Postcolonial Childhoods

[Page 1282]Both social science and humanities scholarship that use postcolonial theory to discuss childhoods are intent on foregrounding the colonial past and its continued effects on the contemporary lives of children. The mode of critique that these scholars adopt is often epistemological. This is namely that it is directed at challenging a normative childhood through drawing attention to the categories and assumptions that appear commonsensical within childhood studies. Intent on uncovering notions of racial and cultural superiority that underlie this norm, the use of a postcolonial lens is at once a magnification of the work of this colonial past in the present. Not all empirical studies on children’s everyday lives in the majority world adopt this postcolonial lens. While postcolonial childhoods is not currently a ...