebels, gang members, and “troublemakers”. These positions have become more mutable as stories emanating from around the world and domestically show both the agency of young people and their unique vulnerabilities. Is the “problem” of children and violence one of turning victims into killers, or is the position taken by other cultures—that children are “unfinished” and therefore inherently unpredictable—more likely to provide answers? What is the role of structures of violence and cultural expectations of the young in creating these cultural frameworks, and in creating possible futures for young people? In this course we will investigate notions of child and youth autonomy, gendering, socialization, liminality and resistance through case studies ranging from “at risk” youth in the US, to child prostitutes in Thailand, to juvenile courts in France in order to understand how ideas of violence and the “unfinished” age of humans are entangled.