IE 2B4 Children and Family in National and
International Context
2009-2010
Clotilde Giner
03/12/09
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Two-week examination of the relationships
between globalisation and childhood:
1st week: Confronting ideals of global
childhood with reality
2nd week: Considering the effects of
globalisation on children’s lives nationally
and internationally
Objective: Gain an awareness of how
childhoods are changing from a global
perspective
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A few definitions of globalisation
The different forms of globalisation and some
of their impacts on children’s lives
Two main questions considered during the
lecture:
- Is globalisation (and its consequences) bringing
children’s experiences and cultures closer to each
other?
- Does it lead to the homogenisation of children’s
lives?
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Globalisation: some definitions
•‘the removal of barriers to free trade and the closer
integration of national economies’ (Stiglitz 2003: ix)
•‘reductions in barriers to transworld contacts. People
become more able – physically, legally, culturally, and
psychologically – to engage with each other in ‘one world’.
(Scholte 2002: 14)
•“a process that opens nation states to many influences that
originate beyond their borders. These changes are likely to
decrease the primacy of national economic, political, and
social institutions, thereby affecting the everyday context in
which children grow up and interact with the rest of society.
(Kaufman and Rizzini 2002: 4)
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On-going debate on its historical origins
Existence of economic, political and cultural
exchanges between national countries for
centuries
However, intensification of these processes due to
new technologies, including ICTs
 Countries have become more intertwined post
WWII
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Political globalisation
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Economic globalisation
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Cultural globalisation
= Increasing number of organisations
which influence the world as a whole, e.g.
the United Nations; The World Bank, etc
= increasing occurrence, speed and intensity
of production, trading and financial
exchange
- Key role of trans-national corporations
= growth in the exchange of cultural
practices between nations and peoples
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Increase in scale of international trade and
investment from 1980s
Growth in intensity in 1990s:
- Removal of barriers to international trade
- Opening up of economies to foreign investment
- Liberalisation of financial flows
= Adoption of neo-liberal policies worlwide
 Key role of international governmental
organisations and NGOs
 Generated unprecedented levels of wealth
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Uneven manifestation of globalisation and
its impact on children’s lives
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Improvement in child well-being in
countries with:
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Robust human and physical infrastructure
Adequate social policies
Prudent macroeconomic policies
Free access to foreign markets
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Shift to a market economy leading to:
 Increase in wage-based employment
 Increased workload for women
 Children
and young people having additional
burden of responsibilities
 Key role of the income-earning woman in
improving children’s health: allocating resources
towards food
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Integration in the world economy from the late
1970s through deregulation and external
liberalisation
Decrease in child poverty rates in the 1990s
and overall improvement of child well-being
But important regional disparities in child wellbeing
Comparative decline of government spending
for social purposes from mid-1980s to late
1990s
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Unequal distribution of the gains in child wellbeing, mainly affecting:
- Children in large parts of the Global South
- Children in remote areas and in urban poor families
in relatively successful countries
- Orphans/other children in AIDS-affected economies
- Refugee children and children affected by war
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Widening gaps in child well-being between the
advantaged and the disadvantaged
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“Global
interaction, rather than insulated
isolation, has been the basis of economic
progress in the world. Trade, along with
migration, communication, and dissemination of
scientific and technical knowledge, has helped to
break the dominance of rampant poverty and the
pervasiveness of ‘nasty, brutish and short’ lives
that characterized the world.
And yet, despite all the progress, life is still
severely nasty, brutish and short for a large part
of the world population. The great rewards of
globalized trade have come to some, but not to
others.”
Amartya Sen, Foreword,
Make Trade Fair, Oxfam 2002,
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High number of governmental and nongovernmental organisations involved with
children,
e.g. UNICEF, Save the Children, Committee on
the Rights of the Child
 UNCRC = expression of the political
globalisation
 Millenium Development Goals: new objectives
to harness globalisation
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Millenium Development Goals adopted by the United Nations to ensure
that "globalization becomes a positive force“ (UNESCO 2006)
Global partnership for development in developing countries aiming to
alleviate the adverse impact of globalisation
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Major accomplishments made in education
Enrolment in primary education increased
from 83% in 2000 to 88% in 2007
Most of the progress in regions lagging the
furthest behind:
- Increase by 15% in sub-Saharan Africa
- Increase by 11% in Southern Asia
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Still important inequalities in education based
on gender, ethnicity and geographical
location
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Steady decline of deaths of children under five
worldwide — from 12.6 in 1990 to around 9
million in 2007, despite population growth.
Recent improvements in Sub-Saharan countries:
-Distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets to
fight against malaria
-Second chance’ immunizations to fight against
measles.
