Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood by Robinson, Kerry H.;

Short description:

This book provides a critical examination of the discourses that underpin the regulation of children’s access to certain knowledge – understood as ‘difficult knowledge’ – and highlights the way this regulation contributes to the construction of childhood.

Long description:

Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood provides a critical examination of the way we regulate children’s access to certain knowledge and explores how this regulation contributes to the construction of childhood, to children’s vulnerability and to the constitution of the ‘good’ future citizen in developed countries.

Through this controversial analysis, Kerry H. Robinson critically engages with the relationships between childhood, sexuality, innocence, moral panic, censorship and notions of citizenship. This book highlights how the strict regulation of children’s knowledge, often in the name of protection or in the child’s best interest, can ironically, increase children’s prejudice around difference, increase their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse, and undermine their abilities to become competent adolescents and adults. Within her work Robinson draws upon empirical research to:

• provide an overview of the regulation and governance of children’s access to ‘difficult knowledge’, particularly knowledge of sexuality








• explore and develop Foucault’s work on the relationship between childhood and sexuality








• identify the impact of these discourses on adults’ understanding of childhood, and the tension that exists between their own perceptions of sexual knowledge, and the perceptions of children








• reconceptualise children’s education around sexuality.

Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood is essential reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking courses in education, particularly with a focus on early childhood or primary teaching, as well as in other disciplines such as sociology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies.

"An important book with a compelling message. It provides an enlightening view of children’s perspectives of their sexuality and the influences on its development. It should give pause to educators, politicians, parents, and society-at-large who attempt to govern and regulate subjects without adequate input from, or understanding of, the subjects’ perspectives and the effects of their environments." - K. Keefe, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

"The book is heavily grounded in sociological and psychological theory, empirical research in the social sciences, and Robinson's own professional and personal experiences. [...] An increase in availability of research and literature like Robinson's will lead to more discussion in the public sphere and hopefully, eventually, result in changes in the way childhood is viewed and regulated." - Jessica R. Peterson, Journal of Youth Adolescence

Table of Contents:

1. The Contradictory Nature of Children’s Contemporary Lives  2. Difficult Knowledge and Subjugated Knowledge: Adult/Child Relations and the Regulation of Citizenship  3. Childhood Innocence, Moral Panic and Censorship: Constructing the Vulnerable Child  4. Schooling the Vulnerable Child: Power/Knowledge and the Regulation of the Adult Normative Citizen-Subject  5. Children’s Sexual Subjectivities  6. Parents, Children’s Sexual Subjectivity and the Transmission of Sexual Knowledge Across Generations  7. Critical Conversations – Building a Culture of Sexual Ethics Early in Life