[URBANTH-L]panel proposal AAA '07 "Children and Governmentality"

[T. Woronov]

Apologies for cross-postings

Call for papers

Governing Children, Producing Citizens
Proposed CAE Panel for the AAA Annual Meeting, Nov 28-Dec 2, 2007,  
Washington,
DC

	In the past several years, Foucault’s work on  governmentality has  
been enormously productive across the social sciences.   
Anthropologists in particular have begun to link ethnographic  
observations and methods to Foucault’s theories, adding a rich body  
of data from around the world that explores how Foucault’s concepts  
help us understand social practices.
	With a few notable exceptions, however, relatively little research  
in education or the growing field of the anthropology of children has  
been influenced by this body of theory.  Yet this is an especially  
fertile area for research and theorizing, for schools are a central  
institution for producing citizen-subjects, while practices and  
ideologies around children are central to the rationalities and  
techniques of government around the world.
	This panel seeks to bring together a critical mass of scholars who  
bring a Foucauldian perspective to bear on research on children,  
classrooms, and schools, arguing that these are privileged sites for  
explicating and extending the concept of governmentality as a  
particularly modern form of power.  How are children constituted as  
subjects of government?  What technologies are brought to bear on  
children to produce them as appropriate subjects?  What kinds of  
state (and other) rationalities conceptualize children, schools and  
education as sites of governance?  How are children learning "the  
conduct of conduct"?
	Current panelists engage with these questions in the context of  
Latin America, East Africa, and China.  We seek additional panelists  
who examine diverse settings and processes to understand how children  
become citizen-subjects.   If interested, please send a 250 word  
abstract by Feb 28th to Terry Woronov (tworonov at email.arizona.edu).

Thanks.