Notes the need to attend to the blurring of the category of childhood implicit in debates about topics such as children's interests and rights and criminalization of children. Outlines factors underlying a shift in the condition of contemporary childhood and children's social experiences. Argues the need to identify how children create and…

The Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera mobilizes recollections of childhood not only as an event in his adult life, but as a way of articulating a longing for new forms of social consciousness. Childhood itself is recalled both as narrative and source of narrative. As such it is a place and time of memory. It is not just a construct of writing,…

Examines the way recent childhood policy initiatives in Britain have generated contradictory models of child competence and adults' role, and attempts to locate policy within broader understandings of social change. Draws from case material on two dominant child care issues: child sex abuse and school deviance. (BGC)