Visual and textual representations of childhood by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), 1999 to 2003

The objective of this paper is to investigate how UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) represents the notion of childhood. A content analysis of 690 photographs as well as an in-depth textual analysis of the most authoritative publications is conducted to decode childhood representations. The methodological approaches are both quantitative (content analysis) and qualitative (textual analysis). The photographic and publications data are obtained from the UNICEF website for the period 1999 to 2003. Inscribed in the visual images are historical western notions of childhood as a blissful stage of life in which passivity and vulnerability are featured. These inscriptions are rooted in technologies of scientific knowledge and myths, which explains therefore their persuasiveness. As regards arguments that development institutions export ideal notions of childhood specific only to western societies, the paper finds that while such ideals certainly are present in the representations, the proper ideal is by no means the sole embodiment of exported notions. Over the last five years, UNICEF has begun to incorporate new views of children as socially competent, valuable social actors in their own right (a school of thought that has begun to be theorised, most notably, by the 'New Sociology of Childhood'). However, the ideas of children as social actors attains a particular meaning in UNICEF texts. Many instances of children's strength and resiliency in third worlds are not represented as constitutive of what the idea of child agency means.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Social Development

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Stevens, Allison

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10710

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/10710