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Growth of cross-cultural contacts and
exchanges of practices between nations
Facilitated by political and economic
globalisation
Key role of new technologies, e.g. Television,
mass telecommunications, the internet
Travel, immigration and cultural diversity as
both resulting from and enhancing cultural
globalisation
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New socio-technical systems of communication
Information, values and images that most
children routinely engage with, esp. through
television
Childhood culture is becoming more
homogenised as the same products, for example
toys, games and clothes, become available
everywhere
However, many children in the world still do not
have television in their homes, and books are
rarities.
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Children and
global commercial culture
• Children as participants in a commercial market,
involved in a culture of consumption (Lindstrom)
Global ‘Brands’ (a few examples)
Accessories, Toys and
media content
Food and drinks
Celebrities
LEGO / Barbie
Coca-Cola / Pepsi
Britney Spears
Disney
Starbucks
Hannah Montana
Wii/Game Boy/Playstation McDonalds
Rihanna
• An average child in the United States, Australia and
the UK sees between 20-40,000 commercials a year
• Strong personal power and influence over parental
purchasing choices
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Great levels of inequality and uneven
distribution of globalisation
 Creation of global children’s desires
 But no standardised access to global
consumer culture:
 Children’s global consumer culture still only a
‘project’: not available to all children, esp. in
large parts of the Global South (Langer 2003)
 But increasing penetration – see Mcintyre
(Langer 2003)
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The proliferation and globalisation of media
are among the key factors that have shaped
and defined the current generation of young
people. (Unicef survey 2004)
Presenting opportunities and risks according
to Unicef survey 2004:
Opportunities: broadens children's outlooks
and provide more equal access to information
Risks: cultural identification and values.
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Debates on the impact of media globalisation
(Buckingham 2007)
1. Global media as agents of cultural
homogenisation? (Morley and Robins 1995)
2. A process of accelerated exclusion and
marginalisation of large parts of the South?
(Nyamnjoh 2002)
3. A new form of ‘hybridity’ based on the merging
of global media forms with local traditions and
idioms – greater diversity? (de Block and
Buckingham 2007)
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A synchronisation of tastes and habits
 Globalisation of children’s programme production
and animation (Westcott 2002)
= Three American TV companies producing half
of the world’s children’s programmes
 In Britain, Ofcom called in 2007 for a national
debate on the future of children’s TV in Britain
 Global domination of American culture at the
expense of traditional diversity?
 Views on Disney (Buckingham 2001)
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Media as a great luxury for most children in
Africa
No access to media content for most children in
rural areas or poor urban families
In the case of elite African children: consumption
of media targeted at children in affluent
countries – second hand consumption
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Global and local components: “glocalisation”
 While the objects of children’s desires are
global, they are consumed locally (Langer 2003)
Pokémon (Tobin 2002): Dominating children’s
consumption worldwide from 1996 to 2000
 Success based on adaptation to local
traditions and idioms = localising process
 But differences in access to (localised)
Pokémon
Teletubbies (Buckingham 2007)
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Children’s media reception taking place in a
particular context
Endowing contents with local meanings
 Children able to use and interpret media
content selectively (Buckingham 2007)
 Possible for children to assume multiple
identifications that draw from different
cultural repertoires, depending on the
context
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Global engagement does not mean
homogenisation
Mitigated by local contexts and children’s agency,
i.e. the extent to which children can participate in
determining the frameworks within which they live
Child as a competent social being who has the
capacity to think critically about advertisement and
media contents
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A child-friendly economic policy
A new pattern of globalization that is socially just
and fair
Permanent observatory monitoring the impact of
mainstream economic policies on child rights
Regulation of privatised utilities (water, sanitation,
electricity, telecommunications) to ensure universal
access to these goods
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Child advocacy:
Need for more effective use of the vast
positive potential of mass media and new
technologies to advocate for, and enrich the
lives of, children and young people
worldwide.
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Impact of globalisation on your life as a child (as
compared to your parents’ life as children), your
children’s life/any child you know or have met (as
compared to your life as children) !
Think in terms of:
- Means of communication (incl. with family and friends
abroad)
- Life patterns (migration, studies abroad, travel..)
- Work /Economic situation
- Consumption patterns (food/drinks, accessories, toys,
clothes, TV content)
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Has globalisation led to the standardisation of
children's lives across the world?
Different steps:
Approach of the question (definition of the words, etc)
Development of an argumentation informed by readings,
lecture notes, discussion and your own opinion!
Provision of examples to support your arguments
Writing of a structured assignment, with introduction and
conclusion
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